The Times – 6 March 1882
POLLAKY’S PRIVATE INQUIRY OFFICE (established 1862). – The rumour that I am dead is not true. – Pollaky, Paddington-green, W.
This is one of the more unusual of Pollaky’s advertisements; one wonders why it was necessary, and how this rumour could have started; there seems to be no mention of it prior to this anywhere else. It predates the more famous quote of Mark Twain from the 2 June 1897 New York Journal (seventeen years later): ‘The report of my death was an exaggeration. (Not: ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’.) But his days as a private investigator were almost over for good.
Pollaky’s last advertisements:
The Times – 18 May 1882
POLLAKY’S PRIVATE INQUIRY OFFICE. Established reputation in England and with the Foreign Detective Police – 13, Paddington-green, W.”
The Times – 19 May 1882
POSTCARD ! (Richmond). – Call on Mr Pollaky, The Green, Paddington, where on proving your identity, you will receive the reward.
In July, he and Mary Ann some spent time holidaying in the Isle of Wight, arriving at the Esplanade Hotel in Ryde on the 14th or 15th. For the first week of their stay weather was pleasant, though there were passing showers, but if they stayed on after that they would have enjoyed some glorious sunshine, as well as the chance of seeing the ‘singular sight as was presented by the large plank exhibited during the week by the coastguards. It was covered with thousands of large goose barnacles which moved themselves about like so many large leeches’ (Isle of Wight Observer 29 July 1882). This was evidently deemed to be one of the highlights of the month, and appeared on page 5 of the newspaper (the first page of news was page 4, and even that was mostly advertisements).
Their new address in Brighton was Miramar, 33 Stanford Road, Preston Park, Brighton, Sussex. The house, built in the early 1880s, still stands at the time of writing.
Pollaky had destroyed all his personal records of his investigations, but, still receiving inquiries for his services, placed the following advertisement in The Times:
The Times – Saturday, 26 April 1884
ANNOUNCEMENT. – Mr POLLAKY finds it necessary to state publicly that he has RETIRED from BUSINESS: that all records and correspondence with former clients have been destroyed; and any person claiming to be his successor would do so fraudulently. – April 25th, 1884
As a result of this advertisement, the following item appeared two days later:
Manchester Evening News – Monday, 28 April 1884
A notable figure has just disappeared from London life. This is Mr Pollaky, who has for upwards of 25 years conducted a private inquiry office at Paddington Green. [...] Mr Pollaky will now be able to devote his leisure to the cultivation of roses or the study of music, which are supposed to possess a peculiar fascination for the detective mind.
Of course, the paragraph in the Manchester Evening News is not entirely correct, as Pollaky had not been at Paddington Green for as long as twenty-five years. But the most interesting suggestion is in the last sentence. Was it Pollaky, though, who was supposed to have a fascination for cultivating roses and studying music, or were these supposed to interest detectives in general? His house in Paddington Green had large gardens in front and behind. The front garden had twelve almond trees, but these are the only plants recorded as being there.
The fact of his retirement did not prevent others from taking advantage of his name; despite his having clearly advertised in 1884 that he was no longer active, there were instances of impersonation, if not of the man himself, then certainly of his representatives, as the following letter shows:
British Medical Journal, 18 April 1885
A CONSULTING-ROOM THIEF.
Sir, – About 5 o’clock on Thursday afternoon, April 2nd, a broad shouldered man, from 40 to 50 years of age, with fair sandy whiskers, called at my house under the pretence of seeking information about a Mrs Ward, and representing himself as an agent of Messrs Pollaky. He was permitted, in my absence, to go into the consulting-room to write a letter to me. He availed himself of the opportunity to steal a large brass syringe lying on my table, although my servant never left him alone for a moment. My servant gathered he had paid visits to other medical men near, which, on further inquiry, I found to be the case; but, happily, in each instance, his predatory instincts were defeated.
I gave full information to the police, who discovered my syringe the next morning at a pawnbroker’s about a mile distant. At the same time, he pawned a square marble clock, evidently the result of his day’s labour.
I have reason to hope, from certain circumstances, that his career will not be a long one; but, in the meantime, I am desirous of warning my professional brethren, so that they may be on their guard against such a character. He wears a dark Chesterfield great coat, with billycock hat, and light trousers; and the tale he tells is generally a little involved and rather incoherent. – Yours faithfully, J.ROCHE LYNCH. 8, Boyne Terrace, Holland
Park, W.
Meanwhile, Pollaky enjoyed his retirement. Signs of his continued activity, vague though some of them are, can nevertheless be seen in letters and newspapers. He had been quite methodical not only professionally, but also in his private life. By selling the house in Paddington Green, and moving to Brighton, he would have realised a fair amount of equity, as property prices, then as now, would have been far lower away from London. Furthermore, he had invested a good amount of the money he saved in railways, in particular the Entre Rios Central Railway in Argentina. In August 1891, he attended a shareholders’ meeting in London and seconded one of the chairman’s proposals.
According to Henry Mackinnon Walbrook in his book The Gilbert and Sullivan Opera: A History and a Comment 1922:
The ‘Paddington Pollaky’ alluded to by the Colonel [in Patience] was a celebrated detective of the day, a man of international reputation who, after his retirement lived at Brighton and was for some years an almost daily habitué of the public chess-room in the Royal Pavilion. He died during the Great War.
The distance from the Royal Pavilion to his new house was a good mile and a quarter, and must have taken at least half an hour each way if he walked. He may, though, have used the horse-drawn buses which passed not too far from his house.
The Public Room at the Royal Pavilion was opened in 1873 (or 1874 according to the Southern Weekly News of 12 October 1889.) It still existed in 1921, three years after Pollaky’s death. Walbrook’s passage on Pollaky in his book is the only reference currently found of Pollaky having played chess there (or anywhere at all) and yet we should not be surprised that chess might provide him with the intellectual stimulus needed by a retired private detective.
Discover the Royal Pavilion, published by Royal Pavilion Museum, says of the Banqueting Room Gallery:
The decoration in this room is toned down not only to contrast with the Banqueting Room, but also to create a calm, relaxing atmosphere. Guests would withdraw to this room after eating. Ladies would retire first, leaving the gentlemen to their port and cigars. Games such as cards, backgammon and chess would be played here. Palm trees, made of cast iron, covered in carved wood, support the upper floor.
On Friday, 24 April 1846, the Monthly Times of London had reported on a chess match that had begun in September 1842 between the Paris Chess Club and the Pesth Chess Club of Hungary. The Hungarian club had sent a challenge to play a match by correspondence. Their players included one called Pollaky. The match finished in April 1846 (hence the report). The Hungarian team won, largely, according to the report, due to the ‘fine play of Szen and Lowenthal’. Johann Jacob Löwenthal (1810–76) was a Hungarian chess player expelled from Hungary in 1849 after the unsuccessful revolution. Although he initially went to America, in 1851 he went to England to take part in the London Chess Tournament and remained there till his death. József Szén (1805–57), founder of the Pesth Chess Club and chess teacher of Löwenthal, on the other hand, remained in Hungary, although he too was in Londo
n in 1851 to play chess in the London Chess Tournament. From 1872 to 1876, Löwenthal wrote the chess column for the London Figaro, that same journal in whose supplement in 1874 appeared Betbeder’s caricature of Ignatius Paul Pollaky.
From this information, vague though it is, as if clutching at straws, we see the name Pollaky associated with the game of chess as early as 1842–46. However this was not Ignatius Pollaky, but one Br. Pollaky who was reported as being a member of the Hungarian team in Le Palamède of 15 July 1842 (a periodical about chess published in Paris). Was he a relation? It is the first mention of the name Pollaky connected with the world of chess, and with that we must be satisfied.
Live-in servants came and went, judging by the census forms. In 1891, Sussex-born Mary Ede, 23, was their domestic servant, in 1901 it was 21-year-old Louise Sayer, also from Sussex, and in 1911, Gertrude Cooper, 20, from Herefordshire. Doubtless there were others, though it is to be hoped that none were as notorious for their behaviour as child stealer Elizabeth Barry, their cook for a short time in 1869. The 1911 census form states that the Pollakys had seven children born alive. It is apparent that after forty-nine years, they were still unable to come to terms with the stillbirth of their first child.
Next door, at No. 31 Stanford Avenue, lived the Treacher family who had moved there in 1889. Thomas Treacher initially worked for his father, Harry, as a bookseller’s assistant, eventually taking over the shop, H. and C. Treacher, 1 North Street, Brighton, on the death of his father in 1891. (His uncle Charles, co-founder of the business, had died twenty years earlier.) Thomas Treacher described himself as a ‘Fancy Stationer and Bookseller’. The business also published a number of books and was a subscription library. Thomas and Minnie Treacher would eventually have six children, all living at home, together with a cook, and a nurse to look after the youngest children. (Thomas’s brother Arthur was a solicitor in Brighton; Arthur’s son would grow up to be the Hollywood actor Arthur Treacher, player of a number of supporting roles.) In 1914 Thomas Treacher would act as one of the referees for Pollaky’s application for British citizenship, stating that he had known Pollaky for twenty-five years and had always known him to be of good character. Although the Treachers were somewhat younger than Mr and Mrs Pollaky, a friendly relationship evidently existed between Ignatius and Mary Ann, and Thomas Treacher and his wife Minnie.
Neighbours on the other side at No. 35 did not stay as long as the Treachers. In 1901 the house was lived in by Richard Gamble, commercial lawyer, and his wife Annie. In 1911 the house was occupied by retired Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Ashmead, who had served in the cavalry in Canada, and his Canadian wife Martha. They had married in England in 1887, and gone out to Canada in about 1890.
Never one to remain inactive for long, Pollaky continued to write letters to newspapers after his retirement. He felt that his long experience in crime detection and matters concerned with nationality made him an expert whose opinions should carry weight. His letters are often quite opinionated and some disagreed with his conclusions. Most are signed ‘Ritter von Pollaky’ (making use of his German knighthood) or ‘Criminalrath’ (modern spelling ‘Kriminalrat’) – meaning a kind of German police investigator, and sometimes ‘Ritter von Pollaky, Criminalrath’. As early as 19 April 1881, the German language newspaper Der Deutsche Correspondent of Baltimore, US, referred to Pollaky as ‘Criminalrath Pollaky’. Several of his letters were published in The Times. The following letter to the Daily Mail of Tuesday 28 July 1896, is a rare example of Pollaky attempting to be humorous:
To the Editor of the Daily Mail.
Your Leader headed ‘Husband and Holidays’ reminds me of an episode which came under my personal experience in a friend’s house. The husband, overworked, fell ill, and a physician was called in. He saw the patient, and the wife anxiously awaited his verdict, which was to the effect that the patient must have a change and travel. ‘Where shall we go to?’ asked the distressed wife. The doctor somewhat brusquely replied, ‘I did not say you should travel with him, but he must travel.’
POLLAKY.
His letters offer an insight into the workings of the mind of a man who still felt, after all these years, the need for appreciation, and a need to be known by the public at large. In 1909, there were several letters to The Times discussing the merits of the method for classifying fingerprints devised by Francis Galton, famous for his now largely discredited theory of Eugenics. ‘Ritter von Pollaky wrote a letter published on 7 January 1909 pointing out that ‘my countryman, the Austrian professor, Dr. Purjonje, in the year 1823, lectured on finger-prints at the University at Breslau.’ This refers to the lectures given by John Evangelist Purkinji, professor of anatomy. His lecture discussed fingerprint patterns but did not mention the use of fingerprints for identification. Pollaky continuing to dwell on this matter, and feeling that he had more to offer as an expert in detection, wrote again a few days later:
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir, – Last August the president of police of one of the most important towns on the Continent honoured me with a visit at Brighton; he came direct from London, where he devoted several weeks to a thorough study of the metropolitan police system both administrative and executive. The president’s professional admiration and enthusiasm for Scotland Yard was great; for the finger prints (Sir Edward Henry’s method of registration) it was still greater; for the universal courtesy of the constables in regulating the traffic it was greatest.
Yours faithfully,
RITTER VON POLLAKY.
Brighton, January 11.
Though Pollaky would leave us in the dark as to who this President of Police was he must have felt that mentioning his visit gave his opinions a weighty credibility that otherwise they might not have. In October 1910, the new Chief of the Berlin Police (Police President) Traugott von Jagow, together with the Chief of the Charlottenburg Police, Günther von Hertzberg, and the Chief of Police of Dresden, visited London in order to study the English police system. They were particularly interested in traffic control and administration of police stations, and were given full assistance by Scotland Yard. During their visit, they attended part of the proceedings of the Crippen murder trial, so visits of foreign police were not unknown at that time. And after all his problems with one particular commissioner of police in days of yore, Pollaky’s approval of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Edward Henry, and his methods may show a softening in his attitude.
Most of Pollaky’s ‘Ritter’ letters to The Times are about the naturalisation of aliens:
The Times – Saturday, 7 January 1911
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir, – THE ALIENS ACT VERSUS ANARCHISM
An Englishman travelling on the Continent has [...] to submit to certain police regulations.
Pollaky lists some of the documents necessary to carry or to complete: passport, hotel register (which the proprietor copies for the police), and a permit stamped on his passport if he intends to settle in that country:
I never heard of any Englishman travelling abroad complain of these purely administrative police measures. Why should a foreigner coming to England and remaining here object to certain similar rules and regulations?
The terrible and horrifying events in the City surely call for more drastic measures in the supervision of aliens.
The terrible and horrifying events he refers to are the Houndsditch Murders of 16 December 1910 and the Siege of Sidney Street of 3 January 1911 which followed as a direct consequence. These events involved a group of international anarchists who attempted to rob a jeweller’s shop killing a number of policemen in their bungled attempt. In the background lurked the mysterious figure of a man known at the time as ‘Peter the Painter’, whose true identity has been the subject of much speculation. These complex events have never been fully explained, but one of those involved, Jacob Peters, later became a senior figure in the Soviet government and may have been killed during one of Stalin’s purges:
The Times �
� Saturday, 22 April 1911
AN ALIEN ON THE ALIENS BILL.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
[…] I am an alien in possession of a revolver. Your readers need, however, not feel nervous. I am in my 84th year, and the revolver was bought by me in the year of our Lord 1867 when I was sworn in a special constable in the X Division of the Metropolitan Police [...] I kept this revolver 44 years without using it once. My unbroken domicile in my ever-beloved adopted country has lasted 60 years, and during 50 years I paid rates and taxes like a true Briton, only I did not grumble as Englishmen do, but I still remained an alien. The very sound ‘stinks in the nostrils of heaven’ [...] My children grandchildren and great grandchildren, born, every one of them in England and British Colonies, will be called upon to fight for England, but I, their ancestor, would still be ‘an alien’. May I venture to ask why I should be called upon to forswear my allegiance to my venerable and dearly-loved old Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria and Hungary, simply to get rid of the stigma as now understood and attached to the word ‘alien’ by the general public? As the London correspondent for more than a quarter of a century of the International Criminal Police Gazette, I think I may in all modesty claim to be an expert able to give an opinion that the new Aliens Act will in the shortest possible time clear this country of undesirable foreigners […]
I remain, sir your obedient servant,
RITTER VON POLLAKY, Criminatrath
Brighton, April 20.
The Times – Saturday, 15 July 1911
An alien desirous of becoming naturalized in England should first of all petition the Government of his own country for sanction to be released from his native Staatsangehörigkeit [Affiliation]. [...] All doubts and disagreeable complications now frequently arising respecting the legal status of a naturalized alien returning to his native country would henceforth be avoided.
Paddington' Pollaky, Private Detective Page 25