The Spy Who Painted the Queen

by Phil Tomaselli

  Because of the nature of their work, these officers were usually well-educated and frequently spoke several languages. Herbert Fitch – who once hid in a cupboard to eavesdrop during a Bolshevik Party meeting in London attended by Lenin – spoke French, German and Russian. Naturally, they liaised closely with the MI5 because MI5 officers did not have powers of arrest and preferred to work in secret. The Branch also had the manpower to carry out basic enquiries such as discreet chats with neighbours about individuals and watching railway stations, though the outbreak of war saw it too fully stretched, even though its numbers had been considerably augmented before the war to watch the Suffragette movement. Some men had gone to France with the army as the nucleus of the Intelligence Corps, and other officers were posted full time to the ports, but this still left a nucleus of about 100 experienced officers to carry out ‘political’ or sensitive investigations.

  Once MI5 had decided on the arrest of a suspect, details were passed to Special Branch to carry out the arrest and to take over the case for prosecution, though MI5 officers would frequently appear at the trial as experts ‘from a Department of the War Office’. Close liaison between the two departments was essential, and MI5 commended 124 branch officers for their assistance at the end of the war. The Branch carried out its own investigations, but, MI5 later noted, not a single spy was caught by it working on its own; all successful prosecutions for espionage came from information provided by MI5.

  Basil Thomson was head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and also of Special Branch in his capacity as Assistant Commissioner (Crime) (ACC). These were the days when a well-educated man was assumed to be capable of doing just about anything, and Thomson was a case in point. Born in 1861, son of a Church of England priest who later became Archbishop of York, he’d been educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. Joining the Colonial Service, he served as a magistrate in Fiji and in New Guinea before being invalided back to Britain. He married and then returned to the Pacific where he was prime minister of Tonga for a time. Returning again to Britain, he wrote memoirs of his time in Fiji and Tonga, as well as a novel, while studying Law. He was called to the Bar in 1896 and then became deputy governor of Liverpool Prison, then governor of Dartmoor and Wormwood Scrubs and, between 1908 and 1913, secretary to the Prison Commission. In 1913 he was appointed Assistant Commissioner (Crime) for the Metropolitan Police (this was a time when senior police posts were usually held by men appointed from outside), with an office at Scotland Yard. These were the forces ranged against enemy spies in the event of war.

  The outbreak of war came suddenly and unexpectedly, though, of course, the army and navy, as well as MI5, had plans in place to deal with events. The army called up its reserves and the part-time soldiers of the Territorial Force, and set in train sending the BEF to France. The navy had been at the annual Fleet Review in the Solent at the end of July 1914 so it was simply kept on standby as events unfolded and was perfectly ready when war was declared on 4 August.

  Acting in part on the advice of MI5 when it came to security matters, the government, through King George V, hastily issued a proclamation commanding his subjects to:

  obey and conform to all instructions and regulations which may be issued by Us or our Admiralty or Army Council, or any Officer of our Navy or Army … and not to hinder or obstruct, but to afford all assistance in their power to, any person acting in accordance with such instructions or regulations …

  Within a few days this had crystallised into the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) that was rushed through Parliament. It gave the military sweeping powers to (among others) commandeer land and buildings and to prepare them for defence or destroy them; it gave them right of access to any building or property whatsoever, to remove people from an area, and to restrict the sale of alcohol. There were explicit restrictions on publication or communication of any information on the armed forces that might be of use to the enemy and bans on photographing, drawing, modelling or possessing plans of fortifications, docks or other installations. There were also bans on tampering or interfering with telephone or telegraph lines or having equipment to tap them, on damaging railways or attempting to injure soldiers guarding them, on possession of dynamite or other explosives, on spreading alarm or disaffection, showing unauthorised lights and on tampering with passes and documents. Anyone committing, attempting to commit or assisting in the commission of these offences would be tried by court martial and liable to a sentence of ‘penal servitude for life or any less punishment’. Sweeping powers were granted to ‘Competent Military Authorities’, defined by the Act as ‘any commissioned officer of His Majesty’s Naval or Military Forces, not below the rank of commander in the Navy, or Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, appointed by the Admiralty or Army Council, as the case may be, to perform in any place the duties of such an authority’.

  DORA was passed simultaneously with the Aliens Restriction Act (again largely inspired by MI5), which imposed draconian restrictions on aliens (foreigners) of all nationalities. It restricted their arrival or departure to one of thirteen named ports and the landing of enemy aliens to only those who had been granted a permit. It also allowed Home Office aliens officers to restrict the landing of any alien and the legal detention of any alien landing without the correct authorisation, prevented them leaving the country without authority and obliged the master of any vessel to report aliens aboard and not allow them to land without the alien officer’s permission. Restrictions were also made on aliens resident in Britain. There were immediate restrictions placed upon where they could live – a whole series of areas adjacent to the coast, ports and military establishments becoming areas from which they were banned without permission. All aliens, whether hostile or not, were obliged to register with the Registration Officer (usually a senior police officer) of their district and to inform them of any planned move as well as advising the Registration Officer of their new district and registering their families. They were forbidden to keep firearms, petrol or other inflammable substances, a motor car, motor cycle or aircraft, any signalling apparatus of any kind, any cipher or code or to keep pigeons. A justice of the peace or policeman with the rank of superintendent or higher could sign a warrant authorising a police raid, using force if necessary, upon their premises at any time. Penalties for any breach of the act could not exceed a fine of £100 or a prison sentence of six months, with or without hard labour.

  The Aliens Restriction Bill had been presented to the House of Commons by the Home Secretary, Mr Reginald McKenna, on 5 August 1914 when he told the House:

  One of the main objects of the Bill is to remove or restrain the movements of undesirable aliens, especially with a view to the removal or detention of spies. Information in the possession of the Government proves that cases of espionage have been frequent in recent years, and many spies have been caught and dealt with by the police. Within the last twenty-four hours no fewer than twenty-one spies, or suspected spies, have been arrested in various places all over the country, chiefly in important military or naval centres, some of them long known to the authorities to be spies.

  It’s an interesting statement. In later years, especially when budgets were being restricted or there was talk of amalgamating MI5 with one or other of the intelligence services, the great spy round-up of 4 August 1914 would be trotted out to justify MI5’s existence. The list of agents arrested has appeared in various forms over the years (usually including men arrested on their own initiative by local police on what appear to be highly suspect grounds), but even the most theoretically significant list, compiled by Professor Christopher Andrew and his researchers for the MI5 official history, can’t get round the fact that, of the twenty-two spies listed, only ten were arrested on 4 August and the last wasn’t arrested until the 16th. But the story was out; it was in Hansard and in the newspapers, so it must have been true!

  The passing of the two pieces of legislation didn’t calm the spy scare; in fact the announcement that twenty-one h
ad been rounded up on the first day of the war probably boosted it. In an early debate in the House of Lords, Lord Leith of Fyvie alleged that the law, as it stood, gave the police few powers against aliens ‘against whom we have no absolute proof’ and also that some eighty-two enemy aliens were at large in Aberdeen, some of whom were ‘known’ to have been signalling on the coast and others to have been photographing fishing boats. He went on:

  A much more serious item is this. Within a mile-and-a-half of our principal naval wireless station at Aberdeen lives a noted German. He is an ex-captain in the Prussian Army and has been called out, twice. Each time it has been said, ‘Never mind; you stay there.’ Anyhow he has gone through two wars with honours given to him, and yet he is allowed to reside within a mile-and-a-half of our principal naval wireless station. The Police have no power to go into his house. They have at present two men constantly shadowing him.

  The number of alleged spies was legion. Alfred Thielemann was charged with being in possession of photographic apparatus, military maps and other items without a permit. A detective officer described how he’d found a number of photographic negatives of Hull harbour and Liverpool docks as well as permits to photograph the Port of London and the Manchester Ship Canal. The defendant pleaded that he was employed by a German company, the European Lantern Slide Company, which had an office in Newgate Street, London, and that he had been sent from Berlin in April to take photographs for them and had been unable to get back to Germany on the outbreak of war. Remanding him in custody, the magistrate remarked, ‘This case may turn out to be one of importance.’ It didn’t.

  A German named William Hark was arrested at the headquarters of the Royal Engineers’ Territorial Regiment whilst dressed in military uniform. He was charged with failing to register but pointed out he’d lived in England for twenty-five years and served as a volunteer soldier for twenty, so he had assumed the law did not apply to him. An officer vouched for his service and character, but he was remanded in custody.

  Sergeant Bottcher of the 6th (Territorial Force) Battalion of the Essex Regiment was investigated because:

  while stationed on the East Coast, [he] endeavoured to get his late employer to ask for him to come to London for three days, the said Serjeant associating with the cook at a house the owner of which is a Sin Feiner and the cook of which was in the habit of visiting Germany.

  Whatever the result of the investigation, Bottcher went on to serve honourably in the Middle East, ending the war as a company quartermaster sergeant major with the 1914/15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal and Territorial Force Efficiency Medal.

  A member of a Southsea concert party who was on a ferry from Ventnor was arrested for looking at a naval vessel through a pair of opera glasses, but released after a short detention.

  Mrs Lockwood, wife of a former army officer, reported a suspicious German on Primrose Hill whom she had seen walking his dog. When she turned to look at him, she saw ‘a pigeon on a level with his head about three yards in front flying away … though she did not actually see the pigeon leave his hand, she considered it must have come from him (and) she noticed a little white paper under the pigeon’s wing’. Peter Duhn, aged 28, described as a well-dressed German living in Charlotte Crescent, Regent’s Park, had quite correctly registered himself with the police as required, but was charged with not notifying them that he owned a pigeon (though no evidence apart from that of Mrs Lockwood seems to have been presented that he did). He was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

  It wasn’t just the police and MI5 that were deluged with reports. A naval investigator in Devon submitted a report in January 1915 on a house known as ‘Snail’s Castle’ near Totnes, where the owner, a London-based lawyer, Mr Blackwell, had been reported for his suspicious behaviour. He visited the property in the company of a mysterious lady and was reported on one occasion to have taken a car, late at night, to Torcross Sands and to have been left there with no obvious means of going on. An interview with the driver proved that, in fact, he’d been taken to a local hotel. His visits were irregular and, it was said, he always arrived late at night, which had occasioned much gossip. As the investigator noted, ‘Mr Blackwell is a married man and the lady who accompanies him to Snail’s Castle is not his wife, which may account for something.’ It almost certainly accounted for everything.

  The military were inevitably caught up in the scare as well. MT1(b), the War Office section that collated and circulated home defence intelligence reports, issued regular updates. These included those of an army officer who had visited the works of the Danish Butter Company at Erith and reported:

  I climbed to the roof which is made of concrete 2 ft thick. This roof is flat and dominates the two Railways North and South of the river, the Arsenal, the Purfleet magazines and the whole of the river up to Tilbury on the one side and the Becton Gas Works on the other. There are a considerable number of people employed here, and the majority are Germans, the Manager of the business we learned is a retired German Naval Lieutenant, and we particularly noticed that any of the workpeople who passed us during our Inspection of the Buildings invariably saluted him.

  Scores of other buildings, both industrial and domestic, were examined by the police and soldiers who commented on their positions commanding important roads and railways. Other reports detail strange lights seen on the coast, apparently signalling to submarines, though the reports are usually inconclusive. There are reports of strange motor cars in the vicinity of vital points, of strangers buying Scottish islands that might be used as submarine or Zeppelin bases, and mysterious persons asking too many questions.

  As far as I can see there is only one genuine case of spying that MT1(b) picked up – that of ‘a yacht, the Sayonara (which) has been cruising round certain ports on the West Coast of Ireland’. Unfortunately, and unbeknown to the military authorities, this was actually part of a Naval Intelligence and Secret Intelligence Service operation to examine the coast for German submarine bases. Needless to say, it found none.

  There were voices that were all too keen to keep the ‘spy menace’ in the public eye for their own interests. William Le Queux wrote a long article in The People on 28 February 1915, headlined ‘Hotbeds of Alien Enemies and Spies in the Heart of the Metropolis’, alleging the Home Office was turning a blind eye to ‘treason mongers and traitors’. It told vivid tales of the authorities allowing ‘the scum of Europe’ to sit in obscure Soho cafés and restaurants gloating over their ‘piratical successes’ (the U-Boats) and discussing the coming of the Zeppelins as a signal for thousands of secret agents to combine, presumably in the previously much-vaunted attacks on military and political targets. He described ‘a man singing an obscene German song, in which the vilest abuse was levelled against England – our one enemy’, with the English being described as ‘big heads’, ‘swine’ and ‘vermin’. A confidential Special Branch report described Le Queux as a man ‘who writes sensational novels on the secret service activities of Germany’ and noted that ‘Mr Le Queux, in this way advertises himself and his works’. Special Branch was quite right about Le Queux – and, as events were to show, there were others quite happy to jump on the bandwagon of hostility to aliens.

  There were suspicions that highly-placed Germans and other enemy aliens, ‘some naturalised, some not’, were in secret sympathy with Germany and might pose a security risk. An anonymous writer to the letters page in The Times advised that the newspaper’s correspondence, telephone calls and telegrams be closely monitored, adding in a sinister manner, ‘I do not wish to be an alarmist, but I know what I am writing about.’

  The Times, commenting on the plethora of reports coming from around the country and the large number of letters it had received from the public, advised, ‘The duty of the public is a simple one. It is to report to the police wherever they think there is justification for such a step. A watchful public will form an excellent adjunct to the already hard worked police and the Special Police Force.’ With advice
such as this, from such an august source, was it surprising that spy fever and fear of foreigners gripped the nation throughout the war?

  2

  CENSORS, COUNTER-SPIES

  AND A SUSPECT

  THE OUTBREAK OF war saw the creation of two other, highly effective, defensive and intelligence-gathering organisations. The monitoring of telegrams and letters, as advocated by the anonymous Times correspondent, began as soon as the war started. During the Boer War there had been extensive interception of telegrams round the world, and though the organisation responsible for this had been wound up, the necessary machinery still existed to restart it. Cable censorship began immediately, as the War Office had a plan and officers in place to carry out the work. The British had realised at the start of the war that control of information was going to be vital. Their first act of the war was to signal the Post Office cable ship Alert, standing by off the German coast, to grapple, cut and reel up the German transatlantic cables, thus forcing the Germans to use neutral cables, which ran through London and could be intercepted. Among the countries that had no cable system of their own was Holland, which was obliged to use the British-controlled lines, as were the other neutral countries in northern Europe. The elimination of key radio transmitters such as the German one in Togoland also helped force the Germans to use neutral cables or their own powerful transmitters in Germany, which could, of course, be picked up by anyone who knew the frequency. Naval Intelligence soon set to work breaking German ciphers, which they managed to do with great success.