To coincide with the publication of her historical true-crime novel 13 Park Lane, Vauxhall History co-editor Naomi Clifford explores the life of one of the characters, who lived in South Lambeth Road
On 29 December 1882, at 64 South Lambeth Road, Nathaniel Thomas John Druscovich, formerly a detective chief inspector in the Metropolitan Police Force but now suffering from prison-acquired tuberculosis, drew his last breath. He was thirty-nine. What had brought the golden boy of Scotland Yard, once feted as a ‘master detective’, so low?
Nathaniel Druscovich was born in 1842 in St George’s in the East, in Tower Hamlets, east London, the oldest child of Matthew Druscovich, a Moldavan carpenter and boatbuilder, and Susannah Orpwood. Little is known about Matthew and Susannah, except that the family, which included Nathaniel’s two sisters and a younger brother, lived for some time in Wallachia,[1]A historical and geographical region of modern-day Romania, north of the Lower Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians. where Nathaniel attended school.
At the time of the 1861 census, Druscovich, then nineteen, was working at a grain weigher in West India Docks and lodging in Poplar, east London. Three years later, he joined the Metropolitan Police and was initially assigned to C Division (St James) as a uniformed constable. He is known to have worked at the London World Exhibition of 1862 in South Kensington and as a clerk in the superintendent’s office. Within only a few months he was promoted to temporary detective police sergeant, becoming permanent in May 1866.[2]Griffin, Rachael (2015). Detective Policing and the State in Nineteenth-Century England: The Detective Department of the London Metropolitan Police, 1842-1878. PhD thesis, University of Western … Continue reading
In 1867 Druscovich married Elvina Le Capelain, who was born in Jersey and had been living in London since at least 1851.[3]1851 England Census. Class: HO107; Piece: 1467; Folio: 556; Page: 63; GSU roll: 87788-87789. How the two met is unknown, but it is worth noting that Elvina’s recently deceased father, a failed engineer and patent agent, had been imprisoned in 1852 for stealing gold watches and had served a sentence of hard labour.
Metropolitan Police detectives were at this time, in effect, direct agents of the British government. The duties of detectives included monitoring foreign nationals and refugees arriving in England following European revolutions in 1830 and 1848, evaluating naturalisation applications and executing extraditions. Druscovich was uniquely suited to these cases. While he was not the only Scotland Yard detective able to speak other European languages, he was fluent in a number of them, and this, coupled with his easy manner, willingness to go undercover and excellent report-writing, made him a natural choice for this work.
In May 1869, when he was still only twenty-seven, Druscovich was further promoted, to the rank of inspector and to chief inspector the following year.
The 1871 census shows Nathaniel and Elvina Druscovich living in rented rooms at 20B Vincent Square, Victoria. At some later point they moved to 64 South Lambeth Road, a run of terraced houses occupying the site where the office block 66 now stands,[4]The terrace was demolished and replaced with Coronation Buildings, a tenement complex. and facing Carroun House and The Lawns, a set of upmarket semi-detached villas set back from the main road. The residents there included, notably, Susannah Meredith, a widowed social worker who devoted her life to the welfare of post-release convict women, and the suffragist Millicent Fawcett and her MP husband Henry Fawcett. Vauxhall Park was not yet in existence.
Newspaper editors loved Druscovich, who was known for his dapper clothes and willingness to go the extra mile. Writing in The Sketch in 1927, George Dilnot described him as having ‘a reputation for quick-witted intelligence and resource… He stood out among his colleagues for the reason that he was a man of culture and education.’ His education and attractive appearance meant that he was assigned to cases of white-collar crime, especially forgery and fraud. The 1860s and 1870s saw a government crackdown on this type of crime because it was deemed to threaten the paper economy on which the British Empire rested.
Among the high-profile cases Druscovich was given was that of Vital Douat, who owned what appeared to be a thriving wine business in Bordeaux, France. In 1865 Douat went to Paris to negotiate a life insurance contract for around £5,000,[5]Approximately £200,000 in today’s currency. and paid the first premium, after which he gave the policy document to his wife for safe-keeping. Douat’s business promptly went bankrupt and he decided to leave France to start afresh in London. Unfortunately, he died of an aneurysm in his East End lodgings. His widow presented her claim in Paris and handed over the necessary documents but the insurance company, suspecting fraud, alerted the French police, who asked Scotland Yard to look into the circumstances of Douat’s death. Druscovich discovered that Douat had faked his own death, even going to the trouble of organising a funeral and attending it as the only mourner. The coffin was filled with metal make-weight as Druscovich discovered after he applied for an exhumation.[6]Dilnot, George. Masterpieces of Detection: Douat’s Convenient Death. The Sketch, 2 Nov. 1927.
Nathaniel Druscovich came to my attention when I was researching my book 13 Park Lane,[7]Clifford, Naomi (2024), 13 Park Lane. Cambridge: Bloodhound Books. about the murder in 1872 of Madame Riel by her Belgian cook, Marguerite Diblanc, in Mayfair. After the killing, Marguerite fled to Paris. Detective chief inspector Druscovich and his colleague James Pay were sent to Paris to help the French police to track her down. She was arrested within days and was held by the French authorities, awaiting extradition.
Druscovich accompanied Diblanc to London on her journey home and gave evidence at her Old Bailey trial. By this time Druscovich was well known to the newspaper-reading public. His unusual name and immaculate appearance made him something of a media darling but at Scotland Yard he made enemies of some of the other detectives, who complained about his ‘foreignness’.
One senior colleague commented on Druscovich in 1877 (after his fall from grace):
‘My individual opinion is that it is unwise to let foreigners have anything to do with our police. They think a great deal of themselves, they take too much upon themselves and they get into difficulties. I was strongly opposed to Druscovich coming to Scotland Yard and I advised them at the time not to have him…. I thought there was a good deal of the foreigner in him, because when he first came to Scotland Yard… his English was almost broken English.’[8]HO 45/9442/66692 Minutes of Evidence, National Archives, quoted in Payne, Chris (2011), The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through the Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective. Stroud: The History Press.
While he was a favourite with the public, there was another side to Druscovich, which he had in common with almost all his colleagues. He was susceptible to bribes. When, three years after the Marguerite Diblanc case, Superintendent Adolphus ‘Dolly’ Williamson gave Druscovich responsibility for investigating another case with overseas links, he set him on a path to destruction. At the core of the case was a betting swindle initiated in London by two rogues, Harry Benson and William Kurr, whose aim was to defraud French punters by convincing them that there was such a thing as a ‘sure bet’. One of their marks, the elderly Comtesse de Goncourt, was cheated out of £10,000[9]Approximately £400,000 now. and instructed her legal representatives to raise the issue with Scotland Yard’s Detective Department.
Druscovich took an unusually long time, four months, to arrest the swindlers during which it became clear that two of his senior colleagues, Chief Inspector William Palmer and Inspector John Meiklejohn (another Lambeth resident – he lived at 202 South Lambeth Road[10]The Old Bailey transcript of the Trial of the Detectives (see fn. 14) shows that Druscovich had meetings with Meiklejohn at the Swan Inn, Stockwell.), were in the pay of the villains and that Druscovich was turning a blind eye to Meiklejohn’s close collusion with the criminals. All three officers were arrested, along with Chief Inspector George Clarke and the solicitor John Henry Froggatt, and arraigned at Bow Street, and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Druscovich, it became clear, had accepted a loan of £60, which immediately made him to vulnerable to blackmail by the gang.[11]See Dilnot, George, The Trial of the Detectives. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Dilnot explains succinctly the intricacies of the fraud and the trial in the introduction. Chris Payne’s … Continue reading
Why did Druscovich to sabotage his career? How had he managed to get in so deep with the swindlers? As a chief inspector he could expect an annual salary of £276, placing him comfortably in the middle class. In addition, his perks included rewards for demonstrating exceptional skill and excellence. For example, Druscovich collected £7 10s for the apprehension of Marguerite Diblanc and his colleague James Pay £10.[12]HO 144/11984/34. National Archives. Possibly Druscovich over-reached himself financially and suffered a temporary cash crisis which coincided with a plea for help from his younger brother John, who had accrued substantial debts and legal troubles.[13]Edinburgh Evening News, 14 August 1877. John Vincent Druscovich was arrested in Manchester and charged with conspiring to defraud a watch and clock manufacturer. It is interesting that after his arrest additional cash and jewellery were found at his 64 Lambeth Road home.
On 19 November 1877, after a nineteen-day trial at the Old Bailey, Druscovich was found guilty of perverting justice, and although the jury recommended mercy in recognition of his long and exemplary service, the judge, Baron Pollock, sentenced him, Meiklejohn, Palmer and Froggatt to the maximum term of two years hard labour.[14]Old Bailey Proceedings Online (t18771022-805). Available at: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t18771022-805 (Accessed: 29 September 2024).Clarke was acquitted. Druscovich was held in Coldbath Fields Prison, where, according to newspaper reports, he tried to kill himself.[15]Waltham Abbey and Cheshunt Weekly Telegraph, 28 July 1877.
On his release in October 1879, Druscovich returned to South Lambeth Road and set himself up as a private inquiry agent, using his home as his office.
He, Elvina and her widowed sister Amelia Bush, and a young servant, are listed there on the 1881 census.[16]1881 England Census. Class: RG11; Piece: 602; Folio: 143; Page: 8; GSU roll: 1341138. A newspaper report suggests that he was offered a job with the Pinkerton agency in Chicago. Nothing came of it. He may have known by then that he had contracted tuberculosis. He died at the house on 29 December of that year. His burial place is unknown.
Elvina and her sister remained at 64 South Lambeth Road for at least ten years, but by 1891 were sharing the house with two other people.[17]1891 England Census. Class: RG12; Piece: 399; Folio: 174; Page: 5; GSU roll: 6095509. Eventually, they moved to Islington, north London. Elvina died in 1916.
The Turf Fraud Scandal demonstrated the vulnerability of police detectives to corruption. A radical restructure was ordered and resulted in the formation of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
13 Park Lane by Naomi Clifford, a brand new dark historical mystery based on real events, published by Bloodhound Books available in ebook and paperback, with an audiobook coming 17 December 2024
References
↑1 | A historical and geographical region of modern-day Romania, north of the Lower Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians. |
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↑2 | Griffin, Rachael (2015). Detective Policing and the State in Nineteenth-Century England: The Detective Department of the London Metropolitan Police, 1842-1878. PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario. |
↑3 | 1851 England Census. Class: HO107; Piece: 1467; Folio: 556; Page: 63; GSU roll: 87788-87789. |
↑4 | The terrace was demolished and replaced with Coronation Buildings, a tenement complex. |
↑5 | Approximately £200,000 in today’s currency. |
↑6 | Dilnot, George. Masterpieces of Detection: Douat’s Convenient Death. The Sketch, 2 Nov. 1927. |
↑7 | Clifford, Naomi (2024), 13 Park Lane. Cambridge: Bloodhound Books. |
↑8 | HO 45/9442/66692 Minutes of Evidence, National Archives, quoted in Payne, Chris (2011), The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through the Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective. Stroud: The History Press. |
↑9 | Approximately £400,000 now. |
↑10 | The Old Bailey transcript of the Trial of the Detectives (see fn. 14) shows that Druscovich had meetings with Meiklejohn at the Swan Inn, Stockwell. |
↑11 | See Dilnot, George, The Trial of the Detectives. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Dilnot explains succinctly the intricacies of the fraud and the trial in the introduction. Chris Payne’s The Chieftain (see fn. 8) also covers the trial in detail. |
↑12 | HO 144/11984/34. National Archives. |
↑13 | Edinburgh Evening News, 14 August 1877. John Vincent Druscovich was arrested in Manchester and charged with conspiring to defraud a watch and clock manufacturer. |
↑14 | Old Bailey Proceedings Online (t18771022-805). Available at: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t18771022-805 (Accessed: 29 September 2024). |
↑15 | Waltham Abbey and Cheshunt Weekly Telegraph, 28 July 1877. |
↑16 | 1881 England Census. Class: RG11; Piece: 602; Folio: 143; Page: 8; GSU roll: 1341138. |
↑17 | 1891 England Census. Class: RG12; Piece: 399; Folio: 174; Page: 5; GSU roll: 6095509. |