Some information I just picked up on George Spencer.. Wrong place at the wrong time ? maybe create some interest given the case that unfolded..
Read following... ( a few minor typos from transcription )
Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1914, Page 2
Article view.
TRADING WITH THE ENEMY
— .» SHIPPING CLERK SENTENCED (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 16th October. The first conviction under the Trad*ing-with-the-Ertetny Act was recorded yesterday at the Old Bailey, when George Newton Spencer was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. Spencer pleaded not guilty to an indictment charging him with inviting Mr. Frank Henry Houlder and others to trade with the enemy. Mr. R. D. If uir, for the prosecution, said prisonor, who was a British Bubject, was a clerk to a Hamburg firm of shipowners. On 23rd September, having a passport granted to him by the American Consul in Hamburg, and a safe conduct from the German General of that city, prisoner came to London on a mission for his firm. Tliis German firm apparently thought, owing to the efficiency of the British Navy, that their ships were no longer of use to them, being either in neutral ports or seized as prizes of war by the King's ships. Some of the vessels were mortgaged to Messrs. Houlder Bros., and Messrs. Holman and Sons, insurance agents. To these two English firms prisoner proposed that they should pay to his firm large sums of money, and take in exchange the ships on which they had mortgages, and run them as their own property. If the transaction had been earned out, the result would have been that from Houlder Bros, there would have gone through a Rotterdam bank the sum of £16,000, and through Messrs. Hobnan and Sons the BUtn of £13,410— £28,410 from the King's subjects to the King's enemy. Messrs. Houlder and Holmau at once said such a, thing could not be done under our proclamations, and the former firm set tho law in motion against prisoner. Mr. Frank Henry Houlder, chairman of Iloulder Brothers, said Spencer declared that he had an authority from the German Government to transfer the vessels, and he produced a letter from the German Home Office c6nsenting- to the sale. One of the ships proposed to be sold was already a British prize of war at Gibraltar. Cyril Henrjr Walton, shipping manager of Messrs. John Holmes and Sons, of LloydVavenue, said accused showed him a document suggesting that witness's firm should take over a steamer in Alexandria by cancelling a mortgage of £16,590 and paying another £13,000. The vessel w;w worth about £20,000. He went to the Foreign Office, and informed prisoner on the following day that ho was advised that Alexandria was being treated as a British port, and that the ship had been seized as a prize. Prisoner said in Germany Alexandria was considered to be * neutral port. The jury returned a verdict of " Guilty," and the Judge, in passing sentence f said : " You are, I understand, an Englishman or a Scotsman by birth, and a British subject. You must, indeed, have been blind to the interest's of your native country or you must have been singularly incapable of appreciating the state of affairs, or you must have thought that the British merchants would do anything for money. It is my duty to pass on you a sentence which will prevent other people thinking that in the way of business they can set the interests of this country at naught. You cannot be sent to penal servitude or be ordered to hard labour, but in the interest of the country I must pass on you the sentence that you be imprisoned for eighteen months."
