2. A biography of Hugh Thomas from records of the General Synod of the Church of England is held by the Anglesey County Records Office (WM/659); also Alumni Records (Magdalene College Archives, Cambridge, pp.152–53); Bangor Diocesan Records (B/ P/1055).
3. The Ozone Preparations Company had its origins in Rosenblum & Co. Consultant Chemists, which was established in 1896 at 9 Bury Court, London EC. In 1897 the trading name was changed to Ozone and moved to Imperial Chambers, 3 Cursitor Street, Holborn.
4. The first meeting between Sigmund Rosenblum and Margaret Thomas was described by Margaret in a transcript she left with Capt. William Isaac of the War Office on 11 November 1931. Isaac produced a brief summary which contained some typographical errors. The original manuscript stated that this first meeting occurred in ‘the summer of 1897’. Isaac returned the original manuscript to Margaret and sent the summary to Col. Valentine Vivian, head of SIS Section V – Counter Intelligence (Sidney Reilly’s SIS File CX 2616, henceforth referred to as The Reilly Papers CX 2616).
5. Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart (Hodder and Stoughton, 1967), p.29.
6. Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart (p.29); and Master Spy, Edward Van Der Rhoer, p.5.
7. Under passport regulations in force at the time (Foreign Office Regulations Respecting Passports, issued 15 July 1895), passports issued for travel on the continent were ‘not limited in point of time, but available for any time, or for any number of journeys on the continent’. However, British subjects wishing to visit Russia would have needed to apply for a passport for travel to Russia and, furthermore, to seek a visa from the Russian Consulate. Although the Thomases already had valid passports for the continent, there is no record of them applying for passports to Russia in the Foreign Office (FO) 611/18 Passport Names Index.
8. The Foreign Office issued passports for the Continent and Egypt to Hugh Thomas on 30 December 1897 and to Margaret on 9 January 1898, FO 611/18 Passport Names Index.
9. Family Division of the High Court of Justice, Principal Probate Registry, 3 May 1898, No. 1456.
10. The sixty-two-year-old Alfred Lewis had been manager of the hotel since 1887. Ironically, he was to die of cardiac failure at the hotel three years later.
11. Entry 433, Register of Burials in the Parish of Llansadwrn; Anglesey County Records Office WPE/32/6. It is also noteworthy that the funeral took place one day before the death was officially registered on 17 March 1898.
12. Sussex Express, 19 March 1898, p.5.
13. Entry 316, 1898 Register of Deaths in the Registration District of Lewes in the Sub-district of Newhaven in the County of Sussex.
14. In the first edition of Ace of Spies by Robin Bruce Lockhart, published in 1967, a typed copy of Hugh Thomas’s registration of death is reproduced. Issued by Somerset House on 19 September 1938, this copy certificate was almost certainly applied for by George Hill, who was researching a bi ography of Sidney Reilly during this period. According to this copy, the death was certified by ‘S.W. Andrew MRCS’. By examining the original handwritten entry, however, it is clear that the typist has made a transcription error. The correct name is T.W. Andrew.
15. Dr Thomas Andrew was born in Perthshire in 1837 and qualified in medicine in Edinburgh in 1861. He and his wife Margaret lived at Balkerach Villa, Doune, where he died on 21 January 1905. His obituary referred to the fact that he had never ventured outside of Scotland.
16. Louisa Lewis lived at the London & Paris Hotel. Her recollections of the weekend of 12/13 March 1898 may possibly have a significant role to play later in our story.
17. Letters dated 17 and 25 May 2001 from Diana Oxford of Kingsford Stacey Blackwell, Lincoln’s Inn, London, to the author.
18. Why Rosenblum chose the name ‘T.W. Andrew’ is not entirely clear. It should, however, be noted that the names and identities he assumed over a period of years were almost always derived from people he had known or met. When living at 50 Albert Mansions, his immediate neigbour at no. 49 was named Andrews (Electoral Register 1896/97, Parliamentary, Country and Parochial Electors in Kennington, Vauxhall Ward, Polling District No. 5).
19. Entry 88, 1869 Register of Births in the Registration District of Clerkenwell in the Sub-district of Goswell Street in the County of Middlesex.
20. Foreign Office Passport Names Index, A. Luke, issued 13 December 1894, FO 611/17.
21. See note 4.
TWO – THE MAN FROM NOWHERE
1. Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart, p.22.
2. Master Spy, Edward Van Der Rhoer, p.4.
3. Deadly Illusions, John Costello & Oleg Tsarev (Century, 1993), p.22.
4. Sidney Reilly – The True Story, Michael Kettle (Corgi, 1983), p.12.
5. Secret Service, Christopher Andrew (William Heinemann, 1985), p.83.
6. A History of the British Secret Service, Richard Deacon (Frederick Muller, 1969), p.139.
7. For examples of these claims see foreword of Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly. This is the US version of the book published by Harper Brothers, New York, in 1932. The earlier British version, The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, published by Elkin, Mathews & Marrot, had been withdrawn from sale the previous year due to legal proceedings initiated by Margaret Reilly; Portraits of Unusual People, Vladimir Krymov (Paris, 1971), p.70; Ace of Spies. Robin Bruce Lockhart, p.22; and letter/enclosure from Capt. William Isaac of the War Office to SIS, dated 17 November 1931 (Reilly Papers CX 2616).
8. Ibid.
9. Clonmel (US Immigration records referred to in note 15); Dublin (US Bureau of Investigation/ONI Memorandum of 23 August 1918), p.2, and Sonderfahndungsliste GB File, p.78, R-38 (Central Office for National Security – RHSA, Department IV (Gestapo) E4).
10. A History of the British Secret Service, Richard Deacon, p.140. A slightly different version of the quotation is given by Robin Bruce Lockhart: ‘I came to Britain to work for the British. I had to have a British passport and needed a British place of birth and, you see, from Odessa it’s a long, long way to Tipperary!’, Ace of Spies, p.104. The source for this story is almost certainly Robert Bruce Lockhart who was Commercial Secretary at the Legation at the time of Reilly’s visit. According to the Diaries of Robert Bruce Lockhart (p.55), his journal for 1921 is missing. However, Edward Spears’ diary would suggest that the lunch took place on Sunday 17 July 1921 (Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge MSS SPRS 2/4).
11. Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly (foreword, pp.ix and 7).
12. The manuscript of The Adventures of Sidney Reilly was serialised by the Evening Standard before it appeared in book form. Reference to Reilly’s year of birth appears in the second instalment on 11 May 1931, p.26.
13. Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, foreword p.ix.
14. Memoirs of a British Agent, Robert Bruce Lockhart (Putnam, 1932), p.322.
15. When, as Sigmund Rosenblum, he married Margaret Thomas on 22 August 1898 (Entry 186, 1898 Register of Marriages in the District of Holborn in the County of London) he indicated his year of birth as 1873, as he did when he entered the United States in January 1915 (US Immigration, Port of San Francisco, Volume 7978, p.26, 13 January 1915), again in July 1915 (US Immigration, Port of New York, Volume 5587, p.103, 6 July 1915), and when he married on 16 February 1915 (State of New York, Certificate and Record of Marriage (No. 4199) between Sidney G. Reilly and Nadine Zalessky, Borough of Manhattan Bureau of Records).