NEWS – “without comment”
A man of several jobs…and wives
One Berkshire-born detective had a life fraught with tragedies
© 2026 Dr Nell Darby
January 2026
Today, I’m writing about a man who, for a period in the late 19th century, working as a private detective in London. George Simmonds (also spelled Simmons and Symonds in the archives) is interesting to me because of his background and his changes in location. In 1861, his father, John, originally from Hampshire, was working as a beer housekeeper on Silver Street in Reading. He lived with his wife Fanny, and their five children, aged between seven and 16. Later that year, another child, George, would be born in Reading, followed by a final child, Edwin, in 1863.
By the time George was ten, only two of his siblings remained at home – third daughter Fanny, and youngest son Edwin. It must have been a rather lonely childhood, with a large age gap between him and his older siblings, although he had Edwin to keep him company. His mother Fanny died in the winter of 1870, aged 48, but John continued to work in the town as a licensed victualler. Within months of his first wife’s death, in 1871, John married for a second time – his second wife being Mary Ann Broadway, who had been John’s neighbour on Silver Street and had formerly worked as a straw bonnet maker. Mary was, like John, widowed, and had a son; her son was several years older than George Simmonds.
In 1881, John Simmonds was now running the Little Crown Inn in Reading. George and Edwin were still living with their father and stepmother; George was working as a gas fitter, while 17-year-old Edwin was a carpenter.
In the 1880s, George fell in love with another widow. Frances Caroline Potter, a farmer’s daughter from Nottinghamshire, had married a Kidderminster carpet manufacturer in 1871 and had three children. By 1881 she was widowed; by 1882, she had married George Simmonds. Their first child, George Edward, was born three days after Christmas in 1882. At this time, George and his family were living in St Helier, Jersey, where George was working as a merchant. However, by 1883, the Simmonds family were living in Camberwell, where son Tom was born; in 1886, they were in Stoke Newington – birthplace of another son, Richard – and by 1891, they were in Tottenham.
By this last year, 1891, George had changed career again: from gas fitter to merchant to private detective. There is little archive evidence for this career apart from the 1891 census. However, there is a news story from 1888 that reports on a George Simmonds of Homerton giving evidence in a court case. This case was brought against a local grocer under the Adulteration Act and sought to show that the man had been selling adulterated cocoa. George Simmonds stated that he had gone to the shop and bought cocoa which was found to have been adulterated with another substance.
I have found several private detectives from this era giving evidence in such cases and given that George Simmonds moved around various places in London, this might be him. In this case, he was working as a private detective for at least three years. I do know that this George Simmonds was not the man behind Simmonds’ Private Detective Agency, which was operational in the early 20th century and co-founded by George Henry Simmonds.
Frances Caroline Simmonds, aged 40, died in early 1892 in Edmonton. Within a year, George remarried. His second wife, Annie Mary Hopgood, nee Merchant, was a surgeon’s widow from the Cotswolds, with several children to look after. George took them into his household but gave up his detective work for a more secure job as an accountant. Life was hard for George emotionally: in 1904, Annie died, aged 56.
The couple had lived in Fulham for the previous decade, and George remained there after his second wife’s death. He then appears to have married a third woman, Helen, although I can’t find a record of this marriage. He and Helen remained in Fulham, where George was, in the 1930s, working as an enquiry clerk. Then tragedy struck a third time: in early 1947, Helen died. This time, George did not have long to mourn her, as by the end of the year, he too was dead.
Although I can’t find much information about George’s private detective career, it’s clear that he was a resourceful man, continuing to work and support his children and stepchildren even when faced with difficult personal circumstances. Just as his wives changed, so too did his jobs. However, he was clearly an educated man, good with numbers as well as letters, and continuing to work as a clerk into his old age.
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Investigating the history of private detectives, with Dr Nell Darby
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© 2026 Dr Nell Darby
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