Oswald Rayner

Oswald Theodore Rayner
Sepia monochrome bust-length portrait of a clean shaven white male with short, slicked-back hair and a centre parting.
Born (1888-11-29)29 November 1888
Smethwick, Staffordshire, England
Died 6 March 1961(1961-03-06) (aged 72)
Botley, Oxfordshire, England
Known for

Oswald Rayner (29 November 1888, in Smethwick, Staffordshire, England – 6 March 1961, in Botley, Oxfordshire, England)[1][2] was a British MI6 agent in Russia during World War I. He later went on to be The Daily Telegraph correspondent in Finland.

Oswald Theodore Rayner was born in Smethwick, the son of Thomas Rayner, a draper in Soho Street and his wife Florence.[3] Between the 1907 and 1910 Rayner studied modern languages at Oriel College, Oxford. During his time at Oxford, Rayner formed a close relationship with Felix Yusupov, who was also enrolled at the university. By the outbreak of the First World War, Rayner was highly proficient in French, German, and Russian, and so he was recruited by MI6 as an intelligence officer.

He is believed to have been involved in the final murder plot against Grigori Rasputin, and according to Andrew Cook he is supposed to have been the person who fired the shot that actually killed Rasputin.[4]

SIS

British intelligence reports, sent between London and Petrograd in 1916, indicate that the British were not only extremely concerned about Rasputin's displacement of pro-British ministers in the Russian government but, even more importantly, his apparent insistence on withdrawing Russian troops from World War I. This withdrawal would have allowed the Germans to transfer their Eastern Front troops to the Western Front, leading to a massive outnumbering of the Allies and threatening their defeat. Whether this was actually Rasputin's intent or whether he was simply concerned about the huge number of Russian casualties (as the Tsarina's letters indicate) is in dispute, but it is clear that the British perceived him as a real threat to the war effort.[5]

There were two officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in Petrograd at the time. Witnesses stated that at the scene of the murder, the only man present with a Webley revolver was Lieutenant Oswald Rayner, a British officer attached to the SIS station in Petrograd, who had visited the Yusupov palace several times on the day of the murder. This account is further supported by an audience between the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, who knew about an assassination attempt before it happened,[6] and Tsar Nicholas II, when Nicholas stated that he suspected "a young Englishman who had been a college friend of prince Felix Yusupoff, of having been concerned in Rasputin's murder ...".[7] Rayner knew Yusupov since they had met at University of Oxford.[8] The second SIS officer in Petrograd at the time was Captain Stephen Alley, born in a Yusupov Palace near Moscow in 1876, where his father was one of the prince's tutors. Both families had very strong ties so it is difficult to come to any conclusion about whom to hold responsible.

Confirmation that Rayner met with Yusupov (along with another officer, Captain John Scale) in the weeks leading up to the killing can be found in the diary of their chauffeur, William Compton, who recorded all visits.[9] The last entry was made on the night after the murder. Compton said that "it is a little-known fact that Rasputin was shot not by a Russian but by an Englishman" and indicated that the culprit was a lawyer from the same part of the country as Compton himself. There is little doubt that Rayner was born some ten miles from Compton's hometown. (Rayner became a solicitor at the HM Treasury.[10])

Evidence that the attempt had not gone quite according to plan is hinted at in a letter which Alley wrote to Scale eight days after the murder: "Although matters here have not proceeded entirely to plan, our objective has clearly been achieved. ... a few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement.[11] Rayner is attending to loose ends and will no doubt brief you."[12]

On his return to England, Oswald Rayner not only confided to his cousin, Rose Jones, that he had been present at Rasputin's murder but also showed family members a bullet which he claimed to have acquired at the murder scene.[13] "Additionally, Oswald Rayner translated Yusupov’s first book on the murder of the peasant, sparking an interesting possibility that the pair may have shaped the story to suit their own ends."[14] Conclusive evidence is unattainable, however, as Rayner burned all his papers before he died in 1961 and his only son also died four years later.

Newspaper reporter Michael Smith wrote in his book that British Secret Intelligence Bureau head Mansfield Cumming ordered three of his agents in Russia to eliminate Rasputin in December 1916.[15] According to Sir Samuel Hoare, head of the British Intelligence Service in Russia: "If MI6 had a part in the killing of Rasputin, I would have expected to have found some trace of that",[16] though his position at the time in question would call into question the reliability of any statement regarding the involvement, or lack thereof, of British intelligence in political assassinations in Russia.

Later he compiled an English translation of Yusupov's book, Rasputin; His Malignant Influence and His Assassination.[17] He named his only son, John Felix Rayner, after Yusupov. Rayner went on to become Foreign Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.[18]


References

  1. ↑ Shaw, Dan (19 August 2010). "Did Smethwick-born spy murder Mad Monk Rasputin?". Black Country Bugle. Retrieved 2014-08-05.
  2. ↑ England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966, ancestry.com
  3. ↑ 1891 Census of Kings Norton, RG12/2363, Folio 42, Page 27, Oswald Theodore Rayner, aged two, 89 Soho Street, Smethwick.
  4. ↑ Miller, Karyn (19 September 2004). "British spy 'fired the shot that finished off Rasputin'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 September 2007.
  5. ↑ Giles Milton, Russian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot, Hachette UK, 2013, p. 29.
  6. ↑ Buchanan, p. 48.
  7. ↑ Buchanan, p. 51.
  8. ↑ "Lost Splendor - Felix Yussupov - Chapter XXIV". Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  9. ↑ Fuhrmann, pp. 230–231.
  10. ↑ Moe, p. 653.
  11. ↑ Assassination! By Paul Donnelley
  12. ↑ Karyn Miller (19 September 2004). "British spy 'fired the shot that finished off Rasputin'". Telegraph.
  13. ↑ Fuhrmann, p. 230.
  14. ↑ To Kill Rasputin, by Andrew Cook. A review by Greg King
  15. ↑ How Britain's first spy chief ordered Rasputin's murder (in a way that would make every man wince), by Annabel Venning, Daily Mail, 22 July 2010.
  16. ↑ Spy secrets revealed in history of MI6 | UK news. The Guardian. 21 September 2010.
  17. ↑ Rasputin; His Malignant Influence and His Assassination by Youssoupoff, Prince. (Translated from the Russian by Oswald Rayner) Florin books series. Publisher: Cape repr 1934
  18. ↑ Imperial Russia

Sources

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