Paddington' Pollaky, Private Detective

by Bryan Kesselman

Confidential

  I beg to report with ref. to Ignatius Pollaky who has petitioned for a certificate of Naturalization that I have known him for the last 4 or 5 years as a person obtaining his living by his wits, but occasionally acting as an Interpreter. He has frequently tendered his services to this Dept. but has never received any encouragement being always considered a dangerous man, but he asserts that he is well known at the Foreign Office & that he has been confidentially employed by the Government on important political matters on the continent.

  He was recently connected with a private Enquiring Office kept by the late Inspector Field, and styled Supt. of the Foreign Dept. of the Bureau de Surété, but he has since left these & opened a private Enquiry office for himself at 14 George St. Mansion House City which he still carries on.

  Enquiry has also been made respecting the persons who have made declarations in support of his petition with the following result.

  1er. Henry William Sewell is a householder & resides at address given. He bears a respectable character & acts as Sword bearer to the City Corporation

  2nd. Thomas Kirkham [Kelham] Minchell is a householder & resides at the address given. He bears a good character, & is a Messenger at Mansion House City.

  3rd. Alfred Wynne is a householder & resides at Address given. He is a Clerk in the City, & bears a good character.

  4th. Edward Hunot resides at address given & is by profession a lawyer’s clerk. He bears a good character. He is not the proprietor of the house but lodges there with his mother.

  Signed

  J.Whicher

  Inspt.

  He found nothing bad to say about the referees, but this faintly damning report into Pollaky’s character was written by none other than that Inspector Jonathan Whicher who had investigated the Road House Murder in 1860. He undoubtedly had an axe to grind after Pollaky’s unwanted presence at one of the official examinations into that case, which had added to the stress that he was already under from the problematic inquiry he was making and the hard time he was given by the press and his superiors. Inspector Whicher, the hero of both Kate Summerscale’s excellent book and the television dramatisation of the investigation into the Road House murder, is here shown in a less than sympathetic light, finally able to vent his resentment of Pollaky.

  Mayne sent the report to the Home Office with a covering letter dated 5 June. Various hands made their comments on the back of this letter: ‘Are we to naturalize adventurers of this description?’

  To which the response of someone identified only as ‘SS’ was:

  As he says he is well known at the F.O. it may be as well to inquire there what is known of him & whether Ld. R. thinks it desirable that he should have a certificate of naturalization.

  The final letter in this series was written on 16 June by one I. Hammond of the Foreign Office to Waddington:

  In reply to your letter of the 11th instant, I am directed by Earl Russell to request that you will inform Secretary Sir George Grey that in His Lordship’s opinion it will be better to decline to grant a Certificate of Naturalization to Mr. Ignatius Pollaky.

  (Lord John Russell, one time Prime Minister, was at that time Foreign Secretary. It was Sir George Grey to whom the original naturalisation application had been made.) On the back of this letter there were two further unsigned remarks in different hands.

  Mr Pollaky should not be naturalized –

  No – of course not – it would be monstrous.

  Pollaky was sent a negative response to his application on 18 June 1862.

  Pollaky was deeply hurt and upset by the refusal of British nationality, and instantly began to canvass for the decision to be overturned. Writing to Sir George Grey on 20 June, he tried to begin calmly:

  18 Maida Hill West & 14 George St

  Mansion House

  London 20th June 1862

  The Rt Honbl. Sir George Grey Brt, ect [sic]

  Sir.

  I have the honor to aknowledge [sic] the receipt of a letter signed H. Waddington dated the 18 inst written by Yr. direction and refusing me a Certificate of Naturalization.

  I should feel greatly obliged if You would do me the favour of stating on what grounds my application is denied me, whether from any informality in the documents sent You, or from any objections as to the Gentleman, making the declaration or from motives of policy; taking into consideration my antecedents – and whether I will always remain at any future period incapable of becoming a naturalized British Subject; the refusal of which to myself personally is a matter of indifference; but as I have in the month of June 1861 contracted Matrimony with an english Lady and am in hourly expectation of the birth of a child I am most desirous that any offspring may desire that advantage they otherwise would not possess, should I not become a naturalized Bts Subject

  I have been a householder at the address above named for some time and consequently pay all assessed and other Taxes demanded and as the want of a Certificate of Naturalization debars me from being a purchaser of any freehold property I am of Course most anxious for my Childrens sake, to become a natural British Subject.

  I trust and hope that the above facts may induce You to reconsider my application and alter the Decision contained as Your letter of the 18th inst.

  Anxiously waiting Your earliest reply, I have the honor to be

  Sir

  Your Obd Servant

  Ignatius Pollaky

  The child referred to in the letter would be the stillborn Lily.

  Upon receipt of this letter ‘SS’ wrote on the back of the second page:

  We need be in no alarm as to his children – if they are born in England, they are British Subjects. So inform him.

  On 2 July, Waddington wrote to Pollaky informing him of this.

  Pollaky responded with a letter to Sir George Grey on 4 July showing a little more of his hurt feelings. He now understood the situation with regard to any children he might have, but reaffirmed his need, ‘to be informed on what grounds the Certificate is refused to myself personally, and whether at a future time my application for the same will meet with the same objections.’

  Part of the final sentence of this letter is underlined:

  Believing that You would not be a party to anything so grossly unfair, as the refusal of my Certificate upon mere ‘on dits’ [on dits: gossip] and that You will be good enough to reconsider Your decision of Your letter of the 18th June.

  This had evidently become a matter of great personal import. Note Pollaky’s description of the Certificate of Naturalisation as ‘my certificate’. There is something almost childlike about this sentence, or like Gollum’s description of his ring as ‘my precious’ (The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien). Of course the decision had not been made by Grey, but Pollaky would not have known that.

  A note in an anonymous hand on the reverse of the second page reads: ‘No further notice – We cannot allow the discretion of the Sect of State in this matter to be questioned.’ And so no response was sent.

  Pollaky, of course, was not going to leave things there. On 31 July, he wrote to Sir Richard Mayne complaining of his treatment:

  I now have no other alternative but to address myself to Your well known sense of justice; Knowing as I do that You have no formal feeling in this matter, and that You only advised the Secretary of State upon Reports made to You.

  How wrong he was! Mayne was, unknown to Pollaky, strongly antagonistic to him. Pollaky in this letter tries everything he can to persuade Mayne to intervene on his behalf.

  He affirms that he was never tried or convicted of any crime in London, England or Europe.

  He mentions his work for Lord Palmerston in 1854 and his good reference from Mr Hodgson to the Austrian Ambassador in 1858. He states that he is certain that Mayne could not be ‘a party to anything unjust and unfair’, and that he would give the matter ‘Kind and Favourable consideration’. After expressing the hope that he might have better chance of success if he reapplied in three or four years he adds some
over-the-top admiration of Mayne’s qualities:

  I will than [sic] patiently wait and will moreover ever be thankfull [sic] to You; whom I believe in this matter solely actuated by the strict observance of Your duty which although I suffer I cannot help admiring.

  He then makes the following extraordinary offer:

  Should you wish me to shut up my office, I will do so after one month notice as a proof that I do not intend to act in any way against the wish & interest of Her Majesty’s Government.

  He restates his wish to:

  … assist the Police whenever the opportunity presents itself and to serve Her Majesty’s Government with all sincerity and honesty, and in this manner show my gratitude for the Grant of the Certificate of Naturalization should I ever obtain such.

  His agitation, evident in this letter both from the language and the handwriting, would grow far more acute over the next few weeks.

  Another letter followed on 31 July 1862. Pollaky protested that people far less respectable than himself had been granted Certificates of Naturalization, and gave three examples:

  1. Baron v Essen formerly in the foreign Legion – is no Baron at all, and is now an inmate of a prison in the Duchy of Baden on a charge of forgery.

  2. On the 19th inst the Certificate was granted to a Captain Kastner, who has no visible means of existence who lives on the charity of the Massonic [sic] Lodges, and who would not dare to make his appearence in Glasgow.

  3. Napoleon de Chorlakovsky a person of bad repute once in custody at Malborough [sic] Police Court for obtaining money under false pretences.

  In the lines that follow, his handwriting very noticeably becomes still more and more agitated, larger and less legible. Furthermore his usual care with regard to grammar slips a bit: ‘I am not engaged in anything what is [sic] unlawfull [sic],’ he writes near the start of this letter. ‘Mr Mullens Solicitor could give further information about [him].’ He adds, ‘to all this 3 persons [sic] the Grant of Certificate was allowed and to me a householder who pays his rates and taxes it is refused. I trust however that it is not to [sic] late and that I will yet find justice.’

  One cannot but sympathise with such deep feelings.

  There followed a half-hearted attempt to show that he was still trying to be of assistance to the police, in the form of two letters with some fairly uninteresting information about ‘evil-disposed persons [who] have lately fraudulently possessed themselves of the tenancy of certain fisheries’, mixed in with hints about his naturalisation. Then, on 4 August, he wrote a letter to Horatio Waddington, re-rehearsing matters from the 31 July letter to Mayne, and asking Waddington to intercede with Sir George Grey on his behalf, since Mayne had written declining to interfere with matters to which Pollaky had referred.

  The letter of 4 August is the last existing communication on the subject of Pollaky’s desire for a Certificate of Naturalization at that time. Those words ‘Certificate of Naturalization’ or ‘my Certificate of Naturalization’ occur in those letters almost like a mantra repeated in each one with an insistence which is still almost embarrassingly unbearable to read.

  Pollaky’s desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to obtain British citizenship implies great sincerity on his part, and yet there is a mystery, and for this we must return to the letters written by Pollaky to Henry Sanford.

  From the letter to Sanford at the end of October 1861 (ref. HSS 14.32):

  I have during the whole time acted with the utmost good faith towards the U.S. Governement [sic] particularly as I have already informed You, I myself am an American Citizen – But although in possession of my first papers of Naturalisation I did not reside the required 5 years in America to obtain [seco]nd papers, and can therefore not in case of any steps being taken by the British Governement [sic] claim by right the protection of the U.S. altho I should[,] such protection ought to to be given to me ‘par faveur’ under this [sic] peculiar circumstances.

  And in the letter to Seward of 12 February 1862 he refers to America as, ‘my adopted Country’. Had he made the required ‘Declaration of Intent’ to become an American citizen at some earlier time? Had he at one time tried to apply for American citizenship and then transferred his loyalty to Great Britain? As usual, the more one discovers about this mysterious man, the more questions there are to answer.

  On 23 October 1856, an Ignatius Pollaky listed as a merchant from Germany aged 19, arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and stated his intention of becoming an American citizen. Could this be Ignatius Paul Pollaky – though the age, occupation and origin are wrong? In 1856 Pollaky would have been 28. Mistakes like this are known on the most official of documents. Six days later, according to the Evening Star of Washington DC, a J. Pollaky of Pennsylvania booked into the Willard Hotel in that city. If it had been he who went to America in 1856, he was certainly not there for the required five years. Unfortunately, these two records are the only ones of an Ignatius (or J.) Pollaky in the United States at the correct period.

  However, he continued in his attempts to make himself indispensable to the Metropolitan Police with another series of letters. These began on 30 December 1862, in the usual way of sending information culled from the press or from his own observations. These include a letter clipped from The Times of 10 February 1863 about a foreigner being overcharged by a London cabman with the apparent connivance of a policeman. Pollaky also writes to Mayne on 10 March 1863, declaring that, ‘since I left Mr Field I scrupulously abstained from acting in cases which properly belong to the police’. Field himself was inconsistent in this kind of matter, sometimes interfering, and sometimes not, but on the whole was evidently less scrupulous than Pollaky. The implication seems to be that Pollaky too had been less scrupulous when he was working with Field.

  Finally, on 16 March 1863, Pollaky managed to have an interview with Sir Richard Mayne. Yardley, the Chief Clerk was also present at Mayne’s request. Pollaky refused to speak in front of Yardley as what he had to say was a private matter. Yardley noted that following this, ‘Sir R Mayne then wished him good morning & Mr Pollaky left’.

  That it was deemed necessary to compare his handwriting later that month with that of an anonymous letter sent to Lord Palmerston (as mentioned in Chapter 3), is indicative of the complete lack of trust that Mayne (who had asked for the comparison to be made), had in Pollaky. He had been writing to Mayne, oblivious to the complete contempt that Mayne had for him. A small number of undated letters from this period show Pollaky indicating that certain members of the police force were passing information to Field’s office, but these too led nowhere.

  An undated letter of 1862 or 1863 shows that Pollaky thought that Mayne’s desire would be, ‘to smash the City Police’, though why he believed this is not recorded.

  It is only right to give another view of Pollaky’s motives. In his book Policing Victorian London (Greenwood Press, 1985), Philip Thurmond Smith writes with apparent scorn of Pollaky and his self-styled ‘grandiloquent title – “Superintendent of the Foreign Department” with his offices in the “Foreign Department Bureau of Sûreté, Temple.’” He also seems to find Pollaky’s accusations of police corruption in the City Police, and in particular Commissioner Harvey’s ‘pocketing’ £700 of gratuity money and using his force for his personal use rather unbelievable.

  Actually it was Whicher who mentioned that Pollaky had been ‘styled Supt. of the Foreign Dept. of the Bureau de Surété [sic],’ and that while Pollaky was working for Field, not for himself. Pollaky himself does not mention the Sûreté at all.

  Smith feels that Pollaky’s motives were an attempt to make himself as helpful to the police as possible in order to secure his naturalization. The following paragraph finishes: ‘The fact that there were regular police detectives, did not, as we have seen, obviate the need for informers, however unreliable they might have been.’

  While these observations may have some element of truth about them, thorough analysis of the letters themselves show Pollaky to have
acted also from a genuine desire to be helpful, though as detective work was his profession he would have felt the need for financial reward and must also have felt that it was only right and fair that he should gain British nationality. It seems unfair, however, to put Pollaky in the category of unreliable informer. While the information he gave may not always have been exact, he only made use of information he had received himself, passing it on to Mayne in good faith, with his own commentary it is true, but with the knowledge that Mayne would make whatever use of it he wished. And from a viewpoint in the twenty-first century, we can see that accusations of police corruption are not unusual, and whether well-founded or not, they deserve investigation now as they did then. The difference is that in Pollaky’s day, allegations of this sort were unlikely to be taken seriously by those in authority. A mighty police corruption case would, however, erupt in 1877, in which an attempt would be made to blacken Pollaky’s name.

  Despite his difficulties establishing a relationship with the police force, Pollaky still felt it part of the responsibility of one living in England to carry out civic duties when required, and so in 1867 he was sworn in as a Special Constable in the X Division of the Metropolitan Police.

  On 29 June and 2 July 1866 the Hyde Park Riots had taken place. Demonstrators wishing to meet in the park as part of their campaign for suffrage for all men had found the gates locked, and this had resulted in a riot in which stones were thrown at the police, including Sir Richard Mayne, and a policeman had been killed. The following April there were further meetings, and the park was more strongly policed. Pollaky wrote in a letter to The Times in 1911 that he became a Special Constable in 1867, though in 1914 he wrote in his naturalisation application that he served during the Hyde Park Riots. Special Constables would be in great need later in 1867 as well to help bolster the regular force. A Special Constable was an unpaid police volunteer, who would have police powers when on duty. It is not known whether Pollaky’s services were much in demand in this capacity.