Authors: Nick Barratt
Officers from D Branch would regularly meet at the Cairo café in Graf-ton Street, Dublin, to share intelligence and discuss plans for future raids on IRA targets, earning the nickname the Cairo Gang. Boddington was involved in a number of these operations, including a raid in Drumcondra, Dublin, in September 1920. However, the regularity of their meetings made them easy to spot and IRA counter-intelligence under the control of Michael Collins quickly identified the British men. On the morning of Sunday 21 November 1920, IRA agents assassinated 14 D Branch officers, although there were originally 35 targets; Boddington was not attacked. In retaliation, members of the feared Black and Tans – Winston Churchill’s RIC reserve force of army veterans – were despatched to raid a Gaelic football match at Croke Park, where many IRA agents were suspected to be in attendance. Firing broke out, in which 14 civilians were killed; three further IRA suspects in police custody were beaten and lost their lives.
After the disaster of what was called Bloody Sunday, the British intelligence operation was severely damaged. Boddington stayed in post and by January 1921 he had become D Branch Chief of Police (Special Branch). Once the July truce had been signed, the need for intelligence operatives grew less and operatives were gradually withdrawn. Major General Boyd, the officer commanding the Dublin branch of the armed forces in Ireland, wrote in 1922 to Scotland Yard, recommending employment for Boddington and others.
On the basis of this recommendation, Boddington continued his undercover work with MI5 after his recall from Dublin. In one of his first assignments, he was able to infiltrate the Communist Party on Kell’s instructions in 1923 so that the secret services could better understand what they were up to and consequently would have known at an early stage of the Zinoviev affair, in 1924 and 1925, and that the claims made by Morton about the complicity of the Communist Party were untrue. He also extensively investigated communist involvement in the navy after the 1931 Invergordon mutiny among sailors in the Atlantic fleet, focusing his inquiries on the crews stationed at Plymouth.
Over a thousand men were eventually discharged. In short, Boddington was not someone you wanted on your tail, and his presence on the case shows the seriousness with which MI5 treated Oldham’s activities.
The young man identified as TAR continued his report into Oldham:
Having got into touch with Captain Boddington and formulated a plan of campaign, I returned to the hotel and rang up the sports club where, by arrangement, I knew he would be. He came round at about 7.00 pm and we greeted each other in the hall as long-lost friends. We sat in the lounge, previously mentioned, and discussed our affairs over a whiskey and soda in loud tones, in order to make it apparent to those who might hear that we had not seen each other for at least five years.
At 7.30 pm we left the hotel in order that Captain Boddington should show his country cousin a few places of interest in that area. We first of all called at the Chequers public house where we were lucky in that we saw a man whom we thought to be Oldham, wearing a dark brown suit, brown shoes, brown shirt and collar, brown tie and white horn-rimmed spectacles. Mr Hood, the proprietor of the Chequers, was also present and Captain Boddington and I made it obvious that we were out to have a good evening.
Oldham left the bar, which is situated at the back of the premises, at 8.00 pm (we had not spoken to him or to the landlord). Captain Boddington and I thought it best not to follow him back to the hotel but to leave him alone for an hour or more.
At 9.30 pm, Captain Boddington and I returned to the Chequers in a cheerful mood and again saw our friend Oldham sitting in the same place talking to the landlord and a Scots girl. Being in good form it did not take us very long to get into conversation with these three people, who subsequently joined us in some pretty heavy drinking. Oldham, who had previously been drinking beer when we first saw him, had switched over to plain gin.
During the conversation in the Chequers, Captain Boddington mentioned that I had been advised by a friend to stay in the Jules hotel, whereupon Oldham pricked up his ears and said, ‘Staying at Jules hotel? Why, I am staying there as well.’
During the course of the evening I got into conversation with the landlord and the Scots girl and Captain Boddington was talking to Oldham – as far as I could make out, about crime, the law and the army.
Oldham seemed to be intensely interested in a story which had been published in the
Evening Standard
of 26 August 1933.
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Quite what this story could be is open to question. There were no obvious political stories published that day. The front page headline related to the sinking of Lord Moyne’s yacht,
Roussalka
, off the coast of Galway – all passengers were saved, including two pet monkeys which Lord Moyne personally rescued. However, there are a variety of other stories which might have piqued Old-ham’s interest, from illicit betting in a West End club to a missing Methodist minister in Bush Hill Park, Enfield, where Oldham had grown up. Alternatively, he might simply have been interested in the football results from the first day of the new season, with Arsenal playing out a 1–1 draw in north London against Birmingham in the 80-degree afternoon sunshine and their neighbours and rivals Tottenham involved in a goalless draw away to Sheffield United.
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At 11.00 pm Oldham, Captain Boddington and myself left the Chequers and made our way to Jules hotel. On the way Oldham excused himself and went into a chemists (G.Gray?) in Duke Street, where he spent five minutes. During these five minutes Captain Boddington and I were able to arrange what we were going to do for the rest of the evening.
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Clearly, the two agents were making decisions on the spot, taking advantage of the circumstances as they unfolded; no doubt their course of action was influenced by the amount of drink they had imbibed.
When Oldham rejoined us we went to Jules hotel, as Captain Boddington stated that he would like a little more to drink and that he did not believe it was possible to get drink after hours in any hotel, whereupon I decided to prove to him that it was quite possible provided one had the drink served in a room.
Oldham thoroughly agreed with this suggestion and thought it would be a good plan if we had the drink in his room, No 37, on the third floor. I got hold of the valet on his landing and ordered a little refreshment which, after a certain amount of quibbling, we decided to have in Oldham’s room.
Oldham appeared to have an enormous capacity for drink and, after about half an hour, was showing signs of drunkenness, whereupon more refreshment was ordered and Captain Boddington decided it was about time that he left. Oldham and I, having bid Captain Boddington farewell, continued to make merry and after about ten minutes I found myself undressing Oldham and putting him to bed as he was in an absolutely incapable condition.
I covered him with bedclothes and decided that the time had come when I should search his belongings.
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This was an extraordinary risk to take – if Oldham had roused himself mid-search, then the game would have been up.
I went through the suit he had been wearing (list of contents attached), all of his drawers, the remainder of his clothes in the wardrobe and finally his two suitcases marked ‘EHO’. These cases were locked but as I found his keys I did not have much difficulty.
In one of the suitcases I found a passport and various belongings, signed ‘Ernest Holloway Oldham’, which proved to me that this was the man for whom I was looking (list of contents of suitcases attached).
Having made a thorough search of his room I returned to my room with my notes and made out a rough copy of the particulars.
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Mission accomplished, but TAR wasn’t finished yet.
On the next morning, 27 August, on my way downstairs at 10.30 am, I called in on Oldham to see how he was. He was still in bed in a dilapidated condition and, on seeing me, told me to leave the room as he was not feeling well. I asked him if he would like to have a little lunch with me at about 1.00 pm, whereupon he said he would be delighted and would meet me in the lounge later on.
I sat about in the hotel for some two hours reading the morning papers and then decided to go out for a walk. As luck would have it I ran into Mr Hunter, to whom I handed my notes of the previous night in order that I should not have anything on me which might prejudice my position should Oldham suddenly smell a rat.
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The aptly named Herbert Hunter was one of the staff assistants in MI5, and was hovering around to hear first-hand how the operation had gone.
At 1.15 pm I again went to see him [Oldham] and found him in the same condition. I sat in his room and chatted to him for a quarter of an hour and asked him various questions about himself.
He said that he was staying at Jules hotel as his house was being redecorated and his wife was in Germany. He said that for a man of no occupation there was very little for him to do but drink. He also let slip the remark that he never touched whiskey. He also said that he had a very bad liver and I observed a small box of liver pills on the table by the side of his bed.
Oldham also stated that he was a member of the Junior Carlton Club. This I believe to be a fabrication as I looked on the 1932 list of members and found that a Captain Oldham (initials different) was a member but not Ernest Holloway Oldham.
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This might have been a coincidence that another man with the same surname was a member; given his sacking from the Foreign Office and
financial problems, it is likely that Oldham’s membership had lapsed several years previously.
I took my leave at 1.30 pm, telling him that I had a call to make and that as London was such as dull place over the weekend I had decided to travel to Scotland overnight and not on Monday morning as I had previously stated.
To the best of my belief Oldham and I parted on very good terms and I do not think he is in any way suspicious of my conduct the previous night.
321
This was an astonishingly daring raid, especially given the ‘rookie’ status of the operative. However, such activities were to become the hallmark of TAR; born in 1909 in Medan, Sumatra, where his Scottish father was posted as a colonial banker, Thomas Argyll Robertson would later rise to prominence during World War II. He was the brains behind the Double-Cross system of disinformation, including Operation Mincemeat, in which the body of a British ‘agent’ was deliberately planted on a Spanish beach with false information designed to deceive the Germans into believing that the 1943 invasion of Sicily would take place elsewhere.
TAR was a colourful character, living the high life during his training at Sandhurst – one of his contemporaries was the future actor David Niven – and, a bit like Oldham, he had developed a taste for good suits, fast cars and living far beyond his financial means. Perhaps that was how he managed to bond so successfully with Oldham on 27 August. He had been recruited by Kell only a few months previously in 1933, mainly on the recommendation of Kell’s son John, who had schooled with TAR at Charterhouse. This was probably his first field mission.
In his report submitted on 28 August, TAR included a list of Oldham’s possessions that he had managed to identify; one can only admire his attention to detail, especially given the amount of alcohol he too must have consumed. In Oldham’s suit was a bunch of keys – one latch key, presumably to his house in Pembroke Gardens, two small suitcase keys and five other keys. One of
these was quite large and TAR speculated it was a safe key and another large key might have opened a padlock. Oldham also carried around a packet of Players cigarettes, five-and-a-half pence and an unopened box of insomnia pills, clearly not necessary on the night in question. Perhaps it is the circumstances of their discovery as much as the details themselves, but Oldham’s few possessions make for rather sorry reading.
Although TAR did not itemise Oldham’s ‘purely personal belongings’ contained in the chest of drawers, he did note that they were accompanied by six small empty bottles of Booth’s gin as well as a doctor’s prescription, two suits, dirty clothes, a pair of grey flannel trousers, a sports coat and an overcoat. There was nothing in the writing desk.
However, the contents of the suitcases were of more interest to MI5. A number of addresses were noted from various letters and pieces of correspondence in Oldham’s possession, including ‘Mr JP at poste restante, bureau de poste centrale, Trouville’ – assumed to be Joe Perelly – as well as a number of other overseas addresses in Vienna, Basel and Bonn. Oldham’s passport showed the extent of his travels over the previous year or so, with extensive trips abroad after his dismissal from the Foreign Office. Various cheque books confirmed he was running low on cash, with a note from Lloyd’s bank on 3 August that they had refused payment of £32.10.1. This was coupled with information from a book with ‘a pink cover with white paper inside, with perforated lines so that various portions of the leaves could be torn out’ that made it clear Oldham had arrived in the country a day earlier than the intelligence services had realised.
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On a more mundane note, Dr Rowan’s address in Onslow Square, Kensington, was listed alongside several nursing homes, such as Old Hill House, Chiselhurst, and the Norwood Sanatorium. Lucy was accurate when she said how much he loved those places. There was also a collection of letters demanding settlement of unpaid bills, including a request for money from the Sunbeam car company regarding repairs to his vehicle. Rather endearingly, Oldham had included a note from the local vet – Hobday, Sutton, Stainton and Otterhead, of 165 Kensington Church Street – although perhaps less touchingly he still owed them £9.8.0 for ‘Cairn’, presumably the name of one of
his dogs. His tailor, who provided his line in brown suits and monogrammed shirts, JA Baxter of 10 Hanover Street, was also included on the list. To underline the impecunious nature of Oldham’s existence, a letter from Eagle Star Insurance showed that they were demanding immediate payment of £111, presumably for the £2,000 mortgage he had taken out. Given 31 Pembroke Gardens itself was security against the loan, Oldham’s home was increasingly at risk of repossession.