The Spy Who Painted the Queen

by Phil Tomaselli

  Given the close involvement of Holland and Dutch subjects in the case it was inevitable that MI5 turned to its man in Rotterdam Richard Tinsley, a former merchant navy officer and member of the Royal Naval Reserve, and now a serving SIS officer of great experience. Before the war he had been employed by the Uranium Shipping Co., which took Russian emigrants to the USA. He had been expelled briefly from Holland for breaking Dutch law by landing emigrants without permission, but was back in business at the start of the war and helped Consul Maxse deal with refugees from Belgium while at the same time helping him set up a rudimentary intelligence gathering system. When Maxse was warned off intelligence work by the Foreign Office because of his diplomatic position (though, as we shall see, this was ignored), Tinsley took over the intelligence side and was transferred to SIS and promoted to the rank of commander in the RNR.

  From his Uranium Shipping Office he ran extensive networks of agents in occupied Belgium and France reporting on military information, particularly train movements. He also reported on Dutch trade with Germany (vital in enforcing the economic blockade), probably by bribing or suborning Dutch customs officials, and supplied pacifist propaganda to German socialists to help them encourage desertion into neutral Holland by German troops (from whom he gathered intelligence). He also ran probably the best British spy of the war, a renegade German codenamed H16 or R16, who was a naval engineer who could travel extensively in the naval dockyards. His real name was Otto Kruger and he supplied first-class information on the state of the German fleet and naval developments, never more so than shortly after Jutland when he sent in a detailed report on the extensive damage suffered.

  From MI5’s perspective it was Tinsley’s close watch on the activities of the German Secret Service that mattered most. Their secret addresses were watched, as were their contacts. It seems likely he ran the double agent codenamed COMO, an American who, as a neutral, was able to visit Britain and who reported on his fellow German agents through Tinsley to MI5. It was through Tinsley (codenamed T) that details of prospective agents were received, and he was instrumental in the capture of several spies and in providing information that allowed MI5’s port security prevent them landing in Britain.

  Whereas all reports received by MI5 from other sources passed through the registry system before being forwarded to the relevant section, Tinsley’s reports were considered so valuable and important that they were sent straight to the investigators of G Division unopened. Sir Everard Radcliffe, a former captain of Yorkshire County Cricket Club who served with MI5 from 1916 to 1919, left an unpublished memoir of his service which is held by the Liddle Archive at Leeds University, and it confirms the respect in which Tinsley was held, at least within MI5: ‘Many were the interesting cases, but what remains most vividly in my mind was the brilliance of our Agent in Holland, who rarely failed to advise when an important spy was en route to England, and almost invariably was able to apprise for what purpose and where he intended to go.’

  De László’s address book produced a total of twenty-nine persons who had come to MI5’s attention in one way or another. In some ways they are a raggle-taggle bunch and one or two seem, frankly, facile, and were even commented upon as such by an unknown hand. Some were Austrian or Hungarian, as one might suspect, such as von Offenheim, an Austrian subject and formerly a rich merchant in London. He was described as having ‘left with Austrian Ambassador at beginning of the war, withdrawing a large sum of money in notes and gold’. Mrs Knatchbull Huggesson of 43 Norfolk Square (by 1917 now Lady Braeburn) and her sister Mrs Oswald Crawford were noted as being ‘Daughters of Hermann von Flisch Brommingen, Imperial Councillor of Vienna. Many allegations respecting them, but nothing suspicious proved.’ There was an address for Countess Hoyos, sister of the Austrian chargé d’affaires at Christiania (now Oslo, in Norway), who was acting for Germany there, but there were no specific allegations.

  Mrs Wood of 23 Rutland Court, Kensington, was the Hungarian-born Countess Rosa Lonyay before she married George Jarvis Wood, an Englishman and at one time an unpaid attaché in Vienna. During the war he had enlisted in the Intelligence Corps and later became a captain and king’s messenger. Mrs Wood had come to MI5’s attention when, early in the war, she managed to get two German servants exempted from repatriation on her own bond of £50. The servants had eventually been repatriated anyway, on 29 July 1916.

  De László readily admitted knowing Eugene De Weress, a Hungarian student who was studying in Britain on the outbreak of war but who was now interned. The main point about MI5 mentioning him seemed to be his connection with the ‘notorious’ Frederick Lawrence Rawson, formerly a director of various companies including the British Union and National Insurance Co., who had drifted into Theosophism and begun to prophesy about the course of the war and to offer hope that ‘scientific’ prayer would both shorten the war and give long-distance comfort to the wounded. His meetings were well attended but also attracted the attentions of the Daily Mail which ran a series of debunking articles about him and his claimed occult powers. These provoked opposition to his meetings and the attentions of the police. On 16 January 1917, the police raided his business property in Regent Street (where he described himself as a ‘Divine Healer’), where there was a large number of clerks and typists and which received and sent large volumes of mail. Large amounts of correspondence and paperwork were taken away. Two days previously, the police had gone to the address and detained a Hungarian employee (presumably De Weress) who had been sent to an internment camp. They raided Rawson’s rooms, where they also took away books and papers to Scotland Yard. No charges appear to have been brought against Rawson who continued his work, though on a much reduced scale.

  Dezol, or Desiderius, Polanyi was described as ‘Hungarian, alien enemy’ with a son who had returned to Hungary on the outbreak of war and who was now serving in the Hungarian army, and a daughter who was a Red Cross nurse engaged with the same forces. Polanyi was noted as having casual employment in London with German alien Thospam, a dealer in cameras, whose factory was in Hamburg.

  Polanyi had first come to Britain in May 1914 from his native Hungary in connection with a patent for motion pictures. Despite his children’s military connections the only bad mark against Polanyi himself was a comment from a businessman with whom he had had dealings that he did not know the difference between good and evil. There was also the curious matter that Polanyi had, at one point, given his address as St Joseph’s Convent, Hendon, a religious foundation which seemed to consist of forty or so nuns, many of whom were of German origin. When he was traced by MI5 he gave the reason that he was temporarily without a permanent address and had arranged for a friend in the convent to receive mail on his behalf. Polanyi had not been repatriated to Hungary, even though he was over the age of 55, because he was found to be doing important chemical work for a British company and it was decided it was better his knowledge was retained in Britain than given to the enemy.

  It was only natural that De László should have known Paul G. Konody of the Albany, Piccadilly, a naturalised British former Austro-Hungarian art critic. Like so many foreigners or naturalised subjects he was reported to have strong anti-British sympathies, but no reliable evidence had yet been obtained.

  Similar unsubstantiated allegations had been made against Alexander Gross, a former Hungarian naturalised as British, the managing director of Geographia Ltd of 55 Fleet Street, private address ‘Buda Pesth’, Hampstead, who made aviation and other maps. Gross had first come to MI5’s attention in March 1912 when his company had applied to various railway companies for plans of their systems. The business was investigated but nothing detrimental was found. On 5 August 1914 the company’s premises had been searched by the police, but again, nothing had been found. Though MI5’s file contained some anonymous allegations against him, and it had a record of a telephone conversation (presumably overheard by an operator) between Gross and his office about a map of a recent naval battle, the only matter of substance related to hi
s employment of some men of ‘bad character and shady methods’ among his sales force.

  Given the allegations that De László was involved in Austrian peace propaganda, MI5 must have been interested in any connections he had with J Szebenyei of Normanhurst, 11 Park Avenue, Golders Green. As Hungarian correspondent of the Morning Post, Szebenyei was accused, in January 1917, of using forged letters, purporting to come from Hungary, as the basis for pro-peace articles in the newspaper. Though his editor stood by him, investigations suggested that he was, at the very least, an unwitting participant in an enemy plot to spread propaganda in Britain and he was interned. It seems possible that Szebenyei was the man who provoked the troubles in Hungary by revealing De László’s naturalisation.

  There were several individuals alleged to have had contact at some time with the enemy secret services. One such was Professor Antonio Cippico, who was Professor of Italian at the University of London. Unfortunately for him, though an out-and-out Italian nationalist, he had been born in Trieste which made him legally an Austrian citizen and therefore subject to suspicion. Travelling to London with the approval of the Italian Government (then neutral), he had tried to get permission to raise a foreign legion in Britain but this had been refused. He had made frequent patriotic speeches on behalf of the Italian Government, who solved his problems with the British authorities for him by naturalising him by royal decree in April 1915 (which was actually in contravention of an Italian law forbidding naturalisation of Austrians in time of crisis). Cippico had been reported by Chevalier Ricci, the honorary secretary of the Dante Society, to be a native of Austria, an agent of von Buelow’s and a spy. The Italian Consulate, however, regarded Cippico as a loyal Italian and Ricci as a blackguard.

  An otherwise unidentified Mrs Leeds was reported as a visitor to Count Talleyrand de Perigord who was himself reported as being of the German Intelligence Service, but there were no further details.

  The Comte de Soissons was an art critic and, at the very least, an acquaintance of De László, but he was also a friend of Baroness Nerembourger (aka Mrs Meyer), described by MI5 as ‘the lady in the Malcolm case who was said to be a spy’. Lieutenant Douglas Malcolm was an army officer accused of murdering a foreigner who went under the name Count de Borch (real name Anton Baumberg) who, Malcolm claimed, was trying to seduce his wife. Malcolm shot him dead and was tried for murder in September 1917. Interestingly, at the initial inquest, evidence was given that Baumberg had been questioned at Scotland Yard by Mr Curtis Bennett and Major Charles Dunlop (both MI5 officers, though this is not referred to) about his identity and about a woman known as ‘The Countess’, aka Mrs Meyer, with whom he had lived and who was believed to be a spy. Also of interest is the fact that Malcolm had recently been to Scotland Yard and had an interview with the assistant commissioner (Basil Thomson) to discuss Baumberg and seems to have come away with the impression that he was both a white slaver and an enemy agent. Much of this came out at the subsequent murder trial and, as a result, Malcolm was acquitted after the jury took just twenty minutes to deliberate.

  Given De László’s Dutch connections it’s hardly surprising that some Dutchmen featured in the list. Graf Schimmelpenninck de Nyenhus, a Dutch nobleman with a German wife, was noted as ‘Appears in the list of pro-German nobles compiled by our representative’, the representative presumably being the ubiquitous Richard Tinsley. Count William Bentinck of Harley Street and former attaché at the German Embassy in London had been allowed to leave London in 1914 because of both his diplomatic status and his insistence he was actually Dutch. Reports had reached MI5 that he had subsequently fought for Germany in the Prussian Garde du Corps. By 1917 he was again claiming to be neutral, and living in Holland, where he was reported to be in a continual relationship with German legation. Tellingly, given De László’s history, letters from England were believed to go to him by the Dutch official bag.

  Wilhelm von Mallinckrodt of Hausahms, 2 Rue Gounod, Antwerp, was believed to be the same Mallinckrodt of W Mallinckrodt & Co., Antwerp, who had been expelled from Belgium at the commencement of the war as a German agent, but had subsequently returned and sent supplies to the German army. Described as a very wealthy man, he was now reported to be chief of the Kommandantur in Liege, and Mallinckrodt & Co.’s premises were reported to be the rendezvous of German agents. Consul Maxse, who, despite having been warned off by the Foreign Office, ran a parallel, even more secret network of British agents in Holland to Richard Tinsley, reported Mallinckrodt as a German agent in November 1915. Maxse also advised the Foreign Office that one of his companies had set up an office in Rotterdam under a false name in order to disguise his connection to it.

  Perhaps most interesting and worrying, De László had the address of one Jonkheer E.J.C. Greven, a lieutenant in the Dutch army. Greven had come to England three times previously during the war. He had visited Aldershot, home of the British army, and was there shown a great deal on the recommendation of the British military attaché. A British army officer who had met him at the Regent Palace Hotel in London had reported him as a probable spy because he asked so many questions about military matters. He had also excited similar suspicions at Avonmouth on a visit there. Consul Maxse had reported, in February 1917, that Greven was believed to be in German pay and to have worked for Germany in England in 1915.

  There was one German connection that also linked closely to Holland. Baroness von Diergardt was described as ‘Hostess of Graham [sic] Scott, who was detained under (DORA) Regulation 14B’, presumably during the visit to Holland that led to his detention. The possible connection with Scott would have fascinated MI5. The 34-year-old Graeme Scott had initially come under suspicion while working as a journalist in The Hague – he appeared to be too friendly with the German military attaché, who ran the local intelligence organisation. On his return to England, MI5 invoked DRR 14, and ordered him to live on the Isle of Man. In July 1915 it then interned him under DRR 14B on the grounds that it seemed neither ‘safe to leave him at large or permit him to go abroad’. Scott was sent to the ‘Islington Camp’ – the old Islington workhouse used for internment – and put in the ‘14B Block’ with Ferdinand Kehrhahn, a socialist activist. In November 1916 Scott, Kehrhahn, and another 14B internee named Hodgson escaped by cutting the wire over a window, and went on the run. There was a huge police operation to find them. Scott and Hodgson were soon recaptured, but Kehrhahn got all the way to New York before being detained and sent back.

  There were a few Americans who had come under suspicion. Mrs Wm Payne Thompson of 703 Thames St, Newport, USA, was reported, presumably by the Censorship Department, to be in constant communication with Germany. An unnamed captain of an unnamed German submarine was said to have called on her when he landed in America (on an unspecified date). Countess Helena Pourtales of 14 Portman Square, London, was described as an American, married to a Swiss who had served in the German army. She had German relations, including a son-in-law now in the German army and a cousin who had been German ambassador at Petrograd at the outbreak of the war. She had been to Germany with her daughters. She also received, in England, German newspapers printed in English for American use. In addition, she was related to a Countess R. de Pourtales, residing in Germany, who had been to America to visit her relative Count Bernsdorf, the German ambassador to the USA.

  At the end of 1916, MI5, with the assistance of SIS agents in New York, had broken up a spy ring involving American journalists recruited in the USA by German intelligence, who had then gone to Holland from where they could travel to Britain and gather information before returning to Holland to report it. They noted that De László held an address for one Walter Roberts, who was connected with the New York Herald and, in particular, with one Bennett, described as a pro-German American journalist. Finally, among the Americans, though in what connection De László was supposed to know him (except perhaps as a target for one of his scams) there was Henry Beigel, who had been deported to America as an undesirable alien. Born in Germany
, Beigel was a naturalised American citizen and described as a ‘Notorious swindler, cardsharper and procurer’.

  Then, of course, there were the Germans. One can quite understand why De László would have known George Lauter, a German portrait painter who was resident in London pre-war. Lauter was interned and afterwards repatriated. Given also De László’s connection to the kaiser’s court it is perhaps easy to understand why he had addresses for Count Eulenberg, ‘The notorious bosom friend of the kaiser’ as well as Prince Hans Heinrich of Pless, Count Fritz Hochberg and Countess Hoyos, all described as German and all related, and Prince Salm-Salm of Arnholt, Westphalia, Germany, a Prussian cavalry officer married to the daughter of Archduke Frederick, in command of Austrian armies. Both the prince and his wife were interned at Gibraltar at the outbreak of war, but were later exchanged for an English prisoner of war. The prince had been killed later in the war, but the princess was, at present, in Switzerland making violent propaganda in favour of the Central Empires. Connected to her was the widow of the late Max Grunelius, a German banker at Frankfurt and formerly a ‘Smart friend of the Emperor’ who was described as being a friend of Princess Salm-Salm, living in Switzerland and suspected of giving information to Germany.

  There were others, though none perhaps so exalted. R. von Hochenhecher was described as ‘Late German officer now in Holland’. H. Loeffler was the son of a naturalised British subject of German origin, married to a Swede, the daughter of General Balck, ‘who is thoroughly pro-German, and a friend of German Minister at Stockholm. His wife is great friend of the German Minister’s daughter.’ Theodore von Guillaume, another contact, was a German subject of 45 Deutscher Ring, Cologne, and head of the firm of Felten and Guillaume, submarine cable manufacturers. He had been reported as seen in London on 20 June 1917, but had not been traced.