Charles Thomas Marvin

Biography

Charles Thomas Marvin (1854–1890), was a British author and Foreign Office employee, whose public disclosure of government secrets prompted the creation of the Official Secrets Act.

Marvin was born at Plumstead, Kent, in 1854. In 1868 he was employed in a warehouse in Watling Street, London. At the age of sixteen he went to Russia to join his father, who was assistant-manager of an engineering works on the Neva. He remained in Russia for six years (1870–6) and acquired a good knowledge of the Russian language. For eighteen months he was the correspondent of The Globe and Traveller at Saint Petersburg. Returning to London, on 10 January 1876, after passing the civil service examination, he was appointed as a temporary writer at the Custom House. In May that year he was transferred to the Inland Revenue at Somerset House and then to the Post Office; he later returned to the Custom House.

On 16 July 1877 he entered the Foreign Office as a copying clerk. On 29 May 1878 he was employed to make a copy of a secret treaty with Russia, the "Anglo Russian Convention of 30th May 1878". The same evening he supplied The Globe and Traveller with a summary of the treaty from memory. On 1 June Lord Salisbury, the then Foreign Secretary, faced with the alternative of admitting the secret deal, said in the House of Lords that this summary was "wholly unworthy of their lordships' confidence". On 14 June The Globe printed a complete text of the treaty which Marvin had again provided from memory.

On 26 June Marvin was arrested, but was released on 16 July after it was found that he had committed no offence known to English law. His actions prompted a tightening of internal regulations that eventually led to the enactment in 1889 of Britain's first Official Secrets legislation.

During the Russo-Turkish war in 1878 he contributed to twenty publications.

He died at Grosvenor House, Plumstead Common, Kent, on 4 Dec. 1890 and was buried in Plumstead New Cemetery on 10 December.