“Dangerous people usually lie low” The Case of Henry Eagle

Today’s guest blog is by Dennis Pollard, on behalf of  ‘WW1 Enemy Aliens in the North East’, a project that looks at the lives of minority ethnic communities in the North East during the First World War.

Dennis is a project volunteer.

The project is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. If you would like to get involved please contact Northern Cultural Projects,  ncp.cic@gmail.com.

Henry Eagle would have stood out as a colourful individual in any community, but in leafy Benton during the spy mania of the early months of the war he was a particular target for suspicion. Under the Aliens Restriction Act of 5 August 1914 all foreign nationals were required to register with the police, and when we first meet Henry in the police aliens file in the Northumberland County Archives the war is only four weeks old. He was then aged about 51 and had recently moved into North House, a large country house with many outbuildings and extensive grounds in Benton, a small village four miles to the north-east of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He told the police at Gosforth that he had been born in Warrenby near Redcar to English parents, but his family had left England for Romania when he was a baby. He had stayed there, he said, until he was 17, not arriving in England until 1882, and was now a manufacturing chemist. After a fourth police interview, and still unable to produce any documents proving his claim of English parentage, he finally succumbed to the threat of a summons and agreed to register as a Romanian.

In spite of his assurances of intense patriotism the police found him untrustworthy, and informed the Special Intelligence Bureau of the War Office that he lived and worked close to several vulnerable points, such as the cable to Russia, the High Level Bridge and a large signal cabin of the NE Railway. The Bureau could not identify him with any known suspect but nevertheless recommended that he be kept under observation.

In the days long before the war he had spelt his surname differently, and would then freely identify with being been born in Romania. He was Henry Igel when he married Grace Small of Leicester in December 1886, and over the next few years they had three children, first Grace in 1887, followed by Leonora in 1891 and Henry in 1896. In the 1891 census he was still Henry Igel, a Romanian, living at 1 Adelaide Terrace in Benwell, Newcastle, with his occupation being listed as a mechanical engineer and retired chemist.

The twenty-year period from 1888 was a time of prolific invention for him, and as Henry Igel he applied for patents for several mechanical improvements or devices, first mostly relating to printing and then to rotary engines, and later in 1908 for one with a medical application, a nasal douche.

However, despite this stream of inventions he filed for bankruptcy in 1894. In 1899, with his bankruptcy still undischarged, he left his wife and placed a public notice as “Henry Eagle or Igel” in the Shields Daily Gazette, disclaiming any responsibility for her debts. A few days later she replied to this in another notice in the same paper, denying she had any debts for which he was liable.

In 1910 she moved into 5 Ravensworth Terrace in Newcastle, running it as a boarding house which specialised in offering accommodation to music hall performers. The house’s residents throughout its existence were the subject of David Olusoga’s second BBC TV series of “A House Through Time”, and episode two had a large segment on the Eagle family.

It was in 1907 that Henry Eagle had introduced what was to become his speciality, a drug he called Iglodine, a name that was perhaps itself a combination of his original name of Igel and that of iodine, the compound’s main chemical element. Its earliest appearance in the Chemist and Druggist trade magazine was in September 1907, where it was announced as a solution with powerful antiseptic properties, of use both in surgery and medicine, and as being produced by the Iglodine Company of 61 The Side, Newcastle-on-Tyne. It had quite a large sale in the north of England, and the range of Iglodine-branded products would eventually include many forms, as an embrocation, toilet soap, ointment, pastilles, throat tablets, cream, shaving stick, nasal douche, suppositories, salicylated, and first aid outfits, and according to its later advertising the drug was “found efficacious in instances of Pronounced Influenza”.

More good fortune was to follow. In 1909, and 15 years after his original bankruptcy filing, the court saw no reasonable probability of his complying with an earlier condition and instead ordered that his bankruptcy could be discharged on the reduced payment of £100.

By the time of the 1911 census Henry Eagle was living at 164 Alexander Road in Gateshead and had several business premises in Newcastle. Perhaps surprisingly, the birthplace and nationality fields on his census form were both left blank, though given the spy mania at the time, this omission may have been deliberate. In his book “Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5”, Christopher Andrew states that the Secret Service Bureau, which had been founded in 1909 following a newspaper campaign to root out “the spies of the Kaiser”, was to use the individual 1911 census returns in 1913 to augment its Register of Aliens, which it had compiled as a means of targeting possible enemy agents.

However, Henry’s financial troubles were not fully over yet. In May 1914 he appeared in court again, this time being charged with assaulting William Culley, a county court bailiff. The bailiff had taken possession of his house, but not, he alleged, without a severe struggle, in the course of which the defendant had spat at him and struck him several times on the neck with a steel umbrella, and threatened to kill him. The bailiff told the judge that he had served through the South African War, but had never felt fear on the veldt like he did during the night he spent in the defendant’s house in pursuance of his duty. The judge was satisfied that there had been an assault by him “of a most aggravated and disgusting character”, and found him guilty, fining him the maximum penalty of £5 plus costs.

Undeterred by his previous debts, in July 1914 Henry Eagle moved to a country house in Benton called North House, for which he may have been paying a rent of £170 a year. It was shortly after this that the war began and the police interviewed him about his nationality, eventually entering him in the Register of Aliens as a Romanian.

In 1913 he had co-founded the Manor Remedies Company to use Iglodine as the main ingredient of a remedy that the company was to call Iodinol. He registered the Iglodine trademark the following year, but by then the company was in difficulties. His next appearance in court, in October 1914, was to oppose the winding-up of the company, which over the 15 months since its foundation had lost most of its subscribed capital of £1,916 (£217,000 today) and was now unable to pay its debts. His co-directors accused him of not fulfilling the bulk of his contract with them to supply the required quantity of Iglodine, for which they said he owed them £230 (£24,000 today).

This appearance before Judge Greenwell exposed an inconvenient problem for him. The judge said that although he was claiming to be called Eagle and to be born in England, he had been before him previously, and on the first of these appearances had told him he spelt his name as Igel and that he had been born in Austria. He denied saying this, claiming to be born in England, though he had registered as an alien because he had no birth certificate. The judge made an order to wind the company up, saying that the matter of his nationality was a question for someone else.

The case was widely reported in the local press and seen immediately by the police, who only a week earlier had been asked by the Special Intelligence Bureau to keep him under observation. The police were concerned that he had made a false declaration of his country of birth, either when being registered as an alien in September 1914, when he had said he was English but finally agreed to register as a Romanian, or at the county court four weeks later before Judge Greenwell.

As a result of this, the police questioned him at North House about the judge’s recollection that he had previously told him he was an Austrian. They found the house only partly furnished and somewhat dilapidated, but:

“..could find no indications of anything of a suspicious nature…Eagle is regarded commercially as a trickster and unscrupulous in his business transactions…believe he has been through the Bankruptcy Court although he says he is in possession of property worth £30000…is well-known to His Honour Judge Greenwell and has frequently figured in civil proceedings…this class of person do not as a rule figure in cases of espionage their system being to lie low and keep out of notice.”

Although the police finally concluded in 1915 that he was not a spy, an unsigned and undated three-page letter they received illustrates the suspicion in which Henry was held by some of his neighbours. Some of the allegations were:

“- Periodically carts and even furniture vans have arrived with heavy cases. We saw a crate with some queer heavy sort of crane thing being unloaded last Friday.

– When the last Zeppelin came he would not put the lights in his house out, and they had to go to make him. In last raid the Zeppelin has been over his house and came from the north.

– An old woman in the village who lived in the house as maid when she was young says that there is a subterranean passage leading to Gosforth Park where the Artillery T.F. are stationed and where the grandstand in which the soldiers were billeted was burnt down two or three weeks ago at 3 am.

–  If he does invent a high explosive it will have some property which will help the enemy. All you may laugh but our instinct is often right.”

Though distrustful of Eagle’s business ethics, the local police commander, Supt John Weddell, wrote of this anonymous letter that he attached:

“……no importance whatsoever to anything contained therein, the writer’s distorted imagination being responsible for the whole thing, and people in this frame of mind are always ready to conjure up the most sinister happenings from the most ordinary incidents. This man, as I have already stated, is in my opinion a “Crook” commercially and otherwise but this does not prove him to be guilty of espionage. People engaged in this sort of thing would certainly avoid the publicity and odium attached to Eagle’s mode of life, such as his appearance at the County Court etc.”

Nevertheless, since 1915 the War Office had also received various communications about him, claiming that although he went bankrupt in 1915, he was paying a substantial rent, and that his conduct was not free from suspicion. In January 1917 a letter from Col. Vernon Kell of MI5 to Northumberland Constabulary’s Chief Constable requested further particulars, and a personal opinion as to whether there was any ground for suspicion as regards his conduct or sympathies. Supt Weddell’s response to MI5 was clear:

“Locally this alien is the subject of great suspicion, and the most absurd tales are circulated about him. One story which is quite current is that he has made a tunnel from his house to Gosforth Park (a distance of about 2½ miles) and that he caused a fire at the old Mansion there whilst it was in the occupation of the Military. A lady living at Benton is constantly telling the local constable about the suspicious things she sees in connection with this man. Every box or parcel taken to the house contains explosives and ought to be seized. A soldier seen coming out of the house was in her opinion a most suspicious circumstance (it happened to be Eagle’s own son) and should be investigated, &c, &c.

This alien professes to be ultra loyal, and points to the fact that his adopted country is one of the Allies. However this may be I am of the opinion that Eagle is not the sort of man from whom there is danger of espionage.

I think he is – personally and in business – a somewhat unscrupulous and unreliable man, and one whom I shouldn’t care to trust in the ordinary transactions of life, but it does not follow that he is dangerous to the State in the ordinary sense of that term. The fact that he runs up against the law and comes in contact with the County Court Judges and bailiffs might just as readily point in the other direction. Dangerous people usually lie low.”

Henry’s circumstances were about to change quite significantly. In mid-1915 a new company called the Iglodine Company Ltd (P.C.) had been formed to buy him out, with a share capital of £15,000, equivalent to around £1.5 million today. Given the “rapid strides” that the new proprietors were reported to have made by March 1920, and the indications that Henry was now able to support an expensive country house lifestyle, it seems fairly safe to assume that he came into substantial funds at some time during this period.

Henry’s son Henry, who had been living with his mother in Ravensworth Terrace in Newcastle, joined the North Staffs 3rd (Reserve) Battalion on 7 November 1916. Its base in Wallsend would have been about 5km or so from North House, where his father was living at the time. Ten days later Henry’s mother Grace also left Ravensworth Terrace, moving to North House and rejoining her husband. As an alien through her marriage, although she had been born in England, she would have needed police permission to move from Newcastle to a different registration district, but it seems she did not obtain any. Three months after her move to North House, and three days after his previous letter to MI5, Supt Weddell wrote again to MI5 to tell them that proceedings were about to be taken against Eagle and his wife for offences against the Aliens Restriction (Consolidation) Order, 1916. The cases were both dismissed on payment of costs of 5 shillings, the Bench considering the offences had been committed inadvertently and without the intention to evade the order.

In 1925 Henry Eagle moved to (and may well have bought, given his likely wealth) Killingworth House, which had been advertised for sale in 1924 as a “Country Residence together with cottages, outbuildings, fields and gardens in all over 20 acre”. In 1929 two castellated houses, The Gate House and The Tower, were built opposite this house as the first part of a larger scheme that was never completed. Thought to be designed by him, these early examples of concrete dwellings are still standing.

When Henry died on 4 April 1939 at the age of 76 he was living at 33 Grosvenor Place in Jesmond, Newcastle, and left an estate of £1,823 (about £117,000 today). The name details in his probate record include the text “Igel or Eagle”, thereby acknowledging the original spelling which he had turned his back upon nearly forty years previously. And there was something to carry this original spelling onwards, as the Iglodine Company itself continued in Pilgrim Street in Newcastle under various owners until May 1959, when it was reported to have gone into liquidation. The company’s trademark, which Henry had first registered in 1914, finally expired in the UK in 2008, being last held by AAH Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

And was Henry a spy? In direct contrast to the widespread mania at the time, the authorised history of MI5 reveals that according to the German archives Germany had only 22 agents in the UK in January 1915, and by the end of the war this number was down to five. It must surely be very unlikely indeed that Henry Igel, or Eagle, would have been among them.