The Forgotten Spy (2 page)

History is at its most compelling when a gripping story provides insight about the past. Most historians focus upon dramas played out on national or international stages, featuring politicians, aristocrats, royalty, criminal masterminds, military heroes, state scandals and secrets. However in recent years, a new area of interest has opened up with the rise of genealogy. For the first time, stories within families have started to emerge that are equally fascinating – although they rarely make the pages of history textbooks, and are treasured within a small circle who have traditionally passed them word of mouth from one generation to the next. The internet has changed things slightly, with easier access to research materials, instant means of communication via social media and a vast array of self-publication tools. Even so, it is unusual that our family stories make headline news or do anything other than provide case studies for professional historians to include in their own account of the past.

I’ve spent a decade researching other people’s backgrounds, both on television as part of shows such as
Who Do You Think You Are?
and for newspapers, books and magazines. However, it’s been difficult finding the time or (let’s be honest about it) the motivation to investigate my own family history. We all love a mystery, especially one that can’t be solved, but the best that I could come up with relates to my uncle Michael and a story from his childhood that he used to puzzle over, the sort of event that stuck in his mind as the moment when he became aware of a wider world outside his front door. He recalled that he was six years old when a curious incident took place, in October 1933. His brother David – my father – was seriously ill in the Southgate isolation hospital, north London, with scarlet fever, a ‘notifiable disease’ that was considered potentially life-threatening at the time. His parents would make the short walk each morning from their home in Berkshire Gardens, Wood Green, crossing the busy Wolves Lane to the hospital gates to check the danger lists posted outside daily at noon. This became a ritual, with anxiety building until they were certain David had made it through the night; a rush of relief, only for concern to grow steadily throughout the day in preparation for another night of worry.

Michael takes up the story.

It was decided that Michael, who had been kept off school all week having been in contact with his brother, should go instead; the 1930s really was a different age in every sense.

At some point later that afternoon, Michael’s parents finally returned home without a single word of explanation. Michael was bursting to tell them about his adventure, but having imparted his news that David was still alive and expecting lavish praise for his successful lone mission, he was somewhat disappointed with their response – ‘they seemed gladdened by my news, but not outstandingly happy’. He never found out what had caused his parents to leave in such a terrible hurry. David made a full recovery and the incident was never spoken about again.

This is hardly a mystery worthy of the detective powers of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, but nevertheless the sudden disappearance of his parents haunted Michael from that day on. Equally, he was vaguely puzzled by the fact that around this time his grandparents decided to move to Shanklin, on the Isle of Wight, leaving their home of 20-plus years in Edmonton.

Michael’s mystery was dramatically solved in 2002 with the release of an MI5 file at The National Archives into a man called Ernest Holloway Oldham, who was his maternal uncle – and therefore my great-uncle. It contained some shocking revelations about Oldham‘s life, including the newspaper clipping at the start of this introduction. The file also revealed that the date that Michael went on his ‘grand adventure’ to the hospital was the same one as the inquest into Oldham’s death, 2 October 1933. My grandmother Marjorie Holloway Oldham had decided to attend, but only if her husband, George Bernard Barratt came too – hence the decision to leave their six-year-old son at home.

Thus with one mystery solved, an even greater one was posed: who really was Ernest Holloway Oldham? For the first time, this book tells the remarkable tale of a seemingly unremarkable man who became the forgotten spy of the Cold War.

In the 1920s, communist Russia had supplanted Germany as the nation most feared by British intelligence services, until the rise of Hitler, fascism and the Nazis in the 1930s shifted attention westwards once more. The secrets of Britain’s communication network lay in Room 22 at the heart of the Foreign Office in London, where a man in a brown suit plotted to betray his colleagues and countrymen as stock markets tumbled, the League of Nations failed and the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe once more.

It is a story of weakness, greed and a tragic descent into treachery, deception and desperation played out in the shadowy world of inter-war espionage. It is the story of my great-uncle.

Many dramatic stories have a humble beginning and this one is no exception. On 10 September 1894, a boy was born at 6 Sunningdale Cottages, a small property on Bury Street in the recently developed London suburb of Lower Edmonton. The boy’s parents, Frank Oldham and Carrie Holloway, were talented and hard-working teachers who had married in Christ Church, Ramsgate, on the first day of the year; rather endearingly, Carrie firmly believed that she had conceived on her wedding night.

A few weeks after her son’s birth, she set out to formally register his appearance in the world, walking the short distance from her cottage past rows of recently built terraced houses, towards the Green – nothing more than a small triangle of grass in the centre of Edmonton that was a reminder of the rural village that had been slowly transformed into a built-up residential area, a haven for families drawn to the outskirts of London by the promise of work who now formed part of a new class of suburban commuters.

Crossing the Green, Carrie bought a ticket at Lower Edmonton station and, after a short wait, joined the north-bound train. Two stops later she alighted at Enfield Town, where she trudged with babe in arms to the registry office. She named him Ernest Holloway Oldham, probably in honour of her half-brother Alfred Ernest Holloway, who was affectionately known to his friends and family as ‘Ern’.

Carrie had met her husband, Frank Oldham, while they were both teachers. Frank was much younger than his wife, born on 3 June 1867 in Station Road, Hadfield, a small village in Derbyshire’s Peak District that today is perhaps best known as the setting for the fictional town of Royston Vasey in the BBC’s quirky dark comedy
The League of Gentlemen
. Hadfield formed part of the manor of Glossop, long the possession of the dukes of Norfolk, who spotted an opportunity to capitalise on the growing movement towards mechanised factories in the early 19th century and decided to transform Glossop into an industrial town.

Neighbouring Hadfield was developed along similar lines by the Sidebottom family, who purchased the Waterside and Bridge Mill complex from John Turner and John Thornley in 1820 and spent the remainder of the 19th century developing the site as a large spinning and weaving combine. For example, they funded and built their own branch railway to the mill so that raw materials could be brought in and finished goods transported around the country or to the ports for export. This was a thriving business – in 1880, the mills ran 293,000 spindles at 4,800 looms and Frank’s father had a key position as loom manager, sufficiently well paid to enable him to purchase and convert six stone cottages in Post Street, Padfield, which were rented out, apart from the one that the family lived in. This was a typical story of working-class man turned middle manager, rising through the factory ranks to obtain a better station in life.

However, young Frank decided the world beyond Hadfield and Padfield had other attractions, possibly as a result of an unhappy apprenticeship as a grocer when he was 12, and maybe due to lingering trauma caused by the 1874 death of his only sibling, five-year-old Lowe Oldham, of scarlet fever – a known killer before the discovery of antibiotics which would affect one
of Frank’s grandsons many years later in 1933. Frank left home to attend the Westminster Training College on Horseferry Road, London, which specialised in training teachers for Methodist schools. Formal training to qualify as a certified teacher had become more widespread after the 1870 Elementary Education Act, with the provision of education still seen as a vocation akin to that of a missionary ‘bringing enlightenment to the uneducated masses’,
³
but it was still quite a journey and even steeper learning curve for a young man with an industrial background from a small village in the Peak District. Frank had to adapt to the discipline of a formal training course in the bustling metropolis that London had become.

After graduation, Frank Oldham returned north to take a position as first assistant master at Wellington Street board school in Oldham between 1889 and 1891. He lodged with the Lee family in Churchill Street, a school placement that was probably secured through connections within the Methodist movement via the training college. In 1892, Frank moved south from Lancashire to Cheshire to become the headmaster at the Tarporley British school. It is said that his hair was completely white by the time he reached the age of 25, so perhaps his employment in Tarporley was not entirely to his liking or the children in his care were somewhat of a more disruptive nature than he had been used to. Either way, he left the same year and headed back to London for a new challenge, securing promotion as assistant master at Croyland Road board school in Edmonton – the equivalent to a deputy headship today.

Carrie’s journey to the north was more challenging. She was born on 27 January 1859, the last of four daughters, to Henry George Holloway senior and Caroline Wood. The couple had met while employed as the school master and mistress of the Minster workhouse on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, and married on 7 July 1851. Shortly after their wedding, the couple became master and matron of the workhouse – a big change in status that was accompanied by a pay rise (£60 per year between them as opposed to £20 each as teachers) and a house of their own within the grounds of the workhouse, complete with the provision of meals, coals and washing facilities.

Tragically, Caroline died of apoplexy on 19 October 1864 when Carrie
was only five years old, leaving Henry without a wife, the children without a mother – and the workhouse without a matron. These were expedient times and within a year Henry remarried. His bride, 13 years his junior, was Rosina Wood, who appears to have been Caroline’s half-sister. To avoid a scandal and awkward questions about the legality of the relationship under the terms of the 1835 Lyndhurst Act (which equated the status of sister-in-law with sister in issues of consanguinity), Henry and Rosina took a train to Margate and married in the Zion Chapel of a rare non-conformist sect, the Countess of Huntingdon’s Confession. They were in the presence of an assistant registrar whose wife, alongside an official from the chapel, acted as the witnesses.

Within a year of her own mother’s death, Carrie had a stepmother to deal with, followed swiftly by five half-siblings. It was not an easy situation for the feisty Carrie and in 1875, aged 16, she quarrelled with her stepmother and ran away from home. She ended up in Higher Booths, Rawtenstall, in Lancashire – a small hamlet whose residents were economically dependent like so many others on the cotton factories for employment.

Following in her parents’ footsteps, Carrie at first found work teaching day-release pupils – children aged 12 who attended half of each school day, as long as they had employment for the rest of the time, and who left school at 13 to take up full-time work. Barely older than the children in her care, Carrie probably started out as a pupil teacher – a system whereby elementary school pupils aged over 13 would act as teachers throughout the day and then themselves receive tuition from the head teacher after school hours. Hers was a paid position, with boys receiving considerably more than girls, and the head teacher securing an emolument for the education of their charges.