Tracing the nameless detective

Often, detectives used pseudonyms, or the only evidence for them is anonymised reports. But there's another reason why some detectives are harder to find...

One of the issues I found when researching my book Sister Sleuths, a history of the British female private detective, was that earlier on in their history, the papers tended to report on the activities of private detectives without mentioning their names. This might be because they wanted to stay anonymous, but could also be because there was a message intended in the subject being reported that meant individual identity was not actually important to the editor or journalist. Alternatively, it could be that the detective was a fictional construct, used to create a deliberately provocative story to promote a certain politics.

The former Essex County Lunatic Asylum - image by John Winfield (cc)

Occasionally, though, you find another reason for a detective being largely nameless. I’ve found detectives present in the censuses as patients in asylums; sometimes, enumerators listed only the initials of a patient in order to preserve their privacy, and although this might be understandable, it does create challenges in working out who individuals might have been.

The following is one man I found in the 1911 census. He is a patient in the Essex County Lunatic Asylum in Brentwood, although his birthplace was Hackney. He is single, a private detective, aged 44, and has, according to the transcription, the initials H.J.H.

Image of the 1911 census (The National Archives/TheGenealogist)

Surely this is enough information to be able to establish his identity, by cross-referencing with other censuses, or with BMD information? I thought it should be fairly simple.

The first issue is that although the transcription gives the man’s initials as HJH, the original document makes it look as though the initials are actually HSH - a common genealogy advice is always to look at the original document, but in this case, is the original or the transcription right?

I looked up all the births of individuals with a first name and surname both starting in H, born in the Hackney district between 1866 and 1868. Only one boy had the middle initial of S - Herbert S Hatch, born in the September quarter of 1866. However, beyond his birth registration, I could find no proof of Herbert’s life. There was a Herbert Lincoln Hatch, born 1869 in London, whose life I could easily trace. There was a Herbert Hatch in Wiltshire and another in Gloucestershire, but neither appeared to have a middle name, nor be from London. The reason I couldn’t find Herbert S Hatch is because Herbert Stanley Hatch died within a year of his birth.

Herbert had been the obvious contender to be the struggling private detective, because his name was the only one that seemed to obviously match. What about an HJH? There was a Henry Joseph Horobin, born in Hackney, but he was a warehouseman living in Walthamstow in 1911; or a Henry John Hellier, but he was working as a ropemaker in Hackney in 1911. Neither was a private detective, nor were they incarcerated in an asylum.

Having initials, a birthplace, a year of birth and a profession should have made this patient quite easy to find - but it hasn’t been so far. Did this man work in the profession for long? Did he use a pseudonym, or have an office away from his birthplace? So far, I am none the wiser, apart from knowing that for at least one short spell in the early 20th century, he did not have the easiest of lives, and was sent to the mid-Victorian, overcrowded, Essex County asylum.