Thomas Miller Beach

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Thomas Miller Beach, who used the alias Major Henri Le Caron, was an English spy who lived from 1841 to 1894. For about 25 years he lived in Detroit and other parts of the United States, with visits to Europe.

He was born in Colchester, England. At 19 he went to Paris to work in business connected with the United States. After being inspired by the American Civil War, he moved to the United States in 1861 and joined the Union Army under the name Henri Le Caron. In 1864 he married a young woman who had helped him escape from a Confederate militia, and by the end of the war he had reached the rank of Major.

In 1865 he came into contact with the Fenian Brotherhood through fellow Union soldier John O’Neill. He learned about planned Fenian raids against Canada and told his father in England about them. His father alerted a local Member of Parliament, who then asked the Home Secretary for more information. Beach’s information helped the British government take steps that contributed to the failure of the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1870 and to Kiel’s surrender in 1871. He provided detailed information about various Irish-American groups, in which he was a leading member. His successful infiltration of the Fenian Brotherhood and Clan na Gael aided the defense of Upper Canada from Fenian raids and helped stop the Fenian Dynamite Campaign.

To protect his cover, Beach and his handlers blamed the deaths and arrests of Clan na Gael dynamite bombers on Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, whose murder occurred in Chicago in 1889. Beach was skilled in medicine and remained close to some of the most extreme Fenian leaders. He knew about the “new departure” in 1879–1881, and in 1881 he met Charles Stewart Parnell at the House of Commons, where Parnell reportedly spoke sympathetically about an armed nationalist movement in Ireland.

The Parnell Commission of 1889 ended Beach’s spying career. He was called to testify by The Times, and his account stood up to cross-examination; The Times lost the case, and Parnell was fully exonerated. Beach published his life story, Twenty-five Years in the Secret Service, in 1892. He remained guarded, and his acquaintances were kept apart from him; he also suffered from peritonitis.

Thomas Miller Beach died on 1 April 1894 and is buried in London.