Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

(Michael S) #1

442 • REILLY, SIDNEY


War II, a business efficiency expert was introduced to improve the
filing system and a Hollerith automated card-sorting machine was
purchased.
In September 1940 MI5’s Registry was hit by a Luftwaffe incendi-
ary and the resulting fire damage prompted the Security Service to
modernize and duplicate the card indices. As highly secret signals
intelligence material became available, new categories of files were
developed—with the ‘‘Y’’ Box files containing the most sensitive in-
formation—and kept as ‘‘Retained Files’’ by particular sections,
which created their own separate registries. As the number of indi-
vidual files increased, management of them became increasingly
complex and all new PFs were identified using the appropriate Na-
tional Insurance numbers. Later files were color-coded to indicate
their currency, and a policy was adopted of destroying defunct files
deemed to be of no historical value.
Within MI5’s wartime Registry, the subsections were R1, the head
of Registry in London; R2, Indices; R3, File Correcting; R3Y, Special
Files; R5, File Making and Carding; R7, Policy Index and Registra-
tion; R8, Communist Recording; and R9, Destruction of Files.
During World War II, SIS’s Central Registry of case histories, re-
cords, and individual dossiers, headed by Bill Woodfield, was evacu-
ated to Brescia, a house in King Harry Lane on the St. Albans estate
of the Earl of Verulam.

REILLY, SIDNEY.Born Sigmund Rosenblum in Odessa in 1874, the
illegitimate son of a local Jewish doctor, Reilly adopted the Irish sur-
name of his first wife’s father and thereafter pretended to have his
origins in Connemara. He was an adventurer, an arms dealer and trav-
eler, and lived for a time in New York where he made and lost a for-
tune, and London, where he found a patron in Sir Henry Hozier,
Winston Churchill’s father-in-law.
Reilly’s travels began when he emigrated to Brazil, but his first
marriage took place in London to a widow, Margaret Reilly Calla-
ghan. A second, bigamous marriage followed to Nadine in New York
where he operated as a purchasing agent of munitions for the Russian
government.
In 1916 Reilly volunteered for military service and was commis-
sioned into the Royal Canadian Flying Corps. Two years later, in

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