The Real Sherlock Holmes

by Angela Buckley

The Irish were right at the bottom of the social and economic pile in Victorian Manchester. Since the early years of the Industrial Revolution there had been a steady flow of migrants from Ireland and arrivals reached a peak in the mid-1840s, during the Great Famine. By the end of the decade, 15 per cent of the city’s inhabitants were Irish-born, making them the largest ethnic community. Seeking refuge from poverty and starvation back home, in Manchester they endured the poorest accommodation and lowest paid jobs.

  Irish workers settled in the most wretched quarters of the city the worst of which, known as ‘Little Ireland’, was on the banks of the fetid waters of the River Medlock. A 10-minute walk from Caminada’s birthplace, the area was characterised by filthy streets and decrepit housing. When Dr James Kay was commissioned by the Special Board of Health to investigate the district in 1831, he reported that the houses lay so low on the banks of the river that the chimneys could barely be seen above the level of the road:

  About two hundred of these habitations are crowded together in an extremely narrow space, and are inhabited by the lowest Irish. Most of these houses have also cellars, whose floor is scarcely elevated above the level of the water flowing in the Medlock. The soughs are destroyed, or out of repair: and these narrow abodes are in consequence always damp, and on the slightest rise of the river, which is a frequent occurrence, are flooded to the depth of several inches.

  Some four thousand people struggled to survive in this unhealthy environment. Friedrich Engels referred to it as one of the most miserable places he had ever encountered. The unsanitary back-to-back cottages were set in muddy streets awash with human and animal refuse in stinking puddles of stagnant water from the river, and surrounded by factories belching black smoke into the damp air. Home to between 10 and 20 inhabitants, most houses had just two rooms. There was no running water and the privies were in a disgraceful state with, on average, one toilet for 250 people. In these depressing circumstances the most needy were forced to live in the notorious underground cellar dwellings.

  In Manchester, during the 1830s and 1840s, around 20,000 people lived in cellars. Often these were in larger houses, which had declined to a dilapidated state and where the rooms and floors had been partitioned and converted into tenancies. The meanest part of one of these houses was the cellar, which was dark, dank and unhealthy. Cellars were almost subterranean, possessing no ventilation, with little natural light and constant damp. Engels described one cellar, where every day the inhabitant, a weaver, had to empty out the river water that had seeped in during the night. These cellars, about 9 to 10 feet square, were usually inhabited by at least 10 people, often two families, and sometimes as many as 16, as well as livestock. There were no beds, so people slept on rags, straw or wood shavings; cleanliness was impossible and disease rife.

  In the late 1840s Little Ireland was demolished to make way for the building of Oxford Road Railway Station. Although they moved elsewhere, the Irish families in the city remained poor for the rest of the century. Faced with such an inhospitable environment and a powerful undercurrent of anti-Irish prejudice, they formed close-knit communities. Also, wherever they settled they built a church; St Augustine’s was opened in Little Ireland in 1820, and Caminada’s parents were married there 20 years later. In defiance of hostility from the wider community, the migrants forged their own identity as Irish Catholics, and Manchester became a breeding ground for Irish nationalism and revolution. During the first half of the nineteenth century there were many periods of unrest, but these matters were brought sharply to a head with the tragic death in 1867 of police officer, Sergeant Charlie Brett.

  The Irish Republican Brotherhood was founded on St Patrick’s Day 1858 with the express aim of making Ireland an independent republic by force of arms. After absorbing other Irish revolutionary groups, they became known as the Fenians. By 1865 there were an estimated 20,000 members in the British Isles, with particularly strong support from the Lancashire Irish. In September 1867, following a failed attack on the garrison at Chester Castle two Fenian leaders, Thomas Kelly and his aide Timothy Deasy, were arrested in Manchester. After an appearance in court they were being transported back to Belle Vue Prison, when their comrades launched a daring rescue, which resulted in the fatal shooting of Sergeant Brett. Three men, William Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O’Brien, were executed for his murder and remembered by the Irish community as the Manchester Martyrs.

  After that fateful day the ‘City of Martyrs’, as Caminada referred to it, played an important part in Irish politics. When he joined the police force in 1868 fear and suspicion of Fenians was already running high, but it was not until the early 1880s that ‘things began to get lively’. On 14 January 1881 a bomb exploded at the Salford Infantry Barracks, blowing down part of the armoury wall and damaging a nearby butcher’s shed. Fortunately, the 8th Regiment of Foot was absent at the time, but two bystanders, a seven-year-old boy and a woman were injured in the blast. The child suffered a fractured skull and later died in hospital. When gunpowder was found at the bombsite, the Fenians became the prime suspects.

  Prior to the explosion, the Chief Constable had received information about the threat and investigated with his right-hand man, Detective Caminada. It was a very foggy day and the two police officers had set up a watch on the Infantry Barracks, but after seeing nothing unusual they left to take up position at the local Cavalry Barracks, and were still there at 5.20pm when the bomb went off. This action marked the beginning of a dynamite campaign that would inspire terror in Britain for the next five years, as the Fenians targeted public buildings and barracks in major cities.

  In the aftermath of the first bombing the national police were on the alert and Caminada shadowed a number of ‘suspicious-looking individuals’ in Manchester. Among them was Thomas Mooney, an Irish bricklayer. Caminada tailed Mooney and his companion to a cottage in Widnes, Cheshire. Once the suspects had left, the detective interrogated the owner of the house, gleaning important information. Mooney had links with Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, a prominent Fenian leader, who orchestrated the early bomb attacks in the dynamite campaign. A short while later, following a tip-off from his informant, Caminada staked out the cottage. The owner’s wife and seven children had gone to see a magic lantern show and as soon as they had departed, Caminada positioned himself in the coal cellar under the stairs, crouching on one knee with his revolver at full cock.

  Two men arrived at the door and called out the password: ‘Sailing Ship!’ They were admitted at once and Caminada listened from his hiding place, as they discussed a quantity of powder to be transported to London ready for business on Wednesday 16 March, just a few days away. The 80 pounds of explosives were to be taken in a carpetbag and tin trunk. It soon became evident that the ‘business’ was the bombing of Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor of London. The Mayor had been planning to hold a banquet on 16 March, but it had been cancelled because of the assassination of Tsar Alexander III. A passing policeman foiled the plot, after noticing a smouldering brown paper package under a window recess of the building. He successfully extinguished the flame and defused the bomb, which was in a steel-reinforced deal box packed with old newspaper and scraps of carpetbag. After this abortive attempt at sabotage, Scotland Yard sent instructions to the Chief Constable of Manchester to arrest Mooney and his accomplice, and once again Chief Inspector Caminada was on their tail. After discovering an address in Paris for the suspects from an imprint on a blotting pad left in the cottage in Widnes, he set off for France.

  Once in Paris, Caminada waited outside the house in Place des Deux Ecus, near Les Halles, until he spotted his quarry leaving. After following Mooney for a while, he approached him in the market place, calling out: ‘Good morning, Tom, how are you?’ Uneasy, Mooney reached for the revolver hidden in his trouser pocket, but the detective walked on without stopping. Later, just as he was preparing to make the arrest, Caminada received a telegram from his Chief Constable. It ordered him not to arrest the suspect, but to m
eet with detectives from Scotland Yard and confirm Mooney’s identity for future reference.

  His mission accomplished, Caminada and his colleagues from London made their way together to the railway station ready to come home. As they were travelling, they noticed that the French police were following them in the mistaken belief that the detectives themselves were Fenians. When they arrived at the station, the gendarmes surrounded the British police officers and began to interrogate them in French. During the confusion Detective Caminada slipped out and made his way across the buffers onto the waiting train. As the train left the platform he watched his companions being marched away to the local gendarmerie and by the time the misunderstanding had been cleared up, he was well on his way home. Thomas Mooney evaded arrest and was found drowned in mysterious circumstances in New York nine years later.

  The dynamite campaign raged for the next four years. The Fenians succeeded in blowing up Mansion House a year after their first attempt and there were several more explosions in the capital, including Paddington and Westminster Bridge underground stations, the government offices at Whitehall, the offices of The Times and even the headquarters of the CID. Bombs were also planted in Chester, Liverpool and Glasgow. Due to the vigilance of Caminada and his colleagues, Manchester was spared any further attempts.

  Throughout this period of Fenian activity, Caminada’s role was to track suspects and pass on information to the British authorities, rather than to make arrests himself. After his trip to Paris, he travelled to Ireland, America, Germany and Switzerland. Many of the suspects he tailed were later arrested, as the CID and the newly formed Special Irish Branch worked to maintain security and protect the public. After the murder of Lord Cavendish, Chief Secretary for Ireland and Thomas Burke, the Permanent Undersecretary, in Phoenix Park, Dublin in 1882, Caminada tracked one of the suspected murderers, John F. Beggs. He followed Beggs from Manchester to Boston, arriving at his lodgings only to find that Beggs was already on his way back to England. Caminada re-crossed the Atlantic and traced him to Ireland. Once again he was ordered not to arrest Beggs; instead he watched his movements and reported them back to the authorities. After the next spate of London bombings, Beggs returned to America, where he was implicated in, and later acquitted of, the murder of Chicago physician, Dr Patrick Henry Cronin in May 1889.

  On another occasion in 1884, Caminada was returning on a cargo ship from active duty in Hamburg, when he followed a suspect onto a ferryboat. As it was midnight when they docked in England, the man invited Caminada to spend the night at his home in London, completely unaware that he was a detective. The man’s kindness to a fellow traveller ‘subsequently proved of the greatest possible service to the police’.

  The final stage of the dynamite conspiracy took place in January 1885, when three more bombs exploded in London: inside the House of Commons; Westminster Hall; and in the Banqueting Room of the Tower of London. These events did not mark the end of Caminada’s involvement in Irish politics, and four years later he became embroiled in Ireland’s bid for independence yet again. On 29 January 1889 Chief Inspector Caminada arrested a high profile political prisoner, who had escaped from a police court in Ireland. The fugitive was the MP for North East Cork, William O’Brien, a well-known journalist, politician and staunch supporter of Irish Home Rule.

  A former member of the Fenian movement, O’Brien had been arrested and imprisoned several times by the British authorities, most notably in Mitchelstown, County Cork, after he had encouraged tenants to resist eviction. When O’Brien refused to appear before the magistrates’ court, a protest in support of his actions took place in the town, resulting in the police killing three people and wounding several more. After his arrest, protests against his imprisonment led to a demonstration in Trafalgar Square on 13 November 1887, during which two people died. Known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, casualties included 200 demonstrators and 112 police officers.

  Two years later in January 1889, O’Brien found himself once again in the dock of a police court, in Carrick-on-Suir on charges of conspiracy, but this time he absconded. Towards the end of the same month, rumours began to circulate in Manchester that William O’Brien was going to make an appearance at a meeting in Hulme Town Hall to protest against the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. A large crowd gathered to see the ‘hero who was defying the British government’. The Royal Irish Constabulary had given Detective Caminada a warrant for his arrest and the stakes were high as he set out for Hulme with his officers amid threats of bloodshed, if he dared to apprehend the runaway MP.

  When the police arrived at the hall a rough and noisy crowd had already congregated at the gates and the nearby streets were occupied by ‘thousands of fiery spirits, who seemed more inclined for a row than a lecture’. Determined to carry out his important duty, Caminada moved into action, placing undercover officers in the audience to gain any snippets of valuable information. At 7.30pm a great cheer rose as a cab drew up and O’Brien was hustled into the hall. Leaning on a hose-cart in the yard, Caminada watched some 300 people rush through the gates behind the politician, who was surrounded by bodyguards.

  Inside the hall, the detective went down to the basement and sent word to his Chief Constable that as ‘things were looking black’, they should send for reinforcements. Within 20 minutes, more than 400 officers had arrived and they moved to block every exit. Caminada was then seized by two of O’Brien’s bodyguards: ‘I received a good kicking, of which my shins bore the marks for many a day’. All negotiations failed and the Chief Constable sanctioned the meeting to go ahead. After checking that there were no ladders for O’Brien to escape through the windows, Caminada joined his colleagues in the hall, where the rowdy audience jeered at him. While he maintained the public’s attention, other officers rounded up the bodyguards and secured the corridors and stairways, sealing all means of escape.

  William O’Brien took the stage ‘amidst a tempest of applause’, as his supporters rose to their feet cheering his name and waving their handkerchiefs, and only quietening down to listen to their hero. At the end of his speech pandemonium broke out, as the audience clambered over reporters’ tables and flung chairs out of the way, trying to climb onto the platform to shake the MP’s hand. Detective Caminada and the Chief Constable also mounted the stage, but the latter was struck in the chest and pitched back into the screaming crowd. After striking the Chief Constable’s assailant a violent blow to the head, Caminada made his way over to O’Brien, who was so jostled by well-wishers that he was on the verge of passing out. Once he had been revived by a glass of water, Caminada helped him clamber off the stage back into the anteroom, while his officers cleared the hall.

  There was a tremendous crush but everyone left the room safely, with only one woman carried out in a faint. Pale and worn after being mobbed by his fervent supporters but remaining firm, William O’Brien surrendered to the police without further ado. Outside the venue the angry crowd had swelled to enormous proportions with several hundred demonstrators carrying torches, but despite this the police successfully escorted the escaped prisoner back to Manchester Town Hall.

  The following morning, after he had taken breakfast with the mayor and mayoress, four detectives, including Chief Inspector Caminada, escorted O’Brien in secret to Ordsall Lane Station. The 9.40 Dublin Express made an unscheduled stop to pick up the party, and O’Brien travelled in a first class compartment to Holyhead and then by steamer onto Ireland. During the journey Caminada discovered that he was ‘a pleasant and agreeable man’ and they exchanged stories of their experiences. They parted company at Kingstown and the MP boarded his train for Dublin. Before he left the platform he beckoned Caminada to the window of his carriage and publicly thanked him and the rest of the Manchester Police Force for their kindness.

  A devout Catholic, Jerome Caminada did not otherwise seem to have a strong Irish identity, in spite of the fact that the families of both his mother and wife had come from Ireland. He did not grow up in the Irish quarters of Manchester,
although the church and school he attended would have had a strong Irish contingent. On the other hand, he never showed any prejudice towards the Irish, which would have been common in his professional circles. Furthermore, the Irish were firmly opposed to the police and the local authorities, placing Detective Caminada in an ambiguous position as a high-ranking officer with Irish origins.

  Above all, Caminada was a policeman, and the resolute sense of civic duty that guided his decisions and behaviour makes it less surprising that he acted on behalf of the British authorities, rather than supporting his fellow countrymen in their fight for independence. Towards the end of his career he was accused of being partial towards the Catholic Church and his response encapsulated the motivation to do his duty: ‘When an officer is ordered by his superior to do a certain work, it is not his place “to reason why,” but to obey orders, otherwise discipline would be at an end’.

  Jerome Caminada was a man who did far more than his duty in his role as a detective. A month after his arrest of William O’Brien, he would embark on another high profile case, one that would bring his remarkable skills to the attention of the nation – and prove him to be a real-life Sherlock Holmes.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Manchester Cab Mystery

  (February 1889)

  At 6.30pm on Tuesday 26 February, John Fletcher hailed a cab from the steps of Manchester Cathedral. Slightly inebriated following an afternoon of drinking, the middle-aged paper merchant clambered into the hansom in the company of a young man. A short while later, the cab driver dropped the pair at the Three Arrows Public House nearby on Deansgate, and then waited 20 minutes while they went in for a drink. They each ordered two glasses of bitter, paid for by Fletcher.

  The young man quickly downed his and just after 7pm, they set off again, this time in the direction of a private address in Stretford Road, towards Old Trafford. En route the road was blocked by a street procession for Mexican Joe’s new Wild West Show, then opening on Oxford Road. The cabman had to walk his horse while the parade passed and as they carried on their journey, a passerby called out to him: ‘A young fellow has just jumped out of your cab and run down Cambridge Street’. When the driver stepped down to investigate he found that the near side door of the cab was open. Inside John Fletcher was slouched in the back in a semi-conscious state, with his head resting on the seat in front. His companion had disappeared.