Delusion: The True Story of Victorian Superspy Henri Le Caron

by Peter Edwards

As the Dominion of Canada was still a prt of the British Empire in 1866, it was a target for Irish rebels living in the United States seeking Ireland’s liberation from British occupation. Using numerous aliases, British secret operative Henri Le Caron (1841-1894) risked everything — career, family, and even his life — for Queen and country. This exciting story, based on extensive research and featuring historical photographs, profiles the early history of Canadian, British, and American intelligence gathering and one man’s surprising place in it.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

344 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2008

About the author

Peter Edwards has written for The Toronto Star for almost thirty years, specializing in organized crime and justice issues. He’s the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books, nine of which are on organized crime.

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sometimes, as a reader, you can't get into the book, whether it's about the subject, the research or writing style. This was one of those for me. Obviously well researched but simply did not capture or keep my interest past page 50.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recall being surprised to learn in Canadian history classes that one of the factors said to have stimulated the completion of the Trans Canada Railway and, in fact, the Confederation of Upper and Lower Canada in the 1860s was fear that the United States, following the end of the Civil War, might turn it’s armies north to conquer Canada. This seemed to me to be unlikely given the tremendous blood shed of that War. However, given the succor that Canada and Britain provided to the South, (e.g.John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin was alleged to be heading to Montreal where there were many Confederate sympathizers), some retribution might realistically have been anticipated. Also, the U.S. was home to many Irish who were enraged with British treatment of their homeland and who wanted to ‘capture’ Canada and trade it for Ireland’s independence. The largest organization of such Irish was the Fenians. A Fenian assassin murdered Thomas Darcy McGee, a prominent Canadian politician, in Ottawa, so the threat was not to be discounted.
This book tells the tale of a British citizen, former officer in the Union Army who, after the War, spied on the Fenians for the English. He did this successfully for over 20 years. His name was Thomas Beach, but his ‘trade name’ was Henri Le Caron. The book is very detailed about the activities of the Fenian and Clan na Gael’s various plots to dynamite major buildings in England and assassinate public figures including the Queen.
During his lifetime, Beach became a physician and practiced in Illinois and elsewhere. I found very interesting that one of the ways he made a living was to rob graves and sell the bodies to the medical school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He devised a way to tunnel at an angle behind the head stone of recently buried people and break open the casket, extracting the corpse with a rope beneath the chin. Mourners would not see a disrupted grave and assume that the deceased still lay beneath the monument. “Le Caron chose to send bodies to Ann Arbor in pickle barrels under the dummy company name, Quimby and Co.” “Ohio body snatchers had a boom year in 1878 when the medical school changed its curriculum, increasing the emphasis on practical anatomy. ”He became embroiled in a bit of scandal when it was discovered that the robbed the grave of the son of William Henry Harrison, former President. John Scott Harrison was a Congressman and also the father of future President Benjamin Harrison. Le Caron and his wife (who assisted him on his nighttime grave robbing) escaped before they were brought to trial. During this period, one of the professors called to testify by the Ann Arbor University’s Board of Regents, a W. J. Herdman stated that he needed ninety to one hundred bodies each year for the schools of medicine and homeopathy in Ann Arbor. He went on to justify this trade stating that the bodies were principally the poor who owed society anyway and providing their bodies to the medical school was a way to pay their societal debt. He saw the problem not so much as the robbing of a grave, but more of the class of victims whose graves were robbed.
This book is very detailed, at times, perhaps too detailed, but a thorough and interesting description of an early terrorist organization that operated in N. America and Britain in the nineteenth century.

[jcg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating history of the Fenian movement and a revealing documtentary of their plans to invade Canada with the intent of forcing Britain to exchange Canada for Ireland.

Full of dynamite and deception, it is an engrossing story. Peter Edwards has done a good job of distilling a vast amount of information into a readable chronicle, although it could perhaps have been a little less detailed, especially in the second half which deals more with Irish plots to blow up British monuments than on the life of Le Caron.