The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (17 page)

As 1866 was coming to an end, intelligence from British consulates in America and other informers indicated that a Fenian rising was soon to break out, and that US-based Fenians were in a state of readiness to proceed to Ireland. Mayne was busy circulating a photograph and description of Stephens and requesting information from Dublin to assist in identifying known Fenians likely to travel from America. In addition, in late December 1866 and early January 1867, police from the London Metropolitan force were keeping a watch for Stephens at several ports; it is highly likely that Clarke was engaged in these duties.
⁷⁹

At a meeting of senior Fenians in New York in mid-December Stephens decided, belatedly, that the financial support and preparations needed for a successful rising were not in place and that it should again be postponed. By 29 December the ‘hard men’ of the military council had had time to digest the news and, accusing Stephens of incompetence, insincerity and dishonesty, they deposed him, installing Thomas Kelly as the effective leader. Kelly was later assessed as being as reckless as Stephens was timid.
⁸⁰
It was probably mid–late January before the British authorities fully appreciated the changes that had occurred. Meanwhile, Kelly, who was determined to deliver action, left America in mid-January, arriving in Paris on 25 January and managing to slip through any surveillance that the police had in place. Cluseret and Vifquain travelled with Kelly, while Godfrey Massey had sailed to Liverpool a day earlier. Massey, who had been brought up under the name of Patrick Condon, was a late arrival on the Fenian scene, having joined only in 1865. Born in Ireland, he had served as a private and as a non-commissioned officer in the British army in the Crimea, before immigrating to America and fighting in the Confederate army where he rose to the rank of colonel.
⁸¹

In Paris, Kelly and Cluseret met up with Fariola and soon travelled to London to set up their operational headquarters. ‘Sprawling London, with its Irish areas no doubt seemed a safer refuge than informer-riddled Dublin, or even Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool.’
⁸²
In addition,
habeas corpus
was not suspended in mainland Britain; therefore, unless the men committed a criminal offence in England, had a warrant in place for their arrest from another country within the United Kingdom (including Ireland) or from their own country of origin, then the police had no grounds on which to arrest them. Kelly and Halpin (who had also reached London) took rooms off Tottenham Court Road and used aliases. Likewise Ricard Burke (the arms organiser) and Godfrey Massey were at 7 Tavistock Street, and Cluseret and Fariola at 135 Great Portland Street, staying there until 28 February 1867. During this time the Fenians held several meetings to discuss the insurrection, including one that led to the establishment of a Provisional Government for Ireland. A provisional date for the rising, of 11 February, was cancelled and a new date of 5 March was set. Fariola and Massey also made contact with one group of Irish-American Fenians (generally referred to as ‘The Directory’) who had been based in London for several months at Stephens’ request, but who had received inadequate information and funds during that time. Nonetheless, under the leadership of Captain John McCafferty, The Directory had developed their own plans for action in February: a proposed raid on Chester Castle to seize arms and transport them to Ireland.

In the busy two months of January and February 1867, secret discussions were also held (involving Fariola) with other republican groups based in London to try to establish common cause with them. These included meetings with the senior members of the Reform League, Charles Bradlaugh and George Odger, who ‘were prepared to offer their support only if Fenian principles were merely democratic and not anti-English’.
⁸³
Fariola also met Guiseppe Mazzini who told him ‘that he disapproved of Fenianism [because of] his mistrust of the principles of its leader [and] because he deemed it doomed to be a failure’.
⁸⁴
Ultimately these discussions yielded nothing of benefit to the Fenians. However, in a scarcely credible breach of security, Fariola and Cluseret were able to build up their understanding of the British military machine by undertaking official visits to Woolwich Arsenal, Aldershot and the War Office. They were able to do this under the guise of a commission of the governor of New York State, obtained by Cluseret, to enquire into the organisation of militias in Europe.

All this was happening under the nose of the London Metropolitan Police, who were either unable to act until there was evidence that a criminal offence had been committed, were unaware of what was going on or were simply slow in obtaining and acting on the necessary intelligence in time. However, by no later than late February the detective department was certainly on the trail of at least Massey and Burke. This is known from evidence later given by their landlady, Eliza Lambert, who stated that ‘Mr Clarke, a detective officer, came to me after they both had left’.
⁸⁵
So Clarke was clearly following the trail of senior Fenians at that point. He may have been one to two weeks behind them, or had deliberately delayed his overt enquiries until the men had left as there was no specific charge to bring against them at that stage. On the other hand, Clarke had also been put on another investigation: a strange case in Ely, Cambridgeshire, where two horses had been found dead on 21 January, apparently as a result of having been fed bran containing strychnine.

This further diversion must have decreased Clarke’s availability for Fenian investigations. In addition, the numbers of Scotland Yard detectives available in England had been depleted further by an edict from Home Secretary Walpole to assign detectives to Paris to watch out for James Stephens, who was now believed to have travelled (and indeed had travelled) to Paris. Despite having been deposed as chief organiser, Stephens was still considered a sufficient threat to security that his movements should be watched; the police were probably also aware that other Fenians used Paris as a bolt-hole. There had been times during 1866 when Mayne had strongly resisted the deployment of British policemen to undercover operations in France but, early in 1867, two Scotland Yard detectives were finally sent.
⁸⁶
Fariola refers to their presence in Paris at the end of January 1867: ‘the English detectives were already on the scent.’
⁸⁷
Most of this surveillance work in Paris was undertaken by Sergeants Druscovich, Mulvany and Manners; Inspector Williamson is also known to have spent some time there and Inspector Thomson may have been involved, but there is no mention that Clarke was ever sent to France at this time.
⁸⁸

With the benefit of hindsight, it does seem strange that, at a critical time for Fenian activity in London, Clarke was allocated to a relatively low-priority case outside the Metropolitan area. As a result of Clarke’s investigations in Ely, Dr Henry Hume Pearson, a physician of some twenty years’ standing, was charged with the apparently motiveless poisoning of two horses, the property of George Hall, a solicitor. The case came to trial at Cambridge Crown Court on 19 March. There were four key pieces of evidence that Clarke had accumulated. The first, a witness who had seen Pearson entering the stables on the day that the horses were later found dead. Secondly, the discovery by Clarke of strychnine hidden behind a mirror at Pearson’s house – in a form identical to that which had caused the death of the horses, and which was only available to members of the medical profession. Third, witnesses who had heard Pearson ask how much strychnine would be needed to kill a horse and, fourthly, evidence that he had practised by killing a pig with strychnine on his own property first. After a ‘guilty’ verdict was delivered, Pearson was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.
⁸⁹

The Raid on Chester Castle and the Fenian Rising

February 1867 – June 1867

On the morning of 11 February 1867, the Home Office received a telegram from the Mayor of Chester:

There are about 500 Fenians arrived in Chester by various trains. It is reported from Liverpool Police that 700 more will be there before tonight. There are about 100 men of the 54th regiment at the Castle and about 200 militia staff and 130 police. Further military assistance urgently needed to protect the arms and ammunition at the castle and also to protect the city.
⁹⁰

The venture led by Captain John McCafferty had begun. The bold plan was to attack the castle, remove arms and ammunition and transfer them by train to Holyhead and by boat to Ireland. However, like so many of the Fenian plans, it was to be compromised by informers. The night before the proposed attack one of Stephens’ most trusted agents, John Joseph Corydon, provided details of the Chester Castle raid, giving the military just sufficient time to reinforce the garrison. By 1 p.m. Fenian leaders realised that the authorities had been alerted to their plans and the operation was called off. The Fenians that had gathered in the town ‘melted away’, often leaving weapons and ammunition that they had brought with them (including agricultural implements, pikes and muskets) in the surrounding countryside. Amongst them was a young one-armed Fenian, Michael Davitt, who we will hear more of in a later chapter. Unable to use a weapon because of his disability, he had carried a bag of bullets to the scene.
⁹¹

Intriguingly, it seems that Williamson and Clarke were called in and even given some credit for the way that things turned out. A cryptic newspaper article published later that year can only be a reference to events at Chester (without specifically mentioning the city by name):

Certain trustworthy information had been given to the heads of the police that bands of men, under pretence of making agricultural work, were gathering round a city in which Government arms are stored. The Chief of the London detective branch of police, at Scotland-yard, Inspector Williamson, is in Manchester with another experienced officer from head-quarters, Sergeant Clark [sic], and the two were advised by telegraph of all the circumstances in good time, as now appear from facts that have been discovered. The place round which great numbers of Irishmen, hugely in excess of any present demand for field labour, and suspiciously well-provided with reaping implements, had congregated, is in an adjoining county, and is distant from Manchester about forty miles. The two London officers who are looking after Fenian affairs principally in this city [Manchester], took rail for the place which I have not precisely indicated, though there would be no fear of harm in naming it, and were back again before their absence had been noticed here. The visit, brief as it was, sufficed to counterplot a desperate enterprise, and to avert bloodshed in the midst of a very peaceable and rather dull community.
⁹²

The raid organiser, John McCafferty, was arrested in Dublin harbour on 23 February having escaped from England via Whitehaven. At his subsequent trial for treason he was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment not least because of public and government misgivings about enforcing the death penalty for a ‘political’ offence.
⁹³
Meanwhile in London, plans for the Irish rising were continuing. Massey (who had been given military command of the rising itself) had visited Ireland and expressed the view that there were inadequate arms for the rising to be successful. However, he was overruled by others and planning proceeded for 5 March. General William Halpin was given responsibility for the Dublin area and, amongst others, Vifquain for the west of Ireland and Ricard Burke the Waterford district, all subordinate to Massey. Fariola travelled to Cork, arriving on 1 March, to put the finishing touches to the arrangements with local commanders.
⁹⁴
When hearing Massey’s final plans, Fariola felt them: ‘so utterly absurd and in disregard of my instructions that I requested him in the name of the Provisional Government to stop all future proceedings, and told him that he had ruined the cause … Massey would not; he did no longer recognise the Provisional Government except Kelly and declined to comply with my advice.’
⁹⁵
The last straw for Fariola was on 4 March when he was given a message from Massey, via a Miss O’Leary, telling him to go to Connaught to take command there – Fariola refused to take what he regarded as a subordinate command, an attitude which: ‘vexed Miss O’Leary, who has kept a grudge against me, and taxed me afterwards of cowardice, and vexed also Massey who did not wish to admit of his being not the Chief Commander.’
⁹⁶
‘Miss O’Leary’ was Ellen O’Leary, sister of the imprisoned Fenian John O’Leary. She was an Irish poet and later a mentor of W.B. Yeats; in 1867 she was a leading member of the formidable Ladies Committee for the Relief of State Prisoners and was described by Clarke in one of his later reports as ‘one of the most active of the female agents’.
⁹⁷

Meanwhile, events were about to make the disagreements between Fariola and Massey irrelevant. Apparently unaware that the plans for the rising had already been passed on to the Irish authorities on 27 February by the prolific informer Corydon, Massey was arrested on board a train at Limerick Junction at 10 p.m. on 4 March, followed later by the arrests of other Fenians involved in the rising.
⁹⁸
Prior to the trials of those arrested, Robert Anderson recorded that he was asked to secure one or more important prisoners to turn ‘Queens Evidence’. ‘It did not take long to discover that Godfrey Massey was incomparably the ablest and best informed of the prisoners’, and Anderson claims to have persuaded him to turn informer.
⁹⁹
Fariola had a different perspective, albeit one that displayed a strong personal dislike of Massey: