World War 1 internments in UK - bibliography

[Matt62]

Another book that has come to my attention:

Panayi, Panikos.  Prisoners of Britain: German civilian and combatant internees during the First World War.   Manchester University Press, 2014.  360 pages. 
The book covers the three different types of internees in Britain in the form of: civilians already present in the country in August 1914; civilians brought to Britain from all over the world; and combatants. Using a vast range of contemporary British and German sources the volume traces life experiences through initial arrest and capture to life behind barbed wire to return to Germany or to the remnants of the German community in Britain.

The WW1 internment records of the International Red Cross can now be searched online, and you can see the original index cards!
http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/en

I found my guy.  Turns out he was first interned at Alexandra Palace, then Spalding (Lincs) and repatriated 18 April 1918.  Great progress on a very old mystery, as I was reluctant to pay the fee.

Hi Loo,

Thanks for the book and the link. Could you help me out? I tried to find my guy but couldn't. Perhaps I am not using the search function properly. Can you see a "John Christian Louis Moss" or a "Johann Christian Ludwig Maass" or some variant of this in the index?

[loo]

Hi Matt,

I found the following:

Ludwig MAASS, 40 years, interned at Alexandra Palace (London), 1915.

Johann MAAS, interned 1915, almost no info on him.

If he wasn't around 40 years, it could be the latter one.
Germans often were known by the last of their forenames.

[Matt62]

Hi Matt,

I found the following:

Ludwig MAASS, 40 years, interned at Alexandra Palace (London), 1915.

Johann MAAS, interned 1915, almost no info on him.

If he wasn't around 40 years, it could be the latter one.
Germans often were known by the last of their forenames.

Hello Loo 

Thank you for that, much appreciated. It would be disappointing if he was the second one and there is so little concerning him, nonetheless in other documents he does go by the name "Johan Maass". I've only ever seen him call himself "Christian Maass", for instance in the 1880 census. He never used "Ludwig Maass" to my recollection.

Johann (my great-great-great grandfather) was older than 40. His death certificate in the latter years of the war puts him at 58, so he would have been in his mid-50s in 1915.

From what I was told by his granddaughter (my great grandmother) before she passed away, he owned a shop and the windows were broken by a mob during the Lusitania Riots in 1915. Soon after, his neighbours contacted the police claiming that he was a German spy. The police then raided his home and according to the story I heard, took him away. My great-grandmother believed that he died prematurely at 58 due to the mental stress caused by his internment, police interrogation and the 'betrayal' of his neighbours.

Recently, I discovered a very interesting "Poor Relief" document relating to him and his Irish wife. He was receiving money from the German government since he was still considered a German national until the war eventually disrupted this and made him unable to visit the German consulate.

The salient part reads:

Widow. Housewife. Husband John Moss, died. Born Germany, Protestant. Son of Christian Moss & Marion Lang, both dead.

Husband was receiving 15/- per week from the German government for some time before his death, and after death his widow received 10/- per week up till 22nd October last when she received a letter from the Swiss Legation in London intimating that payment would cease in respect that "your late husband had lost his nationality through long residence in this (Britain) country without registering at German consulates. Also owing to the fact that you do not intend to return to Germany"

She receives 3/- per week from St Vincent DePaul.  Applies for relief.

Maybe knowledge of this receipt of money from the German government were the source of the 'spy rumours' (which were endemic at the time) that led his neighbours to so distrust him. I also know that Johann had intended to return to Germany when the war started in August 1914. He was going to ship his eldest daughter away to live with her aunt and uncle in Greifswald. However his wife decided against this and so the family stayed, with the result that Johann ultimately lost his German citizenship legally after his death - as his widowed wife was informed.

[loo]

That's quite a story, Matt, and it fits with what is known of the history of the times.
There are many stories of the men developing serious mental health problems while interned.  Boredom seems to have been a major risk factor.

My guy was a baker and had his own shop also but I have no family anecdotes about him. Only one person in the extended family knew anything at all about him, namely that he had existed and was interned.  Although I have only searched through a small proportion of the records, it seemed that a great many of them were arrested in the Fall of 1915, including mine, and I believe this conforms with the historical record.

That's a great idea, to search the Poor Relief records.  I can't do that from my side of the pond.
As you probably know, the lives of British wives of internees were restricted and they automatically lost their citizenship.

Were you able to find the record I referenced for Johann?

If he was in London, it's a good bet he was interned first at Alexandra Palace.

[Matt62]

That's quite a story, Matt, and it fits with what is known of the history of the times.
There are many stories of the men developing serious mental health problems while interned.  Boredom seems to have been a major risk factor.

My guy was a baker and had his own shop also but I have no family anecdotes about him. Only one person in the extended family knew anything at all about him, namely that he had existed and was interned.  Although I have only searched through a small proportion of the records, it seemed that a great many of them were arrested in the Fall of 1915, including mine, and I believe this conforms with the historical record.

That's a great idea, to search the Poor Relief records.  I can't do that from my side of the pond.
As you probably know, the lives of British wives of internees were restricted and they automatically lost their citizenship.

Were you able to find the record I referenced for Johann?

If he was in London, it's a good bet he was interned first at Alexandra Palace.

Hi Loo 

I haven't found the record yet, I'm going to have another search to see if I can locate it (for some reason I'm not very good at using the search function!), thanks again for bringing it to my attention. It was very helpful of you to find it for me and to bring both the database and book by Panayi to our attention, I am sure it will greatly assist many people.

Johann lived in Glasgow, Scotland. Was your ancestor from London? If he had been from Scotland I would have been more than happy to search the Poor Relief Archive for you at the Mitchell Library. There is no online digital source as far as am aware, I believe these records are stored locally across the UK.  If you ever do get a chance to search through them, I would greatly encourage you to do so. The inspectors turned over every leaf in their investigations to try and find an excuse not to pay the money, meaning that they are a unique source of inquisitive information that one otherwise might not be able to obtain.

From what I read the first internments took place in September 1914. A prominent Scottish German Arnold Singewald, for instance, was arrested on September 11th 1914 by two police officers outside his home in Craigendoran, found himself in an internment camp in York two days later, was released and then interned again, like many other ‘enemy aliens’, in the aftermath of the flood of Germanophobia unleashed by the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915. The Sunday Post, a newspaper with a circulation of over a million in Scotland,  reproduced graphic stories of survivors from the sinking. The paper claimed that Germans had exposed themselves as a “Nation of Maniacs”  with the sinking constituting the “culminating crime of a Hunnish race”. This kind of lurid reporting, complete with pictures of the bodies of the victim, led to protests and riots breaking out all over Britain directed against German owned-shops, business and houses. They were effectively "race riots". In May 1916 a public demonstration was organised by a local committee in the Merchants Hall in Glasgow, where the government was attacked for alleged leniency in allowing Germans to walk freely in the country, a situation described as of “the greatest menace to the safety of the realm”,  warning that Scots were not to be “lulled asleep” by people of a foreign “nationality in our midst” who hide behind British names. 

[loo]

These stories are all so interesting - and full of hyperbole, as you have noted.

My Peter Krein was in London, so I can't make use of your kind offer, alas, but I can imagine authorities were highly motivated to find reasons for disentitlement.

This is what you do to find your man:

On first search page, type in the surname as I have given it (might also work with forename and surname together but I have not tried this); hit "search".
This brings you to an advanced search page.  Adjust the settings on this page to nationality German, and Civilian rather than Military.  Then hit "validate".
This brings you to a set of documents for people with surnames having the same three first letters, which you can scroll through.  They are pretty much in alpha order. As I recall, yours was in order.
 If you do not find it in the segment that is displayed, see if it could have been in a preceding or succeeding list alphabetically.  (This may have been the case with yours, but I can't recall exactly.)  If so, scroll through the list in black on the left side of the screen and find the relevant first few letters (in some cases only the first letter is displayed), and click on that one instead and go through that list.  I believe yours was listed simply under "M".

If you still can't find it, send me a PM and I will check again.  I didn't  save it the first time.

[loo]

New resource:

Knockaloe Internment Camp & Patrick Visitor Centre.
This is a recently formed charity which aims to document the experience of being interned at Knockaloe as well as the life stories of those interned.  They also want to assist people to understand the experience of their family member during the war and are already doing some of that.

They have some information already online and are looking to add more stories to their archive. 
You may wish to add your ancestor's story.

http://knockaloe.im/

For further discussion, see http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=968.0 , pages 12 and 13.

[johnbhoy]

Great thread, I've enjoyed reading it. I went on the link http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/en and found my wife's Great Grandfathers records, who was interned in Handforth in Cheshire

[loo]

thanks, johnbhoy.  I'm glad you are finding it useful.

I should perhaps add some more tips with regards to navigating the ICRC site, in addition to comments 24 May at 15:23, as it is not entirely straightforward, and it took me several attempts to get what I needed.

Once you find the first document for your person, click on the red box for more info about him.
You will then get two boxes, one offering a series of initials, and the other blank for you to fill in.

On the first document, you will likely see some code numbers which begin with some of the letters in the first box.  Try to pick one that seems to match;  you may need to try more than one. 

Again, on your first document, there will be some numbers following the letters. Some may be in Roman numerals.  Use the first of these number to put in the second box.  If it is in Roman numerals, change it to regular numbers and then use it.  Do not use the second number, if there is one.

Hopefully, you will then get a series of new documents.  Using the second number (the one you didn't use before), which is a page number, scroll down until you find that number, usually in the upper right of the doc. 
Your person should appear on that page.

Note also that there is a glossary on the site which explains the abbreviations used.  This is especially useful for deciphering the name of the camp, but also some other things.  It is found at http://grandeguerre.icrc.org/Content/help/glossary-en.pdf .   

I hope that helps!