William Melville

 ( Civil Servants In The War Office ) 

In 1893 Melville became Superintendent of Scotland Yard's Special Branch when his predecessor John Littlechild retired to become a private investigator. When he fired veteran sergeant Patrick McIntyre, McIntyre went to the press and claimed that Melville had instigated the whole Walsall Plot himself, a claim vindicated by police files released over 80 years later.

In the next ten years, Melville embarked on a large series of well-publicized raids against anarchists. He went to Victoria Station to personally arrest bomber Théodule Meunier. In 1896 Melville recruited Sidney Reilly (later known as Sidney Reilly) as an informer in an organization he suspected to be involved with Russian anarchists.

In 1901 he worked with Gustav Steinhauer of the German Secret Service to thwart a plot against the Kaiser during the state funeral of Queen Victoria. In June 1900 Melville met future stage magician Harry Houdini when he came to Scotland Yard to showcase his abilities as an escapologist. When Houdini released himself easily from the police handcuffs, Melville befriended him and reputedly learned lock picking.

On 1 November 1903, Melville resigned as superintendent but was secretly recruited to lead a new intelligence section in the War Office, MO3, which was redesignated M05 in 1907.Andrew, p. 6 Working under commercial cover from an unassuming flat in London under the alias persona William Morgan, Melville ran both counterintelligence and foreign intelligence operations, capitalizing on the knowledge and foreign contacts he had accumulated during his years running Special Branch. In 1909 the Government Committee on Intelligence, with advocacy of Richard Burden Haldane and Winston Churchill, established a new Secret Service Bureau with a Home Section under command of Captain Vernon Kell and a Foreign Section under Commander Sir Mansfield Cumming. Melville's unit was folded into Kell's department, which, while acting in Home matters, remained subordinate to the War Office.Andrew, p. 21 By 1910 it was clear that the Home Section and the Foreign Section would seek their own identities, and Kell's department, the Security Service separated from Cummings' Secret Intelligence Service.Andrew, p. 27

According to the conclusions of author Andrew Cook, his biographer, which are not accepted by all historians, Melville then became the head of British Secret Service with the code name "M". Still, the service had a small budget and on occasion, Melville had to do the job himself.