18
INNER TEMPLE SIR BASIL THOMSON
the warring nations. In 1915, she was in Madrid from where
intelligence was received in London that she was in contact
with German agents. Early in 1916, she set sail for Holland,
but when her ship put in at Falmouth she was arrested and
taken before Thomson. “There walked into the room”, he
recalled, “a severely practical person who was prepared to
answer any question with a kind of reserved courtesy, who
felt so sure of herself and of her innocence that all that
remained in her was a desire to help her interrogators.” She
told Thomson that she was indeed a spy but working for
the French. Thomson claimed in his memoirs that he did not
believe her, but nevertheless let her go on the grounds that
none of her acts took place on British soil (not a problem
when it came to Casement). She was later arrested in 1917
in Paris, convicted of espionage by French authorities, and
executed by firing squad.
It was not only with real spies that Thomson had to deal.
The atmosphere in London throughout the war was febrile,
and accusations of espionage and suspicious behaviour
circulated freely. Complaints to his office led in remarkable
directions. His investigations unmasked a number of people
masquerading as exiled minor members of continental royal
dynasties. Another suspicious character, presenting himself
as a Polish nobleman, the ‘Count de Borch’ (his real name
was Anton Baumberg), was brought to Thomson’s notice as
a potential spy. Thomson absolved him of any involvement
in espionage, but the case was swiftly brought back to his
notice when it was found that he was conducting an affair
with the wife of a British officer, Captain Douglas Malcolm,
who was then serving at the front. On leave, Malcolm
Sir Roger Casement
© Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division
discovered the affair, went to horsewhip Baumberg and
ended up shooting him dead. The case became a cause
célèbre: Malcolm was acquitted in court on the grounds
that it was a crime of passion, although there was no legal
precedent for this; yet a considerable public backlash against
the outdated notion that women needed such protection for
their ‘honour’ followed the verdict.
It was an irony that Thomson himself suffered a similar
fall from grace. Following the war, he was promoted to
become head of the Directorate of Intelligence. However,
following a turf war between the various overlapping British
intelligence agencies, he was sacked in 1921. In 1925, he
was arrested in Hyde Park in the company of a young woman
whose name was given as ‘Miss Thelma de Lava’, and fined
£5 for outraging public decency. He argued that he was
researching for a forthcoming book on vice, and a number
of his supporters complained that he had been framed by his
rivals in the intelligence services, or even by members of the
Labour Party. Despite this, he continued to write, publishing
his autobiography, The Scene Changes, shortly before his
death in 1939.
Bijan Omrani
Bijan Omrani is an author and member of Lincoln’s Inn.
He co-curated The Winter of the World exhibition in
Temple Church. @bijanomrani