Wakefield in the Great War, page 6
On the outbreak of war, the Home Secretary ordered that all German and Austrian subjects living in Britain had until 10 August to leave the country. Extraordinary as it seemed, the British government allowed German military reservists to travel freely to rejoin their regiments. On 5 August, the Yorkshire Observer reported that ‘during the weekend quite a number of young Germans residing in Bradford left the city in order to rejoin their regiments. Yesterday about thirty departed for London on the 2.15pm train. They were seen off by friends and the German pastor.’ Two weeks later, the same Bradford station saw more men with names like Muller, Hamlin, von Halle and Bernhardt leave, this time seen off by the Mayor, Chief Constable and a Colonel named Hoffman as they set out for officer training in the British army. Norman Muller, from Cononley, near Keighley, would die leading his troops into battle in 1918 and was the son of Colonel George Herbert Muller, the first commander of the Bradford Pals, and himself the son of a German immigrant. The following summer, Sir Richard Cooper told parliament that German names featured large in the ranks of the British army: ‘In looking through the list of the staff in the War Office, in the July Army List, you will find such names as these, serving the country: Schlich, Bovenschen, Dannreuther, Rueker Munich, Underlin, Varrelmann, Ackermann, Umlauf. If anyone will take the trouble to look amongst the list of officers in the Army List for July, he will find that there are 135 officers whose names begin with ‘Sch’. There is no really British name, to my knowledge which begins with ‘Sch’. The Scholes and Schofield families who could trace their names back to the Middle Ages might disagree but the comments highlighted the difficulty in deciding who was truly ‘British’. Even those who had formally taken British citizenship were suspect, with the Daily Mail asking ‘Does signing his name take the malice out of a man?’
Those Germans not leaving to rejoin their regiments were given until 17 August to register at the local police station and Austrians had until the 23rd. Those who failed faced a possible £100 fine or six months’ imprisonment, but part of the problem was that many ‘aliens’ did not realise they were foreigners. A statement of ‘Advice to Aliens now in Britain’ was produced by the government and published in local papers explained that ‘British women who have married Germans have become German citizens and must be registered. The children of such marriages are in a similar position. Foreigners desirous to leave will find no difficulty unless German subjects if they provide themselves with passports etc and make sure beforehand of train and boat services … Permits are only given to leave Britain by certain ports on a given date by a given steamship service. Therefore those applying to leave should make sure of being able to leave a day or two before.’ In other words, women and children who had never known anything other than life as British citizens became enemy aliens – ‘hunwives’ – overnight. Long queues of businessmen, nannies, students, tourists stranded by the war and old men and women who had left their homeland as children formed and stood patiently for hours before being processed.
German civilians of military age were rounded up by the authorities. Some would soon be released, others would spend the whole war in captivity.
Paul Cohen-Portheim was told to pack as if going on holiday and there was an air of unreality about the round-up.
Whipped up by rumour and wild stories, people began to see spies everywhere. The Yorkshire Observer of 15 August 1914 reported that ‘a Rolls Royce of German registration was searched after its owners left for Germany and … a large number of German and English maps were found in their car, together with detailed accounts of journeys made, a ruler, a whistle and a camera stand, some unused films and a quantity of rope. There were also a number of German newspapers with paragraphs marked in blue pencil relating to Irish Riots, insurrection in India, commercial war in England etc. …’ Ten days later The Times joined in, telling its readers in an editorial that ‘many of the Germans still in London are unquestionably agents of the German government, however loose the tie may be … They had in their possession arms, wireless telegraph apparatus, aeroplane equipment, motor-cars, carrier pigeons and other material that might be useful to the belligerent… It has been remarked by the observant that German tradesmens’ shops are frequently to be found in close proximity to vulnerable points in the chain of London’s communications such as railway bridges…The German barber seems to have little time for sabotage. He is chiefly engaged in removing the ‘Kaiser’ moustaches of his compatriots. They cannot, however, part with the evidences of their nationality altogether, for the tell-tale hair of the Teuton will show the world that new Smith is but old Schmidt writ small.’
At a time when people were willing to believe that Russian soldiers were being transported from Scottish ports, during the warm August weather, to ports in Dover and arriving there with snow still on their boots, any story could find an audience. Soon people began to tear down adverts in the street for Maggi soup after rumours spread that German spies used them to pass messages, and the local pigeon racing club disbanded due to fears that its members might be suspected of using their birds to carry secrets. ‘If you saw somebody in the street that was a bit strange,’ recalled Florence Mower, ‘somebody perhaps with a black beard, kids would run after them shouting ‘‘You’re a German spy.’’ Someone you hadn’t seen near your terrace before, who just happened to be looking around, was automatically a German spy.’
Restrictions were put in place to prevent ‘enemy aliens’ travelling more than 5 miles from home. Charles Hagenbach was given a special permit.
Victor Webb, a respectable Wakefield businessman, found himself in court in Southport in May 1915, charged under the Aliens Restriction Order and fined 40s after being found by police in a hotel room dressed in his wife’s underwear and a wig. The landlady had been suspicious when ‘Vera Cooper’ had registered and complained about the ‘nuisance’ of having to fill in a registration form. With the papers full of tales of German spies dressed as women, poisoning water supplies and planning sabotage, Webb was taking a great risk for what he claimed was ‘a joke’, by then, the first of eleven German spies had been executed in the Tower of London, and several innocent civilians shot by enthusiastic sentries around the country. His defence solicitor told the court that his client was a British citizen and had simply been involved in ‘a freak, a silly trick’. As if explaining everything, the Liverpool Echo of 17 May reported that he had ‘been abroad several times and had done some amateur acting’.
In 1914, most towns had at least one or two German pork butcher shops and Wakefield was no exception, with shops run by Paul Andrassy, Frederick Gebhard, Martin Stwine and Charles Hoffman among others. They were often well established in the community but, like other small retailers, quickly became targets for anger at rising food prices. For the most part, though, Wakefield was spared the anti-German violence that broke out in some places. Although restrictions on travel were put in place, these shops were allowed to stay open as normal. Germans owning companies assisting in the war effort were also allowed to continue as ‘supervised businesses’ monitored by the authorities. The Swiss-born confectioner and baker Charles Hagenbach was able to obtain a pass proving he was not German, and, for him, life carried on as usual. From time to time problems cropped up – on 27 April 1915 Stanley musician Jacob Burro was sentenced to a fine of 40s or one month in prison for having travelled more than 5 miles from home without a permit, after going to Pontefract to help tent-maker George Andrassy to put up a marquee on the racecourse. Andrassy was given a £5 fine or two months for abetting. George Ziegler was fined in May 1915 for failing to blackout his shop properly but the court accepted it was unintentional and he was treated just as anyone else would have been. He was lucky. In May 1915, attitudes toward Germans – any Germans – were about to change.
During a crossing of the Atlantic from New York bound for Liverpool, the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania was spotted by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, not far from the port of Cobh (from where the Titanic had left on its fateful voyage three years earlier). Germany had issued a warning in the United States that all shipping to Britain was at risk although few believed that a civilian ship would be targeted, especially one that carried many American passengers. The German threat was serious and the captain of U-20 ordered a single torpedo to be fired. Seconds after it hit, a second explosion was triggered in the ammunition stored in the Lusitania’s hold. The ship sank in just 20 minutes with the loss of 1,193 men, women and children, including 128 US citizens and three German stowaways reported to have been found soon after the ship set sail. The incident triggered a wave of anti-German violence across Britain, although the intensity varied. In the week after the attack Pontefract reported groups gathering near German-owned shops but no real violence whilst Castleford exploded into a full scale riot and at Gold-thorpe a rioter was shot as he attacked a British-owned shop. Although the Mayor said that a country capable of such an atrocity should be ‘wiped off the face of the earth’, Wakefield remained relatively calm with only sporadic vandalism directed at small businesses. Typical of the sort of problems faced by these family businesses came in September, when cattle dealer Frederick Brook ‘who was the worse for drink’, and who had been ‘in a heated discussion as to German ‘‘frightfulness’’’, smashed the windows at Hagenbach’s shop and that of a nearby pork butcher, Charles Ziegler, with his walking stick, causing over £16 of damage. On arrest Brook said nothing to the police, instead breaking into a rendition of Rule Britannia. He was ordered to pay over £23 in compensation.
The Lusitania attack brought renewed concerns about what to do with the thousands of German, Austrian and other men of military age who had come to Britain from countries who were now deemed to be ‘enemy aliens’. After the August 1914 registration date passed, men of military age were rounded up by police and army patrols until an assessment could be made of the level of threat they posed. Some of those previously released now found themselves re-arrested. Paul Cohen-Portheim, a German-born Jew of Austrian parentage, was an artist and writer working in London at the start of the war. One of those rounded up after the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, he was told by the police to ‘Pack as if you were going for a holiday’ and filled two trunks in the hopes he would be gone a few days at most. In the morning, his last real friend in London accompanied him as far as the courtyard of the police station. From there he went by taxi to a camp in London’s East End, where a thousand German and Austrian men of fighting age had been gathered together in an open hall. Given a metal disc with his prisoner number, Cohen-Portheim was relieved to learn he would only have to survive one night there. At six o’clock the next morning, armed guards marched the new prisoners through the streets of London to the train station as crowds lined their path, spitting, throwing things, and shouting about Huns and baby killers. At the train station, the nightmare suddenly ended as they boarded a comfortable train at the start of a journey that would take him first to the Isle of Man on the first stage of a ‘holiday’ that would last over three years.
Pork butchers’ shops were a common target for anti-German anger.
Writing about his experiences, he described how easy it was to become a potential ‘enemy’:
The pride of our heart, however, remained with us Billie. Billie was 22, but looked 18 and the most typical English boy one could find anywhere. Which is exactly what he was. He was just a jolly English schoolboy with an irresistible smile who quite saw the fun of the situation. He could not speak a word of any language but English, and as to Germany he hardly knew it existed. He had never seen a German before he came to [the camp], but he made friends with everyone and was adored by most, certainly by all the 90 per cent who – as everywhere throughout the war were bad ‘haters’. Billie’s parents had emigrated to Australia when he was quite a little boy, and they had died out there. He had studied architecture and was passing his summer holiday in Europe. When war broke out he was in Belgium and came to England at once – without a passport, for before the war hardly anyone ever troubled to take out a passport, and even less to take one with him when travelling. Billie landed in Southampton and thought some of the buildings of that port quite interesting. So he started sketching them, and was promptly arrested, for the interesting buildings happened to be part of the fortifications. He had no papers, so the authorities decided he could only be a German. I imagine that even they must have thought him and his sketching too naive for a spy, but a German he would remain until he could prove another nationality, and so there he was amongst his ‘compatriots’. He hoped to get his papers from Australia very soon, he told me, he had already waited ten months for them, meanwhile he intended to remain cheerful and did not despair of organizing football in the camp. Billie was not only popular on account of his charming smile, but also as a living proof of the utter lack of sense of the British authorities – which everyone felt they had shown in his own case as well – and because his presence consoled people in a way, for what could you expect if even Billie had been locked up! – I have often wondered if his papers ever arrived or what became of him.
Some prisoners were released once their case had been reviewed but sometimes it was too late, their livelihoods were gone. In February 1915, the House of Commons heard the story of Antonio Fell, a 30-year-old Hungarian living in Nottingham, and married to an English wife. Fell had formerly worked as a a waiter in Nottingham for seven years and was interned at Wakefield in October 1914, but was released in December. Unable to resume his former employment and having exhausted his savings, Fell was now receiving 12s-6d a week from the local Board of Guardians. Would, asked MP Sir J.D. Rees, ‘any action be taken to refund the expenditure incurred upon this alien, who has become a charge on the rates owing to action taken by Government arising out of the War?’ Hundreds of innocent men had been rounded up, forced out of work and then, once it was realised they posed no threat, released to fend for themselves as best they could. But at least they could go home. Others would stay in prison without any sign of how long they would serve.
Lofthouse Park.
Conditions of Lofthouse Camp reflected the 10s each prisoner had to pay for the ‘privilege’ of being held there.
After a few months on the Isle of Man, Cohen-Portheim and around sixty other ‘gentlemen prisoners’ transferred to the special ‘Zivilinternierungslager’ (civilian internment camp) at Lofthouse Park, near Wakefield, a ‘privilege’ camp for the better off internees who could afford the 10s per week they would be charged for the dubious honour of being held prisoner there. Work on the camp had begun on 4 September 1914 when the government had announced its intention to take over Lofthouse Park for use as a prison camp. Built by the Yorkshire West Riding Electric Tramway Company and opening at Whitsuntide 1908, Lofthouse Park was one of Britain’s first amusement parks and seemed an unlikely prison. The park had been built around a country house and its grounds, entered through a decorative arch lit by coloured light bulbs leading to a pavilion with a theatre and a cinema screen, a bandstand, a helterskelter, a privet hedge maze, a hall of mirrors and a haunted house called ‘Kelly’s Cottage’, along with a roller skating rink. Around 200 Territorial soldiers of the 2nd West Riding Field Company of the Royal Engineers had been set to work to cut down the trees and bushes and to erect barbed wire fences and lighting to prepare the camp for the arrival of the first of an expected 1,000 prisoners in October.
The camp had three sub-divisions. First to be created was the south camp around the concert hall, which contained a stage and an auditorium and soon become a rabbit warren full of beds, chairs, clothes and men. As the camp filled, some wooden huts were added along with a hospital and barracks block. Later, a north camp was built using rows of long, low, wooden huts and there was a corrugated iron hall presented by an Anglo-German donor. Finally, a west camp of corrugated iron huts was built on what was a treeless, grassless, waste ground adjoining the main camp. Each area was sealed and special permission was needed to move from one division to another. As a result, each developed its own character. Cohen-Portheim recalled how the South Camp housed men who had dealings in African colonies and who were ‘inclined to be cranky’. The North Camp was ‘rigid and correct’ and regarded themselves as socially superior. He himself lived in the West Camp, which he felt ‘had the least character and was the most colourless and monotonous of the three. It was essentially middle-class. Nearly all its inmates were businessmen who had lived in England before the war; a very few in a big way of business, but mostly men of moderate means. There was a majority of middle-aged, a minority of young men, mostly city clerks.’ The exact status of the men held at Lofthouse was a matter of some debate. Although a few prisoners of war began to arrive in 1915, the majority of those held were not soldiers and so were not legally Prisoners of War. They had not committed a crime and so were not criminals. That made the question of how to deal with them a real problem. Some were respectable and highly placed businessmen in engineering and other companies needed for the war effort.
