Andrew Cook - Ace of Spies

For all to whom these presents may come, I Sidney George Reilly at present residing at the Hotel Cecil in the County of London – Gentlemen send Greeting. By Deed Poll under my hand and seal and under my then name of Sigmund George Rosenblum dated in or about the month of June 1899 I absolutely renounce and abandon the use of my then birth or initial name of Rosenblum and in lieu there of assumed and adopted the initial name of Sidney and the surname of Reilly and have ever since that date assumed, adopted and been known by the name of Sidney George Reilly.

And whereas the said Deed Poll was never enrolled and has since been lost or destroyed. And whereas I am desirous of confirming the said Deed Poll and of perpetuating and evidencing my change of names by executing these presents and causing them to be enrolled in His Majesty’s Supreme Court.

Now I the said Sidney George Reilly do therefore abandon the use of my said birth or initial name of Sigmund and my surname Rosenblum and in lieu thereof assume and adopt the initial name of Sidney and the surname of Reilly. And for the purpose of evidencing such change of names I hereby declare that I shall at all times hereafter in all records deeds documents and other writings and in all actions and proceedings as well as in all dealings and transactions matters and things whatsoever and upon all occasions use and subscribe the said names of Sidney George Reilly as my names in lieu of the said names of Sigmund George Rosenblum. And I therefore expressly authorise and require all persons whatsoever at all times to designate describe and address me by such adopted names of Sidney George Reilly. In witness whereof I have here unto subscribed my adopted and substituted names of Sidney George Reilly this twenty-third day of October one thousand nine hundred and eight.

It confirms the fact that a much earlier move to change his name by Deed Poll had, ‘never been enrolled and has since been lost or destroyed’. This is almost certainly a reference to the Deed Poll application that was being drawn up on behalf of Sigmund and Margaret in the summer of 1899, which was more than likely abandoned in the wake of their swift departure from England. It is most likely that he now resolved to make the change of name official in light of his plans to resume business in England. Robin Bruce Lockhart also refers to his return to the patent medicine business in Ace of Spies. 30 According to his version, Reilly entered into a partnership with a young American chemist by the name of Long and launched the company Rosenblum & Long from 3 Cursitor Street. Although he gives no precise dates for this venture, the implication is that the company was in existence for a four-year period somewhere between 1905 and 1911. Lockhart relates that despite a great deal of hard work on Reilly’s part, the company failed to prosper, due in part to Reilly being ‘something of an innocent in business’. The business finally collapsed when Long absconded with £600 and Reilly was forced to wind the company up with the assistance of a solicitor by the name of ‘Mr Abrahams’. The fact that no trace of Rosenblum & Long has ever been found is due to the fact that the business adopted the name he had first used in 1897, the Ozone Preparations Company.

A search of City of London records confirms that the Ozone Preparations Company traded for some three years between 1908 and 1910, occupying not 3 Cursitor Street, but the first floor of 97 Fleet Street on a sub-lease from the owner, S.R. Cartwright. 31Reilly certainly had a partner in the venture, William Calder. 32It is most unlikely, however, that he absconded with company funds, as he was involved in other Reilly business ventures in the 1920s. The business was indeed wound up in 1911 by Michael Abrahams Sons & Co., other associates of long standing.

The Fleet Street address was within walking distance of the Hotel Cecil in the Strand, where Reilly occupied a suite whenever he was in London. In Edwardian times the Cecil was England’s largest and most luxurious hotel to which the rich flocked and where foreign heads of state were received. The Savoy next door was very much the poor relation by comparison. Opened in 1896, the Cecil had 1,000 rooms and boasted interiors of multicoloured marble, and corridors with hand-wrought tapestries. 33The adjacent Cecil Chambers housed a number of businesses, which at the time included the British Tobacco Company at No. 86 and a number of its European and Empire subsidiaries. Two decades later Stephen Alley, George Hill, Ernest Boyce and William Field Robinson (all of whom we shall meet later in our story) were to work for the company. In 1908, however, one Basil Fothergill worked at the company’s Cecil Chambers office and was a known acquaintance of Reilly. Fothergill’s father, Charles, was a retired British Army major and may well have been known to Reilly through his son. 34To what extent, if any, Fothergill senior served as an inspiration for the Maj. Fothergill in Reilly’s Amazon story is very much open to debate.

It was also at the Cecil that one Louisa Lewis disappeared without trace, on the evening of 25 October 1908. Louisa had worked at the hotel for four years, having moved to London from Sussex. She was last seen early that evening in her coat and hat speaking to a gentleman at the foot of the hotel’s main staircase. 35It was assumed that they left the hotel together. The gentleman was described as being between thirty and forty years of age, medium height with dark hair. Whilst this description could easily apply to a good many men who were in London on 25 October 1908, one particular thirty-five-year-old, who was 5ft 10ins with dark hair, might have had good cause to remember Miss Lewis. In fact, more to the point, she might well have had good cause to remember him – ten years previously Louisa Lewis lived and worked at the hotel managed by her father, Alfred – the London & Paris at Newhaven. On the morning of 13 March 1898 she had encountered Dr T.W. Andrew, who had examined the dead body of the Reverend Hugh Thomas, and declared his death to be by natural causes. Such a death was not an everyday occurrence at the London & Paris, and it would no doubt have remained etched forever in her mind. Is it too much to speculate that ten years later, by pure chance, she happened to meet Dr Andrew again at the Hotel Cecil? Reilly’s face was not one that could be forgotten in a hurry. Had such a crossing of paths occurred, what might Reilly’s reaction have been? Although Hugh Thomas’s death was never suspected of being anything other than natural if untimely, could he afford to take the chance of allowing someone who could match his face with the identity of Dr Andrew seeing him again?

We know from his Deed Poll petition that Reilly was residing at the Hotel Cecil on 23 October 1908, two days before Louisa’s disappearance. Such evidence is purely circumstantial, but compelling all the same. Equally of interest is a story related by Donald McCormick 36in his book, Murder by Perfection, which concerns the activities of Arthur Maundy Gregory, the honours tout, 37and his possible involvement in the death of Edith Rosse. McCormick relates how Gregory established his own private detective agency and was apparently observing the comings and goings in the West End’s major hotels. On one such observation, he was initially suspicious of a ‘free-spending foreigner who was masquerading as an Englishman’. 38This suspicious character turned out to be none other than the ‘flamboyant womaniser’ Reilly.