by Payne, Chris
By July 1866 the total number of arrests under the habeas corpus suspension was 756 and, during the summer of 1866, Ireland was more peaceful than it had been for years.50 John Devoy was one of the many Fenians arrested, and was later tried and sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude. James Stephens and Thomas Kelly (by now the IRB’s ‘Chief of Staff’) successfully remained in hiding in Dublin and were eventually smuggled out of Dublin in March, and arrived in New York in mid-May 1866. Shortly after they arrived, 800 members of the Fenian Brotherhood, commanded by Colonel John O’Neill, ‘invaded’ Canada, crossing the Niagara River and occupying the village of Fort Erie. In a short battle there were fifty-two Canadian casualties (including twelve dead) and twenty-eight Fenian casualties (including eight dead), with approximately sixty Fenians captured and many desertions. O’Neill withdrew his forces and the United States authorities, implementing neutrality laws, seized the Fenians’ weapons and sent them home with paid passages. This ineffective display by the Roberts-led faction of the Fenian Brotherhood lent force to Stephens’ arguments that the ‘rising’ should be in Ireland.51 Though there would be two further (and equally ineffective) Fenian raids on Canada in subsequent years, they did not achieve the aim of raising USA-UK relations to a state of war.
Back in London, the suspension of habeas corpus in February 1866 probably provided a short respite for those detectives at Scotland Yard who had been working on Fenian-related matters. Clarke at least was diverted on to another investigation; as it turned out he might have preferred to have remained on Fenian surveillance, as the case proved not to be his finest hour.
A Diversionary Task for Clarke – The Case of the Missing Cheques
On 1 March 1866, following an approach to Commissioner Mayne, George Clarke was hired by Lord Cardigan to investigate the disappearance of two letters containing cheques sent by the Countess of Cardigan. The 7th Earl of Cardigan, James Thomas Brudenell, was a man who had been both hated and fêted during his lifetime. Born in 1797, Brudenell had been educated at Harrow and Oxford University. Having purchased a commission in the army, he had a chequered career. He was charged in June 1824 by a Captain Johnstone of having debauched Johnstone’s wife Elizabeth, whom Brudenell later married in 1826 after divorce proceedings had been completed. In 1837, after his father’s death, he inherited the earldom and the Deene estate in Northamptonshire, a mansion in Portman Square and an annual income of £40,000. In 1840 he fought a duel on Wimbledon Common with Henry Tuckett (a former army officer); Tuckett was seriously wounded and Cardigan was charged with ‘intent to murder’. As a member of the House of Lords, Cardigan was eligible to be tried by peers and elected to do so, receiving a ‘not guilty’ verdict, essentially on a legal technicality. By 1840 his public image was so bad that his appearance in the audience at Brighton’s Theatre Royal provoked a storm of hisses which lasted at least half an hour and, to enable the performance to begin, he was forced to leave.52
When the Crimean War started in March 1853, Cardigan was given command of the Light Cavalry Brigade under his brother-in-law Lord Lucan; the two men were not bosom friends. On 25 October 1854 Cardigan led the famous ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ at Balaclava. Ambiguity in the orders that he received meant that the brigade rode at the wrong target, directly at a battery of Russian guns rather than at British guns which were in the process of being captured by the Russians. Out of some 676 mounted men, the total casualties were 21 officers and 257 other ranks (including 158 killed or captured), and about 335 horses were killed or had to be destroyed. Nonetheless, the reports that reached home indicated that Cardigan had led the charge with great bravery and on his return to Britain he was greeted by cheering crowds. Later, rumours began to circulate that his conduct may have been less than heroic, particularly in the context of a premature retreat up the valley after he had reached the rear of the Russian guns.
Cardigan had separated from his first wife in 1846 after an unsatisfactory relationship in which neither partner remained faithful; Elizabeth died in July 1858 and later that year Cardigan (by then 60) married the 33-year-old Adeline de Horsey who had openly become his mistress in 1857. This was a situation much frowned upon by Queen Victoria and contemporary society, which left Adeline a social outcast. Such was the colourful background of the couple that Clarke now found himself working for.
In February 1866 the Countess of Cardigan had written two letters enclosing uncrossed cheques for £18 16s and £1 10s, for goods supplied. She had then handed the letters to Robert Lilley, the groom of the chambers (a position in the household staff only second to that of the steward), requesting that they be registered and posted. Lilley was a long-serving member of the household staff who had been employed by Cardigan prior to his marriage to Adeline. A week later, surprised that she had received no receipts for the cheques, the countess contacted the addressees and discovered that they had not received the letters or the cheques. She was then told by her bank that the larger of the two cheques had been cashed on 14 February in London by someone who had been handed a £5 note, and the balance of £13 16s in gold and silver. Fortunately, as was the habit in those days, the bank had kept a record of the number of the £5 Bank of England note. The bank advised the Cardigans to contact the police, and Clarke was sent across to Portman Square on 1 March to investigate the situation. Realising that the £5 note needed to be traced, Clarke visited the Bank of England on 2 March and provided the number of the note and asked to be notified if it was traced. Clarke then interviewed the Cardigans and the substantial number of ‘below-stairs staff’ at Portman House. During his interview with Lilley, the somewhat truculent groom of the chambers claimed that he could not remember being handed the two letters by the countess in the first place.53
On 9 or 10 March, the all-important £5 note was traced to Thomas Hobson, the proprietor of Cole’s truss shop at Charing Cross, who had received the £5 note from a man calling himself William Gaskell. Gaskell had told Hobson that he was a hall porter in a nobleman’s family. Further inquiries revealed that the true identity of William Gaskell was in fact John Hayes, the hall porter at Cardigan’s house in Portman Square, who had been employed by the Cardigans for only a few months. However, on 12 March, when Clarke took Hobson to Portman Square, Hobson did not immediately recognise Hayes as the man to whom he had sold the truss, possibly because Hayes was by then dressed in full livery with his hair powdered. Nevertheless, Hobson later mentioned in court that ‘Hayes [later] came to me and said he was the man who changed the note, and hoped I would say nothing about it, as he would have to criminate one of his fellow-servants’.54 Indeed that was precisely what Hayes did, by informing Clarke that Lilley had asked him to change a £5 note, and he had handed over 5 sovereigns in exchange for it.
By 13 March, Clarke had clearly decided to focus his attention on Hayes and Lilley, and, together with Lord Cardigan, re-interviewed the two men individually. Hayes repeated his assertion that he had received the £5 Bank of England note from Lilley, and Lilley denied it. Clarke later recalled in court that ‘Lord Cardigan appealed to me in the room to know what was to be done. I think I said “My Lord, if all this is true, Lilley must have stolen the letter”.’55 Though this does not sound like a deep conviction of Lilley’s likely guilt, Clarke nonetheless arrested Lilley that evening and, together with Lord Cardigan, took him to Marylebone Police Station where Lilley was charged with stealing the letters, later appearing at two hearings at the Marylebone Police Court when he was committed to trial at the Middlesex Sessions in June, and bailed.
The case was heard at the Guildhall, Westminster, on 2 June in front of a jury, Mr Bodkin (assistant judge) and several magistrates. Harry Poland appeared as counsel for the prosecution, for whom the main witnesses were the Countess of Cardigan, Hayes and Clarke.56 The countess, who seems throughout to have been convinced that Lilley was the guilty party, insisted that her memory was particularly accurate and that she clearly recalled handing the two letters to Lilley. However, in cross-examin
ation by Lilley’s counsel, her memory came into question when she admitted that there had been a previous incident in which her rings had gone missing; she had insisted that they had been stolen and a policeman had been called, but the rings had been found in a pocket in her dress. The credibility of the hall porter, John Hayes, was completely compromised in cross-examination, not least by his attitude in the witness box and the disquieting information that Hayes had left his former employer (the Reform Club) under a cloud, as he was suspected of financial irregularity. In addition, he had left his previous rented accommodation owing his landlord £20. By the time that he had completed his evidence Lilley’s defence team seemed to have right on their side when concluding that: ‘Hayes had the strongest motives for sheltering himself by accusing someone else…’57
Before the summing-up, several ‘below-stairs’ members of the Cardigans’ household were called to give evidence in Lilley’s defence, but after Hayes’ evidence their journey to the court hardly seemed necessary. The jury returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict, and Lilley was released. No prosecution appears to have been taken against Hayes. However, the issue returned to haunt Clarke the following year.
In June 1867, Lilley brought a case against Lord Cardigan for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution that was heard over two days at the Court of Queens Bench. Much of the same ground was covered again, with the countess continuing to stress the excellence of her memory. No further evidence from Hayes was forthcoming as he had died the previous January, but Clarke was called and responded to questions about his investigation. Lord Cardigan confirmed Clarke’s version of events and appears not to have displayed any criticism of the handling of the case by Clarke.58 The jury, finding for Lilley, awarded him £400 damages in addition to the £45 that Cardigan had already paid into court.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to understand why Clarke recommended Lilley’s arrest, rather than that of Hayes. Of course, whether Hayes was guilty of the offence or not was never tested in court, but Clarke was probably the butt of a few jokes back in the sergeants’ office at Old Scotland Yard. For Lord Cardigan, the £445 plus legal expenses and the costs of reimbursing the Metropolitan Police for Clarke’s services would have represented only a small proportional increase in the costs of his lavish lifestyle. However, after his death in March 1868 the countess had to pay off debts of about £365,000 by realising capital assets. The countess remarried and lived into the twentieth century but, in her memoirs published in 1909, did not mention the case of the missing cheques; perhaps she had forgotten.59
Scotland Yard and the Fenians
August 1866 – January 1867
At the end of June 1866, the defeat of a reform bill drafted by Lord Russell’s administration catalysed the resignation of the government; the subsequent General Election brought in a Conservative administration led by Lord Derby, with Spencer Walpole as Home Secretary and a new chief secretary in Dublin Castle, Lord Naas (soon to inherit the title of the Earl of Mayo). This last appointment introduced a fresh attitude to the policing of Fenianism, including a greater use of undercover detectives and political surveillance in Britain and other locations (e.g. Paris) where the Fenians were known to be active. Soon after his appointment, Lord Naas also asked a young barrister, Robert Anderson (who had been working closely with his brother, Samuel Anderson, the Crown solicitor in Ireland), to prepare a précis of secret and other documentary evidence on the Fenians.60
In July, the new government and the Metropolitan Police were rudely awakened by the activities of the Reform League who, after a peaceful meeting in Trafalgar Square on 2 July, went ahead with a further meeting in Hyde Park on 23 July 1866 despite a ban on the meeting being imposed by the Home Secretary. On the day, thousands of people turned up. Finding the park gates closed, the mob pulled down the railings; the police were overwhelmed and soldiers were sent in. Mayne himself was wounded and many policemen seriously injured, but Mayne’s subsequent offer of resignation was refused. Some described the events that day as almost the last great expression of the traditional London crowd, and others viewed it as a revolution narrowly averted.61 The extent of involvement of Clarke and his colleagues in these events is unclear, but these were difficult times for the police.
Lord Naas started to apply pressure in August for changes in the strategy of policing Fenianism, by suggesting to the Home Secretary that ‘from four to six detectives from the Police Forces in England be assigned to Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester to ascertain whether Fenian agents are being actively engaged in carrying on the conspiracy’.62 Perhaps lulled by a false sense of security created by the withdrawal of habeas corpus in Ireland, Walpole refused but, shortly after, directed Mayne to explore the Fenian issue in Liverpool. Mayne then wrote to the Liverpool chief constable, Major Greig, early in September and sent on this occasion Inspector Williamson and Sergeant Mulvany ‘to co-operate with your officers and those sent from Ireland in discovering the Fenian Conspirators’.63 On 15 September, Williamson reported back that house searches had only revealed ‘a few treasonable songs and some drill books’. He added: ‘Although the Fenian spirit exists in Liverpool, there is no extensive organization, and no drilling or meetings of Fenians in numbers takes place … For some months past the Fenian cause has been in a depressed state in this town.’64 Further activity in October suggested that this was an unduly complacent assessment, as Mulvany had to return to Liverpool to deal with the case of four men who were arrested in Liverpool when unable to account for the possession of a number of rifles, bayonets and phosphorus (used in incendiary devices), apparently obtained from military sources.65 The items had probably been stolen from military bases in England, or ‘liberated’ from them by soldiers who had been seduced into the Fenian camp. Indeed, the modern perspective is that Liverpool was the centre of the Fenian conspiracy in England at that time and, when an informant finally provided details of an extensive Fenian organisation in Liverpool, even Mayne was convinced of the seriousness of the problem.66
In September, Lord Naas suggested deploying experienced army personnel on mainland Britain, including Captain William Whelan, who had been working to help root out Fenianism in the army. Apparently this idea was also rejected though it seems that Whelan did unofficially deploy informers on the mainland and Mayne certainly wrote two letters to Whelan in mid-September 1866 asking him to communicate to him the enquiries he had been making about the Fenian conspiracy.67 Unfortunately, details of Clarke’s role in the policing of the Fenian conspiracy during 1866 are unknown, as no specific mention of him was found in any of the surviving archived reports or newspaper accounts on the Fenians that have been located relating to this period. He only emerges publicly again, in the Fenian context, in January 1867. However, as Clarke’s name also only appeared in the national newspapers in relation to two criminal cases during 1866, it seems likely that he was engaged for much of the rest of his time on some form of unpublicised anti-Fenian activity. Meanwhile, as 1866 moved to its conclusion, events in America were developing in ways that would bring Clarke more into the Fenian limelight in 1867.
In New York, Stephens and the Fenian military council had started to strengthen their military leadership by attracting some senior officers with Civil War experience who were dedicated to revolutionary republicanism. Of these, Gustave Paul Cluseret was appointed ‘Commander-in-Chief’ of the Fenian insurrectionary force. Cluseret was a Frenchman who had been an officer in the garde mobile during the revolution of 1848 and later served in Algeria, before joining Garibaldi’s volunteers in Italy in 1860. This was followed by service in the Union Army in the American Civil War, where he achieved the rank of brigadier general.68 On appointment by Stephens, Cluseret selected two other foreign veterans of the Civil War as his military adjutants, Octave Fariola and Victor Vifquain.69 Fariola and Clarke were later to become briefly acquainted and, because Fariola has left probably the most extensive archival and newspaper record of the Fenian conspiracy between August 1866 and
November 1867, the following account will draw heavily on his experiences. The two main sources of Fariola’s recollections were intended for quite different audiences: firstly, a statement or ‘confession’ given to the British authorities in late 1867 or early 1868 (now held in the National Archives); and secondly, a series of newspaper articles written by Fariola and published in late 1868 in the Fenian-supportive newspaper The Irishman.70 The following account tries to tread the common path that emerges from these different sources.
Octave Fariola (full name Octave Louis François Etienne Fariola de Razzoli) was born in 1839. He was a Swiss citizen but was brought up in Belgium where he attended the military academy in Brussels, being commissioned as a lieutenant in about 1856, before assisting in Garibaldi’s campaign in Italy in 1859–60, where he acquired his revolutionary republican credentials and contacts. Married in Brussels in 1863, Fariola and his wife immigrated to Louisiana where he joined the Union army at New Orleans on 10 July 1863 as a staff officer for General Nathaniel Banks, before serving in the 2nd Engineer Corps d’Afrique. He was honourably discharged as a lieutenant-colonel on 29 January 1866, and was living as a planter in Louisiana with his wife and young son when he received a series of letters from Cluseret, between August and October that year, inviting him to become Cluseret’s chief of staff in a new enterprise. When Fariola’s crop (probably cotton) in Louisiana was destroyed by caterpillars (a common fate) he finally decided that he needed to find other sources of income and travelled to New York in early November to meet Cluseret, only on arrival discovering that the object was the liberation of Ireland by the Fenians, and that his role would be the organisation of the Fenian insurrectionary force.71 Before agreeing to accept the post, he had a long interview in New York with James Stephens. In his later confession Fariola reported that: ‘The whole of his statement was so extra-ordinary that I came to the conclusion that if he was not telling the truth he must be a fool or a scoundrel of the worst character.’72