The Spy Who Painted the Queen Read Online Free

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.