Just one newspaper advert
How do you find out about a detective when they only advertised their services once?
Sometimes, the records of a private detective, even in the 20th century, raise more questions than they answer. Such is the case with James Francis Marrinan. The evidence for him being a private detective lies in a single press advert that has been digitised at the British Newspaper Archive. This advert is bold in its approach:
The Northern Whig, 10 June 1927, p.5 (via British Newspaper Archive)
How do you go about finding out more about Marrinan’s detective career from across the Irish Sea in England, where I am based? Firstly, I tried searching for the street address. 30 Rosemary Street, though, was in Belfast, and home to several businesses over the course of the 1920s, including a firm of solicitors and a supplier of amusements to bazaars and carnivals. Some of these businesses came and went in quick succession, including, it seems, Marrinan’s agency.
It was possible, however, to find out what Marrinan had done BEFORE becoming a detective. The 1911 census for Ireland had only one Marrinan with the right initials living in Northern Ireland. This was James Francis Marrinan, born in 1875 in County Louth, and the 1911 census recorded him as a constable with the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Baptism registers show that James Francis Marrinan, the son of Patrick Marrinan and his wife Sarah (nee McGrath), was from Clonmore, County Louth, and was baptised on 2 May 1875. He married Emily Adelaide O’Neill in Belfast in early 1906, and by the end of that year, their son, Patrick Hamilton Marrinan, had been born.
Luckily, the Royal Irish Constabulary Pension Registers are held by The National Archives in Kew, and have been digitised on Ancestry (partial transcriptions are also available on Findmypast). These show that James Marrinan joined the RIC at the age of 21 as a constable, and was in the constabulary until 1922. The RIC was deemed to no longer exist on 2 April 1922, but it took another four months for its disbandment to be completed. It was during this time, on 3 May 1922, that James Marrinan was discharged from service, with his pension starting on 1 June. He had served 23 years and 11 months in the RIC, and had been a sergeant for just over a year.
Many police officers and detectives in England took their pensions and then became private detectives, and it seems that in Belfast, James Marrinan did the same. Whether he did this from 1922, and either adverts don’t survive, or he gained work without advertising, is not clear; but press advertising was usually a vital part of the private detective’s kit, and so the lack of adverts might suggest that being a secret sleuth was a short career for Marrinan. I know, though, that there is still more to find out about James Francis Marrinan, and his life after the Royal Irish Constabulary.