Basil Thomson: Difference between revisions

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'''Sir Basil Home Thomson''', {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|KCB}} (21 April 1861 – 26 March 1939) was a British colonial administrator and prison governor, who was head of [[Metropolitan Police Service|Metropolitan Police]] [[Criminal investigation department|CID]] during World War I. This gave him a key role in arresting wartime spies, and he was closely involved in the prosecution of [[Mata Hari]], Sir [[Roger Casement]] and many Irish and Indian nationalists. His equating of Jews with Bolshevism led to accusations of anti-semitism. Thomson was also a successful novelist.

Thomson was born in [[Oxford]], where his father, [[William Thomson, Archbishop of York|William Thomson]] (who would later become [[Archbishop of York]]), was [[Provost (education)|provost]] of [[The Queen's College, Oxford|The Queen's College]]. Thomson was educated at Worsley's School in [[Hendon]] and [[Eton College]], and then attended [[New College, Oxford]], where a fellow undergraduate was [[Montague John Druitt]], the man named as the prime suspect in the [[Jack the Ripper]] case by Chief Constable [[Melville Macnaghten]] in a Scotland Yard document dated 1894. (Thomson replaced Macnaghten as head of CID at Scotland Yard in 1913.) Thomson ended his university studies after two terms, after suffering bouts of [[Major depressive disorder|depression]], and spent some time from 1881 to 1882 in the United States, working as a farmer in [[Iowa]].<ref name="odb">Noel Rutherford, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36499 Thomson, Sir Basil Home (1861–1939)], ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, January 2008.</ref>

In 1883, with the promise of marriage to a Grace Webber should he be financially secure, Thomson secured a cadet position at the [[Colonial Office]], where he assisted [[William Des Vœux|Sir William Des Vœux]], then [[Governor of Fiji]]. Arriving in [[Fiji]] in early 1884, he set about learning the [[Fijian language|Fijian]] and [[Tongan language|Tongan]] languages while appointed as a stipendiary [[magistrate]] throughout the islands. When [[William MacGregor|Sir William MacGregor]] was appointed administrator of [[British New Guinea]], Thomson joined his staff until he was invalided back to England after contracting [[malaria]].<ref name="odb" /> Back in England, Thomson married Grace Webber in 1890, returning to Fiji with his wife in the middle of that year to serve as commissioner of native lands. When [[John Bates Thurston|Sir John Thurston]], the [[Governor of Fiji]], dismissed the [[Prime Minister of Tonga|Premier of Tonga]] ([[Shirley Waldemar Baker]]) in his capacity as [[High Commissioner]] of the [[British Western Pacific Territories|Western Pacific]], Thomson was moved to [[Tonga]], where he became assistant premier to {{ill|Siaosi U. Tukuʻaho|to}}, the pro-British chief appointed as Baker's replacement.<ref name="odb" />

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In the mid-1890s, Thomson read for the [[Bar association|bar]] examinations at the [[Inner Temple]], and was admitted to the bar in 1896. Instead of becoming a [[barrister]], Thomson accepted the position of [[prison governor|deputy governor]] at [[Liverpool (HM Prison)|HM Prison Liverpool]], after his name was suggested for the post due to a personal acquaintance with [[Evelyn Ruggles-Brise|Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise]], a fellow [[Old Etonian]] who had stayed with Thomson in Tonga.<ref>{{cite book |title=Prison Governors: Managing Prisons in a Time of Change |last=Bryans |first=Shane |year=2007 |publisher=Willan Publishing |location=London |isbn=978-1-84392-223-0 |page=32 }}</ref> Over the next twelve years, he served as governor of [[Northampton (HM Prison)|Northampton]], [[Cardiff (HM Prison)|Cardiff]], [[Dartmoor (HM Prison)|Dartmoor]], and [[Wormwood Scrubs (HM Prison)|Wormwood Scrubs]] prisons. From 1908 to 1913, he served as secretary of the [[Prison Commission (England and Wales)|Prison Commission]].

In June 1913, Thomson was appointed [[Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis|Assistant Commissioner "C" (Crime)]] of London's [[Metropolitan Police]], which made him the head of the [[Criminal Investigation Department]] (CID) at [[New Scotland Yard]]. When [[World War I]] broke out in 1914, the CID found itself acting as the enforcement arm for Britain's military intelligence apparatus: while the newly formed Secret Service Bureau (later known as MI6, the [[Secret Intelligence Service]]), and the intelligence arms of the [[War Office]] and the [[British Admiralty|Admiralty]], collected intelligence on suspected spies in Britain, they had no arrest powers. As head of CID, Thomson was involved in the arrests in several high-profile espionage cases, including Lieutenant [[Carl Hans Lody]] and establishing himself a reputation as a "spycatcher".<ref name="odb" /> Thomson worked closely with the MI5, especially the MI5(g) headed by [[Vernon Kell]] and his work was key in dealing with the Indian nationalist movement in Europe.{{clarify|date=November 2014|reason=sentence does not make sense}}

Since the existence of the latter organisation was not acknowledged at the time, Thomson controversially claimed a large proportion of the credit in the successful British counter-espionage operations. In his memoirs, ''The Scene Changes'', Thomson acknowledges only the works of [[Robert Nathan (Indian civil servant)|Robert Nathan]], who worked closely with him, and was involved in the interrogation of a number of Indian revolutionaries who worked with [[German Intelligence]] during the war. Thomson and Nathan's work at the time was key in identifying the plans by [[Ghadar Party]] and the [[Indian Independence Committee]] to assassinate [[Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener|Lord Kitchener]] in 1915 through an associate of [[Har Dayal]], [[Gobind Behari Lal]], as well as identifying the outlines of the [[Hindu–German Conspiracy|Indian revolutionary conspiracy]]. Their efforts at the time also resulted in the capture of [[Harish Chandra]] (who was associated with the [[Berlin committee]]), and he was successfully turned into a [[double agent]]. Thomson's efforts were also key in uncovering the first concrete evidence of Turco-German agents [[Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition|operating in the middle east]] and attempting to destabillise [[Afghanistan]] and [[British India]].

One who he interrogated was [[Mata Hari]], the Dutch exotic dancer later to be executed by the French as a spy. In 1916 she was taken off a ship sailing from Spain to the [[Netherlands]] at [[Falmouth, Cornwall|Falmouth]] as a suspicious person and brought to London where she was interrogated at length by Thomson. Eventually she claimed to be doing some work for French Intelligence. (A full transcript of this is in Britain's [[National Archives]] and Thomson himself refers to it in his 1922 book ''Queer People'').

Thomson's work as Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard Involved a wide range of investigations. His natural conservatism was given full throttle against suffragettes, then against spies from Imperial Germany and its allies, then against [[Irish nationalist]]s, and finally against British [[Marxist]]s. Thomson was involved with the spreading of public awareness of the "Black Diaries" used against [[Sir Roger Casement]] to prevent public support for a reduction of Casement's death sentence for [[high treason]] in 1916. More controversially, the large number of Jews among the Bolsheviks before Stalin's purges led some to think he equated Bolshevism with Jews.{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}} He wrote anti-Semiticly shaded articles for a newspaper, the ''[[Whitechapel Gazette]]'', owned by the highly questionable social figure [[Maundy Gregory]].{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}} He burlesqued such views in his 1925 Sherlock Holmes spoof, "Mr Pepper Investigates", especially in Chapter 6, 'Blackmailers'. Thomson was appointed [[Companion of the Order of the Bath]] (CB) in 1916 and [[Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath]] (KCB) in 1919.