16. When he married Pepita Haddon Chambers on 23 May 1923 (Entry 29, 1923 Register of Marriages in the District of St Martin, in the County of London) he indicated his year of birth as 1874, as he did when he entered the United States in 1924 (US Immigration, Port of New York, Volume 7978, p.26, 15 May 1924, and US Immigration, Port of New York, Volume 8155, p.5, 21 October 1924).
17. History of the British Secret Service, Richard Deacon, p.140, and Sidney Reilly – The True Story, Michael Kettle, p.13.
18. The only member of his family that he endeavoured to keep in touch with was his first cousin Felicia Rosenblum who lived in Warsaw. According to an ‘Explanatory note’ appended to Reilly’s OGPU File No. 249856, written on 10 November 1925 by V.A. Styrne (now part of Trust File 302330, Vol. 37, Central Archives of the Federal Security Service, Moscow), ‘He was extremely bothered by being a Jew and made every attempt to conceal his origin’.
19. Although marketed as being written by Sidney Reilly and his wife, the book Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly is not an autobiography. It was ghostwritten by journalist Stuart Atherley six years after Reilly’s death on the instructions of Pepita Reilly.
20. Reports commissioned by the author dated 11 August 2000 and 12 October 2000 by Stepan Zhelyaskov, Vital Records Specialist at the State Archives of Odessa Region.
21. Report commissioned by the author dated 11 August 2000 by Gerda Rattay of Vienna City Archive (ref MA 8-A-1285/2000).
22. Reports commissioned by the author dated 4 September 2000 by Dr Juliane Mikoletzky of the Technical University of Vienna Archives and 3 September 2000 by Thomas Maisel of the University of Vienna Archives.
23. According to War Office records (The Army List), at the Public Record Office, only one Maj. Fothergill is to be found during the time period in question. Maj. Charles Fothergill was commissioned in 1855, retired in 1881 and went into business. He was never involved in any South American expeditions nor had he any intelligence connections. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, however, that Charles Fothergill was known to Sidney Reilly, who was acquainted with his son Basil Fothergill.
24. It is likely that Abram was born before the 1821 Russian decree which required Jews in the Kingdom of Poland to take surnames. Furthermore, it was not until 1826 that separate civil registers were begun for recording births, deaths and marriages for each religious community (Roman Catholic, Jewish, Protestant and Russian Orthodox). It is not therefore possible to verify Abram’s specific date of birth.
25. Gentile names are shown in brackets following the first mention of a Hebrew name. All future references use the goyish or gentile name used by that individual (goy is Hebrew for gentile).
26. Marriage Records 1840, town of Szczuczyn, province of Bialystok, Lomza Gubernia, Fond 264, Bialystok Archive, Poland, Jankiel Leyba Rosenblum and Hana Bramson.
27. There is no ‘H’ in the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Hebrew name Hersh therefore appears as Gersh when written in Russian.
28. University of Leeds Russian Archive, MS 1080/859, Family Tree of the Rosenblum, Neufeldt and Wolff families; MS 1080/322, letter from Vera Bramson to Sophia Wolff, 24 April 1928; Letter from Esfir Bramson to the author, 3 March 2003
29. Service File of Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum; Fond 316, Inventory 64, Case 448, Russian State Military Historical Archives, Moscow.
30. Mikhail Rosenblum married Sophie Zonshein on 24 September 1889; Fond 39, Inventory 5, Case 46, p.106, State Archives of Odessa Region. Their son Boris was born in Odessa on 6 July 1890; Fond 39, Inventory 5, File 52, p.185, State Archives of Odessa Region.
31. A variety of versions of Rosenblum family photographs (p.26) have surfaced over the past four decades, including the one of a teenage Reilly (p.29). They were taken seperately on various occasions during the 1880s, and not taken contemporaneously in 1890 as implied by Michael Kettle (Sidney Reilly – The True Story, p.72).
32. To date no trace of a record of birth for Rosenblum has ever been found in any of the locations put forward as his place of birth within the former Russian Empire: Bedzin, Poland; Bielsk, Poland; Odessa, Ukraine; Kherson, Ukraine; St Petersburg, Russia. Ukrainian records in particular are incomplete due to the ravages of the Second World War.
33. The first Odessa General Census, XLVII, Table 24, pp.152–53.
34. OGPU File no. 249856.
35. Mikhail Rosenblum studied chemistry for two semesters in the physico-mathematical department of Novorossiysk University, before leaving to study medicine at the Imperial Medical Surgery Academy in St Petersburg. Reilly claimed to have studied in the same department for two semesters before leaving the university.
36. Extract from manuscript by Margaret Reilly dated 13 November 1931 (Reilly Papers CX 2616).
37. Box 182, XIIIh, files 7 and 10 (index cards), 1891-1895, Ochrana Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California.
38. Sidney Reilly – The True Story, Michael Kettle, p.14.
39. Ibid.
40. Felitsia Vladimirovna Neufeldt (née Rosenblum) was the daughter of Grigory Rosenblum’s brother Vladimir. She lived in Warsaw from 1900 and was widowed in 1911. She, along with her sons Ira and Marek, and their respective families, were confined in the Warsaw ghetto by the Nazis during the Second World War and died in the Treblinka death camp between July 1942 and June 1943.
41. Iron Maze, Gordon Brook-Shepherd (Macmillan, 1998), p.15/16.
42. The unrest was sparked by a government decision concerning army conscription. Student opposition followed, accompanied by political demands.
43. Fond 2, Inventory 2, Case 1241, ‘List of foreign passports issued (1892– 1899)’, Odessa City Governor’s Office, contains a list of around 2,400 names. To obtain a passport to travel abroad, a Jew would need to obtain the following documents: ordinary citizen’s identity card, certificate from the chief of police confirming that there was no objection to the applicant leaving the country, certification of regimentation with military enlistment registration office, or notice of completion of military service, and a Treasury certificate showing the payment of a passport application fee of fifteen roubles.
44. Reilly’s Deuxième Bureau file 28779/25 was among French intelligence material taken by the Germans to Berlin after the fall of France in 1940. The Russians, in turn, took the consignment to Moscow in 1945. Between December 1993 and May 1994 some 10,326 cartons of material weighing twenty tons were returned to the French by the Russians. The French maintained that 10,000 boxes of material, including file 28779/25, still remained in Russian hands. After a hiatus of five years the Russians returned a further 900 metres length of archives in 2000. A number of files, however, including 28779/25, remain in the still restricted Osobyi Archiv at the Russian State Military Archive, Moscow: Fond 7k, opis 2, delo 3047; Fond 7k, opis 1, delo 104, pp.256–64; Fond 198k, opis 2, delo 1057, p.68.
45. According to file F7 12894 (Police reports on Russian refugees in Paris) and F7 12904/7 (Anarchists in France and abroad – 1892/1923) in the National Archives, Paris, the 4th and 5th districts of Paris were the principal areas where Russian refugees, Jews and students resided during the 1890s. These two districts also feature in three other files, F7 12591/12596/12600 (Description sheets for aliens and suspects 188/1907).