Cyril and Eva: a 1930s detective team

One couple were a real partnership in the London detective world, but they were as secretive as their job

It’s not unusual for a wife, or more rarely, a daughter, to have helped the ‘man of the house’ with his detective work. A smaller-scale male detective working for himself might ask his wife to take on administrative work for him, or even to shadow people herself; if he was a police detective, he might teach his wife the tricks of the trade, and when he retire, she might become a private detective herself.

What isn’t so commonly recorded, is where a wife took on a more equal role with her husband. Therefore, one entry in the 1939 Register is unusual.

Extract from the 1939 Register on Findmypast

Cyril and Eva Beresford lived in north London - earlier in the 1930s, they may have been based in the St Pancras area, but they had moved to Islington by 1937. Cyril grandly described himself as the proprietor of a detective agency, with Eva as the agency’s staff manager, as well as its driver.

I’m not sure whether they had a separate business address, although I suspect they operated from their Islington flat. If Eva managed staff, it might only have been a couple of individuals - or she could have arranged for ‘freelance’ detectives to help on on specific jobs.

There are no press adverts for a Beresford detective agency, and little information about Cyril and Eva themselves. I’m assuming they’re husband and wife, despite their 26 year age gap, but there’s no record either of their marriage, nor of Eva’s birth (if she’s a daughter of Cyril) in England and Wales. Eva may have actually been an Evelyn but known as Eva.

The only other thing I know about Cyril is that during World War 2 he angrily wrote to the local newspaper complaining that he and his neighbours were being painted as nuisances by the local council for repeatedly asking them to build a local air raid shelter for their flats. He pointed out that he had gathered a group from his community to build their own shelter, but the council had stopped them, saying it would provide one instead - but this had not materialised. He sounds like a good neighbour, willing to take on local bureaucracy and trying to ensure the safety of his community.

My suspicion is that either Cyril used his middle name, or a preferred name, as his first, and/or that he may have originally been from abroad. There are certainly a couple of men of his name in Australia and the US earlier in the 20th century. An alternative is that he was the man of the same name who was active in the theatrical world until the start of the 1930s, but I can’t prove this. I also think that he died in 1952; but beyond this, the only reference to this intriguing couple - outside of a few street directories - seems to be the brief entry for them in this one archival record.

If you know any more about the Beresfords, do let me know!