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Cecil Street
Cecil John Charles Street OBE MC (3 May 1884 – 8 December 1964), also known as John Street, was a major in the British Army and a crime fiction novelist.
He began his military career as an artillery officer and during World War I, he became a propagandist for MI7. During the Irish War of Independence, he acted as an Information Officer for Dublin Castle alternating between Dublin and London and working closely with the British official Lionel Curtis. He later earned his living as a prolific writer of detective novels written under several pseudonyms including John Rhode, Miles Burton and Cecil Waye.
Street was born in Gibraltar to General John Alfred Street CB of Woking, and his second wife, Caroline, daughter of Charles Horsfall Bill of Storthes Hall, Yorkshire, head of a landed gentry family. Caroline had married comparatively late and her only son was born when she was thirty-five. General Street, having retired from the Army at the age of sixty-two just after his son's birth, died suddenly. Consequently, Street and his mother went to live with his maternal grandparents at their house in Firlands, Woking, which was "comfortably staffed with seven domestics". Street remained "modestly circumspect" about his privileged background in later life and valued "a man's personal accomplishments over his family heritage".
Street was educated in Wellington College, Berkshire and later in Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1903, before getting transferred to the Special Reserves. Before the First World War, he lived at Summerhill, a regency country mansion outside Lyme Regis (later owned by the Scottish educator A. S. Neill and run as a school, the name being subsequently used for his school at Leiston, Suffolk), where he was a shareholder in, and chief engineer for, the Lyme Regis Electric Light & Power Company.
He later served as a Captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was wounded three times in combat and won the Military Cross for his services. As a Major, he headed a branch of British Military Intelligence and later, he acted as an Information Officer at the headquarters of the British administration, based in Dublin Castle.
In 1906, Street married Hyacinth Maud Kirwan, daughter of Major John Denis Kirwan of the Royal Artillery. They had a daughter, Verena Hyacinth Iris Street, who spent most of her life living with her grandmother and died in 1932 aged 25. The marriage was unsuccessful, with Maud suffering mental imbalance and getting admitted to a private asylum. They were separated by the late 1930s.
Street later lived with Eileen Annette Waller, granddaughter of the Irish writer John Francis Waller, who belonged to a landed gentry branch of the Waller baronets of Tipperary. They married in 1949, shortly after his first wife's death. They lived "a comfortable life together" living in "attractive older homes" including The Orchards, Laddingford, Kent, and Swanton Novers, Norfolk.
John Street wrote three series of novels; one under the name of John Rhode, mostly featuring the mathematics professor Dr. Lancelot Priestley; another under the name of Miles Burton, mostly featuring the retired naval officer Desmond Merrion; and a third under the name of Cecil Waye, featuring the Perrins Investigators.
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Cecil Street
Cecil John Charles Street OBE MC (3 May 1884 – 8 December 1964), also known as John Street, was a major in the British Army and a crime fiction novelist.
He began his military career as an artillery officer and during World War I, he became a propagandist for MI7. During the Irish War of Independence, he acted as an Information Officer for Dublin Castle alternating between Dublin and London and working closely with the British official Lionel Curtis. He later earned his living as a prolific writer of detective novels written under several pseudonyms including John Rhode, Miles Burton and Cecil Waye.
Street was born in Gibraltar to General John Alfred Street CB of Woking, and his second wife, Caroline, daughter of Charles Horsfall Bill of Storthes Hall, Yorkshire, head of a landed gentry family. Caroline had married comparatively late and her only son was born when she was thirty-five. General Street, having retired from the Army at the age of sixty-two just after his son's birth, died suddenly. Consequently, Street and his mother went to live with his maternal grandparents at their house in Firlands, Woking, which was "comfortably staffed with seven domestics". Street remained "modestly circumspect" about his privileged background in later life and valued "a man's personal accomplishments over his family heritage".
Street was educated in Wellington College, Berkshire and later in Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1903, before getting transferred to the Special Reserves. Before the First World War, he lived at Summerhill, a regency country mansion outside Lyme Regis (later owned by the Scottish educator A. S. Neill and run as a school, the name being subsequently used for his school at Leiston, Suffolk), where he was a shareholder in, and chief engineer for, the Lyme Regis Electric Light & Power Company.
He later served as a Captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He was wounded three times in combat and won the Military Cross for his services. As a Major, he headed a branch of British Military Intelligence and later, he acted as an Information Officer at the headquarters of the British administration, based in Dublin Castle.
In 1906, Street married Hyacinth Maud Kirwan, daughter of Major John Denis Kirwan of the Royal Artillery. They had a daughter, Verena Hyacinth Iris Street, who spent most of her life living with her grandmother and died in 1932 aged 25. The marriage was unsuccessful, with Maud suffering mental imbalance and getting admitted to a private asylum. They were separated by the late 1930s.
Street later lived with Eileen Annette Waller, granddaughter of the Irish writer John Francis Waller, who belonged to a landed gentry branch of the Waller baronets of Tipperary. They married in 1949, shortly after his first wife's death. They lived "a comfortable life together" living in "attractive older homes" including The Orchards, Laddingford, Kent, and Swanton Novers, Norfolk.
John Street wrote three series of novels; one under the name of John Rhode, mostly featuring the mathematics professor Dr. Lancelot Priestley; another under the name of Miles Burton, mostly featuring the retired naval officer Desmond Merrion; and a third under the name of Cecil Waye, featuring the Perrins Investigators.