by Nigel West
Since Gould had grown suspicious of Regan, another special agent was sent down to report and he, as well as the Rochester police, discovered that Gould was intimate with a German-Swiss of the name of Klocken-Busch who had lived in Chatham for twenty years.
In May the Rochester police reported the removal to London of the whole family, with the exception of Gould and his daughter Violet, and, through an intercepted wire, MO5 obtained their town address, 340 Merton Road in Wandsworth. Gould stayed on at the Queen Charlotte, occasionally going to London for a few days while Mrs Gould took his place at Rochester. Then towards the end of October the police noted signs of Gould’s approaching departure. He was having a hundred cards printed with a notice to the effect that he was sole agent in Kent for John Brown’s Whiskies – and the police knew of no such brand in Kent.
Gould moved to London on 30 December 1913 and MO5 were acquainted with the fact by the postmaster and the Chief Constable of Rochester. Shortly after, the Chief Constable forwarded to MO5 two books which had been found in the Charlotte after Gould’s departure. One of these was a press copy containing a number of letters written by Gould during the years 1903 and 1904. The reference already made to this book in the reconstruction of Gould’s part are sufficient proof of the value of this find.
In January 1914 Gould resumed relations with Schmidt at the Hotel Stadt Konigsberg, Potsdam. Writing from Wandsworth that he had found a good chance for a ‘sample’ he begged for an interview in order that he might unfold his plans. Schmidt answered from Cologne, where his office had been established for some months, suggesting that Gould should go to Brussels on the 23rd, provided he had discovered a better source of supply than the last. Gould went to Brussels, but apparently also pushed on to Cologne, whence he wrote to Steinhauer urging, presumably, that a questionnaire should again be sent to him. For Steinhauer replied: ‘For the present I must get Mr P’s opinion, before that it would be no use to send you a request, that does not all go quite so quickly as you think’. And Schmidt wrote on 29 January, enclosing a duplicate of the questionnaire of February 1913, in accordance with Gould’s request to Herr P; he added emphatically that Gould was to start on his journey only after hearing from Germany and to go only to the place indicated.
The cover address given by Herr P. was Madame Mueller, Pachecostrasse 81, Brussels. Gould’s first letter dated 29 January to this address slipped through the post unnoticed for there is no trace of it in the file and C’s men were directed to inquire. It was an important letter offering certain drawings for, on 5 February, Schmidt replied that he would give only £10 for the ‘pictures’ as they were too old. Gould was to go to Brussels on Friday 13 February. Meanwhile, Gould seems to have intended to enter upon some strange business conducted in collusion with Steinhauer and a man named Austin Fryers, director of the British Cinema Productions. While still at Rochester Gould acting with Austin Myers had been engaged in a very questionable attempt to wrest money from Mr Forde Ridley, formerly the MP for Rochester. Gould offered to procure for him a knighthood or baronetcy, and demanded the payment of certain fees to the officials who would exert influence in his favour. Mr Forde Ridley did not covet this honour and in some alarm broke off the interview. Then Gould and Austin Fryers turned their attention in another direction.
On 29 January 1914, two letters addressed to Steinhauer and apparently bearing on business connected with the British Cinema Productions were intercepted in the post. In the first Austin Fryers mentioned Gould as his introducer and approached Steinhauer with the suggestion that he should secure for the British firm exclusive rights over German films and in exchange the firm would send good English films to Germany. In the second F. A. Gould-Schroeder, writing on note-paper of the British Cinema Productions Ltd., announced that a letter addressed to Major Schroeder was lying at the post office. Steinhauer was to fetch it and ‘read it carefully and perhaps some good business might come of it’.
After Gould’s arrest the DPP was asked to examine the question of Gould’s connection with Austin Fryers, but the inquiry elicited little of importance; Austin Fryers was said to be connected with speculative concerns and to have a small office in Shaftesbury Avenue; he associated with theatrical people and had no influence in Court circles. And the question remained unsolved as to whether the business proposals to Steinhauer were genuine and for his private advantage, or whether it was connected with some new scheme for conveying information out of the country.
The rest of the correspondence was taken up with haggling for better terms with Schmidt who wired on 9 February offering £30. Gould could supply charts of Bergen and Spithead and a ‘pilot’ chart, as well as a cruiser drawing and gunnery drill book of 1909 and he asked first £80, then £60 for the collection. Schmidt wired again curtly: ‘For thirty’ which Gould accepted. His wife would convey them abroad passing under the name of Mrs Jackson – but they were to ask no questions of her.
On 9 January, as already stated, the Rochester police forwarded to MO5 the letter-book containing damning evidence that could be produced in court, and the authorities began preparations for the arrest of Gould. Statements of his movements were prepared and he was specially kept under observation. He was allowed to go to Cologne unimpeded, the police at the ports being merely instructed to watch for him and report his passage.
On 6 February a letter from Sir Graham Greene demanding Gould’s arrest was sent to the Chief Commissioner of Police; on 9 February the police at the ports of Folkestone, Dover, Queensborough and Harwich were referred to the memorandum of 1 November and warned to keep watch for Gould and a description of him was also sent to Gravesend; on 13 February sworn information was laid before the magistrate at Bow Street and a search warrant was taken out against Frederick Gould otherwise known as Major Schroeder; on 18 February the police were requested to watch all trains arriving at Sheerness during the next few days as Gould was expected to be going there to fetch confidential documents.
On 19 February Mr Hetherston of the GPO’s Investigation Branch gave special orders that a particular letter addressed to Gould was not to be intercepted in the post but the time of delivery was to be reported when returning the order. This letter was delivered to Wandsworth in the 8.55 p.m. delivery on 19 February. MO5 must then have known that Gould was in possession of a particular incriminating document. On 21 February the police at Chatham Dockyard and at the Admiralty Pier, Dover were instructed that if Gould or his wife attempted to leave England the following day they were to be stopped and special care was to be taken to prevent destruction of any documents, or communications passing from the one to the other.
Mrs Maud Gould was arrested in the Continental train for Dover at Charing Cross on the afternoon of 22 February 1914 after the police had ascertained that she had taken her ticket to Ostend and Melville had surprised her into admitting her identity. Lying on the seat of the carriage and concealed by her rug were three envelopes containing the gunnery drill book, the charts of Bergen and Spithead and the cruiser drawings. On her way to the police station at Bow she tore up a scrap of paper unnoticed by the police, but the pieces were seen and picked up when she dropped them on leaving the cab. The fragments were pieced together but as some of them were missing the message so recovered was incomplete. It ran ‘Petersen’, ‘Pacheo’, ‘arrival in ssels’.
Mrs Gould was searched and detained at the station. A return ticket to Ostend was found on her. When the charge of having committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act was read over to her, she denied all knowledge of the nature of the documents she was carrying; she said she was taking them to Ostend and then to Brussels, and that she tore up the address to which she was going.
The same afternoon F. A. Gould was arrested and searched at his house. The photograph of Steinhauer, posted at Potsdam on 13 February, and also the two telegrams of the 9th from Schmidt were found on him. The premises were searched and there were found a quantity of letters with the date 14 February written on them in ink; also the falsifie
d marriage certificate. There were besides some letters and postcards in German signed ‘St.’ and the list of thirty-eight questions.
A search was instituted at the Queen Charlotte and a portfolio full of ordnance charts of the coasts – especially of County Galway and Wales – and river estuaries and five plans of railway stations in London was discovered by the Rochester police. The Goulds were brought up at Bow Street on 23 February, they were remanded till 25 February and again till 11 March. Mrs Gould was let out on bail.
Meanwhile, Captain Drake in consultation with the DPP, Sir Charles Matthews, set about the preparation of the case sifting the evidence so as to ensure conviction while concealing the existence of a counter-espionage organisation, the methods employed and the amount of information regarding the German Secret Service acquired by that organisation. The work involved many consultations with Sir Edward Troup of the Home Office. The point to be settled was the extent to which use should be made of the mass of evidence procured under Home Office Warrant for opening Gould’s correspondence. It was decided to limit the evidence produced in court to that which would have been retained under the ordinary usage of the GPO, to telegrams dating back not more than two months, and to receipts for registered packets dating back not more than two years. The mass of correspondence and the letter-book found at Merton Road and the Queen Charlotte could also be produced. Of these documents the two letters to Steinhauer from the letter-book, showing that Gould was procuring agents for the Germans and accepting commissions from them in 1904, the letter to Mr MacMaster of 1903 giving details of Gould’s past history were put in evidence, and also Schmidt’s telegrams of 9 and 19 February.
An official from the accountant’s department of the GPO was to be subpoenaed to produce the receipts for registered postal packets despatched from Berlin and also the telegram of 19 February. The arrest naturally caused great excitement and many persons came forward voluntarily and made statements to the police. Most of this testimony has been mentioned in the course of this narrative, for instance that of Carl Reimers in which Gould condemned himself out of his own mouth. Reimers was to be called at the trial.
An effort was made to trace the purveyor of the incriminating documents. Suspicion fell on Harry Schroeder, who had been employed from 2 to 6 February on heating apparatus in the basement of Block 4 of the Admiralty. He had been discharged on 6 February but had been seen by a man, who had known and suspected Frederick Gould as far back as 1910 or 1911, coming out of the Admiralty on 20 February. No proof however of Harry’s complicity was obtained but the inquiry elicited a severe comment from the Secretary of the Admiralty who pointed out how little care was taken by the Office of Works to select suitable men to carry out repairs in government offices.
Evidence was also collected on the value of the documents found in Gould’s possession. The maps and charts found at the Queen Charlotte were submitted to an expert, who stated they were non-confidential and could be bought by the public, but taken as a whole the collection indicated that the owner was particularly interested in ports, harbours and railways of vital strategic importance.
William Llewellyn, a staff clerk in the Admiralty’s hydrographic department, was to identify and appraise the charts found on Mrs Gould: the chart of Spithead labelled: ‘This chart is to supersede No. 394 which latter is to be destroyed in the presence of the captain. 594. Spithead Skeleton. No. 17, Folio No. 1’; and a chart of the approaches to Bergen marked Skeleton Index No. 10. Folio No. 12. These he identified as Admiralty property by their peculiar linen backing and by the labels attached to them. Once Admiralty property they would remain Admiralty property for all time. They had been issued to one of HM ships or to a chart depot in one of the dockyards. The chart of Spithead was in official custody in December 1912 and almost certainly as late as October 1915. The Bergen chart had been in the Admiralty at Whitehall, through a chart depot, and on a ship. It was in official custody in July 1910 and possibly as late as October 1913. Copies of both charts could be bought from a map-seller for the use of the Mercantile Marine or of yacht-owners.
Louis Rivers Croisdale, engineer in the Commander-in-Chief’s department at the Admiralty was to identify the print copy of an Admiralty tracing of an unarmoured cruiser. This was a confidential document and the property of the Admiralty. The original tracing was in use from March 1909 till the end of 1911 and the print was used in connection with the building of two ships in 1909, and of two others in 1910. The last two were completed in 1913 and the print showed the general arrangement of the main and auxiliary machinery in the ship with certain essential features of the design of the ship. Three sections of the vessel were shown illustrating important points of the design. Twenty copies of the print had been prepared, a number sufficient to issue to firms together with the invitation to tender for the contracts, while retaining enough for official use. Fifteen copies had been issued to ship-building on the express understanding that they were to be kept secret and these were all returned.
Evidence concerning the questionnaire was to show that the answers would be of the most confidential nature dealing with the latest developments of guns, armaments, torpedoes, mines, and kindred matters. Only one who had technical knowledge and was in close touch with recent developments in our navy could have framed them. Besides this, police evidence was to be called dealing with Gould’s journeys abroad in May, October and December 1912; with the search for documents establishing Gould’s identity; and to establish the finding of documents at both houses. Also evidence of private persons connected with the transfer of the Queen Charlotte and, the agreement for the occupation of the house in Merton Road. Besides the preparation of the case, MO5 set on foot various subsidiary inquiries. The banknotes received by Gould were traced but no fresh discoveries resulted; a list of the names of Gould’s sons was sent to the Admiralty and the names of his naval friends were supplied to the Director of Public Prosecutions; an enquiry was instituted into the nature of Gould’s relations with Lieutenant Herbert Stokes, Royal Navy of HMS Natal; a photograph of Gould was sent to the French Sureté Generale who identified ‘Petersen’ as Pierre Theisen; communications were also received from the Belgian Sureté Generale with regard to this man.
Finally, Frederick and Maud Gould were charged on 5 March, with Sir Archibald Bodkin prosecuting, the hearing was resumed on 11 March. Counsel for the defence urged that there was no evidence to prove that the accused had obtained the documents but only that they were in possession of them. The charge should therefore be one of misdemeanour and not of felony. Both the accused were committed for trial, the woman being allowed bail as before.
The trial took place at the Old Bailey on 3 April before Mr Justice Atkin. Frederick Gould pleaded guilty to the charge of having feloniously obtained and attempted to communicate certain plans and information calculated and intended to be useful to an enemy. The Attorney-General summarised the evidence already given in the magistrate’s court and submitted for the judge’s perusal the questionnaire, which it was not considered advisable to read or discuss in public. The defence was that Gould had never admitted being a spy; that the maps found at the Queen Charlotte were harmless and had been bought at a sale for half a crown; that only two of the documents found at Gould’s house were of a dangerous nature and they had been deposited there for some person who was to call for them.
Gould was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment with a recommendation for deportation at the end of his sentence. In passing sentence the judge laid stress upon the abuse of the hospitality of this country committed by Gould and the iniquity of his methods in luring necessitious officers to betray their country.
Maud Gould pleaded not guilty to a charge of receiving information and the charge was withdrawn as there was insufficient evidence to prove that she knew what she was doing, Gould was imprisoned at Brixton and while there made various statements to obtain mitigation of his sentence. But Captain Drake doubted his information on any point. In Maidstone Prison, Gould was able t
o identify only the vocabulary signals book, small size, and the old economic code, then obsolete, as having been sold to Germany in 1911. He also stated that Klockenbusch of Southend and an engineer named Percy King should be watched, and some observation was kept on the family. Harry Schroeder went first to Newport, Monmouthshire, then abroad and Mrs Gould returned to the stage. In February 1915 she spent some days with a troupe at Dover, but there was no reason for interfering with her. She corresponded with her husband in the most affectionate terms and appears to have hoped that he might be released in October 1918. This however, was not allowed and directions were given that her correspondence should be carefully watched. Some enquiry was also made about Frederick Charles Schroeder, the son of Gould’s wife, Elizabeth Fenton, but there was no ground for suspicion.