The 1880s Special Branch Ledgers and associated issues

During the course of Felicity’s research time as a guest history researcher at offices provided by Special Branch she had access to undisclosed historical documents – the now much talked of Special Branch Ledgers which contain detailed referencing to Special Branch police activity of the 1880s. As well as containing matters of historical interest, these ledgers happen to contain sensitive information about a number of Special Branch police informants in respect of 19th Century Ireland matters. The informant’s names are historical and of minimal importance compared to the quality of historical debate that results from the ledgers. There is no reason for Special Branch police to continue to withhold these ledger documents from the public.

In September 2007 Special Branch police threatened civil proceedings against Felicity Lowde, attempting to prevent her from continuing with her historical case story research. They later abandoned these proceedings. A page relating to the Special Branch civil case against Felicity is shown below. On account of Special Branch historical research material being on Felicity’s computer which was seized by Thames Valley police in 2006 on the basis of Daniel James Hart’s malicious allegations, Special Branch police interfered with the 2007 court case in the magistrates court to the detriment of  Felicity’s defence case management.

Felicity is a caring, intelligent and careful researcher who uses discretion. She has never sought to disclose information about historical informants in respect of Ireland’s troubles. In any event, it is highly improbable that any such disclosure wold have an effect on security matters of the present day. The Special Branch interference in the June 2007 case at the Magistrates Court was very unusual and entirely unlawful. 

 

The Special Branch police attempt to extort £50,000.00 from Felicity Lowde in 2007 was very reprehensible in the circumstances.

There is a publicity seeking scammer in the public domain who claims to be an ex policeman who was once a murder squad detective, going by the name of Trevor Marriott. This person makes numerous bizarre and dishonest claims on his website which need correcting here. Firstly he claims to have ‘independently discovered’ the existence of the Special Branch Ledgers in 2008. This is untrue: he found out about their existence via Felicity’s situation with them, which Felicity briefly published on the Internet in 2007. Felicity is to this day the only person in the public domain who has seen the Special Branch ledgers. Trevor Marriott discovered Felicity Lowde’s case and associated matters via the press and media in 2007. He will have read about the unlawful raids on her premises in Oxford (during one of these raids, one copy of Felicity’s photographs of the Special Branch ledgers were removed) and presumably, he incorrectly assumed that all perfect original copies of Felicity’s photo evidence had been taken by the corrupt arresting police officers who invaded Felicity's house on the basis of the false allegations made by Daniel James Hart. 

As an ambitious author, Trevor Marriot sought to profiteer from attacks on Felicity and her (at that time) corresponding silence. He sued  Special Branch for non release of the Special Branch ledgers, and in so doing, created  a furore of publicity in order to try to sell his books.  

Trevor Marriot’s books appear to be nonsense from start to finish. At no stage did he consult Felicity in respect of any of his actions. On his website Trevor Marriott publishes, without permission, two of Felicity’s photographs (taken and transferred from an old website), one of which he seems to have altered with black marker pen, describing the photo as having been altered by Special Branch and presented to him and to the court case he attended in that format. The other he publishes in complete form without permission from Felicity. 

Trevor Marriott now claims to have been on a quest to get the ledgers released by Special Branch police; this quest is nothing but a quest for his own publicity. Even basic facts about the ledgers, plagiarised from a few discrete claims Felicity made in 2007, he gets wrong. (Such as for example the annotation(s) about Randolph Spencer Churchill).  

Trevor Marriott’s ‘hobby detective’ suspects in respect of the ‘Jack the Ripper case’ do not figure in the ledgers at all. 

Trevor Marriott claims on his web page that Special Branch now state that they have destroyed “the two ledger books” and situates this claim beside exclamation marks in a stupid manner. An unreliable claim even at face value, as there are three ledger books in fact. (The upside of this is that the books may still be intact at Special Branch). 

Trevor Marriott wrote to Felicity on the  20th July 2020 stating that he had counted the (then) forty-five ledger photographs (all with informant’s mentioned names or code names carefully concealed) on her current blog page, and then asked her to send him her collection of ledger photographs via email. The answer was no.  The book Trevor Marriott has published titled The Secret Police Files has yet to be seen by Felicity – it looks like actionable nonsense. Profiteering from historical and present abuses of justice is despicable. Has anyone verified this socalled ex murder squad detective’s career? He claims there was an association between himself and Special Branch police during the course of his so-called past career police work, which appears to be untrue.