The war widow who became a female detective

Lilian Blair's detective work in the 1920s resulted in her being spit on by an angry wife

In 1917, Maud Evelyn Laura Morton separated from her husband, Edward Percy Morton, after having been married for just four years. Aged 28 at this time, she was the daughter of an émigré from Klaipèda, then in Prussia (now Lithuania), Eugene Stager (known by one of his middle names, William), who  - after working in France, where his two eldest children were born - had established himself as a woollen manufacturer in Bradford. He had been made bankrupt in 1894, and then had been in a serious accident in January 1895, lingering on until August that year, when he finally died.

Within a year, his widow, Clara, had married his younger brother, with Maud gaining two half siblings - twins - in addition to her own siblings. Her eldest brother, also named Eugene, died in 1899, aged just 22, and in 1901, one of her younger sisters was living in a local orphanage, even though her mother was still alive. Maud had therefore already had something of a tumultuous life when she married.

Although Maud and Edward separated, they did not try to divorce until 1926. At this stage, Maud was living in lodgings in Paddington, while her husband had stayed living in West Yorkshire. The motivation behind Maud finally petitioning for divorce appears to be rumours that her husband had been committing adultery with a woman at the Hotel Metropole in Blackpool. However, Edward Morton soon cross-petitioned for a divorce, arguing that his wife had been having an affair with a married surveyor named Gerald Hoile, who lived with his wife Catherine at Barnes in south-west London.

The main witness to her affair was another woman. This was Mrs Lilian Blair, who lived with her husband in the same house as Maud. She gave evidence in the Divorce Court that one evening, Maud had come home late from a dance, clearly drunk, and had admitted having been naughty with a man to Mrs Blair. It was Gerald Hoile who had taken her to the dance.

Maud had been to a dance with Gerald Hoile

After Lilian's evidence, Maud had been recalled and denied that she had done any such thing. However, at the close of the previous day's hearing, she had been heard to whisper to Mrs Blair,

            "You swine. I hope you will get your deserts some day."

She then spat at the woman in front of several people.

 Maud gained her divorce, and although she remarried, it was over a decade after the divorce, and not to Gerald Hoile - he remained living with his wife.

But who was Mrs Blair, who was described as a private detective? Her own story was even more interesting than Maud Morton's. Lilian was born Lily Maud Duggan in Kilburn in 1879, the second of six children born to Alfred Duggan, who worked as a smith or fitter, and his wife Ellen (nee Bracher). The family was working-class, living in various properties in Willesden, but - unusually, given their lives and infant mortality at the time - only one of the children died in infancy. In 1909, Lilian's father Alfred died, and her widowed mother moved into a flat and took on housework for other people to make a living.

Lily Maud Duggan soon changed her name to Lilian, and on 21 September 1916, she married dentist Herbert Rayson Sears. He was from a different background to hers: born in Northampton, he had been educated at Boston Grammar School before training to become a dental surgeon. The couple married at Marylebone, with the witnesses being Lilian's mother Ellen and sister Ethel.

Both of Lilian’s husbands were in the Royal Fusiliers during WW1

Of course, Lily had married in the middle of World War 1, and this explains why Herbert's profession was not given as dentist on the marriage certificate, but as a soldier with the 23rd Royal Fusiliers. In 1917, Herbert Rayson Sears was killed in action, with his name later placed on the Old Scholars Memorial in Boston.

In her 30s, and widowed after just a year of marriage, what was Lilian to do? She appears to have met Ernest George Blair, another soldier with the 23rd Royal Fusiliers, and on 20 April 1918, she married him.

Although Ernest is listed on the 1901 census as a chemist's porter, this was his first job, at the age of 15. What he had spent most of the intervening years between that and joining the army doing was working as a private detective, and he resumed that career after the war ended. He initially worked with his younger brother, Albert Victor Blair, and worked on the usual combination of cases, including divorces.

Ernest also appears to have worked with his wife. He presumably taught her a lot of his skills, but Lilian was a resourceful and independent woman in her own right, and knew how being a woman offered her useful detective skills that her husband might lack. She knew that instigating and nurturing friendships with other women, particularly those on their own, could lead to those women offering confidences, trusting her to the extent of not noticing her presence. She appears to have been a good listener, and a good observer.

The Blairs lived in lodgings in Paddington throughout the 1920s, and it was while they were living here that they met a fellow lodger, Maud Morton. Soon, Lilian knew about her separation from her husband, and she knew that Maud was friends with a married man who took her to dances. She monitored Maud and her movements, and when approached by Edward Morton to give evidence against his wife, that's what she did.

By 1939, the Blairs were living in Ealing, and although Ernest was still working as an enquiry agent - employed by a solicitor - his wife was listed as being a housewife. She may well have been; but it's hard not to believe that she was still there in the background, helping her husband on occasion with his assignments.