Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey,Pronounced Marchbanks, see Clan Marjoribanks (10 September 1876 – 11 June 1947), also known as Colonel Z, Haywood, Uncle Claude, and Z, was a British police constable, soldier, and intelligence officer who served in several foreign wars for the British government. Despite having served HM in intelligence duties on every continent before the First World War – North Borneo, Mexico, Cape Colony, the United States, and Canada, among others – he is most well-known as the creator of the interwar Z Organisation, later becoming the Assistant Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) during the Second World War. He was also a member of the London Controlling Section. He began his career in intelligence in 1895, and remained active until his death.
Many of the staff at OSS/London felt that he was anti-American, but he was one of the few men directly responsible for the creation of the American intelligence system itself, and counted among his closest friends William J. Donovan, Allen Dulles and Ralph Van Deman. Some of his female coworkers felt that he was misogynistic because he would not hire many female agents, but the first female he ever sent undercover, Edith Cavell, was tortured and killed, and he felt shame about that for the rest of his life. Many of the personnel at the SOE felt that he was biased against the nature of their outfit, but Dansey was one of the men directly responsible for the SOE's creation, and its first director, Frank Nelson, had been one of his own Z agents. By the 1940s, having seen British intelligence networks collapse around the world, Dansey had developed trust issues and paranoia, which led to his negative reputation – but also kept him alive when so many of his friends were killed.
Early life Claude Dansey was born 10 September 1876 at 14 Cromwell Place in Kensington. He was the second of nine children, and eldest son of the Danseys. His father was Captain (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Edward Mashiter Dansey, an officer in the 1st Life Guards. His mother was Hon. Eleanor Dansey, daughter of Robert Gifford, 2nd Baron Gifford.
Dansey attended Wellington College until 1891, when the community was hit with an epidemic of diphtheria, forcing his parents to relocate him to another school.
The "Homosexual Scandal" of 1893
Dansey's parents placed him in a private boy's boarding school in Bruges, called the English College (formerly known as Laurence's School), under the tutelage of the Anglican headmaster Reverend Biscoe Wortham. As Dansey had just reached his 16th birthday, he was still discovering his sexuality and going through the later stages of puberty.
In 1892 or 1893, Dansey was on holiday in Windsor, Berkshire with the headmaster's son, Philip Wortham. While Dansey was here, Philip introduced Dansey to the son of the Attorney General of Upper Canada, a 23 or 24-year-old man named Robert Baldwin Ross, known mostly as "Robbie," who seduced the young Dansey. The two became romantically and sexually involved. Ross "fell hard for Dansey," becoming almost obsessive.
Lord Alfred Douglas, two years younger than Ross and himself a homosexual, sought to "rescue" Dansey from Ross, and brought him to a property called The Cottage at Goring-on-Thames (today known as Mill Cottage, the former home of George Michael), in the town of Goring-on-Thames.
The Cottage and its grounds that summer were being rented by Oscar Wilde, one of the most famous men in the world and author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Evidence suggests that Dansey had sex with both Wilde and Douglas at The Cottage during the Indian Summer of 1893. According to Matthew Sturgis, however, these events did not take place at The Cottage, but in Wilde's hotel room at the Hotel Albemarle at 60-61 Piccadilly, in London.
The reasoning is unclear, but after a night with Lord Douglas, and a night with Wilde, the historical record shows that Lord Douglas then paid a female sex worker to sleep with Dansey. The following Tuesday, Dansey returned to the English College, three days late for the start of term.
In October 1893, Reverend Wortham was screening his students correspondences. In that era, this was considered normal behavior for the headmaster of a boarding school. The letter was sent by Dansey, addressed to Robbie Ross. Wortham brought Dansey to his office and submitted him to questioning; Dansey admitted the nature of his relationship with Ross. Wortham later questioned his son, Philip, who admitted having been in sexual relations with Ross. The Reverend Wortham would much later discover that Ross had also been romantically entangled with his brother-in-law, Oscar Browning.
Reverend Wortham contacted Dansey's father and informed him of the situation. The elder Colonel Dansey was furious, believing that his son had been taken advantage of, and that his family's honor had been affronted. He consulted the family's solicitor, Sir John Wontner. Initially, Dansey's father wanted to sue Ross and bring a legal case against him. Wontner, however, explained that while Ross would most likely be imprisoned for at least two years, Claude Dansey would also be sentenced to at least six months behind bars "as an accomplice," to Ross's crime of sodomy. Dansey's father decided against pursuing legal action. However, he did arrange for Reverend Wortham to retrieve all of the correspondences between Dansey and Ross from over six months that they had been romantically involved. Wortham met Ross at the Hotel de Flandre in Bruges, where Ross delivered the letters.
To avoid any further scandal, Dansey was removed from the English College. Ross was sent by his own family to Davos. Wilde's own relationship with Lord Douglas became heavily strained after what became known as the "homosexual affair in Bruges."
Dansey never spoke of this event again. However, historians note that through his headmaster's actions, Claude Dansey first learned how to read other people's mail without them knowing, and how to communicate in ways that could remain undetectable, which were valuable skills for his later career. For the rest of his life, he did not trust the security of written correspondences.
Early career in military and police
Second Matabele War In 1895, when Dansey was 18, his father contacted Edric Gifford, 3rd Baron Gifford – Dansey's uncle – to locate a suitable position for Dansey in Southern Africa, believing that this was far enough away from Europe for any rumors of the Bruges incident to have spread. Lord Gifford was at the time was the chairman of the Exploring Company, chief of the Bechuanaland Exploration Company, director of the British South Africa Company (BSAC), and a close friend of Cecil Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson. Another one of Dansey's uncles, Maurice Gifford, had already been a member of an elite police force here known as the British South Africa Police (BSAP), and had served during the First Matabele War in the company that took Bulawayo, where he was still living.
After roughly a month of travel by ship, train, and stage coach, Dansey arrived at Bulawayo, where he was placed into the Matabeleland Cavalry Regiment of the British South Africa Police. Here, he was trained in horsemanship, outdoor cooking, survival, and other skills needed to survive in the bush and shrubland for weeks at a time. The modus operandi of the BSAP was constant patrolling of the wilderness, with officers operating in small teams of several men, and often as solitary patrolmen, without supervision.
In late 1895 and into early 1896, while Dansey was still in training, Leander Jameson led the failed Jameson Raid. After this, many of his fellow police officers were imprisoned in Johannesburg, leaving behind only a small force in Bulawayo. In Matabeleland, the Matabele were inspired by the Boers holding out against the British in their South African Republic just to the south. An outbreak of rinderpest ran through the area, and Dansey's unit was given an order to slaughter cattle en-masse.
On 20 March 1896, the Mlimo – who blamed the drought and the plague on the British – led the Matabele and the Shona to rise up against the British, officially starting the Second Matabele War. In roughly a week, they had killed over a hundred settlers, and the death toll was rapidly rising. The Mlimo decreed that all whites in Matabeleland were to be slaughtered or forced to flee the land. The town of Bulawayo was then placed under siege by the Matabele nation for several months. Only 22 BSAP mounted police officers were left in Bulawayo by this point, and Dansey was one of them. The settlers responded by raising the Bulawayo Field Force under Colonel William Napier, and Dansey's uncle Maurice Gifford put together two troops of cavalry called Gifford's Horse. Dansey and the surviving members of the BSAP were pressed into the service of Gifford's Horse. This unit broke through the siege line several times, riding into the bush to rescue settlers from Matabele attacks, suppressing several waves of Matabele Imbizo formations throughout April. "Uncle Maruice" lost his arm in one of these attacks, but continued to lead Gifford's Horse.It was not until late May when Cecil Rhodes riding in from the north, accompanied by Colonel Plumer from the south, arrived in the town to break the siege. Rhodes requested assistance from the British Crown, and they sent Frederick Carrington and Colonel Baden-Powell (later to be the founder of the Scouting Movement) to bolster the security of the region.
Dansey rode out with the new arrivals, especially learning the basics of scouting and intelligence gathering from Baden-Powell and Frederick Russell Burnham. From the Impi and the Xhosa in the formation, Dansey also learned the basics of indigenous tracking methods. It took until mid-July for the soldiers to push the Matabele back to the Matopos. Baden-Powell forced the Matabele into submission and arranged a peace deal.
In 1897, after the Matabele rebellion, Dansey rode north with the cavalry troops led by Colonel Edwin Alderson to suppress the Shona rebellion in Mashonaland. Here, Dansey was engaged in many early forms of special operations against the Shona peoples.
Just shy of his 21st birthday, Dansey's 3-year contract with the BSAP was up for renewal, and he decided to leave the colony, seeking adventure in other lands.
Egypt and Crete After visiting Madagascar and British East Africa, in 1898, Dansey returned to England where he secured his first commission into the British Militia. As a Second Lieutenant, he spent a month in the summer of 1898 with the 5th and 6th Battalions, Lancashire Fusiliers in Annual training at the Altcar Training Camp and the Salisbury Plain. At around the same time, the Lancashire regulars in the 2nd Battalion under the command of Herbert Kitchener and Hector MacDonald were engaged in the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September.
Hoping to join them in battle, Dansey traveled to join the regulars of the 2nd Battalion in Egypt, but the battle was finished before he got there. He reported to the 2nd Battalion somewhere along the Nile as they were moving by boat to Alexandria.
Four days after the Battle of Omdurman, the Candia Massacre occurred in Crete, and the 2nd Battalion had received orders to travel there. On 11 October 1898, the 2nd Battalion arrived at Crete to join the International Squadron fighting in the Cretan Revolt. The British were here as a part of the Great Powers Alliance in battle against the Ottoman Empire, and the 2nd Battalion was here to maintain security and ensure that the Ottomans would accept the terms of their surrender and leave the island. Two days after Dansey's arrival on Crete, on 13 October, Rear-Admiral Gerard Noel met Edhem Pasha aboard the HMS Revenge to discuss the terms of the Ottoman withdrawal.