On this day, September 9, 1914
At Bow Street Police Court yesterday, Maximilian Walter Curtis Duntz, 31, cigarette manufacturer, of Green Street, Leicester Square, W, was charged on remand with failing to register himself.
When the prisoner was arrested, he first said that he thought he was a Norwegian, but did not know where he was born; then that he was born at sea and, finally, that he was born in Berlin.
Detective-inspector Carlin stated that the prisoner was enrolled as a Special Constable in the name of Walter Curtis six days before he was arrested.
The prisoner, giving evidence, said that as he had lived in England for 16 years and did not owe allegiance to Germany, he regarded himself as a British subject.
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Mr Hopkins: “We have kept ‘open house’ for years, but we have not come to that yet.”
In reply to the magistrate, the prisoner said that the only reason he changed his name was that Duntz sounded very much like “dunce”. He had no idea when he joined the special constabulary that only British-born subjects were eligible.
The magistrate sentenced the prisoner to the maximum term of six months’ imprisonment, and recommended him for deportation, the effect of which, he said, might be that he would be interned until the end of the war.
Carl Linz, 53, a German canvasser, of Railton Road, Brixton, was charged at Lambeth with traveling more than five miles from his registered address without a permit. It was stated that he had visited Woolwich. Mr De Grey directed a remand, and when bail was suggested, replied: “No, certainly not. Here is an alien enemy going to Woolwich.”
Mr H. Sydney (for the defence): “He went to Woolwich on business.”
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Mr De Grey: “So he says. It may be true, but I am not going to let him out until I am quite satisfied that it was so.”
At Marylebone the remanded charge against William Norman Bott, a mining engineer and Special Constable for the City of London, for failing to register was dismissed, the magistrate saying that he had established his defence. The prisoner, it was stated, was naturalised in 1885.