Thomas Miller Beach

Thomas Miller Beach (who used the alias Major Henri Le Caron) (September 26, 1841- April 1, 1894), British spy, was born in Colchester, England.

His services enabled the British Government to take measures which led to the fiasco of the Canadian invasion of 1870 and Kiel's surrender in 1871, and he supplied full details concerning the various Irish-American associations, in which he himself was a prominent member.

For twenty-five years he lived in Detroit, Michigan and other places in the United States, paying occasional visits to Europe, and all the time carrying his life in his hand.

Early career

He was an adventurous character, and when nineteen years old went to Paris, where he found employment in business connected with America.

Army life

Infected with the excitement of the American Civil War, he crossed the Atlantic in 1861 and enlisted in the Northern army, taking the name of Henri Le Caron.

In 1864, he married a young lady who had helped him to escape from some Confederate marauders; and by the end of the war he rose to the rank of major. In 1865, through a companion in arms named John O'Neill, he was brought into contact with Fenianism, and having learnt of the Fenian plot against Canada (the Fenian raids), he mentioned the designs when writing home to his father in England. Beach's father told his local M.P., who in turn told the Home Secretary, and the latter asked Mr. Beach to arrange for further information.

Irish connections

He was proficient in medicine, among other qualifications for this post, and he remained for years on intimate terms with the most extreme men in the Fenian organization.

He was in the secrets of the "new departure" in 1879-1881, and in the latter year had an interview with Charles Stewart Parnell at the House of Commons, when the Irish leader spoke sympathetically of an armed revolution in Ireland.

End of career

The Parnell Commission of 1889 put an end to his spying career. Le Caron was subpoenaed by The Times, and in the witness-box the whole story came out, all the efforts of Sir Charles Russell in cross-examination failing to shake his testimony, or to impair the impression of iron tenacity and absolute truthfulness which his bearing conveyed. His career, however, for good or evil, was at an end.

Autobiography

He published the story of his life, "Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service", and it had an immense circulation. But he had to be constantly guarded, his acquaintances were hampered from seeing him, and he was the victim of a painful disease, from which he died on the 1st of April 1894.

References

*1911
* "The Spy who came in from the Coalfield, A British Spy in Illinois", Joseph Clark, Journal of Illinois History, vol 10, no. 2, Summer, 2007