The Irish Sleuth-hound

John Walsh turned a police career into a successful detective agency with a Met colleague - but his personal life was as interesting as his professional one

His was a police career that was remembered long after he retired. John Walsh, originally from the town of Mallow in County Cork, had joined the Metropolitan Police in the late 1870s, and was working at Scotland Yard from 1883, reaching the rank of Detective-Inspector. He retired in 1907, aged 50. Four years later, he was the subject of his own column in one newspaper entitled The Feats of Detective Walsh, which gives an indication as to how he was perceived.

London’s notorious Seven Dials area, by George Cruikshank

One column noted how he had tried to enter a den in Seven Dials to capture a criminal named Dempsey. Two of Dempsey's friends were on the roof, and threw down a heavy coping stone, aiming to 'crush Walsh to a jelly'. It missed him by an inch. He was regarded as being 'as agile as a cat', yet the strongest man in the Metropolitan Police: he was 6 ft 2 and weighed 16 stone, and had the power to persuade the hardest of criminals to give themselves up rather than face his power.

Walsh was also in demand as a bodyguard, looking after the members of European royalty on their visits to Britain, from the Russian Tsar to the German Emperor. After nearly 30 years of service, however, he left the police. Within weeks, he was advertising his services as a private detective:

John Walsh, ex-Detective Inspector, New Scotland Yard, after 29 years' worldwide experience, now undertakes Private and Confidential Inquiries: a thorough, honest and reliable business.

In 1908, Walsh's business was based at John Street, Adelphi, between the Strand and the Thames. When his friend and police colleague James Stockley (who will feature in a separate article next month) retired in 1911, the two men briefly joined forces as Stockley and Walsh, still running their joint agency from John Street.

Outside of his detective work, Walsh had an interesting home life. In 1886, he had married Susan Sly in her hometown of Weymouth, Dorset. Susan, born like Walsh in 1857, was one of 11 children born to hotel-keeper Solomon Sly, and his wife Elizabeth. John and Susan had settled in Battersea with their two children, John George  - born in 1888 - and Norah Eleanor, born six years later. Susan died in 1909, and within two years, Walsh married her younger sister, Jane.

John Walsh did not need to marry his sister-in-law in order to bring up his children: at the time of their marriage, her niece was 17 and her nephew 23. Perhaps John had become very close to his wife's family; perhaps he was not a man who could live alone. But he married his wife's sister, and this second marriage seems - at least from what we can tell - a happy one. As both John and Jane were middle aged at the time of the marriage, there were no more children.

John George Walsh, John's son, followed his father into private detective work. But his father soon retired from this second profession; it could be that he was in ill-health and could not maintain the hours and subterfuge involved in private detection. He left the agency under the competent leadership of James Stockley, and retired for the second time. In May 1917, aged 59, he died at home in Clapham.

Not much is known about this Irishman's career as a private detective, although it's likely that he was in demand as a bodyguard, as spoke of his ease in locating others to do this job as well, in addition to finding guard-dogs for individuals and organisation.

As a police detective, though, we know that he was nicknamed The Sleuth-hound for his detection abilities, and that he was both respected and feared because of his courage, his physical presence, and his ability to escape danger. He would have applied these abilities to his private detection work, and no doubt was a success for the brief time he worked in the field before his second retirement.