Second theory: Ignatius Paul Pollaky may have been born Ignatz Pál Polák in 1828, and baptised with the name Ignatius; the younger brother of the then deceased Ignatius Polák baptised in 1819 in Malacky, born there or in Pressburg if his family had moved there by the time of his birth. Josephus Polák and Marina Vincek (the name perhaps shortened to Minna) would then be his parents. It is perhaps too much of a leap of faith to believe that Fanny Modern née Pollak whose death in Budapest was mourned in 1885 was his sister, and that her given name corresponds to the middle name of their father, and that Marie Pollaky, the other mourner, was their elderly mother.
On my return from Bratislava, I continued online looking through the many records and scans of documents on the Family Research website of all the variations of the Pollaky name which might exist. I tried Polak, Polaki, Polaky, Pollak, Pollaki, Pollaky and several others. All had hits, sometimes the same family varied spelling between one record and another, but I still had to conclude that if what Pollaky said about his family is true, there are currently no records to be found which make an exact match. Looking at this second theory harder, I discovered that the Ignatius Polák baptised in 1819 had two older brothers, Josephus, baptised 1814, and Paulus, baptised 1817. This means that if Fanny Modern was their sister, and Marie Pollaky was their mother, the mother would have been quite old in 1885 when she was listed as a mourner. Moreover, I could find no trace of a daughter being born to that family. We must be careful; there were three other Ignatius Poláks, one born 1822 and the others in 1824, though none of them have parents with the correct names. (There is also an Ignatium Polaky born in 1783, and an Ignatius Polaki who became a father in 1794, both far too early to be of interest.) Third theory: he might still be connected to mother (Marie) and sister (Fanny) but not to the Polák family.
Breakthrough
And suddenly, without warning, came the breakthrough I had been looking for. The Toni and Gustav Stolper Collection 1866–1990 held by the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, a huge document, several hundred pages long, contains the following passage:
Translation from a MEMO written by Anna Jerusalem
The Family of Professor Dr. Max Kassowitz 1842–1913
The name of KASSOWITZ first appears in a register of Jewish families at Pressburg of 1736 …
The father of Max’s mother Katharina, nee Pollak, 1821–1878, named Ben Joseph Schames* and was caretaker of the Congregation. He was an intelligent, enlightened popular man whom his grandson Max lovingly remembered. When Max left Pressburg for the University of Vienna, his grandfather asked him to promise never to let himself be baptised.
A brother of Mother Katharina … Ignaz Polaky who compromised himself politically [aged] 19 1848, went as a fugitive to England, where he founded a Private Detective Agency; he acquired a high reputation with the Police, was knighted and awarded numerous distinctions; he was twice married to Christian Englishwomen, preserved great affection for his relatives on the Continent whom he frequently visited in later years.
There it was! Ignatius (Ignaz) Pollaky was the son of a Synagogue sexton and he had a sister called Katharina. So it seems that his family had lived on the (old) castle hill in Pressburg in the Jewish Quarter which no longer exists. As far as the rest of the paragraph goes, this book will show if the other statements are accurate in later chapters. Pollaky himself inflated his father’s importance in his declarations, but it is interesting to note the description of the elder Pollaky as intelligent, enlightened and popular. The original German as well as the English translation is included in the Stolper papers. Toni Stolper and Anna Jerusalem were both daughters of Max Kassowitz, and therefore Pollaky’s great nieces.
It seems likely that Pollaky had been involved in the dramatic events which took place in Hungary in the late 1840s, and that his activities had come to the attention of the authorities, causing him to try his luck elsewhere.
Hungary at that time had not been an independent country for many years. From the mid-sixteenth century, it had been variously divided between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. By 1718, the Habsburg Empire had fully wrested control of it for themselves.
The Habsburgs, with their capital in Vienna, spoke German, hence the common use at the time of the German name Pressburg for Pollaky’s home city, rather than its Hungarian name, Pozsony. Like other countries and states ruled by Austria, Hungary was straining under the leash for independence.
On 15 March 1848 the Hungarian Revolution began. This was not the first time the Hungarians had fought for independence from Austria. From 1703 to 1711 Rákóczi Ferenc (Francis II Rákóczi) had led an unsuccessful struggle for Hungarian independence.
On 13 April 1848 the Hungarian Declaration of Independence was presented to the Hungarian National Assembly, and passed unanimously two days later. Naturally, the Austrian rulers were not going to accept this, and there were a number of insurrections throughout Hungary as a result. By July 1849 the revolution had been quashed by the Austrian army (with help from Russia). Hungary finally gained autonomy, though not full independence, from Austria in 1867.
There were anti-Jewish pogroms in Pressburg that took place in April 1848, and this also may have influenced Pollaky’s need to leave Hungary. There had been several losses of life. Some of the younger Jewish intellectuals were committed to the revolution, and after the pogroms, the Jews were ordered to leave Pressburg.
It seems clear that Pollaky had made his position there untenable, due to his support for the Hungarian revolution, and that he had fled. He made his way first to Italy.
At that time, the northern states of Italy were also trying to free themselves from Austrian rule. In early July 1849, Italian patriot Piero Cironi (1819–62), had been arrested by the Florence police for his involvement in these affairs, and on 12 July 1849 Cironi wrote of his imprisonment. The previous morning he had been joined by a young Hungarian from Pressburg, Ignaz Pollaky, who had been arrested in Livorno when on the point of embarking for Genoa. Cironi who wished for amicable conversation with a like-minded person, felt that it was unfortunate that Pollaky spoke Italian badly, but wrote that they had conversed in French instead.
Pollaky was not held for long – a few weeks later he arrived in England.
Note
* The word ‘Schames’ is not a surname; it means that Joseph was the caretaker or sexton.
2
Arrival in England
Pollaky arrived in London on 20 September 1849 on a day that was fresh and fine, with a west wind. The ship docked at Gravesend, Kent. The written records of entry on the relevant page in the records of Alien Arrivals in England are all in different hands, which implies that the individual passengers signed their own names there. His name is written as Pollaky Ignatz (Professor) – in Hungarian style the surname appears first.
There are, however, a number of conflicting records as to when Ignatius Pollaky first arrived in England. On 15 February 1846, a native of Austria called Pollacky (with the extra ‘c’) arrived in Dover from Ostend, Belgium on the Princess Alice. This individual then disappears from records. This is almost certainly not our man, unless he had made an earlier visit as a lone teenager to England. Pollaky was somewhat approximate when asked when he had arrived in England, whether because of faulty memory, or because he would write down whatever year was most convenient is hard to say.
On his application for British nationality made in 1914, he wrote that he arrived in 1851, whereas according to his earlier application for British nationality made in 1862, he arrived in 1852, although in a letter of 31 July 1862 to Sir Richard Mayne, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, he writes, ‘during 12 years of residence in London & England I never was tried or convicted on a charge of felony or misdemeanour’. That would place his arrival in 1850.
Later, however, in the same letter he writes:
Mr Hodgson in the year 1858 wrote a letter to the Austrian Ambassador in London stating that during my residence in London (10 years) my conduct was a
lways very good and that I during that period was instrumental to bring repeatedly Criminals (Foreigners) to justice (This letter is still on Record on the Books of the City Police.)
(Charles George Hodgson 1812–68 was Superintendent of the London City Police Force, the Austrian Ambassador at that time was Hungarian-born Count Rudolf Apponyi.)
Hodgson’s letter would place Pollaky’s residence in London from 1848. From it we can surmise that during the 1850s Pollaky was working at bringing foreign criminals to justice. However, that letter, if it was on record at the time, is certainly not available to examine now.
There is little information as to his activities or to his place of residence until some way into the 1850s. He does not seem to be recorded on the 1851 census, but that may only mean that he was out of the country at the time, and, given his itinerant way of life at that time, perhaps this should not be surprising. The census was not by any means foolproof, and an interesting example comes from 1851 in which one Hungarian resident (born 1829) of Bermondsey, London is listed as, ‘A Person refusing to give name’.
Pollaky evidently spoke, read and wrote a number of languages well. The best idea of his spoken English comes from an interview given in 1877, discussed in detail in Chapter 11. His characterful use of written English in his letters does include a few spelling mistakes, but what native writer does not suffer from occasional lapses? Examples of his characteristic use of English and his handwriting include: always using ‘th’ after numbers to indicate the date – 1th, 2th, 3th, 4th, 21th etc., frequently heading private letters, written in English, not Private & Confidential, but Private & Confidentielle, and almost always writing the letter ‘K’ as a capital letter – even in the middle of a word. As well as English and Hungarian, he is known to have spoken German, French, Spanish, and Italian, and he may have been familiar with Polish and Greek as well. On 7 January 1861 The Times reported that he acted as court interpreter for a Greek man, Staveis Kollaky (the similarity between surnames is a coincidence), who had been charged with stealing 180 yards of silk; on 23 March 1871 he acted as interpreter for one Liebitz Goldberg, who spoke Polish. (On both these occasions, Pollaky had been present on other business; his presence in the vicinity of the trials had been fortuitous.) It may be that he was able to interpret both Greek and Polish though perhaps these two gentlemen spoke other languages that he understood. We have already heard of Piero Cironi’s opinion of Pollaky’s Italian, others also would cast doubt on his language abilities, but his own self-confidence seems to have carried him through.
Something of the humbug, particularly in his early days when he was trying to make himself seem more important and effective as an investigator than he really was, as well as his being, perhaps, a bit of a busybody, combine in his letters with great energy. When he felt deeply about things, or became agitated, his handwriting became faster, stronger, less legible and had a greater number of errors. He does, however, manage to come over through his letters, as well as through newspaper reports about him as genuine and as having his heart in the right place – likeable, though sometimes extremely frustrated by the apparent resistance of officialdom to credit him with that genuineness. He tried very hard to ingratiate himself with Sir Richard Mayne (1796–1868), Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, but failed at every turn. From the coldness of Sir Richard’s responses to Pollaky, it is clear that he had very little patience with private investigators at the best of times. Both Sir Richard Mayne and Ignatius Pollaky are buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. (Pollaky in Plot 17308, Sq.68, Row 2.)
From the 1860s his newspaper advertisements and several letters he wrote included statements that he specialised in intelligence on foreigners living in Britain. Later still he would recommend registration of all foreigners upon arrival in Britain, with the further recommendation that they should officially contact their countries of origin before applying for British nationality. The latter suggestion was not met with universal approval. (See Chapter 13.)
3
‘Inspector Bucket’, Lord Lytton, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, the Road House Murder and Whicher
One of the major figures in Pollaky’s life was Charles Frederick Field, whose father, John, may have been the publican of the ‘Earl of Howard’s Head’ in Chelsea. Field was probably born in 1803, the fourth of seven children to John and Margaret Field.
In 1829, when the Metropolitan Police Force was created, Charles Frederick Field joined as a sergeant. He was promoted to inspector in 1833, and after an active career became Chief of the Detective Division in 1846. The new police force was headed by joint commissioners Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne.
Five foot ten and inclined to be stout, Field married Jane Chambers in 1841. He is described on the marriage certificate as ‘Inspector of Police’ residing in Limehouse, East London. His father, John Field, was described somewhat laconically, as ‘dead’. Charles Field reputedly became the model for Inspector Bucket in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House which began serialisation in 1852. Dickens, in a letter to The Times on 18 September 1853, denied it. That we know a fair amount about this colourful character is, nevertheless, due in no short measure to his writings.
Dickens wrote about Field on a number of occasions. Firstly as Inspector Wield in his piece A Detective Police Party published in 1850, then, again as Wield, shortly after in Three Detective Anecdotes. Dickens himself, in a letter of 14 September 1850 to his colleague William Henry Wills, associated the cleverly disguised name, ‘Wield’ with Field. In 1851 he wrote another short piece entitled On Duty With Inspector Field. All these appeared in Household Words, Dickens’s own magazine.
In 1851 Dickens had engaged Field to provide security at a performance of a comedy by Lord Lytton, a friend of Dickens. The play, Not So Bad As We Seem, was to be performed by Dickens’s amateur theatrical company (with Dickens himself in the cast), and Lytton who had acrimoniously separated from his wife was afraid that she would interrupt the performance. Dickens and Field were on friendly terms; Dickens occasionally accompanied Field when the latter was on duty. More information about this appears in Chapter 12. Dickens wrote in a letter dated 18 April 1862 to his friend, author George Walter Thornbury (1828–1976), that Field had been a Bow Street Runner, but there is no evidence to support this.
In December 1852, Field retired from the police force and opened a Private Inquiry Bureau at 20 Devereux Court. This building, built in 1676, had previously been the Grecian Coffee House where patrons had included Oliver Goldsmith the novelist, and Sir Isaac Newton and other members of the Royal Society. In about 1842, the coffee house had ceased business, and the premises was divided into ‘chambers’. Known as Eldon Chambers, a number of professional people kept offices there.
After his departure from the police force, the press often continued to refer to Field in their reports as Inspector Field – a fact that got him into trouble as the police believed him to be giving the impression that he was still associated with them.
Field was by no means the first to advertise his services as a private investigator. As early as the days of Queen Anne, who reigned between 1702 and 1714, one John Bonner was reputed to have published the following:
This is to give notice that those who have sustained any loss at Sturbridge fair last, by Pick Pockets or Shop lifts: If they please to apply themselves to John Bonner in Shorts Gardens, they may receive information and assistance therein; also Ladies and others who lose their Watches at Churches, and other Assemblies, may be served by him as aforesaid, to his utmost power, if desired by the right Owner, he being paid for his Labour and Expences [sic]. (Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne by John Ashton, 1882.)
Reference to Bonner’s advertisement can also be found in Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London During the Eighteenth Century by James Peller Malcolm (1810), where it is explained in different terms: ‘John Bonner of Short’s Gardens had the bare-faced effrontery, in 1703, to offer his assistance, by necromancy, to those who had lost any thing at Stur
bridge Fair, at Churches or other assemblies, “he being paid for his labour and expenses”.’ This kind of criticism, justified or not, would mark the attitude of many towards private investigators. Pollaky in particular suffered owing to that aura of exotic mysteriousness which hung around him, arousing suspicion and dislike.
One-time Bow Street Runner and first Chief Constable of Northampton, Henry Goddard, had been known to accept work in a private capacity possibly as early as the 1830s, and continued to do so until the mid-1860s. Much of Goddard’s private work came from the Forrester brothers, John and Daniel, who ran a detective agency from within the Mansion House building. They had been employed by the City of London Corporation, John Forrester from 1817, and Daniel from 1821, but they were not connected with the City of London Police which was formed in 1832.
In 1862 one of Pollaky’s early advertisements for his new inquiry office appeared in The Times directly above one placed jointly by the Forrester brothers and Goddard. The Forresters were by that time no longer at the Mansion House. Was it purely coincidence that Pollaky’s first business address was so close to that recently vacated by them? They were the most successful and the best known private investigators of their time. Had Pollaky hoped that some of their success might come his way if he used an address associated with them?
The Times – Wednesday, 7 May 1862
Paddington' Pollaky, Private Detective Page 2