A Detective and a Thief

Thomas Boal gave private detectives a bad name, appearing in the press more as a thief than anything else...

In April 1898, at London's Marlborough Street Police Court, Thomas Boal appeared, charged with stealing household furniture from Helene Hill, a laundress.

Boal was a private detective who had removed Helene's furniture as part of his job. She had been living at 2 Little Dean Street, in Soho, where, although ostensibly a laundress, she was running a brothel. She was convicted of this in October 1897 and fined £25; but she was unable to pay the fine and so was sent to Holloway Prison. While there, she asked a friend to try to sell some of her furniture - which she had bought from Germany - in order to pay her fine and thus be released from prison. The friend found that there was no furniture in the house to be sold.

Holloway Prison: image taken the year before Helene Hill’s incarceration

Helene Hill was understandably furious. She owed no rent; she had given nobody the authority to remove her goods. It emerged that Thomas Boal had taken the furniture and asked Bonhams, the auctioneers, to sell it for him and two other men. The goods were sold, and Boal received a cheque for over £11.

As Boal worked as a private detective, he may have been asked to sort out financial issues for a client, and did so without Helene's knowledge. However, his later actions showed that this was a pattern of behaviour - to behave unethically, and in fact criminally, to carry out his work. A couple of years later, he had stolen the property of two army officers. Then, in 1907, he was charged with stealing or receiving letters containing cheques.  He interfered with the post, he broke into homes to steal goods: anything in order to complete a case.

Boal worked as a private detective from at least 1898 until 1907. Born in 1846, there is little known of him outside of his court appearances, although he lived in London. In 1900, he was living in Acton Lane, Chiswick; in 1907, he was at Cromer Street, St Pancras. On one occasion, in 1900, he was a complainant in court when he accused a musician of 'persistently annoying him' in Wandsworth's High Street, but he was usually a defendant.

Bedford Square: Thomas Boal was in this area in 1907, when he stole cheques from a builder’s letterbox (image by Sir James, used under creative commons)

The 1907 theft case is interesting, as Thomas Boal appears in the records of the Old Bailey charged with stealing the cheques. However, the Old Bailey records him as being a mechanic rather than a private detective. He was accused of stealing cheques from the letter box of builder Frank Bush near Bedford Square; when he was brought to the police, he claimed he had already gone to a different police station to “explain about the cheque that I tried to cash”. He claimed that he had been given it by another man, and asked to change it for cash; however, the cheque appeared to have been forged, and Boal had run away when challenged about it. He was convicted of theft, and sentenced to 12 months' hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs. He also confessed to a previous 1903 conviction for assault.

Wormwood Scrubs, where Boal was sent in 1907 (image by Chmee2, used under creative commons)

The Digital Panopticon describes Boal as an Irish-born man, with a scarred nose and tattoos on his finger and forearm. He was 5 foot 5 inches tall, with brown hair and grey eyes. There is also a Thomas Boal in the 1891 census, living in Greenwich with his wife and five children. He is from Ireland, and working as a sewing machine agent. However, he is ten years younger than the private detective's stated age, although age discrepancies aren't unusual in the censuses. It’s also possible that ‘Boal’ was a misspelling of the man’s name, based on his accent - it could have been something like ‘Ball’, for example.

Are both or one of these men the private detective? I believe that the man with the 1903 and 1907 convictions are also the private detective who had sold Helene Hill's furniture. However, not much else can be found out about him - but he was certainly a man who was motivated by money, and who would do anything to get it.