Sidney Reilly - Origins and Youth

Origins and Youth

The origins, identities, and activities of Sidney George Reilly have befuddled researchers and intelligence agencies for more than a century; hence, much of his purported life and many of his notorious exploits should be cautiously examined. Reilly himself told several versions of his origins to confuse and mislead investigators. Reilly claimed to be the son of (a) an Irish merchant seaman, (b) an Irish clergyman, and (c) an aristocratic landowner and habitué of the Imperial court of Tsar Alexander III of Russia.

Some sources say Reilly was born Georgi Rosenblum in Odessa, then a Black Sea port of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), on 24 March 1873 or 1874; however, other theories of Reilly's birthplace and origins exist. In Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 28), author Andrew Cook states that Reilly was born on 24 March 1873, in the Jewish Kherson gubernia of Tsarist Russia, as Salomon (Shlomo) Rosenblum, and later that "Sidney Reilly" was the illegitimate son of Polina (or "Perla"), his acknowledged mother, and Dr. Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum, the trusted first cousin of Reilly's putative father, Grigory (Hersh) Rosenblum. There is speculation that he was the son of a merchant marine captain and the above-mentioned mother.