The 'Suckered!' Trilogy

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Here’s some context:

I suppose that some might question exactly why Inspector Andrews would be sent to Southern Ontario on behalf of the Times. Especially when this would suggest a conspiracy involving who knows how many people. However, in order to embrace the idea that this could never happen you have to completely ignore the historical record and disregard the inconvenient facts which point to illegal work by high ranking officials in the Government and Scotland Yard to aid the Times against Parnell and the Irish cause (something which David has chosen to do).

Some of this is well known such as Robert Anderson’s use of Government intelligence documents to write part of the Parnellism and Crime series for the Times in 1887. This act was considered so egregious that it almost cost Anderson his pension when, in 1910, some 23 years after the fact, he admitted doing it.

There is an interesting addendum to the above political brouhaha. Robert Anderson’s old friend, boss and ally, James Monro, using a circuitous route, was able to pass a note to Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister, in which was stated:
“Mr. Monro is desirous that the Home Office should be made aware that should they desire to ‘interview’ him, any account which he might be able to give of certain past events (and which might not agree with some things which have appeared), he is at their disposal.” [Christy Campbell, Fenian Fire, Harper Collins Publisher, London])

“any account which he might be able to give of certain past events (and which might not agree with some things which have appeared), is an apparent warning to the Powers That Be that should he, Monro, suffer further scrutiny, or inquiry, on the matter of Anderson, the Times and Parnell, he could open a can of worms which was best left untouched. Or, as Campbell puts it, the note hinted “at something nasty in the Whitehall woodshed.”

Keeping with Monro: ignored by those who disbelieve in Scotland Yard actions against Parnell are various political activities which took place during Monro’s tenure as head of Special Branch. For example, according to William Henry Joyce, a sub-inspector in the Royal Irish Constabulary who, while in this position, aided the Times’ case during the Parnell Commission (see Irish Historical Studies, 1973, Dublin University Press), and was therefore in the thick of things in 1888, threats and inducements were offered to Fenian prisoners held in British jails.

Thomas Scott and Michael Harkins, the Jubilee bombers, were interviewed by Littlechild in Chatham Jail, in March of 1888, in order to try and get them to give evidence linking Parnell and his supporters with the bomb plots. Littlechild was also said to have made another prison visit to interview an Irishman named Thomas Clarke who would claim that Littlechild offered him his freedom if he would testify against Parnell. Littlechild also spied on Parnell’s personal life, writing reports on the Irish leader’s affair with Kitty O’Shea. The O’Shea affair would eventually lead to Parnell’s downfall. And, as I have already pointed out, it was even suggested by Sir Charles Russell, later Lord Russell of Killowen, Parnell’s chief counsel, that the reason Richard Pigott was able to so easily disappear from London and make his way to the Continent was that he had been hustled out of the country by two Scotland Yard detectives. Joyce, also, says as much.

These were all politically motivated actions aimed at aiding the Times’ case against Parnell, or at harming Parnell personally, and perpetrated by Special Branch and Scotland Yard while headed by Monro. Monro would have known about, and would have had to sanction, all of these. However, Monro didn’t have the authority to offer pardons and cash incentives to convicted terrorists. Who did?

In the autumn of 1888 it was decided by certain high ranking members of the British Government that, along with Henri Le Caron, British double agent General Francis Millen should be encouraged to travel from New York to London in order to give testimony against Parnell at the Commission. The man who was Millen’s handler in the U.S. was William Robert Hoare, the British Consul at New York, who was reluctant to comply. Millen, a high ranking Clan na Gael member, was just too important an intelligence asset to be burned so that a privately owned newspaper could win its case. His inside knowledge was invaluable and irreplaceable. British Government officials saw things differently.

Cables flew back and forth across the Atlantic while notes and messages were passed in London. Among those Government officials who were involved in attempting to illegally provide evidence for the Times newspaper against a democratically elected sitting member of Parliament were: the Chief Secretary of Ireland, Arthur Balfour; Deputy Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Philip Currie; The Prime Minister himself, Lord Salisbury and the head of Special Branch, one James Monro. Christy Campbell, writing in Fenian Fire, goes so far as to state “There was an intense round of meetings in Whitehall [regarding Hoare’s obstinacy in not providing Millen for the Commission]. Monro was clearly up to his ears in it.” (My underline.)

As well, professor Bernard Porter describes the reaction of the Home Office when the Parnell Commission was called into being. They were against an open public hearing, stating “if there have been any questionable proceedings on the part of the Government or Police Agents, these might come to light in the course of the trial with damaging consequences” (my underline). As Porter states, “This suggests at the very least that the Home Office were not confident that everyone around them had clean hands.” [Bernard Porter, Origins of the Vigilant State: The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch Before the First World War, Boydell & Brewer, 1987.] “Police Agents” in this context very much suggests Monro’s Special Branch. Why would the Home Office worry about their activities in connection with an open public commission on Parnell if Scotland Yard was so politically blameless? Why was the H.O. unsure of what was going on in their own bailiwick?

Porter offers a simple see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil reason that might apply: “…One reason why the Home Office, for example, seems to have taken very little interest in the detailed activities of its political intelligence sections may have been to avoid embarrassment. If a Home Secretary was wise enough to know no evil, then when he was questioned about it in the Commons he could tell no lies.” [Porter, Origins of the Vigilant State.]

So what was Robert Anderson’s role in all of this? Anderson, the man whom Henry Mathews described as “a tout for the Times.” The man, who in 1888, had over 20 years of anti-Irish-Nationalist secret work under his belt, in both Dublin and London, while being the head of CID at Scotland Yard for only a matter of weeks. The man who seemingly hated Parnell with an overwhelming passion. The man who used secret intelligence, which was bought and paid for by the British public and not his to reveal as he wished, in order to attack Parnell and the Irish Party in the Times.

T. M. Healy, K.C. (editor of The Freeman newspaper) said of Anderson: “British interests necessitated secrecy as to spies, but Anderson cared little for that, provided Parnell could be discredited. Beach, therefore, was shipped from the U.S.A., and became the “star” witness at the Commission. To tender such an agent as a witness to help a newspaper was a step unprecedented.” [T. M. Healy, K.C., Letters and Leaders of My Day, Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1928.] Indeed.

In fact although it is said that Anderson didn’t want Beach to appear before the Commission Anderson, according to Beach himself, summoned him to his house, while he was in England for the funeral of his father, in order to tell him that the Times was looking for someone to testify at the Commission. [Peter Edwards, Delusion, Key Porter Books, 2008.]

This seems to have been a fishing expedition on Anderson’s part and whether he was gauging Beach’s reaction to the information or telling him to find someone to testify is not clear. Either way, Anderson, the head of the CID, was attempting to personally find a witness or witnesses to appear against Parnell, and in support of the Times. And he was doing this at the exact same time, mid-December, 1888, that Inspector Andrews was travelling around Southern Ontario performing, as he himself stated, a similar task (Andrews stated that this was what he was doing in southern Ontario. His own words, freely given. End of story).

T.P. O’Connor said of him: “…Sir R. Anderson is an Irishman and a Unionist....He has the most violent political prejudices. These prejudices are so strong, and I am sure so honest, that they blind him very often to all the difference between what is right and what is wrong in the conduct of his fellow-creatures, and often to his own attitude towards those who have the misfortune to differ from him…. You will find in all his writings and all his proceedings he is constantly haunted and beset and obsessed by what I may call the policeman's spirit, and above all the secret service spirit.” [Hansard, 21 April, 1910, vol. 16 cc2335 – 435.] This needs no comment.

Stewart Evans, writing on Casebook, has stated: “… But Anderson was a very political animal and in no small way very bigoted. It was a major part of his makeup and must be assessed with all other aspects of the man to decide upon his true nature and the veracity of his word…. As we know Anderson was obsessively opposed to the Irish Nationalist MP Charles Stewart Parnell and the Home Rule Movement….When Anderson wrote of these matters in Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement [1906] he sought to shift the onus for the main letter incriminating Parnell back to Parnell by claiming it was not forged by Piggot. Anderson wrote, ‘And as regards the Parnell 'facsimile letter' of May 15, 1882, I have received definite confirmation of my statement that it is in the handwriting of Arthur O'Keefe. I have obtained further proof, moreover, that at that period O'Keefe was employed by Mr. Parnell as an amanuensis.’ This statement disagrees with the verdict of history…”

In other words Anderson was still attacking Parnell, and using an out and out lie to do it, some 17 years after the end of the Commission (Sir Robert Anderson? Lying?). Stewart also pointed out that, in 1888, Anderson “…was far more concerned with the Special Commission than the murders.”

Still, it has been asked, why would Monro and Anderson send Andrews to Southern Ontario on what has been termed an illegal political mission?

First of all, it must be understood that both Anderson and Monro had been privy to Thomas Billis Beach’s intelligence regarding Parnell and the Irish Nationalist movement. They knew that in a meeting between Parnell and Beach held in London in 1881, Parnell had stated: “…I have long since ceased to believe that anything but force of arms will ever bring about the redemption of Ireland….He told [Beach] that he did not see any reason why an insurrectionary movement, when we [American Irish Nationalists] were prepared to send money and men who were armed and organized – why a successful insurrectionary movement should not be inaugurated in Ireland…He stated what the [Land] League could furnish in the way of men and money, and informed me as to the assistance which he looked for from the American [Land League] organization….You furnish the sinews of war. You have the power…” [Edwards, Delusion] This meeting was held just as the “land war” in Ireland began to intensify; just before the Phoenix Park Murders and just before the start of the bomb attacks in Britain when the “sinews of war” seemed to have been tensing and stretching.

As Martin Fido points out, “Parnell was having his cake and eating it: acting the pacific constitutional agitator for Home Rule within the Union when in England; declaring himself an independent separatist who condoned violence when appealing to firebrands in America. Anderson took and retained very full notes of this information.” [Martin Fido, Anderson, Monro and Jsfmboe, Ripperologist #80, June, 2007.]

Most people, when mentioning Beach’s career, usually fail to mention this highly significant interview with Parnell. An interview that provided proof to men like Anderson and Monro that not only was Parnell out to destroy the Union but that he also secretly supported terrorism. Also usually ignored is the fact that Beach’s testimony at the Parnell Commission regarding this interview was deemed of great importance. Fido states, “history tends to have forgotten that Beach’s accusations stuck and were accepted as findings against Parnell in the committee’s final report.” [Fido, Anderson, Monro and Jsfmboe.]

Parnell was blamed, in part or in whole, for supporting acts of Irish terrorism by pro-British, anti-Irish-Nationalists, like the Times, James Monro, Robert Anderson and conservative elements within the British Government. The belief that these men wouldn’t gather intelligence against Parnell for the Times because it was illegal or morally wrong, or because they just wouldn’t do such an underhanded thing, is laughably uninformed. This was politics wrapped up in patriotism. Good versus evil. British Civilization versus Irish Chaos. In other words, this was war by other means.

Porter states: “The object of all this [police and government dirty tricks aimed at discrediting Parnell] was not primarily to put down terrorism, but to try to discredit the cause of Home Rule and its supporters. The distinction is important. Home Rule, pursued through peaceful, parliamentary means, was a legitimate political policy, and the policy (as it happened) of two of the main parties in Parliament. Opposition to home Rule was the policy of two others. Here, then, we have one of the earliest examples in modern British history of a phenomenon we shall see more of as our story progresses: secret agents with particular political viewpoints, probably in collusion with like-minded politicians, using the apparatus of the secret state for partisan ends. This is new. The rationale for it, as in later examples, was that those ends – the maintenance of the Union and the defeat of separatism – were not really partisan, but patriotic. That feeling may have been genuine.” [Bernard Porter, Plots and Paranoia: A History of Political Espionage in Britain 1790 – 1988, Routledge, 1989.]

Secondly, Anderson himself wrote that he had used “extra-legal action” when dealing with Anarchist’s threats in Britain: “I am clear that the measure of peace & order wh[ich] we have been able to maintain in recent years has been due to action taken by this dep[artment] wh[ich] seems applicable to it…The experience of all the years during wh[ich] I have held my present office [i.e., since August 1888] has been this: For more or less prolonged intervals these men [foreign anarchists] have been treated under the ordinary law, with the invariable resu[l]t that they have assumed a menacing attitude, and taken to dangerous plots. Then some “extra-legal” action has been adopted by the Police, & they have at once grown quiet & timid.” [Robert Anderson memorandum to Commissioner Edward Bradford, London Metropolitan Police, 14 January 1899, TNA: PRO HO 45 10254 X36450/92]

So Anderson clearly used illicit police methods when it suited him – when peace and order were threatened and dangerous plots had to be stopped – and he boasted that such methods worked effectively. What plots more dangerous than the bombing campaigns had Britain faced? What greater threat to peace and order than the possible dissolution of the country? Who did Anderson feel was complicit in both? Would the ultra-Unionist Robert Anderson fail to use “extra-legal” means to obtain his political ends?

Or, instead, are we to believe that men like Monro and Anderson were simply a troop of inexperienced Boy Scouts. Babes in the woods of the murky late Victorian politics of Empire. Men so honourable, blameless and guileless that they were incapable of any sort of underhanded or devious practice; no matter the threat, situation or cause? At best this “belief” is farcically naïve.

In the end even a cursory look at the historical record shows that David’s articles abjectly fail to offer an objective, balanced or reliably researched look at the anti-Parnell political actions of men like Monro and Anderson, let alone the actions of their political masters in the government. In effect David has swept history under the rug rather than offer context to articles which he is attempting to “demolish.” Probably cause and effect.

Wolf.

[David Orsam]

By “an area of history” I assume you mean the politics of the LVP and, specifically, Scotland Yard and British policing as it pertained to the Irish Question

Incorrect.

You are going to have a very busy time of it writing numerous articles “demolishing” “the ideas that you have been advancing” since the political situation, including the Irish Question, has been part of the Whitechapel Murders conversation since the time of the murders themselves.

You have misunderstood me. I was talking about the missions of Inspector Jarvis and Inspector Andrews in North America and their consequences, a subject not traditionally associated with the Ripper murders. Certainly not in any of the many books I read during the 1980s and 1990s (which went back to Leonard Matters’ 1929 book) which were focussed almost entirely on the identity of Jack the Ripper. So I fear your entire post was a waste of time.

[David Orsam]

David, who tells us that he worries so about history (and distortions to history and how he must protect history at all costs) doesn’t even mention Evans and Gainey’s names let alone discuss their theory. For some reason he sees the most significant and widely known theory as being unimportant.

Why is any of this important? The three theories that David attempts to “demolish” in his articles all stem from Evans\Gainey or from Stewart Evans himself. Their theory stems from news reports that date from 1888. David, apparently, doesn’t want the casual reader of his articles to know about this.

I’ve heard of obsession but this is ridiculous. I’ve already answered your irrelevant Evans/Gainey point more than once. If you are not absorbing or understanding it then it really is your problem not mine.

[David Orsam]

Wolf,

I have read your long post (#421) and nothing in it was new to me or assists in our understanding of the specific missions of Inspector Jarvis and Inspector Andrews in North America.

The simple point is that, in respect of the Parnell Commission and related matters in America, the Times employed their own private detectives. Officers from Scotland Yard, who had no more authority or power in America than a private detective could not usefully add anything to what the Times could achieve. Furthermore, Anderson was fully aware of the problems that would arise for him should he use C.I.D officers in America to assist the Times, so there was no point in him doing it and he did not do it.

You are basically making the exact same point that the humiliated Labouchere made after he was forced to apologise: Scotland Yard did some things so it’s fair to say they did some other things. Not a good argument at all.

I will pick up some of your specific points separately.

[David Orsam]

in order to embrace the idea that this could never happen you have to completely ignore the historical record and disregard the inconvenient facts which point to illegal work by high ranking officials in the Government and Scotland Yard to aid the Times against Parnell and the Irish cause (something which David has chosen to do).

I have never said "it could never happen". I am saying, on the basis of the evidence, that it did not happen in this instance, in respect of Andrews and Jarvis.

[David Orsam]

Andrews was travelling around Southern Ontario performing, as he himself stated, a similar task (Andrews stated that this was what he was doing in southern Ontario. His own words, freely given. End of story).

This is the only point you have made that I see as in any way relevant to the discussion but it is clearly not the end of the story, even on your own account. I remind you that in Ripper Notes (24 October 2005, p. 39), you said:

"The question remains: Why if he was on a secret mission, would Inspector Andrews be indiscreet or stupid enough to tell newspaper reporters what that mission was?"

It is a question for which we have both provided answers and I suggest to you that my answer is far more convincing than yours. In fact, yours is utterly implausible. In any event, the simple fact of Andrews’ two reported interviews clearly isn’t the end of the story as you conceded in your own article.

[David Orsam]

Secondly, Anderson himself wrote that he had used “extra-legal action” when dealing with Anarchist’s threats in Britain: “I am clear that the measure of peace & order wh[ich] we have been able to maintain in recent years has been due to action taken by this dep[artment] wh[ich] seems applicable to it…The experience of all the years during wh[ich] I have held my present office [i.e., since August 1888] has been this: For more or less prolonged intervals these men [foreign anarchists] have been treated under the ordinary law, with the invariable resu[l]t that they have assumed a menacing attitude, and taken to dangerous plots. Then some “extra-legal” action has been adopted by the Police, & they have at once grown quiet & timid.” [Robert Anderson memorandum to Commissioner Edward Bradford, London Metropolitan Police, 14 January 1899, TNA: PRO HO 45 10254 X36450/92]

I'm aware of this memo (quoted regularly by Simon Wood) and have inspected the original file in which it can be found, which is labelled "EXPLOSIVES: International Action for the suppression of anarchism". Anderson's memo, written more than ten years after the events of 1888, is about anti-terrorism measures and has no relevance or application to the issue of Scotland Yard assisting the Times in respect of the Parnell Commission.

[David Orsam]

In the end even a cursory look at the historical record shows that David’s articles abjectly fail to offer an objective, balanced or reliably researched look at the anti-Parnell political actions of men like Monro and Anderson, let alone the actions of their political masters in the government. In effect David has swept history under the rug rather than offer context to articles which he is attempting to “demolish.” Probably cause and effect.

I am completely objective, balanced and unbiased - and have been throughout - and my research is fully reliable.

If I were to sum up your posting it is basically that you don’t need evidence of anything. Monro and Anderson were so committed to the anti-Fenian cause that they would do anything and there is no allegation that we should not be prepared to believe believe regardless of whether there is evidence to support it and regardless of how ridiculous that allegation might be. I do not accept that is the correct way of looking at the issue. I am fully aware of the political context but that does not, by itself, offer any help with the specific cases we have been discussing.

[David Orsam]

Wolf,

I don't know if you have finished with your responses now but one thing that might be helpful is if you were to set out which points from my trilogy, if any, you agree with and which points you disagree with. In particular, is there anything in your Ripper Notes articles that you wish to amend or withdraw in the light of my articles?

This is, I think, the proper way of going about things.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Wolf,

Thank you for taking time to write these replies. I for one feel they are of import.

As you know, earlier in this thread I referred to other authors who wrote about the political shenanigans of certain members of the hierarchy of Scotland Yard...including Monroe and Anderson.

I believe I named Porter at some point..and the Clutterbuck thesis is of great import too.

There is another author..whose name escapes me at the moment..who also has written with great knowledge on the subject. NB EDIT. Alex Butterworth. The world that never was.

There is no doubt in my mind. .having studied just about everything I could about Anderson in particular. .that the man himself tried continously to create his own reputation through egoistic comment and action. In his autobiography..through his words.Anyone attempting to defend this man is, as much research by many has shown, now naive. That has an enormous bearing on any action we know he undertook.

Thank you again for your time in posting.


Phil

[Hunter]

Who, here, is defending Anderson?

[Mayerling]

Who, here, is defending Anderson?

Hi Hunter,

Search me. I have found little I can like in Sir Robert, except possibly his zealot - like patriotism, but God help us from zealots.

He was not the only British police official who went too far at times. In the 20th Century, a more intelligent figure, Sir Basil Thomson, made a career against suffragettes, German spies (a war-time necessity though), Sir Roger Casement (in the use of those "Black Diaries" to prevent a move for clemency from growing), his French allies (he questioned Mata-Hari, but apparently did not mention his suspicions to the French!), the British Labour Party (Thomson had some involvement in that "Zinoffiev" letter business in 1923). Later he wrote pro-Fascist, anti-Semitic articles, some for the "Whitehall Gazette" owned by Maundy Gregory (interesting choice for one of his allies there). Fortunately, while angling to become head of the Yard in 1926 he got caught in a rather stupid sex scandal. It finished his career as a police official.

Jeff

[David Orsam]

Who, here, is defending Anderson?

I was wondering the same thing myself.

[David Orsam]

Further Response to Wolf

The theory that Inspector Andrews was in Toronto on Parnell business can be distinguished from the Tumblety/JTR theory in that it at least it has some evidence, in the form of supposed quotes in two newspapers from Andrews, to support it. However, there are two fundamental problems with this evidence:

1. The newspaper reporters were writing their stories in the very same context that Wolf has set out at some length. In other words, just as Wolf today seems to think that Scotland Yard detectives in America simply must have been investigating Parnell or Irish Nationalists, the very same thought evidently occurred to the newspaper reporters for pretty much the same reasons. Of course, they did not have access to the internal documents we have today but, frankly, those add little to what was believed at the time. In other words, in support of his view about what Scotland Yard was probably doing in 1888, Wolf is praying in aid reports from people who probably held exactly the same view as he does and whose reports might well have been coloured by that view. The evidence, in other words, needs to be treated with extreme caution.

2. If Andrews was engaged on a secret mission to uncover evidence about Parnell, the last thing he was going to do was tell a newspaper reporter. As Wolf himself says, this would have been "stupid". So – just as Wolf tried but failed to find a sensible explanation for him doing so – we need to work out what possible reason there is for the appearance of those quotes.

When we look at the actual words quoted of Andrews, further problems arise:

1. As I mentioned in my trilogy, the quote of Andrews in the Toronto Daily Mail, namely "I do not mind telling you that since I have been in Toronto I have obtained some important clues in the Parnell case - things I never dreamt of before" does not necessarily support the theory that Andrews had been sent to Toronto to find clues in the Parnell case. As I said in the trilogy, while Andrews was in Toronto, he could, unsolicited, have been given "clues" by citizens of Toronto, many of whom would no doubt have wanted to meet a real life detective from Scotland Yard and, indeed, pass any information they had to him. I want to make clear that my case as set out in the trilogy is that Andrews was not sent to Toronto for the purpose of investigating Parnell so that the Barnett extradition was not a "vehicle" or a "prop" or a "cover story" to conduct such investigations. That is very clear from the documents in the National Archvies. If a resident of Toronto had said to the inspector, "Joe Bloggs knows something important about Parnell" or "Joe Bloggs knows something about the identity of JTR", Andrews, being a detective, might well have gone to ask Joe Bloggs, assuming Joe Bloggs lived in Toronto, and reported back to his boss but that is completely different from the theory that Wolf and others have propounded.

2. In the Montreal Herald article, Andrews is quoted as saying that he cannot answer the reporter's question about whether he had been deputed by the London Times to collect evidence against Parnell and that he cannot divulge the secrets of his office. That being so, the following words "No I cannot deny the statement" simply must be a mis-quotation and no other explanation makes any sense. That only leaves the quote "I may not have been altogether unsuccessful, but I don't think I have been unsuccessful". The entire case rests on this! Did the journalist write it down correctly in his notebook? Was he even making notes at the time or writing from memory? Again, of course, it contradicts what Andrews had already been quoted as saying in refusing to give anything away. So the obvious conclusion, as I said in my article, is that Andrews did not say those exact words and the reporter, perhaps influenced by his own view of what a Scotland Yard detective would have been doing in Canada (as stated above), misunderstood him.

Of course, I basically said all of the above in my trilogy but Wolf has ignored this. Instead, he appears to have adopted a strategy of giving us political lectures and attacking me personally while avoiding the subject matter of my trilogy and refusing to engage in any form of constructive debate with me, having not responded to my posts in response to his last attacks. He could, for example, have answered the questions I posted in #286, which were bang on point, but has noticeably failed to do so. I repeat them in case he has forgotten them:

"1. Are you still saying that the Canadian Minister of Justice at any time refused to sign the extradition papers?

1a. If so, what is the evidence for this?

1b. If not, what was the "snag" on the Canadian end?

3. What evidence is there to support the claim in your article that the Canadians were "resisting"?

I surely don't [need] to point out that this is a substantive issue which goes to the heart of your claim that Inspector Andrews was being sent by Scotland Yard to Canada - in the face of Canadian resistance - to conduct Parnell inquiries. Your exact words were: "It was as if the authorities were making sure that Barnett was returned to Toronto even if the Canadians seemed to be resisting".

Do you now wish to retract those words?"

This is the kind of discussion we need to be having, not a long-winded essay on British or Irish politics which cannot possibly tell us what Andrews and Jarvis were doing in America in 1888. For that, we need to focus on the evidence in the case, which is what I have attempted to do throughout.

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Who is defending Anderson?

Whomever wrote this gem—

" . . . Anderson was fully aware of the problems that would arise for him should he use C.I.D officers in America to assist the Times, so there was no point in him doing it and he did not do it."

Good to know.

Regards,

Simon