Wartime stories from Didsbury ……… following up on yesterday

Now there is a fine line when researching other’s people’s lives between telling the story and being mindful of picking over the personal history of an individual and revealing stuff that is sensitive and private.

And so it has been today, when I followed up on a story from yesterday, which was about a block of flats on the corner of Palatine Road and Queens Court Road.

The buildings looked to have been built in the 1930s, and in a trawl of the Manchester Guardian found a series of articles, which named the flats.  The earliest was 1939, which fitted with what I wanted to believe, and so I gave short shrift to the other references, which included the case of a woman found innocent of stealing a £1 in 1945, and the trial of an “Aircraft Examiner, under two charges of the Official Secrets Act which was heard in camera”.  *

“He was also charged with aiding and abetting a German Refugee from Nazi oppression to commit an offence under the Aliens Order.”

I promised myself that I would return if only to see what happened to him, and having done just that I was confronted with that dilemma of describing what happened, and in the process naming names.

It was 1940, he was living at Queens Court and he accused of making drawings of sensitive items in his care, and keeping them in a locked briefcase, along with possessing a key to a room he had no official permission to access.

All of which in wartime was very serious, and despite pleading that he was merely wanting keep a record of his work, he was found guilty and sentenced to six year had labour.

And as so often happens his actions had been discovered by chance when the police searched  his home in relation to another matter, involving a young German woman, who had been granted the status of “refugee from Nazi oppression".

She was twenty, and was working as a domestic servant in one of the flats in Queens Court, and was employed by the  “aircraft examiner” and his wife.

He had fallen in love with her, left his wife and the couple moved into a house in Old Trafford, but on his advice she had failed to disclose to the Police the change of address.

Now I know both their names, but have chosen not to reveal them.  That said I haven’t been able to find out anything more.

Were they reunited after the war and his release?  Did they go their separate ways, and carve out new lives?  As far the historical records are silent.

So it’s just one of those stories of little people caught up in big events, who just happened to live at Queens Court.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Walking Palatine Road, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

*Manchester Guardian, March-September 1940