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INTRODUCTION

A Tragedy of war is rempant xenophobia, with demands that enemies be locked up, even if they have been refugees from persecution as with Hitler in 1939, or peaceful people with no hostile intent. Owing to a small fifth column, some care was needed but the UK DISGRACED ITSELF by locking up thousands of harmless people, shipping them to the ISLE OF MAN in WW2, when internment camps were set up in Douglas, Ramsey, Peel, and Port St Mary/Port Erin. With menfolk away fighting, male internee could be used as labour, and as petrol/diesel/tyres were in short supply, they were mostly moved by train, which needed rail tickets and warrants issued at the camps for the issue of tickets. Two documents were needed for each party of aliens, namely a warrant from the camp saying the destination and the number of aliens and escorts. At the stations, the booking clark filled in an H M Forces paper ticket for the party. the warrant was sent to Douglas head office of the IMR, as were the tickets and an invoice raised against the camps agency for the fares. this is a selection.

Some journeys were common, for example RAMSEY internees were sent to stations on the NORTH line such as BALLAUGH, for local farms. Peel internees were sent to ST JOHNS and CROSBY. Douglas internees were sent tothsouth line stations, and Union Mills, but some destinations seem rare or non-existent, but the whole alien caper was covered with wartime secrecy and after the war with embarrassment so a lo of records were disposed of on the basis that it swpt it under the carpet. MY late father, a doctor in the Eighth army felt such records such not be wiped out so managed to save some. Whether the survivors are representative or chance isnot certain, but it is probably in between.

The only camp for which a representative number of warrants exist is the METROPOLE WHICH WAS A HOTEL ON DOUGLAS PROM. The warrant was on a scrap of paper with the names of the farm/farmers to whom the internees were going and the station. The warrant was given a rubber stamp which was a 2 ins oval for the METROPOLE. I HAVE SELECTED some of the better stamps and we have some on line. TO SAVE SCANNING SIMILAR DOCUMENT REPEATELY , which seemed to vex ebay, the scan represents the item and its quality. Likewise with tickets they were individually pre-numbered but the ticket send will be of comparable quality and subject. e.g. if you order a ticket from the married camp, that is what you willl get, and if from the Mooragh camp then that is what willbe sent.

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2324 is ticket for 10 internees/1 escort from MOORAGH camp RAMSEY.

3570 By late 1944, the idea that even a diehard NAZI would want to escape back to acollapsing Germany was absurd so excortswere often omitted

3831 wives and children were rounded up, but eventually were allowed on shopping trips, hence the ticket from the MARRIED CAMP TOCASTLETOWN

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HEADQUARTERS INTERNMENT CAMPS paperwork1943 3 items

Thousands of 'suspicious' foreigners took jobs in the UK as waiters, waitresses,goveresses,or married British subjects. Many more fled the brutal Nazi regime, and the last thing they wanted to do was to return to Germany and face Hitler's vengeance; a few were diehard Nazis inserted to damage BRITAIN, so short term internment to sort the wheat from the chaff was unavoidable, but zenophobia turned it into lock em all up,even though many could have contributed to the British war effort.

IN WW1 and WW2. tens of thousands were incarcerated in the Isle of MAN, and thousands of people were employed guarding them and in a bloated administration, rather than making a positive contribution to defeating Hitler. After the war, the IOM was embarrassed at its role as the BRITISH PRISON CAMP, so wartime secrecy and post war, 'push it under the carpet' ensured minimal publicity and maximum destruction.

As most of the internees posed no threat at all, the authorities had to show some humanity so periodic conferences of groups of internees took place. the letter from Alien INTERNMENT CAMPS HQ is for such a meeeting, and explains 20 internees from Douglas and 20 from Ramsey will be sent to Port Erin, each party with an escort. great efforts were being made to save petrol, tyres etc, so civil motoring was banned but special buses were required as the terrible aliens could not mix with normal human beings, could they? Port Erin was the married camp where the German wives and therefore half German kids of BRITISH husbands were imprisoned, but rather than guard each hotel, the whole of the area became a prison camp with the local people needing passes to get in and out. There was supposed to be minimum interaction with these bad people, but with its beaches, the local kids went on the beach so little Tommy might encounter prisoner child Hermann, and play together, which meant the moms found their kids had an alien friend, and the German mom was not a monster. soon the local moms became the most vociferous champions of their new German friends, hence the need to keep these horrid people out of contact.

the paperwork outlines the incredible amount of bureaucratic capers with bus timetables, and lists of all the bumpf that had to be generated when the government was bleating save paper.

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Isle of Man METROPOLE CAMP alien Internment Camp ticket voucher 1942

During both World Wars, the Isle of Man was used as an Internment Camp for 'enemy' aliens, tens of thousands of people spending years as prisoners in the IOM. In WW 1 a vast prison camp was set up at Knockaloe just outside Peel, but in WW2, boarding houses on Douglas Prom, at Peel and the whole of Port Erin were taken over as prison camps. The Metropole hotel at the north end of Douglas Prom was requisitioned at the start of the war along with the rest of the block and with barbed wire outside made into a prison camp. It was used primarily for Italian Prisoners from July 1940 to November 1944 by which time Italy was now an ally. For troublesome prisoners, the next door Douglas horse tram stables were pressed into use, the 'cells' being individual horse stalls with cobbled floors. As these people were mostly as innocent of any crime as the 'guests' in the Nazi concentration camps, this does not reflect well on the Isle of Man government.

The internees included thousands of Italians who had been working in the UK before the war, and had no desire to do any harm to the UK, but officialdom had to protect its back from allegations of doing nothing. After a while it occurred to someone that local farmers needed labour as there was a move to grow more food on the Island. Internees were in desperate financial straits, so were allowed to volunteer to work on local farms and would be sent by train from Douglas to the nearest station. So they would not make a break, there was an escort on the train, but as they went to different farms, the farcical nature of this was manifest.

The parties of internees would be marched to Douglas station where the escort would hand over a slip of paper with the name not of the prisoner but of the farmer who they had been consigned to, the number of internees and the station. The IMR accepted this as a ticket warrant and charged the camp the necessary fare, the camp offsetting it as an expense against the profits of hiring out the labour, the internees receiving a small sum for their work. HM Forces tickets which were paper tickets measuring approx 3 x 4.5" were used, with the details entered by hand

A small stock of these Internment camp warrants for the Metropole camp survive for 1942. Each is 'individual' as it will be for a different date and party of Internees which can vary from 1 or 2 to 14 or more. The warrants are on odd slips of scrap paper , but ALL have a 2 x 1.25" oval METROPOLE INTERNMENT CAMP rubber stand within a double ring which is dated. Sometimes the inking is very faint if several warrants had been stamped, but if the rubber stamp had been inked it can be over inked.

Santon and Port Soderick Metropole Warrant

These destinations were the major ones for internees, if the surviving material is a representative sample of the whole, and the names of individual farms/farmers recur.

Apart from the main destinations, there can be other interesting variations

Metropole CROSBY Warrant

This was a less common destination and the example we have on offer at present has a good ink strike which is not too heavy or too light or blurred, but there is an approx 1 ins tear starting midway between Kermeen and 3, but it is not apparent in the photo and would not be apparent when displayed properly. In my opinion it is the best of the remaining rubber stamp strikes we have for Crosby internees

Metropole UNION MILLS Warrant

very few issued and most have gone

UNSTAMPED 'Rubber stamped' WARRANT

This is a bit like the King's celebrated 'There is a Secret passage into the Castle known to everyone but me' line! The Metropole warrants were written on scraps of paper and to give them some semblance of 'officialdom' were rubber stamped as we have seen. A handful, and it is a tiny quantity, seem to have been inadvertently issued without being hand stamped. The IMRCo could reasonably have rejected a scrap of paper with an order to send someone somewhere as invalid if it had no recognisable official element to it! You could have written it, or I could have, after all! As the soldiers who escorted the prisoners would be on the same duty day after day, and as the booking clerks would know them, and it would mean a day's work would be lost, it seems that everyone accepted as valid a rubber stamped document without the rubber stamp!

Quite clearly it IS a variant, just as a stamp that was lacking one of the inks in the printing process is a variant, but one that only makes sense if it is displayed with comparable properly completed warrants, as it is otherwise just a scrap of paper that could have been written by you or me! The item is in the same handwriting as 'proper' warrants; it is to the same general style, and it's sense of authenticity is its similarity to proper forms.

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METROPOLE WARRANT on back of official government Offers of Assistance form of 9/38

The majority of Metropole warrants are on scraps of plain white paper, as paper was rationed and in short supply, but during the war, surplus or superseded forms could be used, and from my father, I know that the British Army in Sicily used captured Italian forms for WD communications! This variant of the Metropole warrants looks very smart as they are on an attractive pink paper, and when you turn it over you find it is an 'Offer of Assistance' form printed by the government in 1938 and which has been form in half to provide paper stocks!

Including my file copy, the quantities surviving are less than the proverbial 'fingers on one hand'. For the purpose of the illustration I have shown the front and back of the form, but the item of offer is just one form not two. They are the only Metropole warrants known to me on coloured paper and on the back of an official form, but I am sure this is purely a random factor based on what survived.

In passing, 'what survived' is the bane of analysis. Do 'rare' destinations have rare status as they were rare, or because few of them survived by chance? Are these pink forms rare for the same reasons? There is a further paradox. Historians like paper trails and will often say that without a paper trail it is NOT history. This is sloppy reasoning. The event may have happened but the paperwork may not have survived, but non survival does not mean the event did not happen. Put quite simply, the fortuitous survival of a few Metropole warrants showed the movement of aliens on war work took place, and if NO warrants had survived it would not mean the event did not take place; It would mean we did not have a paper trail, and nothing more.

If the Metropole issued warrants, it is reasonable to suppose that other camps did, but so far I have seen no examples. I cannot prove the other camps did so, but it is likely they had similar systems.

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'Best available' is subjective, as some warrants were crumpled up by the soldier escorting the POWs, so some are crumpled and some flat. Other things being equal a smooth one will be better than a crumpled one! Anyone who has used inked rubber stamps [as I have] will know how the first impression after inking can often be over-inked with the centres of letters such as an a or e being filled in. On the other hand if the clerk tries to get too many impressions before re-inking the impression gets weaker and weaker. These were working documents, not collectors items for philatelists, and a busy filing clerk needed to get the paperwork to the soldier in time for him to catch the train, so there can be over-inked and under-inked warrants. Is an over-inked warrant that is not crumpled better than a perfect inking than has been screwed up?

If you have used rubber stamps, you will know they need to be applied evenly to the paper, not left side heavy or right side heavy? Is a superb stamp where the edge of the double circle is off the paper better than a poorer stamp? Most stamps had the name of the soldier escort and sometimes the clerk stamped the warrant partially over or right over the soldier's name. Was this an error or how it was supposed to be done? It is an interesting variation but is it better or not?

I try to use my judgment to balance these variables. The most bizarre variable of all is that sometimes in the scurry to get work done a warrant was filled in and NOT stamped with the Metropole rubber stamp. Technically this would be invalid, but the booking clerks at Douglas station were used to Private X arriving with internees and presenting a warrant for say 6 internees to Santon. These unstamped warrants were accepted as valid, but is an unstamped warrant a further variant?

Most internees seem to have worked in the vicinity of Santon or Port Soderick, but a number went to Ballasalla and a few to Union Mills or Crosby, hence the variations. I think we can safely say that Port Soderick, Santon and Ballasalla were the main destinations, and we know of Union Mills, Crosby and [one] St John's, but that does not mean other destinations did not exist. They may have existed and may have been sent to landfill decades ago. I have never found any data of movement patterns, so a few crumpled pieces of paper may be all that we can use to discover history!

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IMR Isle of Man Railway wartime cartage forms inc internees, NAAFI, RAF traffic

These TWO cartage notes were to move inbound goods from the IOMSPCo wharf to the railway station, and reveal the high level of war related traffic by 1942 Each note provides for 10 consignments. One note has internees, Muller at the Married camp Port Erin, Koppel at the Peel camp and two consignments to Weiss at Port Erin, plus two consignments to the RAF at Ronaldsway before Ronaldsway was handed over to the Royal Navy, so that is six items out of ten are war related. It also reveals how much traffic on the boats and on the trains was internee related,

The second note commences with the NAAFI at Jurby and two consignments to Port Erin which was within the perimeter of camp M, so maybe war related, as they seem to be for tobacco and with the greatly increased population at Port Erin, tobacco usage would go up markedly.

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IMRCo HM Forces paper ticket to 'Pass 105 Internees from Central Internment Camp Douglas to Peel AUG 1940

The IOM established Peel as an Alien internment camp using the Peveril block on the Prom. Initially in housed mostly refugees who had more to fear from the Germans than the local people would in an invasion, but later became a camp for British Nazi sympathisers and hardened Nazi civilians. This movement order is at the start of the camp's career and is for an escort and 105 internees.

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IMRCo HM Forces paper ticket to 'Pass aliens from Central Internment Camp Douglas to Ramsey July 1940

The IOM established Ramsey as an Alien internment camp using the large hotels on the Mooragh Prom, forming what became the Mooragh Camp. This movement order on counterfoil 58 for 1 OR (escort) and 2 internees is at the start of the camp's career.

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Ticket authorising movement of internees from Peveril Camp Peel to Crosby & back 1941

During the Great War, 1914-1918 the IOM became a vast prison, with a large camp for enemy internees at Knockaloe just south of Peel. During World War 2, history repeated itself, with smaller camps on the prom in Douglas, at the Mooragh in Ramsey, at Port Erin and at the Peveril block in Peel. The Peveril initially housed 'friendly enemy aliens, many of them Jewish refugees from the Nazis, but Nazi sympathisers were added and the camp eventually became a hostile internees camp. Three prisoners escaped in 1941 and were recaptured and questions about them being fed led to a six hour riot at the camp and questions in Tynwald and in Parliament as well.

This Isle of Man Railway ticket is headed H M Forces, although it is paradoxically for those who were ideologically hostile to HM government and HM forces.

Most material relating to POW camps since the days of the Napoleonic wars relates to craft items produced by POWs to while away the horrific boredom and commands high prices. Very little material has appeared on the market relating to the administration of the camps or movements of internees or detainees (the terms seem to have been elastic). It is a spare item from my collection.

3388. FROM PEV CAMP represents this rare issue, as most later Peel tickets,so far as i know, do not give the specific camp in PEEL.

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!945 Isle of Man Peel unescorted internees to named farmers No 6282

In the early days of the war, internee traffic was noted as aliens, internees or POWs, and the name of the camp was often given, eg Peveril or Mooragh. By April 1945, the likelihood of any internee wanting to escape back to the rapidly shrinking territory of the Third Reich was so fanciful that escorts had seemingly been abandoned. This had taken place as early as 1940 at Camp W in the south of the Island, but the diehard Nazi's and British fascists at the Peveril Camp at Peel were treated more cautiously.

By 1945, even at Peel there seems to have been much informality. Instead of notes, Internees or Int, H M FORCES TICKETS used for internees follow a different pattern The number of internees is given, along with the name of the farmer, the name of the farm and the destination station.

From studying an individual ticket, it makes little sense, as there are movements of 1, 2 or 3 passengers and the issue authority for the warrant is a farmer at a named farm! As military traffic it makes no sense, and it is only when the same pattern, Piper Kerrow Garrow, Kermeen Kerrow ny Clough, etc appear repeatedly, and one is aware of a large camp at Peel and the way internees were doing farm work, that it becomes intelligible.

Insufficient material survives to be dogmatic, but it is my impression that Peel was more formal than most placed for much of the war, due no doubt to the type of internee, but the 'we understand it, even if no one else does' attitude became the rule.

I was a youngster in the last years of the Sheard era, 1960-65, and many of the staff were now old men, some in their eighties, and the railway did work on a highly informal, 'we all understand it' basis.

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Ticket authorising return trip for alien internees and 1 escort, Port St Mary MARRIED Camp to Castletown and back, 1941 ticket 3791

The Port Erin/Port St Mary camp commenced as women only camp with the residents AND the internees living behind the barbed wire perimeter! Married couples were split up, but later this barbarism was partially reversed and some men allowed to live with their wives in the Married part of the camp.

This Isle of Man Railway ticket is headed H M Forces. It was normally for a single journey but the internees were clearly supposed to return so is marked Castletown & Back. From what I can find out, shopping in Port Erin and Port St Mary was limited and so trips were permitted to Castletown, under a warrant from the camp administration for alien women internees. BY October 1941 these had apparently reached into the 300s.

Most material relating to POW camps since the days of the Napoleonic wars relates to craft items produced by POWs to while away the horrific boredom and commands high prices. Very little material has appeared on the market relating to the administration of the camps or movements of internees, aliens or detainees. It is a spare item from my collection.

So far as I can see, there were six camps in Douglas, and one each at Onchan, Ramsey, Peel, and the womens/married camps at Port St Mary/Port Erin. Of those camps we have material, albeit in very short supply for the Douglas Metropole, Peel, Ramsey Mooragh, and the womens/married camps at PSM/PE. I have seen an item relating to the Hutchinson Sq 'P' camp but have none for sale. I would be happy to receive any supplementary information to fill out this or our other item descriptions.

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1945 Prisoner of War IMR railway ticket 20 POWs Douglas to Ballasalla, Isle of Man illus 5557

The Isle of Man served as a massive Internment camp in both wars, imprisoning around 30,000 mainly German aliens in WW1, and many classes of prisoner in WW2, from all the Axis nations and also British fascists etc. Most were civilian prisoners but there were military prisoners as well, and as an Island in the middle of the Irish Sea escape would be particularly difficult thought three internees did attempt to escape in a rowing boat from Peel, but were recaptured within hours.

My late father, Dr R Preston Hendry was the foremost authority on Isle of Man Railway tickets, and he had noticed that the Isle of Man Railway used H M Forces tickets for Internees, as they were usually known, although sometimes shortened to Int, or given as Detainee or Alien. Some movements were large groups of perhaps 50-300 internees to or from one of the many camps in Douglas, Onchan, Peel, Ramsey or Port Erin/Port St Mary. The internees were financially hard up so working for local farmers who needed labour for food production was attractive to the internees and by 1944 had become vital to the life of the local community.

One assumes POWs were released the moment the war ended, but this was not so, and many, esp German, POWs remained in custody into late 1945 or early 1946. This ticket is unusual for several reasons;

a) It refers to POW rather than Internee, Alien, detainee, and POW was rarely used as a term in the IOM, as the majority were not military personnel who technically are POWs.

b) It is October 1945 which five months after the end of hostilities in Europe

c) Early internee material for farm work shows internees escorted by soldiers to and from the farms they worked at, but by the spring of 1945 the idea that even the most diehard Nazi would try to escape from internment, make his way to England and then to Europe to take part in the dying days of the shrinking Nazi empire was so absurd that few internees were escorted. for farm work, this was a known destination with several farms taking batches of prisoners every day.

d) HM Forces tickets were marked SINGLE journey, and altered to return if need be. Internee traffic to and from farms was return as the internee returned to the camp at the end of the day. As there were NO camps at Ballasalla, this is not a move from one camp to another, but must be for a work detail, and the POW would return at the end of the day

In passing the IMR used essentially the same type of ticket for soldiers from 1874 to 1940, but with the massive growth of military traffic in WW2 had many books of a revised design of ticket printed c1941, of which this is an example. Most were destroyed after the war, but by chance some survive and enabled us to piece together the WW2 internee/pow situation.

We have several other internee/HM Forces items on line for the Isle of Man.

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1941 Isle of Man Railway IMR Ticket Internees Mooragh Camp Ramsey - Married Camp

With the scatter gun approach of interning all 'enemy' aliens, even those who had fled from Hitler in fear of their lives much distress was caused as the women and children were in the women's camp at Port Erin/Port St Mary and husbands/fathers were in other camps. This inhuman policy lasted for a long time but by 1941 visits were arranged to the Married camp at Port Erin and this ticket 2351 covers a trip by 30 internees and an escort to see the wives - it is headed 34 M Camp, ie 30 + 4 escort from M[ooragh] camp to Port Erin & Return.

Only a few of these married visit warrants seem to have survived.

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WW2 Escort & 4 internees Isle of Man Railway ticket 3447 Douglas - Ballabeg 1944

With six internment camps in Douglas and other camps in Onchan, Ramsey, Peel and Port Erin the Island houses many alien internees in WW2. The internees were hard up and the Island was growing more of its own food so internees were allowed to work for farmers. AT first it was very formal but by 1944 a group of internees with perhaps one soldier to ewcort them would be sent by train to a number of farmers at a country station. Farmer Cooil has 2 internees and farmer Fargher has two internees, the two groupd sharing one soldier as escort! Did he escort one party to farm A and then the other party to farm B, or just say hop it? WIthin a few months internees were sent without escort.

Ballabeg is a small station just west of Castletown and I only recently found some Ballabeg material.