Thomas Miller Beach was an English spy who enlisted in the Northern army during the American Civil War. 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. He supplied full details concerning the various Irish-American associations, in which he himself was a prominent member. Although he was never officially caught, he was found out and forced to give up his life of secrecy.
Thomas Miller Beach (who used the alias Major Henri Le Caron) (26th September 1841— 1st April 1894) was an English spy.
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.
His infiltration of the Fenians and subsequent reports and espionage greatly aided Canada in protecting itself from the Fenian raids which took place from 1866-1871.
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
Beach was born in Colchester, England. He had 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 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 allegedly spoke sympathetically of an armed revolution in Ireland.
End of career
The Parnell Commission of 1889 put an end to Beach’s spying career. He 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. Nevertheless, The Times lost the case, Beach’s career, for good or evil, was at an end, and Parnell, who had always insisted that he was opposed to violence, was completely exonerated.
Autobiography
Beach published the story of his life, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, in 1892 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, peritonitis, from which he died on 1 April 1894.
