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  Special Branch often found that foreign governments asked them to investigate threats that proved exaggerated. To at least one historian

  This suggests that the Special Branch discriminated. It was less impressed by hearsay than its continental informants, and less apt to confuse sedition with dissent.9

  In this the Branch officers were not alone. Opinions expressed in the English press, in magistrates’ courts and by respected members of society generally, indicate that a clear distinction was made between a sane, legal desire for radical change and a determination to commit propaganda by the deed.10 Melville was a sophisticated observer but no liberal. In his own mind there was a clear distinction between self-deluding ‘anarchists’, who might be dropouts but were probably harmless, and violent anarchists whom he preferred, by every means at his disposal, to exclude from society.

  Enrico Malatesta, a follower of the deceased Russian anarchist Bakunin, had been expelled by the largely communist international in the 1870s as a potentially violent extremist. The Italian Government was interested in Malatesta, and in the late summer of 1890 they received a report from London announcing his arrival in England. He was much admired by the London anarchists and did not leave until the spring of 1891, when Inspector Melville wrote on 27 April:

  I beg to report that the Italian anarchist E. Malatesta has recently been residing at 112 High Street, Islington. Information has been received that about a week or ten days ago Malatesta and a most intimate friend of his named Consorti (another desperado) left this country en route for Italy, and supposed[ly] for Rome, for the purposes of fomenting disturbances on 1st May.

  The few Italians in London who are aware of Malatesta’s departure are very silent respecting it, and with a view to deceiving any person who would give information to the Italian Government about it, hand-bills are being printed announcing that Malatesta will speak in London on 1st May. From this circumstance it is believed that Malatesta has gone to Italy on very important business.11

  This is the amended version. Littlechild, to whom this was passed, adjusted two phrases such as ‘my informant is of opinion that’ to the diplomatically passive ‘it is believed that’ and passed it on to the Home Office for transmission to Italy.

  With Malatesta out of the way for a while, Melville continued his clandestine investigation of other continental ‘desperados’ in London. His domestic life had taken a turn for the better. Amelia Foy, aged thirty-nine, had become a more or less permanent visitor at 51 Nursery Road. How could Melville have shared his life with anyone who did not understand his job? Her first husband, another Irishman called William, had died early in 1888. Melville knew him – he too had been among the first officers of the Special Irish Branch, and had been posted to Southampton when Melville went to Le Havre. Amelia had been born in Guernsey and is believed to have moved to London at some time in the 1870s.12

  Not long after he submitted the report on Malatesta there was another tragedy at home. The littlest of Melville’s four children, all of them under ten, fell ill. The little girl had an ear infection, as so many children do. There were two ladies in the house to help with her care; besides Amelia, Alice Darcy, a widow in her early thirties, lived in with her little boy and supervised laundry, cooking and cleaning. But no amount of attentive nursing could cure meningitis, and in the middle of April little Cecilia Victorine, who was just four years old, passed away as her father sat with her.

  In Cowes Week of 1891 Amelia and William Melville married in a Roman Catholic church at West Cowes.13 (He had probably been on royal duty.) Some time afterwards, the family moved from Brixton to the heights of genteel Clapham. Lydon Road is in the quietest part of the Old Town, the village near the Common, and the new house was larger and convenient for the station at Wandsworth Town. Melville went back to work.

  He relied heavily on informants. Not only was Melville among the original members of the first Victorian Secret Police section but he was among the first of Queen Victoria’s secret policemen to command a foreign language and culture. He could have returned after almost five years abroad to find himself a back number, but instead he was in the vanguard of a new police initiative and had the great advantage of being able to talk to foreign agents already engaged on surveillance work.

  By now, thanks to his contacts in the Préfecture, he would have learned that the French Secret Service had run full-time undercover agents in London for years.14 It is likely that his first contacts in the anarchist community were among these men and that he approached them as a result of introductions from friends in the French police. Following universal police practice, he would not in the normal course of events have revealed their identities to fellow officers in the Special Branch. They in turn would have introduced him to potential informants among the French community. One such man, known to him from early 1890 onwards, was Auguste Coulon, a member of the Autonomie group of anarchists which met at a club in Fitzrovia.15

  Collaboration with foreign policemen was welcome, and on the whole they shared an ideology.16 It was also mutually beneficial; and none of them could work without informants. Special Branch laboured under a number of disadvantages. It was tiny, and royal duty depleted its numbers all the time as did other protective functions. In 1890, for instance, at least two of its members, Sweeney and McIntyre (lifted from royal duty at Osborne) were engaged for months in protecting Henri Le Caron after the Parnell Commission.17 Yet shadowing a suspect meant employing enough detectives to work three shifts in every twenty-four hours. While there were insufficient men for round-the-clock surveillance, men borrowed from the SIB would have had to be paid for, since the SIB had a different source of funds, and men from private detective agencies were not only expensive but might be considered a security risk. Besides, attendance at clubs and political meetings meant passing oneself off as a continental anarchist and McIntyre and Sweeney, Melville and Quinn – had they been available, which they often were not – would have found it almost impossible to remain undiscovered at meetings. The others were not fluent linguists and not even Melville – who was fond of using disguise and spoke the language – could pass as a native Frenchman.

  So information must come from following up queries by foreign governments, from foreign informants, from the anarchist press, and from the suspects themselves, usually on entry into Britain. When fugitives disembarked they were grilled by the Port Police about where they intended to live. The Port Police telegraphed ahead, and on arrival at a London railway station the suspect would be followed to his lodging. Anarchists were not inconspicuous. Like members of any sub-cultural group, they cultivated a certain look. At this time it tended to involve very dark, shabby clothes, preferably long overcoats and soft hats with the brim shading the face: fashion to skulk in, worn as described by Conrad in The Secret Agent by men who looked

  …generally as if they were not in funds. Some… had the collars of their overcoats turned right up to their moustaches, and traces of mud on the bottom of their nether garments, which had the appearance of being much worn… With their hands plunged deep into the side pockets of their coats they dodged in sideways, one shoulder first, as if afraid to start the [shop] bell going.18

  For Melville, informers and informants were the most important source by far. The Special Branch’s ‘special account’ from 1888 onwards shows that while most were occasional informants (such as a landlady in the Jubilee plot case who received a reward) a handful were, like Le Caron, on the payroll for over a decade. The rest were employed for anything from a few months to several years.19

  Many who lived among the London refugee community were not mere informers to Scotland Yard, but long-term agents of a foreign power under deep cover. Of those who knew or collaborated with Melville, the most extensive record is found in the Archives de la Préfecture de Police in Paris. Their letters survive, written in longhand and signed with noms de guerre such as Zéro, Zéro numéro 2 or Monte Carlo. They often enjoyed the confidence of key anarchists and were not i
n the least suspect; whether or not they were always aware of one another’s true identities is uncertain.

  The first mention of Melville is in 1892, when a French correspondent reports that an anarchist bomb plot involving, of all things, English protagonists plotting in the English provinces, has been foiled. Perhaps it occurred to them from the outset that the Walsall Plot was a sham designed to increase that perceived threat which was so important in obtaining Treasury funds for Special Branch without a murmur of objection. After all, justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done; yet undercover work among London’s fringe political groups did not – must not – hit the headlines.

  A dynamite plot in Walsall was alarming enough to make the news, but sufficiently far geographically from most foreign anarchists to deter them from snooping around what they might suspect was a fit-up. And Melville was at the bottom of it.

  Late in the summer of 1891 a socialist working men’s group in Walsall, Staffordshire, was approached to find work and accommodation for a couple of Frenchmen of similar outlook and background. This they did, although with some difficulty as one of the men – a colourist and painter called Laplace, alias Clément – spoke no English at all and the other, Victor Cails, did not settle easily to the jobs that were provided for him. Laplace returned to London.

  The original approach had been by letter from Auguste Coulon. He was half French and half Irish and worked with Louise Michel, the well-known anarchist, running a school for children of expatriate anarchists in Fitzrovia, that part of London just west of the Tottenham Court Road and north of Oxford Street. Coulon had met a young man called Joe Deakin from the Walsall club at an international conference some time before and it was Deakin who had received the letter seeking assistance for Cails and his friend.

  Some time in November of 1891 Cails, now in Walsall, also received a letter. This came from London and requested assistance in fabricating the casting of a ‘device’. It seemed obvious enough that émigré workers in London should seek help of this kind in Staffordshire, as this was where the most engineering expertise was located. The comrades decided it would be quite in order to help in some small way since they understood that the ‘device’ would be used against the cruel régime in Russia.

  An egg-shaped bomb casting – harmless, of course, on its own – was made and when with some difficulty it was at last paid for, Joe Deakin was sent to London with it. There he was to meet an Italian he already knew by sight, for the man, Jean Battolla, had visited Walsall.

  No sooner had Deakin been greeted by Battolla on Euston Station than Melville, McIntyre and two other officers leapt forward and arrested both of them. They were escorted back to Walsall, where along with Cails and several others they were thrown into cold bare prison cells and half-starved. The Chief Constable of Walsall, a Superintendent Taylor, was only too pleased to assist Scotland Yard.

  Deakin protested from the start that this was the work of agents provocateurs. He lay awake in his icy cell trying to work out who had set him up. Cails was suspect; on the other hand so was Charles, another accused; and so was Battolla. In London the anarchists could see the Walsall men had fallen into a trap; Russia, indeed! – Coulon wouldn’t know the first thing about Russia. They knew it was a sham designed to spread fear in the English population. The members of the Autonomie Club demanded to know where Coulon got his money. It wasn’t as if a part-time schoolteacher earned any to speak of. Coulon protested that he was a true anarchist, and lived by plunder.

  The Walsall case came to trial in the spring, and an agent sent a cutting from the Birmingham News to Paris about Melville’s earlier, rather over-zealous arrest of a pillar of the community (presumably on a tip-off from Chief Constable Taylor) in the course of the investigation. He had a quiet Handsworth street blocked off and having barged uninvited into the man’s home with a couple of Staffordshire policemen, he found him recovering from the ’flu on a sofa in his living room.

  Mr Cavargna is by birth a Swiss, and is 55 years of age. He is the local representative of the Provident Association of London… In the locality he is very well known indeed, and has always been considered a quiet, unassuming and inoffensive gentleman. The company with which he is connected have the highest esteem for him, and by his clientèle he is justly respected. The house he resides in with his wife and daughter… is plainly but comfortably furnished, and our representative noticed a number of books and magazines about, showing that Mr Cavargna reads not a little. The portrait of the Bishop of Salford in his robes was pointed out by Mrs Cavargna – ‘When in Manchester we knew him very well’, said she, ‘he used to call upon us.’20

  Phew. This was not going to be one of Melville’s finest hours. He and his subordinate officers, having talked to the invalid and ‘enjoyed his whisky and cigars’, were shown his patent bomb-making equipment. The patent had been taken out because Mr Cavargna was not just an insurance agent; he was an inventor. In response to a competition run by the Government of New South Wales which offered the huge bounty of £10,000 for a method of destroying rabbits, which were a pest, he had invented and patented small egg-shaped bomblets, to be tied around the necks of those unfortunate rabbits that had been caught; upon release they would scamper happily back to their warrens and explode within, suicidally destroying their entire family.

  Melville unaccountably took Mr Cavargna into custody. Despite sympathetic treatment by magistrates, doctor’s notes, dozens of letters of support and protest and ultimately, a squirming explanatory letter from the Chief Constable to the Home Office,21 the poor gentleman spent several weeks in the dismal confines of Winson Green prison before being released.

  For the genuine ‘Walsall plotters’, bail was set extremely high, and Deakin and the other main actors in the drama spent a couple of months on remand awaiting trial. At Stafford Assizes in April before Judge ‘Hanging’ Hawkins, Auguste Coulon was not called to the witness stand. Nor was he even arrested, although counsel for the defence mentioned the part he had played more than once. Inspector Melville was cross-examined.

  [He] stated that he had known for two years previous to that time Auguste Coulon, who was a member with the prisoner Battola of the Autonomie Club group of anarchists. Asked by Counsel whether he had paid Coulon any money as a police spy, Inspector Melville declined to answer and the judge over-ruled the question on grounds of public policy. Counsel for the defence remarked that his object was to show that all which was suspicious in the case was the work of Coulon; in fact that it was Coulon who had got up the supposed plot.

  It was further submitted by Counsel for the prisoners that it had not been shown by the Crown that any of the prisoners had possession or control of any explosive substance or material for the manufacture of an explosive bomb, and that all that was produced against them was a rough sketch of a bomb sent from London, a leaden pattern, a brass screw, some lead and plaster castings, and a small bit of time fuse commonly used by minders in the locality for blasting.22

  The Walsall ‘plotters’ got ten years’ hard labour, except for Deakin who got five.

  The panic about anarchism had been exacerbated by another bomb from Ravachol in Paris in March. When Ravachol was caught at the Café Véry after a tip-off from a waiter, his capture was quickly avenged by a bomb at the café which killed its proprietor and a couple of customers. Two men, Meunier and François, were wanted for questioning after the revenge attack.

  Majendie began circulating a note recommending international preventative laws.23

  All this was going on during the Walsall trial, but English anarchism had barely existed until it was identified as such during that very trial, and now the sentencing of Deakin and the others met withindignation in a small-circulation journal called Commonweal. In May the publisher, C.J. Mowbray, and the editor, David Nicoll, were charged at the Old Bailey with ‘maliciously soliciting and encouraging certain persons unknown to murder the Right Hon. Henry Matthews, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Sir Henry Hawkins of
the Judges of the High Court of Justice, and William Melville, an inspector of the Metropolitan Police’. Nicoll had written that these people were ‘not fit to live’ and Sweeney and another policeman claimed, not very convincingly, to have heard him inciting murder in a speech in Hyde Park. In his defence Nicoll

  …denied that this article was intended by him as an incitement to anyone to commit murder; it was written in hot blood, when the news of the issue of the infamous Walsall police plot reached him, and with a similar provocation he should probably write as hotly again. His opinion of the conduct of the persons he had denounced was in no way changed, and he suspected that this charge against him was brought to get him out of the way, because the police knew that he was collecting evidence of the vile means they had used in concocting their Walsall plot in conjunction with the provoking-agent Coulon.24

  Observers agreed that Chief Justice Coleridge was fair, but Nicoll got sent down anyway.

  Eighteen months later, Zéro numéro 6 wrote a full report on the whole affair. It is not accurate in every respect; he seems to think that Mowbray, the publisher of Commonweal, was somehow involved; but he does say that the plot