Anderson"s £12 million arrangement with The Times

[Natalie Severn]

As many who have read "Fenian Fire" by Christy Campbell ,will be aware,Sir Robert Anderson was up to his neck in skullduggery with The Times Newspaper,in the years 1887/88/89 having contributed a series of articles to them with the intention of criminalising the Irish Home Rule MP ,Charles Stewart Parnell.These were published alongside the letters Richard Pigott had forged ,blackening Parnell"s name by associating him with the Phoenix Park Assassinations of British Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Cavendish and Chief Secretary for Ireland ,Thomas Burke.
Charles Parnell decided to bring a libel action against The Times and he was aided by this by Michael Davitt,later to become an MP himself.The Govt decided to have a Special Commission to hear all the evidence and it began work on 22nd October 1888---falling in between the double event and the murder of Mary Kelly.

The Times"s legal fees amounted to £250,000----the equivalent today of £12 million.The story demonstrates the lengths the Prime Minister ,Lord Salisbury as well as Sir Robert Anderson,James Monro and The Times itself
and a small group of Tory MP"s went to to destroy the entire cause of Home Rule.It is there for all to read in the superb book by Campbell,Fenian Fire.
On the thread begun by Truebluedub ,entitled Anderson and his Parnellism and Crime articles,I will represent the case for the vindication of an innocent man,Charles Parnell who was framed by his enemies,Sir Robert Anderson amongst them leading the shots.

[Natalie Severn]

It is interesting to note that on the day Sir Robert Anderson took over as head of CID [Irish section in particular] Mary Anne Nichols was found murdered.The Home Secretary,Matthews grew alarmed when Anderson,having gone abroad allegedly for his health,was away on "extended leave".Anderson was actually very busy preparing things for the Special Commission ie according to letters from Sir Edward Jenkinson-----who was now Michael Davitt"s "mole" as well as certain notes in Davitt's note book , such as "Oct 4th[1888]----both Pigott----[the Forger of the Parnell letters in "The Times"] and Anderson [---the writer of the defamatory articles on Parnell in "The Times"- "Behind the Scenes in America" ------left Paris today!
Mind Anderson was carpetted for it by Matthews when he arrived back having "not been around ' during the first four canonical murders of Jack the Ripper............

[Natalie Severn]

Sir William Harcourt presided over the "Special Commission"-----he is the one who Sir Robert Anderson said was "Home Secretary" [ instead of Matthews ] in the 1908 interview.Harcourt persistently referred to Sir Robert as "The Times tout" ----quite an apt description, because Anderson was up to his neck trying to arrange various of his spies to testify FOR The Times and AGAINST Parnell.One who did, earned a magnificent sum for his efforts- £20,000,[presumably paid by The Times] .It would be a fortune in today"s money .His name was Thomas Billis Beach aka "Henry Le Caron".

When it came to the forger Richard Pigott, Anderson found he couldnt do much to help him.Interstingly they were both in Paris at the same time and both left Paris on the same day,October 4th,soon after the "double event".Christy Campbell says Richard Pigott had a side line in "high class French erotica "and serviced a small group of Tory MP's with it.Lets hope Anderson didnt know about that little number -

[fido]

A genersal caveat... Christy Campbell's book is indeed superb in its investigation of the roiling internal politics and competition for leadership of the American Fenian movement. He has sorted out brilliantly the confused loyalties and self-interest of the double agent General Millen, who sold information to the British government and tried to get a permanent appointment as a British spy at the same time as he tried to gain power and influence in th Fenian movement. I shall always be grateful to Campbell and to Leon O'Broin, whose The Prime Informer: A Suppressed Scandal bring clarity to the extraodinarily dificult problems of the Jubilee Bomb Plot, which Anderson and Monro felt they had foiled, and the trumpeted arrests and comparatively hushed trials of two conspirators arrested in England. But - and it's a very big but - the limitations and bias of Campbell's treatment of the dedicated Unionists becomes apparent in his sensational sub-title: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria. Lord Salisbury's Conservatibve and imperialist government? Plotting to assassinate the Queen? I was agog to know what he'd found out. But I was very disappointed. What he meant was that, knowing the Home Office spy systems had detected Fenians conspiring to explode a bomb in Westminster Abbey, Salisbury was content that they should be left at liberty and even encouraged for a while, rather than have them arrested immediately, to make the case against them stronger. He could be accused of taking a risk with the Queen's life, indeed. But there was no government plot to assassinate Queen Victoria.
In the same way, the book evinces a determined bias against the (unquestinably bigoted Unionist) Robert Anderson, and an extravagant sympathy for James Monro. Apparenly unaware that Monro's entire career showed a tendency to premature protest resignations, Campbell suggests that Anderson's machinations secured his downfall as Commissioner (when, in fact, Anderson kept his head well below the parapet as Monro fought the Home Secretary Matthews unsuccessfully). He suggests that there is something sinister about Monro's predecessor and successor as Assistant Commissioner (Sir Charles Vincent and Sir Robert Anderson) like his predecessor and successor as Commissioner (Sir Charles Warren and Sir Edmund Bradford) all collecting knighthoods, while Monro did not. This misses the point that te two Commissioners were knighted for military services before they camde to Scotland Yard; Vincent was the brilliant founder of the CID folowing the scandalous "trial of the detectives" which exposed corruption in the upper ranks of the detective service, and Anderson was the first in a chain of Assistant Commissioners who all received coimplimentary knighthoods on retirement. Monro would have been knighted had he not resigned in a fit of pique because he could not win over Matthews to his (perfectly reasonable) demands for improved force pensions (a demand that Warren had also made, but with less publicity, and without support from Monro when he needed it) and his insistence that another senior civil servant should not be put into a high position in Scotland Yard, which had already received Anderson as a transfer from the Home Office.
That Anderson was very anxious not to have the Parnell Commission expose his contributions to the Times series (which, by the way, included only one forged Parnell letter, the others having been produced in a subsequent libel action brought by another MP) is certainly true. To that end he was very far from wanting Beach rewarded for giving evidence: he desperately wanted him not to, and then coached him and fed him official information (quite improperly) when Beach insisted. Anderson's career would probably have been finished if Millen had come and given evidence as he wished: it was fortunate for Anderson that Miollen died of a heart attack before he could cross the Atlantic. (Campbell doesn't suggest that this was a Britsh official assassination, but one gets the impression that he wouldn't mind if you took it as a possibility). Twenty years have passed sincei first noted that Anderson andMonro both had reason to be far more concerned about the forthcoming Parnell Commission in the autumn of 1888 than about a horrible criminal in the East End, espeiallyas they would have known that Warren's downfall was not, as the press believed, a punishment for incompetently allowing a 5th (or 6th?) murder to occur, but the end of a long-running battleof his own with the Home Office.
I have asked Natalie elsewhere what her knowledge of Anderson is based upon othe than two of his books, Fenian Fire, and an assortment of Ripper books. I am in full agreement weith Stewart Evans on the board where he stresses that to pronounce on the character of a historical personality one needs to read as much as one possibly can about and by him to undertstand him in the context of his culture and period. And I am totally opposed to Stewart's assertion in another place that it is quite unimportant for him to make any study of the type of quirky Christianity which was the central commitment of Anderson's life, and played an impornt part in the way he conducted himself in what he regarded as the morally inferior occupation of detective. I simply don't agree that Stewart's lessons in the school of life and experiences as a police officer mean that he can confidently pronounce those of us who have read some of Anderson's theology and studied some of his co-religionists to be wrong in assessing when and how he might stretch or conceal the truth. And I think Campbell's assertions about Anderson's character and speculatins about his actions (such as cosnpiratorial association with the forger Piggott, for which there is no evidencer at all) have misled Natalie.
All trhe best,
Martin F