William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.

Birth

William Melville was born into a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

family in Direenaclaurig Cross,

Sneem Sneem () is a village situated on the Iveragh Peninsula (part of the Ring of Kerry), in County Kerry, in the southwest of Ireland. It lies on the estuary of the River Sneem. National route N70 runs through the town. While the 2016 census recor ...

County Kerry County Kerry ( gle, Contae Chiarraí) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and forms part of the province of Munster. It is named after the Ciarraige who lived in part of the present county. The population of the co ...

, the son of a baker and publican. He moved to London in the 1860s and followed his father's footsteps as a baker before he joined the

Metropolitan Police The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...

in 1872.

Scotland Yard

In 1882 he was chosen to be one of the founding members of the

Special Irish Branch Special Branch was a unit in the Metropolitan Police in London, formed as a counter-terrorism unit in 1883 and merged with another unit to form Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) in 2006. It maintained contact with the MI5, Security Service and had ...

that was founded to work against Fenians and

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...

s. Melville was posted to the

Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very cl ...

port, during which posting his children, James Benjamin (1885) (later Sir James Melville KC) and Cecile Victorinne (1886; died in London in 1891), were born. In December 1888 Melville returned to London and was assigned to protect the Shah of Persia in his

state visit A state visit is a formal visit by a head of state to a foreign country, at the invitation of the head of state of that foreign country, with the latter also acting as the official host for the duration of the state visit. Speaking for the host ...

. His duties later expanded to the protection of British Royal Family and he foiled the

Jubilee Plot The Jubilee Plot was a supposed assassination attempt by radical Irish nationalists on Queen Victoria during her Golden Jubilee, on 20 June 1887. Those who presented the idea of a plot claimed that the radicals intended to blow up Westminster Abbe ...

against

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

in 1887. In 1891 he began to campaign against anarchists by raiding and wrecking anarchist clubs and underground printing houses. He also revealed the Walsall Plot. In 1893 Melville became Superintendent of Scotland Yard's

Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...

when his predecessor

John Littlechild Detective Chief Inspector John George Littlechild (21 December 1848 – 2 January 1923) was the first commander of the London Metropolitan Police Special Irish Branch, renamed Special Branch in 1888. Littlechild was born in Royston, Her ...

retired to become a private investigator. When he fired veteran sergeant Patrick McIntyre, McIntyre went to press and claimed that Melville had instigated the whole Walsall Plot himself, a claim vindicated by police files released over 80 years later. In the next ten years, Melville embarked on a large series of well-publicized raids against anarchists. He went to Victoria Station to personally arrest bomber

Théodule Meunier Théodule Meunier (August 22, 1860 in Bournezeau, France – July 25, 1907 in Cayenne, French Guiana) was a French anarchist who, along with Emile Henry and Auguste Vaillant, was responsible for a series of bombings in Paris, France during ...

. In 1896 Melville recruited Shlomo Rosenblum (later known as Sidney Reilly) as an informer in an organization he suspected to be involved with

Russian anarchists Anarchism in Russia has its roots in the early mutual aid systems of the medieval republics and later in the popular resistance to the Tsarist autocracy and serfdom. Through the history of radicalism during the early 19th-century, anarchism d ...

. In 1901 he worked with Gustav Steinhauer of the German Secret Service to thwart a plot against the Kaiser during the

state funeral A state funeral is a public funeral ceremony, observing the strict rules of Etiquette, protocol, held to honour people of national significance. State funerals usually include much pomp and ceremony as well as religious overtones and distinctive ...

. In June 1900 Melville met future stage magician

Harry Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...

when he came to Scotland Yard to showcase his abilities as an

escapologist Escapology is the practice of escaping from restraints or other traps. Escapologists (also classified as escape artists) escape from handcuffs, straitjackets, cages, coffins, steel boxes, barrels, bags, burning buildings, fish-tanks, and oth ...

. When Houdini released himself easily from the police handcuffs, Melville befriended him and reputedly learned lock picking. On 1 November 1903, Melville resigned as superintendent but was secretly recruited to lead a new intelligence section in the War Office, MO3, which was redesignated M05 in 1907.Andrew, p. 6 Working under commercial cover from an unassuming flat in London under the alias persona William Morgan, Melville ran both counterintelligence and foreign intelligence operations, capitalizing on the knowledge and foreign contacts he had accumulated during his years running Special Branch. In 1909 the Government Committee on Intelligence, with advocacy of Richard Burden Haldane and Winston Churchill, established a new Secret Service Bureau with a Home Section under command of Captain Sir Vernon Kell and a Foreign Section under Commander Sir Mansfield Cumming. Melville's unit was folded into Kell's department, which, while acting in Home matters, remained subordinate to the War Office.Andrew, p. 21 By 1910 it was clear that the Home Section and the Foreign Section would seek their own identities, and Kell's department, the Security Service separated from Cummings' Secret Intelligence Service.Andrew, p. 27 According to the conclusions of author Andrew Cook, his biographer, which are not accepted by all historians, Melville then became the head of British

Secret Service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For ...

with the code name "M". Still, the service had a small budget and on occasion, Melville had to do the job himself.

Secret Service Bureau

Melville's own section continued as a separate Special Section of the Secret Service Bureau and he concentrated on looking for German spies. In August 1914 the Bureau eventually identified the barbershop of Karl Gustav Ernst as the centre of a German

spy ring Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...

.Andrew, p. 81

Death

William Melville died of

kidney failure Kidney failure, also known as end-stage kidney disease, is a medical condition in which the kidneys can no longer adequately filter waste products from the blood, functioning at less than 15% of normal levels. Kidney failure is classified as eit ...

in February 1918.

References

Sources

External links

MI5.gov.uk History
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Melville, William Civil servants in the War Office Deaths from kidney failure Metropolitan Police officers People from Iveragh Peninsula People of the Victorian era Pre–World War I spies World War I spies for the United Kingdom World War I spies from Ireland 1850 births 1918 deaths