I will strive to obtain Your good opinion, my intentions are honest and I would consider no sacrifice too great, to obtain Your favourable consideration of my personal honesty.
Permit me Sir Richard to express a hope that I may be useful to the police at the ensuing Exhibition; and if You would appoint me under the Inspector of the H Division I would deserve most fully Your trust.
The International Exhibition of 1862 took place in South Kensington from 1 May to 1 November. Pollaky may have attended, but not in an official capacity, and perhaps not with Mary Ann, who suffered a miscarriage in July, unless it was while she was heavily pregnant.
Pollaky, already making use of international connections, was known to advertise in the foreign press; his name appeared a number of times in Viennese newspapers – there were announcements of his having on at least three occasions in the late 1860s donated about 50 florins to the poor of Vienna. The International Exhibition of 1862 created an ideal opportunity to drum up some business, and one of the most interesting mentions of his name was in a paragraph which appeared on 27 May 1862 in Der Vaterland. This was a warning to visitors to the London Exhibition to be careful, in which he is referred to as ‘Ignaz Pollaky, richtiger [correctly] Pollak’. Whether this correction of his surname was his own or someone else’s is not made clear, but his first name is invariably spelled ‘Ignaz’ in the Austrian press.
A number of letters were sent from Pollaky to Mayne, and from Mayne to Waddington. Pollaky wrote a second letter on 15 March 1862. He had seen Field in a public house speaking to one Sergeant Robinson of the police. It is evident that Pollaky had some reason for keeping an eye on Field:
Field treats me cooly and I suppose was informed of my interview with You yesterday.
The cooling of the friendship between Pollaky and Field was not surprising since the former had set up a rival business. Pollaky enclosed a letter from Nicholls, Fields business partner and eventual successor, the contents of which are unknown. Mayne then invited Nicholls for an interview, and asked Waddington if he should bring him over so that they could both speak with him.
On 17 March, Mayne wrote:
Mr Waddington saw him [Nicholls] & heard what he had to say in reply to question relating to statement by Pollaky.
Pollaky heard of this meeting. It is hard at this distance in time, bearing in mind that the records are incomplete, to know exactly what the problem was. Pollaky seems to have taken it upon himself to investigate corruption in the City Police Force. On 21 March, he wrote a letter to Mayne:
Sir!
Enclosed I beg to remit a few facts, if the public would Know what is going on in the City Police, this imitation of the Continental Police would not be tolerated for a week.
Later in the letter:
Mr. Nicholls has not had anything to say to me so that I stand in very bad odour with him.
Pollaky enclosed with this letter a report dated, ‘London 21th March 1862’:
Facts collected from Sergt May of the City Police who appears to day before the Police Comité
1. Sergt Russel C.D.P. went in company with an officer from Geneva after a man who run away [sic] with some property belonging to his creditors they found the man in Oxford St. A scuffle issued, and the watchs [sic] fell to the ground (which were picked up by the Geneva Officer ?) This foreigner who saw himself so attacked by strangers, went afterwards to Inspector Hobb (C. Division) and complained of being assaulted and robbed – Russel receiving 2£. Hamilton was promised a watch for this heroic exploit.
2. Sergt Webb C. DVs. was sent down to Southampton in Reference to the ‘Nashville’ the Mayor of Southampton inquired of Furnell the name of the officer (W) which he (F) declined to giving.
3. Sergt Webb takes a man a foreigner (who could not speak a word English) in the City Road 6 months ago. takes him to Mr Hamilton’s Office, they then take all the money from him. Hamilton and Webb each retaining 20£. which they entered in the Gratuity Book after which the foreigner was sent about his business no charge was booked nor was the man brought up before the Magistrate[.]
The CSS Nashville was the first warship to fly the Confederate flag while in English waters. Pollaky at the time of this letter had just finished his association with Sanford.
Sir Richard Mayne, though, was already more than a little irritated with Pollaky. On 27 March he instructed Charles Yardley, Chief Clerk of the Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police to:
Write to Mr. Pollaky by my direction that if Sgt. May City Police has any information which it is proper shd. be made known to me request it may be put in writing.
Yardley did as he was directed and Pollaky evidently received this communication, but was not to be put off so easily. On 29 March he wrote another letter to Mayne telling of how:
Srgt Ed. Furnell C.D.J. apprehended yesterday a young man at 4 Newcastle Place Clerkenwell on a charge of Misdemeanour without a Warrant and brought the prisoner Phillipps up this day at the Mansion House, contrary to the Section which makes it compulsory to bring such prisoners up before the District Magistrate particularly as in this case property has been seized.
He also writes that he has received the letter from Mr Yardley, and, perhaps not realising the implication that Mayne wanted no further words on the matter, that he will get Sergeant May to write what he knows.
He concludes:
I shall do my best; that anything which may come to my Knowledge in the City, which goes to the Direction which will serve to expose the manner in which the City Police discharge their duties. I shall always hasten to aquaint [sic] You of, and shall be most happy to be of any service.
There followed a most unusual letter to Mayne purporting to be from Sergeant Daniel May. May writes that he will write, ‘a full statement in corroboration of the contents of Mr Pollaky’s letters.’ But the letter is on Pollaky’s headed paper, and is evidently in Pollaky’s own handwriting, though the signature might be May’s.
In early April 1862, Pollaky tried again, giving further examples of petty corruption and also of nepotism within the City Police. Evidently trying to ingratiate himself with Sir Richard Mayne by giving him (as Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police) information about what Pollaky hoped he would perceive as a rival force, he only added to Mayne’s irritation:
1. The 12 police & Sergt of 26 Old Jewry pay to the Comissioner [sic] 25% or 5/- out of each pound they receive as gratuities. And it is now stated that the Comissioner [sic] has about 500£ of this monies [sic]
The Inspector of detective Department does not however give his share of 5/- in the £.
2. Inspector Hamilton’s son is in Stubbs’ Trade protection office and all inquiris [sic] made in the Country for Stubbs are made through the City Police by the Country Police. Stubbs has also opened a branch in Paris and Stubbs’ Clerks are in daily and hourly communication with the Detective Deptmt of the City Police –
3. The Comissioner [sic] Harvey’s Neveu [sic]. is on the Police Pay Sheet as a Supernumerary received £1 p. week he is a lad between 17 and 18 years of age – and is commonly called Master Harvey
Later in the same letter:
Although animated by the purest desire to serve You I am exposed to the grossest treatment from the detective officers in Scotland Yard which proves to me that all that passed between me and Yourself is well known to them, the following is an illustration
Last Thursday I returned to my office My Clerk told me that Mr. Thomas called. I supposed it was Sergt Thomas and took a cab to Scotland Yard. I then saw Thompson and asked if he knew that Thomas wants me, he said no. I then met Thomas on the Street near Leicester Sq. on Saturday when he grossly abused me for calling at Scotland Yard. And he said I dont care for Sir Richard, he is nothing to me. But all this will not make me abstain from acting as I do upon Public Grounds, as long as You consider my services of any good to You
I am Your truly
Ob Ser.
‘Pollaky’
On 16 April, he wrote another let
ter of the same kind. It seems that there was much talk about misappropriation of police funds by an Inspector Mitchell of the City Police. Pollaky points out that though this would have resulted in instant dismissal in Mayne’s Metropolitan Police, Mitchell was instead promoted:
If such a case would have occurred in the Metropolitan Police (everybody says) he would have been sumarly [sic] dismissed. [He] takes 25% of the 12 Detective Srgts of all their Gratuity Monies; which now amounts I am told to about 700£ without ever accounting for it, then it becomes a matter of wise discussion of the said Commissioner, not to be too hard on a Sinner.
He goes on to warn of demonstrations he has heard were being organised for the next visit to London of the Emperor of France:
Yesterday I heard from a person generally well informed in all such matters, that a Comité has formed itself here for the purpose of getting up demonstrations at the next visit of the Emperor of the French to London. I am willing to give up to You the name of the party, who is bye the bye or better was for a long time Honorary Secretary of the Deutsches Vaterland here.
He concludes:
Should you desire to see me I am at Your disposal at any time by day or night and You know I hope by this time it is not for the filthy lucre.
Pollaky trying even harder to prove his value, wrote yet another letter on 25 April to Mayne enclosing a paragraph from that day’s Times. Ever hopeful, he writes, ‘I hope You will not consider me too officious in intruding on Your valuable time.’
The enclosure concerned the police investigation of a murder and robbery in Holborn, London. The newspaper clipping ends with the following sentence which Pollaky highlighted with two crosses:
They [the jury at the inquest] also added that they desired the authorities should be made acquainted with the fact that the police had left the widow of the deceased for an entire week unacquainted with his condition, although from his pocketbook and papers they must have been aware of his address.
With this emphasis he evidently was trying to help the police improve their own image by making Mayne aware of what was being said. This itself would have probably been enough to annoy Mayne still further.
Having now irritated Sir Richard Mayne, who was not known for his tolerance of private investigators, with clumsy and tactless attempts to ingratiate himself, Pollaky tried to move forward with his life in a new way. This was something he must have been contemplating for some considerable time, but would cause him more trouble and anxiety than almost anything else in his professional or personal life; something which is inextricably bound up with his correspondence with Sir Richard Mayne, the Metropolitan Police Force, and Horatio Waddington, Permanent Under-Secretary of State to the Home Office.
On 29 April 1862, Ignatius Paul Pollaky went to the Mansion House in the City of London, and formally made his application for British Citizenship.
9
1862 Naturalisation Application – ‘It would be monstrous’
On 3 May 1862, Pollaky’s application for British nationality, written a few days earlier was formally received by the Home Office. He describes himself as having been born, ‘at Presburg [sic] in the Empire of Austria in the Month of April One thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty Nine’. (This date would be contradicted in 1914, when he wrote that he was born on 19 February 1828.)
That Pollaky not only felt frustrated but also deeply upset by the treatment he would now receive is evident from the way he expressed himself in the letters that followed, and also from his handwriting, which becomes more and more agitated in some of them. A great outpouring of astonishment at the lack of understanding shown by the authorities, despite his protestations of sincerity and loyalty, is also present in abundance.
He states that he first came to England in 1852, and this, if true, would explain why he does not appear on the 1851 census. Four friends gave references: Henry William Sewell, Thomas Kelham Minchell, Edward Hunot and Alfred Wynne. They made their declarations at the Mansion House in front of William Cubitt, Lord Mayor of London.
Henry William Sewell (1796–1872) was elected to the post of Swordbearer to the Lord Mayor of London in 1860, a post in existence since at least 1420. His predecessor had held that office for twenty-eight years until his death in 1860 at the age 94. The Swordbearer, the most senior of the Mayor’s staff officers, supervises the protocol of ceremonial events. He wears a type of fur hat called a ‘Cap of Maintenance’ and, as his title implies, carries the Lord Mayor’s sword.
Thomas Kelham Minchell (1815–70) was, according to the 1861 census, the son of a ‘mariner’. He married for the second time in 1842 and was a messenger working at the Mansion House at the time of Pollaky’s application.
Lawyer’s clerk, Edward Hunot (1839–1915) was 24 when he acted as a referee. At the age of 40, by then a merchant, he married the exotically named Eugenie Victoire Leonce de Brignola, daughter of an Italian count, resident in England. Lest it should be considered that Hunot moved in exalted circles, it should be pointed out that Count Angelo de Brignola had in 1857 applied for financial relief as an insolvent debtor. Alfred Wynne was a clerk in the City of London.
In the meantime, Pollaky was still working hard to get on the right side of Sir Richard Mayne by informing him of the misdeeds of the City Police. On 5 May 1862, he wrote Mayne a letter which he must have supposed would be helpful, but can only have given rise to ire.
Pollaky enclosed a clipping of a letter published that day in The Times. He tells of what appears to have been an expenses-paid trip to the West Indies for the interestingly named Sergeant Jack Spittle of the City Police, officially on police business, but in fact, according to Pollaky, ‘it was a private business in which D.W. Harvey and a certain public company had some interest in’. (Daniel Whittle Harvey was the first Commissioner of the City Police.) He continues: ‘I shall shortly be able to lay before You a case of such flagrant malpractice which will doubtless appear to You sufficiently important for intervention.’
The enclosed newspaper paragraph, tactlessly sent with his letter is entitled: ‘ARE THE POLICE TO BE BETTER PAID AND CARED FOR?’
It begins fairly enough, urging the public to sympathise with poorly paid police constables in the hope that they might be better paid, but it then continues to compare Mayne unfavourably with Harvey:
Day duty in the metropolitan police is so badly arranged, and so very tedious, that it is dreaded by everyone in the service; and this arrangement only to suit the caprice of the commissioners, whose despotic rule is predominant in the police. Had Sir R. Mayne have been as charitable to the men of the metropolitan police as Daniel W. Harvey was to the officers of the city police, the men of both services would have been equally considered. [...] There is no division in the metropolitan police where so much tyranny exists as in the police of your locality.
The letter is signed ‘A Police Constable’.
As noted previously Pollaky had already written to Mayne about corruption in the City of London Police. This mention of Harvey’s name was now so blatant that he must have felt it impossible for Mayne to ignore it. It was, indeed, Harvey that he had accused the previous month of taking 25 per cent of his men’s gratuities, amounting to about £700, just as it had been Harvey who had employed his own unqualified young nephew in an overt act of nepotism. At that time policemen were allowed to accept gratuities from members of the public in gratitude for their work.
On 22 May 1862 Pollaky wrote a letter to Mayne requesting an interview to discuss a robbery of £800 worth of diamonds. He received in reply a letter from Chief Clerk Mr Yardley informing him that any information he had should be put in writing. Pollaky evidently felt, rightly it would seem, that this was a snub, he responded to Mayne with the information on 26 May, but insisted in his letter that he was acting in ‘perfect good faith’ and that his sole object was to gain Mayne’s good opinion, feeling certain that one day Mayne would appreciate him. The information Pollaky sent is a newspaper article from the Telegraph: A story of how a London
jeweller was robbed by a German and an American in a complex fraud. The American used a seal with the initials ‘R.M.’ to seal a box of jewels, but aside from this coincidence, there seems to be no reason for Sir Richard Mayne to have deemed the story of particular significance, and it is hard to see why Pollaky should have thought he would. Pollaky seems to be clutching at straws in his attempt to make himself indispensable to Mayne.
To return the question of naturalisation: one can see things as they really stood between Sir Richard Mayne and Pollaky. On 27 May, Pollaky’s solicitor wrote a letter to Horatio Waddington. It had been about four weeks since Pollaky’s application for a Certificate of Naturalisation had been sent to the Home Office. Frederick Browne asked Waddington to inform him if Pollaky’s application might be entertained. Waddington sent the letter to Sir Richard Mayne for comment. Mayne’s written response regarding Pollaky was: ‘This is a man of very indifferent character, an agent of Field, the Ex-Police Officer – shall his application be refused to him.’
So now it becomes clear that Pollaky’s correspondence with Mayne had done him more harm than good. Things would not get any better. On 2 June 1862 a letter was written to Sir Richard Mayne by a police detective regarding Pollaky’s application, which is quoted here in full:
Detection Dept
2 June 1862
Paddington' Pollaky, Private Detective Page 12