MI5 in the Great War

by Nigel West

  Another, more topical feature of the case, is the Gould trial looming in the background; 23 and 25 February, 4 and 11 March 1914, mark the first stage of that case, and the trial and judgement took place on 3 April. The committal for trial on 11 March doubtless took the Germans by surprise and Gregory’s recantation of 12 March remained unanswered for more than a fortnight. This gave time for at least two letters to reach the suspect address in Brussels safely. The change of address was probably deliberately delayed in order to test the action of the British Post Office.

  Lastly the psychology of the victim is of interest. Alert and suspicious, unscrupulous and a coward making a brave show, it is probable that his protests of patriotism were not altogether a pose. He was out to make money but on his own terms. That he was on a dangerous tack he knew from the start, his words and his mean sheltering of himself under a fellow worker’s name prove it. But he had neither the intention nor courage enough to carry out the worst treacheries and Gould’s heavy sentence acted as a deterrent.

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  Lina Mary Heine, born at Holzweiseg, Prussia in 1893, arrived at Portsmouth on 13 March 1914 and ten days later began work as a teacher of German. At the end of March, Max Power Heinert or Heinricht, formerly agent for a firm of coal and briquette merchants, also arrived at Portsmouth ostensibly for the purpose of studying English. He was Lina’s husband but the connection was kept secret; he used, however, to visit her under pretence of taking lessons from her, but such visits are recorded by Heine’s landlady as having begun about early June. Entries in her diary show that between 1 April and 29 July she went fourteen times to Emsworth, six or eight miles from Portsmouth, between Havant and Chichester, journeys which may conceal meetings with Heinert. After his arrival Heine moved to 6 Pelham Road, where she occupied two rooms. Heine afterwards stated that she had been recruited for the German Secret Service at about Christmas 1913, by a bogus advertisement in the Berliner Tageblatt; a lady knowing English was required to fill the post of teacher of German in a Russian language school in England. She answered the advertisement and was persuaded to take up Secret Service work.

  Heine’s reports were sent to a man with a Russian name and addressed to hotels in different towns in Germany. Letters to her from Germany were dealt with as follows:

  Lists of questions were posted to Miss Claire Fouquet, poste restante, Southampton; remittances were sent, on one occasion at least, in an envelope endorsed Henry Court, Imperial Hotel, London; friendly communications signed in turn, Uncle, Aunt, Ruth, Ellen, would come acknowledging her letters and asking her to fetch from Southampton and forward to Basle letters for Miss Claire Fouquet, or warning her that a remittance was coming from Henry Court. All such communications came via Schneider or August Klunder.

  The check on Schneider’s correspondence brought Heine’s activities to the notice of MO5 at the beginning of April, but in spite of all their efforts no proof of her spying was obtained for several months. Special agents were sent to shadow her from 17 to 23 April, but nothing suspicious was observed, and she was never seen to post a letter. Her pay of £15 was sent regularly every month and the postmaster of Portsmouth was able to forward her signature for the first of these remittances, dated 16 April 1914. After that she allowed the servant to sign the slips, possibly out of precaution. The postmaster also noticed and forwarded to MO5 an advertisement of Heine’s offering her services as a teacher. Ohlson was sent to take lessons and he succeeded in obtaining a specimen of her handwriting. In the course of five lessons he could make nothing of her, only he managed to learn that a certain officer at the Royal Naval College was an intending pupil of Heine.

  In May Heine was followed to Ostend and was seen to meet Captain Fels. Early in July the check on A. Hocke, Carstensgarde, Copenhagen, which had been running since 27 August 1913, produced a letter from Heine. She sent a sketch of the searchlights at Portsmouth as they had appeared on certain dates in June, and she answered a few questions of a list posted to her in April. She was put on the SWL and arrested on 4 August 1914.

  Heinert was with her and as he could give no satisfactory account of himself he also was arrested. The police then discovered they were man and wife and that Heinert had, since 1 July, been living in the house of Leigh Kendall, a private tutor, who had given him lessons in English. Kendall had seen nothing suspicious in Heinert’s actions and conversations. Next it was discovered that Heinert had a brother, Walter Heinricht, a musical instrument maker living and owning four shops in Glasgow. Heinricht also was arrested but as there was no evidence against him he was released.

  Heine and Heinert were interned in Portsmouth Prison pending deportation. At some date between 1 August and December, Heine confessed to her guilt but declared that her husband was innocent. He died in prison suddenly on 1 December 1914 and Heine was subsequently moved to Aylesbury Gaol.

  The Home Office wished to release Heine, but MO5 declined to entertain the idea that any term short of three years’ detention was an adequate punishment for her crime. As Heinricht, her brother-in-law, corresponded with her, some fresh enquiry was made about him. He had been interned as a prisoner of war in September, and his shops had been searched, but as nothing incriminating was found and there was no suspicion against him he had been released in December 1914. Six months later his wife, Molly Heinricht, was the subject of a presumably satisfactory enquiry.

  Heine appealed to be repatriated in 1916 and was again refused on the grounds that if she returned to Germany she would be sent to spy in Allied territory.

  A repatriated German tailor’s assistant named Hermann Otto Nather, published in the Premdenblatt, a lying account of the cruelty of the British authorities towards interned civilians and prisoners of war, stating as an instance the case of an Austrian officer who had been interned with his wife in Portsmouth Prison and had died there. The case was raised by the Austrian Government through the American ambassador. The draft of the Foreign Office reply identifying the supposed victim as Heinert or Heinricht and giving the true facts concerning him was submitted to MO5. Twice during 1917 the question of Heine’s repatriation was raised. Colonel Kell kept to his view that release was impolitic and eventually she was recommended for internment under DRR 14A, on the grounds of her hostile origin and association with German Secret Service agents here and on the Continent and of her being a professional spy. The Order was made on 28 February 1918.

  On 11 December 1918, the DMI had placed Lina Heine on the list of women who were to be held during demobilisation, but as it was evident that these women, eleven in number, were suffering much from the prolonged captivity. MI5F asked that their cases should be reconsidered on the grounds that the principle of prevention and not punishment, which had governed in interning them, should also be applied in the question of release. The Home Office consented and Colonel Kell raised no objection to the release, subject to the immediate repatriation of all these women. On 21 March 1919, a Deportation Order was made against Heine, who sailed for Rotterdam on 1 April.

  The case is of interest for the greater subtlety of the German methods employed. If Heine gave the correct date for her enlistment in the German Secret Service, the interval between Christmas 1913 and March 1914 must have been spent in training as a spy. She may, in fact, have been the ‘Limma’ whom Steinhauer mentioned to Gould in January 1914, as having just ‘been put in the way’. Heine’s success in baffling our agents shows that she was an accomplished spy. It is possible that Heine got her husband to post her letters, or else that she posted them in the Isle of Wight where she went frequently.

  Another interesting point is the false report made by the repatriated German. It shows the danger of letting such people go. But his report and Heine’s repeated efforts to obtain release serve to emphasise a weak point in the policy of interning spies without previous trial and conviction. It gave rise to endless petitions and to the claim that the trial had been quashed because there was no proof against the accused – consequently he or she was unjustly im
prisoned.

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  The real name and nationality of the spy, who passed as a Spaniard named Albert Celso Rodriguez, is in doubt. He arrived at Cecil House, Western Parade, Portsmouth, on 26 March 1914 and at once got employment at the Berlitz School, 14 Hampshire Terrace. On 30 March he sent an urgent message, which was to be wired on to ‘Holloway’, announcing his change of address through the well-known spy agency: Mr Adams, 10 Petite rue des Longs Chariots, Brussels. Then came obviously the first communication from Berlin in Schmidt’s handwriting but signed ‘Harry’.

  Rodriguez’s first commission in England was to ascertain the facts about Sam Maddick. While reporting about the man, he volunteered the information that several officers had come to Portsmouth to be examined for the rank of lieutenant and he specified one officer of the line who had just concluded a loan for £200.

  Regarding the correspondence that followed, certain points show that additional precautions were adopted by the Germans after the trial of Gould. Several of Rodriguez’s letters passed through safely unnoticed by us, but one letter, dated 8 May, which Rodriguez claimed to have sent, and of which there is no record in Reimers’ file, was lost in transit, so a new address, e.g. Mevrouw E.C.A. Groot-Verwer, Koningennenweg 91, Haarlem, was sent for Rodriguez’s use.

  In the interests of safety, ‘Harry’ or ‘Holloway’ limited his communications with Rodriguez to what was strictly necessary and sometimes wrote in French and posted in Amsterdam letters were sent gummed into their envelopes, and the pay was remitted in French banknotes, two precautions which were also observed in the case of Lina Heine. Sheets of question were forwarded to Rodriguez and many of them repeated questions sent to Heine but the two spies, although they arrived almost at the same time and were engaged in collecting the same information, were never seen to meet and probably were quite unaware of each other’s existence. It is known also that both of them made excursions to London and the Isle of Wight. Rodriguez revived the ‘Incitement to Treason’ circular under a new form; he launched typed circulars of questions which were to be answered for a new English or English-American Naval Review, offering five shillings for each answer and £70 for the Annual Report of Torpedo School. The replies were to be sent to Harry Ford, Poste Restante, Brussels, and an allusion in one of Steinhauer’s letters shows that after collection there, they were to be posted back to Rodriguez at Portsmouth.

  The first type of circular was sent to various civilians in Portsmouth and the neighbourhood on 16 April. It was followed by a more elaborate one offering £5 for a set of correct answers with the chance of earning £5 a week by such easy methods. A pencilled postscript threatened reprisals in case of betrayal. This circular was signed Robert Wilson, Post Office, Southsea, and was launched on 2 May. Eisner and Company received one of these and handed it to the police.

  An out of work labourer named Graham then brought in to the police one of these circulars signed Harry Marbas or Markas, Post Office, Southsea. Graham connected it with a chance meeting he had had in Victoria Park with a man resembling Rodriguez.

  Lastly, a letter addressed to Miss Caddy Morrison, 2 Herbergstrasse, Berlin, with an enclosure addressed to the ‘Ghrieg toinietermium’ and signed by H. Ellison, Post Office, Southsea, was returned from Berlin as undeliverable. The letter purported to come from a gunner who offered to give information regularly at a salary of £6 a month. On receipt of the letter to Mr Adams, Brussels, MO5 took out the necessary Home Office Warrants, informed the Admiralty that there was a spy at the Berlitz School, and requested the dockyard police to keep observation on Rodriguez and the borough police to verify the address for the Register of Aliens.

  The dockyard police sent in a special report giving the description of Rodriguez and Maddick, whom Rodriguez had visited on 23 April. Rodriguez had moved to 30 Ashburton Road, Southsea.

  On 25 April Rodriguez came up to town. Portsmouth informed the Metropolitan Police by wire and the man was shadowed to 194 Green Lanes, the house of a Jew named Louis A. Sions, and thence back to Oxford Circus, where he managed to shake off his pursuer. He was not seen again at Ashburton Road till the morning of the 28th, when he took steps to protect himself: he applied at the consulate offices for a passport to be made out in the name of Alberto Rosso, Professor of Languages, Berlitz School, native of Carteolona, Pavia, Italy. His application was sent to the Italian consulate.

  Through the post office, MO5 obtained a registration slip signed by Rodriguez. Meanwhile the circulars had been coming into the dockyard and borough police who forwarded them to MO5. At first these circulars were thought to be a hoax, but the Graham incident aroused MO5’s suspicion that they might represent a genuine spy effort. Home Office Warrants were taken out and arrangements made for the identification of the person calling for letters addressed to Wilson, Marbas and Ellison at Southsea Post Office. A careful comparison was made of all the handwriting with that of Rodriguez with the result that he was declared to be the author of all the circulars as well as of the Ellison letter. This letter was interpreted as a draw to test the safe working of the post between England and Germany. A few days later corroboration of the result of the handwriting test was received in a letter from Holloway, who asked how long he was to go on calling for letters addressed to Ford.

  Rodriguez sent a stupid boy to collect letters for Marsab at Southsea Post Office; he was told there were none and that in any case Marsab himself must call for them or supply his messenger with a written authorisation. Rodriguez therefore called in person for the letter to Ellison.

  About this time he moved to 60 Clarendon Road and boasted in his reports of the interesting people he met in the boarding house. Melville, who was sent down to enquire, ascertained that there were no other foreigners in the boarding-house and no one there had naval or military connections.

  By the end of July the borough police sent in a report that Rodriguez had left Cecil House on 6 April but they had not discovered his present address. This was acknowledged with the request that, if possible, the address should be picked up.

  On 12 July Rodriguez sent answers to several questions and propounded a scheme for opening an art school, which scheme his employer was inclined to accept. But he quarrelled with Rodriguez’s answers and said the only things of any interest to Berlin were the official and confidential books and plans. On 2 August Home Office Warrants were taken out for Rodriguez at the post offices at Chichester and Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

  Rodriguez had been on the SWL since early April and he had been the subject of enquiry by both the dockyard and borough police; accordingly, when the warning letter of 30 July was received, these two departments concerted measures for dealing with all persons on the SWL. Rodriguez, Heine and Henri or Louie Schneider were to be kept under observation and arrested by the dockyard police. Between 30 July and 4 August careful watch was kept upon these suspects. It was known that Rodriguez and Heine were both preparing to leave. Rodriguez took his luggage to a grocer’s shop with instructions that it was to be forwarded to A. C. Rosso, Regent House, Seaview, Isle of Wight. Then on 3 August, the wife of the manager of the Berlitz School informed the borough police that Rodriguez was a spy and produced letters on 3 August: proof. He was arrested at 11.15 p.m. and charged under Section 6 of the Official Secrets Act. Proceedings thus passed into the hands of the borough police. Rodriguez was dealt with under the ARO and interned in Portsmouth Prison on 12 August 1914.

  From the German point of view it would seem that their policy of direct incitement to treason in naval and dockyard circles was a failure, thanks to the general loyalty of the men and to MO5’s methods. Hence the attack was broadened to include the purely civilian element in the ports and, as the Continental post was known to be unsafe, methods of posting in England were introduced. This involved a corresponding change in the wording of the circular; the news was now wanted for an English or English-American review. However the amazing clumsiness of the circular and of Rodriguez’s notes was bound to mar the plot.


  With the special precautions taken in the cases of Heine cum Heinert and Rodriguez we have clear evidence of the employment of two unconnected agencies working in the same port. Both were sent into the country for the purpose and not resident here. This policy may be an outcome of the bitter experience gained in the Hentschel case.

  The chief feature in the investigation is the immense use made of the Home Office Warrant for this one case no fewer than six names and eight addresses were registered. Lastly, owing to the action of a private individual Rodriguez would have been captured and possibly convicted even had he escaped the notice of MO5.

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  Sam Maddick was born at Westminster in October 1874. From 1 March to 12 October 1912 he was at work in Devonport on all kinds of electric installations on ships of a new type: he left Portsmouth at his own request and went immediately to Chatham, where he worked mostly afloat running electric leads on ships. He left Chatham on 21 December 1913. Where he spent the next few months is unknown. Rodriguez said that he had been a chauffeur in London, but on 11 June 1913, he took up work in Portsmouth Dockyard and was employed on ships and on yard machinery. At Chatham and at Portsmouth he had been somewhat irregular in attendance at work and in March 1914, he was away for several days and stated on his return that he had been to Paris to look for a job and did not depend upon his weekly wages.

  Late in April, A. Ransom, Hotel Stadt, Konigsberg, Potsdam, wrote to Maddick in terms that showed Maddick had offered his services to Germany but in the wrong quarter; Ransom, however, was willing to accept them. A good deal of correspondence followed in the attempt to arrange a meeting. Maddick wished it to take place in London, but Ransom would not hear of this. He proposed Brussels, on 9 or 12 May but Maddick was afraid to go. Finally, Maddick proposed to take ‘samples’ abroad at the end of May or beginning of June and the matter was clinched in a letter posted at Ostend and endorsed M. Dressler, 71 rue Longue, Ostend, enclosing £4 and arranging for a meeting at Ostend on 7 June.