The story of the trial of Alice Wheeldon and her family – a miscarriage of justice perpetrated in 1917 at London’s Old Bailey

“Alice Wheeldon’s is the history of a woman, of a family, of a neighbourhood, and of a wider network of people who sought to make the world a better place through women’s rights, pacifism and then opposition to conscription. All these strands intersect in the events that led to her conviction and imprisonment in 1917, and in the consequences of the trial, which scattered the Wheeldon family across the globe.”
Women and War: from the series ‘Beyond Commemoration: Community, Collaboration and Legacies of the First World War’

In 1916, during the First World War, Alice Wheeldon was living with her family in Derby, England. As the main income earner, she supported the household through buying and selling high-quality second-hand clothes.

Alice and her husband, William Augustus, had four adult children: three daughters (Nellie, Hettie and Winnie) and a son, William Marshall (Will), who was a conscientious objector. Hettie (aged 25) and Nellie (27) lived in Derby with their parents; Winnie (23) had moved to Southampton with her pharmacist husband, Alf Mason.

The family were all active campaigners for many social issues of the time, notably women's suffrage and emancipation, pacifism and opposition to conscription. The war had split the women’s suffrage movement, with a more conservative wing encouraging enlistment.

The carnage of war drags on

With the controversial introduction of general conscription in May 1916, there was desperate concern for the young men who were conscientious objectors and the British Government’s treatment of these ‘conchies’. People were scared and angry. It was a year when Britons were increasingly horrified by the continuing and pointless carnage of the war, some calling for a negotiated peace. But the forces for a fight to the bitter end won out.

On 7 December 1916, David Lloyd George succeeded H. H. Asquith as Prime Minister. Lloyd George had been at the heart of the War Cabinet as Minister of Munitions and the Secretary of State for War, and a vocal proponent of conscription.

Undercover agent approaches the Wheeldon household

On 21 December 1916, an undercover agent using the name ‘Alex’ (or ‘Alec’) ‘Gordon’ was sent to Derby from Liverpool by Herbert Booth, an employee of an obscure branch of the Ministry of Munitions known as PMS2. Posing as a conscientious objector seeking accommodation, ‘Gordon’ was referred to Hettie Wheeldon, who had until recently been the local secretary of the No-Conscription Fellowship, and to her mother, Alice Wheeldon.

‘Gordon’ visited the Wheeldons for the first time on 26 December. After sharing a meal with them, he was referred to lodgings elsewhere by Hettie Wheeldon. He returned to the Wheeldon household the next day, 27 December 1916.

On 27 December 1916, ‘Gordon’ telegraphed Booth asking him to come to Derby – it would later emerge that he wanted to alert his superiors to a supposed ‘plot’ that he claimed to have uncovered through his conversations with the Wheeldons. Booth then travelled by train to Derby where he was met by ‘Gordon’.

‘Gordon’ introduced Booth to Alice Wheeldon on the evening of 29 December 1916 as ‘Comrade Bert’, another conscientious objector.

Discovery of poison leads to arrest for conspiracy

On 1 January 1917 a parcel was intercepted at the Derby railway station. It contained poison that had been sent from Southampton by Alice Wheeldon’s daughter, Winnie Mason, and supplied by Winnie’s husband, Alfred Mason, a pharmacist.

This parcel of poison formed the basis of the Crown case.

Alice Wheeldon and her daughters Harriet (Hettie) Wheeldon and Winnie Mason, along with Alfred Mason, were arrested on 30 January 1917. They were charged on 3 February 1917 with conspiring to murder (and soliciting and proposing the murder of) the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and Sir Arthur Henderson, Labour leader and a member of the small War Cabinet.

The Crown’s case was that Alice Wheeldon had suggested to ‘Gordon’ that she would procure poison for ‘Gordon’ to assassinate Lloyd George and Henderson.

The defence case was that Alice had believed ‘Gordon’ to be a conscientious objector who would help her with an ‘emigration scheme’ for her son and two others, in return for her assistance in helping his friends who wished to escape from an internment camp. Alice said she had agreed to get the poison for ‘Gordon’ at his request: she said he had told her it was to kill guard dogs at the internment camp.

Although members of the Derby community formed a Defence Fund, they had difficulty in finding lawyers prepared to defend Alice and her family. Alice’s husband William accepted the offer from Sayed Riza, barrister, to represent Alice, their daughters Hettie and Winnie, and their son-in-law Alf Mason.

High-profile trial leads to convictions for Alice, Winnie and Alf

The defendants came up for trial at the Central Criminal Court in the Old Bailey on 6 March 1917 before Justice Low, prosecuted by the Attorney-General, The Right Hon. F.E. Smith KC MP (later Lord Birkenhead), leading Mr Hugo Young KC, Sir Archibald Bodkin and Mr Maddocks. The defendants were all represented by Mr Sayed H. Riza.

The defendants were introduced by the Attorney-General as “a very desperate and dangerous body of people, consisting of persons who are bitterly hostile to this country, shelterers of fugitives from the Army, and persons who do their best to injure Great Britain in the crisis in which this country finds itself to-day”.

At trial Booth gave evidence, but ‘Gordon’ was not called. No explanation was given by the Attorney-General beyond that there were reasons “which seem to me good”. It would emerge, much later, that ‘Gordon’ was in fact William Rickard, a convicted criminal with a record of mental instability.

The trial was restarted on 8 March due to a juror falling ill. To that point, the court had heard, over two days, the Attorney-General’s opening address, all prosecution witnesses, and the opening of the defence case, with the evidence of the principal defendant, Alice Wheeldon. 

A ‘second’ trial then started from the beginning again with one new juror, and evidence was rushed through on the basis that 11 of the jurors had heard it before. This trial concluded on 10 March 1916 with the defendants, apart from Harriet (Hettie) Wheeldon, being convicted. Alice, Alfred and Winnie were sentenced to 10, 7 and 5 years’ penal servitude respectively.

Permission to appeal was refused on 2 April 1917.

Alice and her family imprisoned but continue to maintain their innocence

After the trial, Alice Wheeldon and Winnie Mason were imprisoned in Aylesbury; Alf Mason in Brixton.

Already suffering from ill-health, Alice went on a hunger-strike and was force-fed. In worsening health, she was transferred to Holloway Prison, but she became very ill and was released on licence on 31 December 1917.[1] She was accompanied home to Derby by her daughter Hettie Wheeldon and Lydia Smith, a good friend from a neighbouring village.  

From the outside, Hettie did her best to correct what she saw was a severe miscarriage of justice.

She produced a critical analysis of the trial in a 60-page report that constituted a passionate, reasoned and comprehensive (at that time) condemnation of the trial.[2] She argued, for example, that it was “highly unjust not to call an important witness”.

And in 1918, she issued a pamphlet, ‘Victims of Alec Gordon: The Agent-provocateur’ as part of the campaign to gain release of Winnie and Alf Mason, with the support of the Derby MP J.H. Thomas.[3]

Also part of that campaign, her letter to the Home Secretary petitioning for the release of Winnie and Alf sets out her reasoning with great clarity.[4]

Shattered lives

Despite being acquitted, Hettie’s teaching certificate was suspended for two years in October 1917, on the basis of an intercepted letter to Winnie in prison. It seems that her Socialist views had rendered her unfit to be a teacher.[5]  She married Arthur McManus in 1920, and died the same year, at the age of 29.

Winnie and Alf Mason were released at the end of the war, on 26 January 1919, after serving almost two years. But their lives were in tatters. Winnie’s teaching certificate had been suspended, and although Alf resumed his profession as a chemist, he led an unsettled, rootless life on release, with long periods away from his wife and son, Peter Mason.

The damage to reputation was felt so acutely within the family that Winnie and Alf’s grandchildren, Chloë and Deirdre Mason, had been shielded from knowledge of the case until they were adults. The campaign to clear their names gave them an opportunity to understand and contribute.

Find out about the campaign. 

[1] Order of, and Notice of Release on Licence, 29 December 1917. [Held: TNA >  HO 144-13338- 331997- Licence Release]

[2] [Held: Mason Family Papers > 03 Hettie’s Report]. Download: Document description | Pages 1-34 | Pages 35-61 | Appendix

[3] Hettie Wheeldon’s leaflet ‘The Victims of Alec Gordon’, 29 June 1918 [Held: Mason Family Papers]. Download.

[4] [Held: TNA > MEPO > MEPO 9356 – Family Letters - 05]. Download.

[5] [Special Branch] file 9356/82, Haywood to Thomson, 7 October 1919.