INTERESTING REMINISCENCES.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 64, 17 March 1910, Page 8

INTERESTING REMINISCENCES.

Sir Robert Anderson, who as head of the Criminal Investigation Departmen, tracked down the Irish Fenians, records'some of his'experiences in the new number of "Blackwood's." He says that Mrs O'Shea negotiated the Kilmainham treatj' with Mr Gladstone in a tete-a-tete in Thomas's Hotel in Berkeley Squaire. Many a great man has been fooled by a woman, Sir R. Anderson adds. He also relates how he got certain Fenians into Government paj r . The London leaders of the movement'formed a plot to discover who their' enemy was at Whitehall. "A letter came to Whitehall from a Fenian whom I knew by repute as one of tli'e most active and dangerous of the Loudon Fenians. He wished to give information to the Government. I met the fellow by appointment one night in a house in Westminster. He lied to me for an hour, during which I listened as though I believed all he was telling me. This, as I expected, led him to ask for money. I then pretended to lose my temper. He had asked to see me in order to give information to the Government, and I had come prepared to pay him handsomely, but I was not to be fooled by the yarns he was giving me. As I spoke I took a handful of sovereigns out of my pocket and jingled them before him. The greedy look- on his face told its own tale. He pleaded that if I would give him time he would get me all I wished to know, and he meekly asked for his 'expenses'.' I saw that the baits had taken,, so I gave him a couple of pounds. The man made good his promises,' but lest he should fail me, I was anxious to get hold of another of the leaders. The London Fenians at this time had copied the American plan of having a public side to the conspiracy, and in furtherance of this scheme they had started a brass band. The instruments were placed in charge of one of. the most trusted of their members. I learned by chance one day that, being behind with" his rent, this fellow had pawned these instruments, and that he was in a state of trepidation owing to their being wanted for an anniversary procession, and he had not money to redeem them. This gave me a chance and within a few weeks of my being commissioned by the Secretary of State, I had the most influential London Fenians in my pay. What grand copy it would have been for the newspapers of that time if, in describing the Fenian procession that followed, they could have added that the band instruments had been taken out of pawn with money supplied by the Home Office. I will only add that the hold thus obtained upon the London organisation prevented the commission of Fenian outrages at a critical time, and, further, that the information I received from these men was never used to bring a criminal charge against any member of the conspiracy."