William Melville

William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau.

Birth William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, County Kerry, the son of a baker and publican. He moved to London in the 1860s and followed his father's footsteps as a baker before he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1872.

Scotland Yard In 1882 he was chosen to be one of the founding members of the Special Irish Branch that was founded to work against Fenians and anarchists.

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. 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. 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.

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.

Secret Service Bureau Melville's own section continued as a separate Special Section of the Secret Service Bureau and he concentrated on looking for German spies. In August 1914 the Bureau eventually identified the barbershop of Karl Gustav Ernst as the centre of a German spy ring.

Death William Melville died in London of kidney failure in February 1918.