Le Havre extended along a windswept curve of coastline under a vast northern sky. Its docks, tucked into the north side of the wide estuary of the Seine, were the seat of its prosperity. In the eighteenth century, local dynasties had been founded on fortunes made from the triangular trade in sugar and slaves between Africa, France and the French Antilles, and Melville would have found out quickly enough that their names still carried weight in the town a hundred years later. Families like the Foaches and the Begouens once built ships, bankrolled the trade, even insured it and refined the sugar. Thanks to them Le Havre was endowed with a grand Hotel de Ville, a number of private mansions in the city centre, an imposing Palais de Justice and the deep Vauban Docks, based on those in the Port of London, that Melville would come to know well.
Nearly 300 metres of massive stone breakwater protected the port and people ashore would point out ships poised beyond the bar, awaiting pilots to bring them in. Since the first passenger steamships ploughed their way across the Atlantic in the 1830s, Le Havre had become more prosperous than ever, and now with mass emigration from the east, all Europe seemed to want to embark here for a new life in America. The steamship lines competed to offer something different. Some were technologically advanced, some more luxurious, some, like the Chargeurs Réunis, specialised in freight. Melville would have seen scores of ships of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes.
It was a good place to bring up a family. Le Havre was a sort of cross between Brighton and Bristol: a station balnéaire and commercial port combined. Along the Boulevard Albert Premier facing the long beach, tall balconied hotels were springing up to satisfy the new fashion for seaside holidays. Kate could wheel the perambulator towards the Cap de la Hève which towered out of the sea, or inland towards the old Priory on a hill overlooking the bay. All this, after the smoke and grime of London: they would have had no regrets. Melville was working with French customs officers every day, and began to learn French.
The exact date of Melville’s posting to France is uncertain. In March of 1884 an English Port Policeman at Le Havre reported two Irish-American suspects on the New York boat; we know this from a letter from the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office to his opposite number at the Foreign Office.1 That policeman may have been Melville, who was the sergeant there along with a PC Durham. By April, Monro was definitely employing Inspector Maurice Moser on Irish duty in Paris.2 The first proof of Melville’s presence at the coast is a letter from the Consul, Frederic Bernal, to Jenkinson in London, in December of 1884.
Havre, December 16th 1884
Sir
Sergeant Melville called this morning at the Consulate General and showed me a memorandum he had just received from London with instructions to call on me for my intervention in the event of his discovering the presence in this town of a certain individual. I at once telegraphed you as follows. ‘In case necessity arising could do nothing without instructions from Foreign Office.’
You will remember a conversation I had with you some months ago when I told you that the Foreign Office wished to know what instructions the Home Office desired should be given me. I have heard nothing more on the subject.
Were I to know that an individual who was on his way to commit, or had committed, some attempt to blow up a place in England, was here, it would be necessary for me 1st, to get the police to arrest him – provisionally, and 2nd, to formally apply to the Procureur de la République for his detention (that official would immediately ask for instructions from the Minister of Grace and Justice), but up to the moment I have no instructions which would justify my incurring such a [sic] responsibilities.3
Bernal sent a copy to the Foreign Office which was minuted by various hands. If this happened, who would deal with it? The Foreign Office decided that if Sergeant Melville or anyone else reported the presence of Irish dynamitards on French soil, they should inform the relevant British Consulate in America so that the men could be picked up there.
It is clear from Bernal’s letter that after nearly eighteen months working directly to Harcourt, Jenkinson had not grasped the niceties of communication within departments of state in England, far less the diplomatic and legal complexities of enforcing his will abroad. He made people feel threatened. At the Foreign Office, in consulates abroad, and in Scotland Yard, people felt their authority undermined by his sweeping demands and force of character. Turf wars sprang up like brush fires.
In February of 1885, for instance, Jenkinson began to agitate for a sort of roving ambassador to tour consulates in every one of the United States and encourage them to… well, what? It depended how you read it. Maybe they were supposed just to keep their ears open, and maybe they were supposed to spend a little money (whether out of Foreign Office funds was unclear) employing agents, in which case they would become part of Jenkinson’s empire at one remove. In a moment of carelessness, or weariness, Sir Julian Pauncefote at the Foreign Office allowed Jenkinson’s emissary to go forth but his arrival did not always go down terribly well. There exists for instance an exasperated letter to London from Lord Sackville West at the Washington Legation; he personally had been begging for a dedicated employee to do this very job for some time. His requests had been ignored and now, it seemed, the Home Office was proposing to interfere in foreign affairs.4
As for Monro, he could get no co-operation from Jenkinson whatsoever. The CID was ignored. Jenkinson trusted only his RIC men, who were quietly operating in London as elsewhere in England entirely under his control, answerable to no one else. (He acknowledged that there were ten of them,5 although later events would show that there were more.) Monro found this intolerable. Worse, Jenkinson would not share information; he insisted6 that he was under no obligation to do so and could not work if he did. So Moser, in Paris in the summer of 1884, had found himself watching men who were working for Jenkinson. Nothing could be more futile. And the Special Irish Branch Port Police, leaving home at the crack of dawn on icy mornings for the docks, and prepared to do all they could to warn the authorities of the movements of suspects, needed something better to go on than a ship’s manifest. How was Melville to investigate, or even identify, suspects on the New York boats if he had only a sketchy idea of who they were or why they were suspected? Jenkinson had proved dismissive of the SIB from the start and by the spring of 1885 matters were coming to a head.
In London there had been bombs at the Tower and the House of Commons. There was also social unrest which had nothing to do with Ireland, and following riots in Trafalgar Square, Commissioner Henderson resigned.
On 8 April James Monro and Edward Jenkinson, like a couple of recalcitrant schoolboys, sat down before the new Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. Warren was a military man. He settled the argument at once. When they departed he was entirely persuaded that Jenkinson’s promise to communicate with him directly, cutting out Monro, would somehow ensure that Jenkinson volunteered information and that Monro would no longer concern himself with the work on which his detectives were engaged. Neither was remotely likely. Jenkinson on principle did not volunteer information. Monro remained rightly protective of his status and that of the Special Branch, and had been used to running his own show and letting Sir Edward Henderson as Commissioner do the PR and take the credit while he did the work. Now, in Warren, he was up against a man who was used to obedience from subordinates. As Assistant Commissioner in charge of CID, Monro was expected to take orders.
Six weeks later Home Secretary Harcourt called Jenkinson and Monro into his office in an attempt to mediate. He too failed. Monro was reasonable; all he wanted was to see the RIC off his patch and get some information to work with. Jenkinson was ‘like a dog with a bone’, Harcourt told him irritably, insisting ‘It is monstrous that the London detectives should not know of these things.’7
Jenkinson had every reason to be wary. He had recently been approached, via the Consulate in Mexico and the Foreign Office, by a potentially invaluable spy, General F.F. Millen, who had been a leading Irish-American activist for twenty years (and had worked for the British in the 1860s on the recommendation of Lord Salisbury, who was keeping silent on the matter). He worked for the New York Herald, besides being a military man.
Millen would be risking his life and, in any case, expected a certain standard of living for his family. He would be a serious charge on the Secret Service budget.
Jenkinson dared not reveal Millen’s identity. He thought Scotland Yard men were incompetent; thanks to them, his own name had already appeared in the newspapers. He insisted that he alone should be the judge of when to convey information to Monro, that Monro on the other hand should be under an obligation immediately to convey information to him, and that he should retain the RIC men. On the other hand Jenkinson had been made a fool of, recently, by ‘the Burkham affair’ in which bogus information was offered and largely paid for.8
By 17 June – at another, stormy tripartite confrontation – Harcourt had had enough.
Sir W. Harcourt regretted to see that Mr Jenkinson manifested such a temper and frame of mind... and when Mr Jenkinson displayed such a state of mind in dealing with him, it gave rise to the impression in Sir W. Harcourt’s mind that Mr Jenkinson might display the same feeling towards others, and that perhaps he had done so in dealing with Mr Monro…
Mr Jenkinson asked what was to become of the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Sir W. Harcourt observed that on the whole he thought the sooner they quitted London the better…
Mr Jenkinson observed that that being so, he did not see that there was much use in his appointment.
Sir W. Harcourt said that was a matter for him.9
Jenkinson, who was a little more subdued after this, spent the next few days producing a long memo setting out his case.10 He was willing to concede almost nothing. At the end of June the Liberal Government fell, and would remain out of office for the next seven months. Harcourt went with it and departed in anger, as Jenkinson with characteristic arrogance had announced that Lord Spencer was coming over and would settle the dispute in his favour with the new Conservative Home Secretary, Sir Richard Assheton Cross.11 Monro calmly wrote a note explaining why Jenkinson’s scheme was not only operationally unsound, but unconstitutional.12
Cross, the incoming Secretary of State, was impatient with the whole thing. He met both men and scribbled a set of rules which he considered adequate to settle it. The rules could be partially interpreted, and were.
For the rest of 1885 Monro and Jenkinson were distracted by other matters. Jenkinson knew that a plot was being cooked up that would involve the Tsar in sponsoring Irishmen to drive the British out of Afghanistan, and possibly promote a Franco-Russian alliance against Germany. It was all a diversion. The Foreign Office was paying a senior Fenian called Carroll-Tevis in Paris and he, along with Jenkinson’s man Casey, was deep in the plot. The English Government now had so many agents dotted about Paris, New York and London unknown to each other that they risked playing a double or treble game that would inevitably lead nowhere; this to a great extent was the case with the Russo-Irish plan.13
Nonetheless Jenkinson looked forward to Millen’s arrival from America via Le Havre in November.14 Before that a meeting of Irish revolutionaries would leave France by way of Le Havre in September.15 It would be Melville’s job to watch them; to watch them come in, and make sure they left; to watch Millen arrive. Jenkinson was still excluding the SIB from anything but mundane tasks, but Melville had plenty of routine work at the port, his French was fluent, and there was a new baby at home: in April, James Benjamin had been born.
There were no immediate bomb threats to London. In the lull that marked the second half of 1885 Jenkinson’s urge to manipulate events became almost megalomaniac and his epistolary efforts more stupendous than ever. His eighteen-page Memorandum on the present situation in Ireland of 26 September set out an eloquent case for Home Rule which he sent to Lord Salisbury and selected members of the Cabinet. In his view, were Home Rule not conceded the violence would worsen; the reasonable majority of Parnellite Irish nationalists would be overwhelmed and outmanoeuvred by the violent extremists unless Parnell received support.
Salisbury dismissed this. Home Rule was out of the question from a Conservative government and he was perfectly prepared to confront an escalation of hostilities. Jenkinson bombarded his only sympathiser in Cabinet, Spencer’s successor in Dublin Lord Carnarvon, with notes and memos; he even wrote about Home Rule to Gladstone, pointing out that only by keeping Parnell on side could violence (and implicitly a violent swing to the Tories) be prevented. Gladstone, who had always kept the Secret Service strictly at arm’s length, sent the following somewhat deflating reply:
I agree very emphatically – but these are not abstractions, they call for immediate action. I must ask in what capacity you address me – and what use I can make of your letter?16
1886 would be Melville’s third year in Le Havre, and he was frustrated by a dangerous situation that nobody seemed to be doing anything about. There was a pretty little port called Honfleur set deep into the south side of the Seine estuary, and close to Honfleur was a dynamite factory. Ships laden with the stuff now sailed quite regularly away from Honfleur along the river mouth beyond Le Havre and out into the English Channel whence, it was claimed, they headed for the Baltic, their cargo apparently intended for use in the Russian mining industry. Melville would have been aware that the Irish-American dynamiters used materials bought in Europe. He could have a source of supply here under his nose, a short ferry ride away, and yet he had no intelligence with which to make further enquiries.
If he pointed this out in a report to his superiors in London, and we have no proof that he did, nothing came of it. Hostilities had re-opened in the New Year over, of all things, a threat to HRH the Prince of Wales. It came in a letter signed ‘Magee’, and under the mistaken impression that Mr Jenkinson was head of the Secret Police, the Prince of Wales passed it on to him. Rather than conveying the letter, or at the very least its contents, to Scotland Yard, Jenkinson organised a ludicrous sting operation.
He sent a woman for the purpose of entrapping the writer of the threatening letter, entrusting to her a bag of farthings, supposed to represent sovereigns, in payment of the bribe demanded by the writer of the letter.17
This masterly ruse not only failed, but emerged into daylight when the Prince passed a subsequent letter directly to Scotland Yard. Dogged detective work by the SIB revealed that the woman had been one of many Irish people employed by a private agency off Piccadilly Circus which was supported by Mr Jenkinson’s Secret Service funds and advertised for assistance in the public press.
As this case was followed up, the Tories were preparing for a fresh election. By February Gladstone and the other old faces were back. Hugh Childers was Home Secretary. In March Godfrey Lushington, Under-Secretary at the Home Office, declared that the endless squabbles were leading him to favour the loss of Jenkinson over the loss of Monro.
Unless the case is very carefully handled I believe Mr Monro would resign. And this would be a deplorable loss, very far exceeding any gain from Mr Jenkinson obtaining a free hand, if indeed that were possible.18
Nothing could be done to make these two work together. By May, Monro had gone on the offensive. He wanted Jenkinson out, and wrote a long memo listing every instance of the man’s arrogant behaviour and more:
[and then]... the explosions at the Houses of Parliament and the Tower occurred. While investigating these cases, the manner in which my action as a police officer was interfered with is almost beyond belief. Not only was freedom of action denied to me, but in one instance illegal action was taken by Mr Jenkinson himself and suggestions involving illegal procedure were made to me by Mr Jenkinson which, had they been listened to, would undoubtedly have led to the failure of the case and involved the police in well-merited disgrace. I do not further allude to the matter here, but I am fully prepared to substantiate the accuracy of this statement.19
He concluded his note with a cool evaluation of Mr Jenkinson’s usefulness.
I have already said that all the information regarding dangerous, or supposed dangerous, subjects in London was given to Mr Jenkinson by Scotland Yard... I have furnished to Sir Charles Warren a list of every file of information issued by Mr Jenkinson to me during the past year, and the result qua tangible information is absolutely nil. There have been many vague rumours communicated; the time of police has been frequently wasted on following up the intelligence of an (unintentionally no doubt) misleading character; but of real, practical, valuable information there has been a very decided absence.20
InJune 1886, afterjust four months in office, the Liberal Government split over Home Rule. An election was called, and a coalition of Tories and Liberal Unionists took its place. Lord Salisbury returned as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, and for the first time a Roman Catholic, Henry Matthews, became the Home Secretary.
As for relevant information from overseas, in September of 1886 Monro was complaining that he seen not a single item of consular intelligence in a year.21 Relevant documents from consulates went to the FO and thence to Jenkinson. But this is not to say Scotland Yard received no information from overseas. Some embassy intelligence certainly reached Monro, such as this hair-raising note on 10 July from the Secretary at the British Embassy in Paris:
A man came to me this morning and said that he was convinced that some dynamite plot was being prepared by the Irish Americans who frequent Reynolds’ Bar… He has overheard phrases like ‘we shall have another earthquake ready soon’… He has twice seen suspicious looking bags at the Bar, which are taken charge of by the proprietor. My informant had an opportunity of touching one: he found it very heavy, and heard a ticking noise coming from it. He thinks it contains dynamite, which comes from Havre.22
The informant was sent direct to Scotland Yard and told Monro, in answer to questioning, that an Englishman had been seen hanging around Reynolds’ Bar. Monro saw a means to expose one of Jenkinson’s unacknowledged ‘threads’. He knew that the man who ran the private agency off Piccadilly was called Winter, alias Dawson. He had long ago put the information before Childers and Jenkinson. Jenkinson tipped the man off; he fled to Paris; and it was he who was lurking around Reynolds’ Bar. As Winter was a bigamist, Monro sent a man (either Melville or Moser) to Paris who arrested him and Monro asked Matthews to ask the Foreign Office for extradition. But Matthews agreed with Jenkinson that there was no need for that. The smoking gun – Monro’s proof that Jenkinson was running a private detective outfit in London in parallel with the police – remained just out of sight.
The information about Reynolds’ Bar had been followed by a tight-lipped little note from HM Consul Bernal in Le Havre itself on 26 July.
I do not suppose the explosion of nearly two tons of dynamite which occurred here on Friday night, from which my house somewhat suffered, is of sufficient importance to Sir Julian Pauncefote, GCMG, to report officially, but I think it as well to mention that when the sloop came ashore she had on board 23 tons of dynamite from the factory at Ablon, near Honfleur; two and a half tons of gunpowder sent out to her from this port; &c. She was bound to St Petersburg, and the cargo was, I learn from one of the officials, for the Russian Government.23
Melville must have reported this event to London as well, for the following day the Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, wrote to the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office that ‘I have reason to believe that explosives may be brought to this country by steamers plying between Russia and here’ and asking for consular reports to be sent to him; for Port Police at Gravesend to be warned; and for crew lists to be obtained wherever possible. Known Irish dynamitards had visited St Petersburg that summer. This information was not of immediate concern to the police in charge of London, but it would have been useful background; even more useful had they known that plots involving Russia and Ireland were being cooked up by Jenkinson’s men, apparently with Foreign Office connivance.24
Melville, conveniently located as he was, probably knew more about the provenance of dynamite than the Assistant Commissioner. Jenkinson was routinely holding onto key information from overseas which should go to the London police.
The Consul at Le Havre at least suspected that no one was paying attention.
I don’t know whether the authorities care to know that the Schooner Little Vixen of Plymouth sailed three days ago from Honfleur for St Petersburg with ten tons of dynamite; 28 cases of fuse; and 2 cases of electric clocks.25
Relations between the English and French police at the ports were good. They helped each other. But what questions should be asked? Melville was not the only one whose effectiveness was diminished by lack of Irish intelligence from London. The Consul in St Petersburg pointed out:
No information worth having can be obtained by HM Consuls without some clue. If you can furnish me this secretly, Russian police can give valuable assistance.26
But Jenkinson had gone too far. The ‘threads’, followed back to their source, became tangled. Lord Salisbury at least liked to feel he was in control and Jenkinson had never made any secret of his Home Rule sympathies; could he be trusted? It so happened that certain anti-Parnellite elements in London had been cooking up black propaganda against Parnell since the previous winter. One of them was a Captain Stephens, who had worked for Jenkinson until he was sacked for drunkenness. In September, at an audience with Matthews and Salisbury, Stephens asserted that there were letters in existence which proved Parnell approved and encouraged the dynamite faction. Jenkinson, he said, knew of these letters and suppressed them.27
On 11 December 1886 the stumbling block was at last removed. Home Secretary Matthews wrote to Jenkinson:
I regret that today, after much anxious consideration, I have determined to relieve you from your present duties as speedily as possible and I fix the 10th January as a convenient day.28
Jenkinson burned his papers and left.
By February of 1887 Monro was in sole charge both of Irish intelligence as it concerned London, and of the Secret Service. Melville’s career could truly begin.