PASSPORTS, Assassins, Traitors and Spies was the title of our most recent afternoon lecture.
The large audience was kept spellbound by Martin Lloyd's true tales involving the use of passports, genuine and otherwise, during the last two centuries.
Starting with the failed attempted assassination of the French Emperor Napoleon III outsi
de the Paris Opera in January 1858 by an Italian revolutionary, Count Orsini, Mr .Lloyd also recounted the sad story of the German spy Carl Lody, and that of the 'English' traitor, William Joyce in the Second World War.
All three had obtained passports illegally, and because of the limitations of these documents at the time, operated without hindrance before being caught by other means.
Count Orsini used an English fellow-conspirator's passport in the days when there was no description of the holder on the document, only the signature of the Foreign Secretary at the time (Palmerston!).
Carl Lody was given a genuine American passport, stolen from its real owner, before the days of the passport photograph.
William Joyce was tried as a traitor on the basis of a British passport which he had obtained by fraud in the Thirties, although by then he was the rightful owner of a German passport.
All three were caught as a result of amazing coincidences and executed.
Carl Lody was shot by a firing squad in the Tower of London, the first execution there since 1700. But the failure of the passport systems and nationality conventions of their times to prevent these men's nefarious activities, led to changes in law and ever more regulation and information about the individual on the passport itself.
All these stories left us in some doubt as to the purpose and efficacy of holding a passport, genuine or otherwise, and raised many of the issues of individual liberty, state control and international relations which lie behind the rules.
Mr Lloyd finished his entertaining talk by answering questions and offering some of his books for sale.
The next lecture, entitled Strange Goings On In A Sussex Borough, will be given by Malcolm Pratt at 2.30pm on Wednesday, April 16 at St. Augustine's. Visitors always welcome.
The next Museum Outing is on Thursday, April 24, to the Rangers House at London's Greenwich Park. Details from Mr and Mrs Openshaw on 01424 846369.
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