Who first offered to pay for the wives’ visits?

Mr. Fenwick Harrison, the purchaser of the Kitchener letter, was the first to offer assistance. As a result of his generosity the Lord Kitchener Memorial Fund Committee hoped to make arrangements for 50 mothers and wives to visit their relatives in Switzerland. Applications were to be sent to Sir Hedley Le Bas, 34 Norfolk-street, Strand, London.

Was the scheme going to be run by the Government?

The Times reported that Mr. Lloyd George had said he hoped to return to town within days and would then give the matter his first attention. It added that if the arrangements could not be undertaken by the Government, “the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John will gladly undertake the work and see that it is carried through.”

Wives of Prisoners in Switzerland

Q: What did it cost to bring a prisoner’s wife out to Switzerland?

Lord Northcliffe wrote in The Times: “The cost of bringing out the wives on a visit is but £12 each.” He asked whether, if the Treasury would not set “a very trifling precedent”, the British Red Cross Society should “satisfy this earnest wish of those who, in the national cause, have been through the hell of the trenches and the bottomless pit of the German prison camps”.

The Times, 31 August 1916. One of St Peter’s First World War documents, from the years when British prisoners of war were interned at Château-d’Œx, 1916–17. Transcribed in full from a cutting made available by The Times Archive.

In this report: the cost of bringing a prisoner’s wife to Switzerland — £12 — and the Lord Kitchener Memorial Fund Committee’s hope of arranging visits for 50 mothers and wives.

← All archive documents

Headline as printed: WIVES OF PRISONERS IN SWITZERLAND.

Handwritten annotation

The Times - 31/8/1916

VISITS TO BE ARRANGED.

Lord Northcliffe’s suggestion in his article in The Times of yesterday with regard to the wives of the British prisoners interned in Switzerland is already being acted upon. Lord Northcliffe stated that wherever he went he found that the British prisoners who were married were anxious to see their wives, and he suggested that the Government or the Red Cross authorities should take the matter in hand and arrange for the wives to go out to Mürren and Château d’Oex. In his article Lord Northcliffe said:—

“The cost of bringing out the wives on a visit is but £12 each. Dare I suggest that, if Mr. Lloyd George and the Treasury do not see their way to a very trifling precedent, the British Red Cross Society should satisfy this earnest wish of those who, in the national cause, have been through the hell of the trenches and the bottomless pit of the German prison camps?

Mr. Fenwick Harrison, the purchaser of the Kitchener letter, was the first to offer assistance. As the result of his generosity the Lord Kitchener Memorial Fund Committee hope to be able to make the necessary arrangements for 50 mothers and wives to visit their relatives in

Switzerland at an early date. Applications should be sent to Sir Hedley Le Bas, 34, Norfolk-street, Strand, London.

But it can also be definitely stated that all the wives of the interned men will be able to go to Switzerland, for arrangements are being made for that purpose. Mr. Lloyd George stated yesterday that he hoped he would be returning to town in the next few days, and he would then give the matter his first attention.

If, as is possible, the arrangements for the visits cannot be undertaken by the Government, we are assured that the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John will gladly undertake the work and see that it is carried through.

These two societies are at present taking the relatives of dangerously wounded men to France, and while they are there they are the guests of the societies. This work is carried out by the Red Cross authorities in such a way that any relative who receives permission to cross the Channel has the least possible trouble in the matter.

The organization of this department could easily be expanded and altered so that Switzerland could be embraced. The Joint Committee of the Red Cross and the Order of St. John feel sure that subscribers to The Times Fund will approve of the use of their money for the purpose suggested by Lord Northcliffe. For the moment, however, they must await the decision of the Government and see whether it will be their duty to undertake this good work.

Facsimile of the original cutting: Wives of Prisoners in Switzerland, The Times, 31 August 1916 — **Facsimile** — *The Times*, 31 August 1916, page 7. Scanned by the News UK Archive & Record Office and supplied to St Peter's in April 2016. Reproduced with acknowledgement to Times Newspapers Limited. Open the full-size scan.

End of the transcribed document

Notes by St Peter's — not part of the document above

St Peter’s and the 1916 internment

The Château-d’Œx chaplaincy was placed on the Colonial and Continental Church Society’s list in 1866, and for the thirty-three years before St Peter’s was built the English congregation had no building of its own. Served by seasonal chaplains, it met in the village’s Protestant church — the Temple, up on the hill — and, when the climb or the snow made that impractical, in the lounge of the Hôtel Berthod, the Pension Morier and the Salle des Catéchumènes. The season was a summer one — June to September, before winter sports drew visitors to the valley. The church was built in 1899, on land given by the Berthod brothers and with a loan from the Society; it was consecrated on 27 May 1902 by Thomas Edward Wilkinson, Anglican Bishop of North Europe, and enlarged in 1911, by which time the chaplain could no longer seat everyone who came.

From 1916 neutral Switzerland took in wounded and invalid prisoners of war from both sides — French, Belgian, German and British — released from enemy camps under agreements between their governments. Château-d’Œx received the British. The first train reached Montreux on 30 May 1916 carrying 304 men, including 32 officers. The chaplain, the Revd E. Dudley Lampen — the parish’s first permanent chaplain, in post since 1908, and assisted during the war by the Revd Isaac Hutchinson — later described the whole episode as “the sojourn of 750 British soldiers in this valley”.

St Peter’s was their parish church. They filled it for services, and one of the internees, a professional organist in England before the war, played the church’s American harmonium. In August 1916 Lampen wrote to The Times asking readers to fund a proper organ — “a permanent memorial of the historic sojourn of our British officers and men in this valley”. The fund’s treasurer was Colonel E. Vansittart of the Royal West Kent Regiment, himself one of the officers who had arrived on that first train. The organ was dedicated on 8 March 1917: a Goll of 1916, opus 462, and the organ still played in the church today.

These First World War reports were traced for the centenary of the internment, which Château-d’Œx marked on Sunday 29 and Monday 30 May 2016 — a hundred years to the day after the first train. The complete archive → · The fuller account of 1916 →

About this transcription

Source: The Times, 31 August 1916
Archive item: wives-of-prisoners-in-switzerland (2 images)
Transcription: Machine-transcribed in two independent passes.
Status: Verified before publication — two independent transcriptions were compared, and any reading still in doubt is left unresolved and noted below rather than settled.

Transcribed verbatim, preserving the spelling, punctuation and capitalisation of the original. Square brackets mark a reading that is uncertain or a passage cut off by the edge of the scan. Where the text of a figure or a name could not be established, it is shown as unresolved rather than guessed.

Editorial notes

Signature and date as printed

(none)

Uncertain readings

“Norfolk-street” — could be “Norfolk street” (hyphenation is faint but appears present)
“Mürren” — the umlaut on the u is present but unclear due to scan quality
“precedent” — could possibly be “precedent” (standard reading confirmed)

Wives of Prisoners in Switzerland — The Times, 31 August 1916

Handwritten annotation

Questions answered