Press of the Yard: Gentleman, Detective, and Fraudster

Former police sergeant Henry Press put his private detective skills, and enjoyment of performing, to criminal use

Up to the mid 1870s, Henry James Press was a respectable gentleman, to all intents and purposes. He was a husband, and a father, living with his family in Paddington; he was a police sergeant working for the Metropolitan Police. But then, something went wrong. By 1880, he had abandoned his family to the workhouse. He was a private detective in Manchester, living in sin with a known thief, stealing himself. He was a man wanted by the police in both Manchester and London.

First, we rewind his life. Henry James Press was born in Greenwich in late 1847, the son of Henry, a shoemaker originally from Cambridge, and Charlotte, from Essex. In 1866, he married Sarah Ann Barnard, and the 1871 census records the couple as living at 20 Amberley Road in Paddington. Henry, aged 23, had become a constable in the Met.

Henry and Sarah would have seven children between 1867 and 1879 - five boys (Henry John William, George, Herbert, Augustus, and Walter) and two girls. Both his daughters, Nellie and Bessie, his youngest children would die before their second birthdays - Nellie in 1879 and Bessie in late 1881. In October 1874, the four older boys were baptised together at St Mary's Church in Paddington, their father's occupation listed as police sergeant.

Henry Press had a respectable career in the Metropolitan Police, but at some point, he was discharged due to being physically unfit. He left, however, with an "excellent character". He had a taste for excitement, and initially, after leaving the police, he tried to become an actor, getting jobs in what were termed "minstrel entertainments". He did not manage to make a living this way, though, and so became a private detective. He would later state that he enjoyed the disguises and fake names he had to utilise in this new career.

A view of Paddington, © Nell Darby

In 1880, Henry became bored of his family, who he had moved from Paddington to Camberwell, south of the Thames. He walked out on his wife Sarah, who had lost their daughter Nellie months before, and who had only recently had baby Bessie. He walked out on his sons, who were aged between three and 12. To all intents and purposes, he had disappeared, and Sarah was soon reliant on parish relief to feed and maintain her family. He had left her destitute.

Henry, described as a 'gentlemanly looking man' was anything but a gentleman. He had fled to Manchester, and in the summer of 1880, was discovered there, living in digs at Strangeways with a woman going by the name of Bessie Hill. He and Bessie had formed a criminal partnership, stealing items that were then pawned for money. The couple - who had taken rooms under the names of Captain and Mrs Dyson - were living off the profits of their frauds.

A view of Manchester, Ⓒ Nell Darby

Eventually, the Manchester police started investigating this series of frauds and thefts, which included stealing a silver watch and another gold watch from a Norwich man. They tracked the suspects down to the rooms at Nightingale Street, Strangeways, and one day, 8 August 1880, Detective Inspector McLelland called on Captain Dyson. He and his 'wife' were out, and so he called again - only to find them making preparations for a hasty departure. They were detained on charges of obtaining goods by fraud. A large number of pawn tickets were found in the rooms, given by pawnshops across the north-west of England.

Although Henry Press had worked as a private detective after leaving the police, his excuse that he had operated in Manchester under various names and disguises purely as part of his detective work was not believed by the Manchester force. When he appeared at the Manchester City Police Court, charged with fraud, the court heard that there was a current warrant out for his apprehension as a result of leaving his family chargeable to their local parish.

I'm not sure whether Henry was convicted of fraud, and the references I can find to an individual of his name in the criminal registers is for a different man. However, I do know what happened to him and his family.

The 1881 census shows that the Press boys were sent to the West London District School in Ashford - a residential school for workhouse children. They were separated from their parents, living as 'inmates' despite little Walter still only being four years old. One-year-old Bessie had been farmed out to a family in Greenwich, and would die only a few months after the census was taken. As older boys, the children were boarding with other families, making their own way in the world. Sarah Ann Press disappears from the record after the mention of her being destitute in 1880, although there is the possibility that she remained living and working in Greenwich, as someone of the right name and age died there in 1914.

And Henry Press? He upped sticks and emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, where, in 1894, he married another English emigre (possibly bigamously). He found work as a cashier, and remained in the US, dying in Cambridge, near Boston, in 1905, of what was termed an 'organic brain disease'.

A view of Boston, © Nell Darby

This private detective found that his skills in disguising his identity were useful both in this job, and in his subsequent criminal career. He represented what the press saw as the dangers of private detection, and the possibility that some in the profession might use their job for nefarious purposes. In Henry's case, his police and detective career gave him skills that he then decided to use for a short career as a thief - and in the process, he abandoned both his family and his good name.