On 23rd July 1959 British Home Secretary R.A. Butler made an important announcement to the House of Commons concerning the controversy about the obscene diaries attributed to Roger Casement.  Besides admitting their existence for the first time, Butler briefly described the diaries and commented on how and when they had come into police possession.  He stated the diaries had been— 

“found in a trunk which the landlord of Casement’s lodgings in London handed to the police at their request on 25th April 1916 …” 

Butler did not name the landlord, but police papers name him as a Mr. Germain, landlord of Casement’s last lodgings at 50 Ebury Street, London.  Those police papers naming Germain were secret in 1959 and remained secret until released in the late 1990s.

It is a remarkable fact that today, sixty-seven years after that announcement, nothing is known about this Mr. Germain!  It is not even clear what precise role, if any, he played on that day 25th April 1916.  Germain remains an enigma, a cipher—who was he and did he really exist? 

According to those police papers, in May 1914 Casement stored two locked trunks of personal belongings with Germain.  At the same time he visited his trusted tailor also in Ebury Street, one Edward Peacock with whom he left various items of official apparel and a ceremonial sword for long-term storage. 

There has been speculation that this Germain might never have existed, that he was invented by the Secret Services to conceal the dubious provenance of the diaries.   No-one seems to have researched his life.  

There are no documents which detail what he actually did on 25th April 1916.  Police papers indicate that he personally brought the trunks to Scotland Yard on his own initiative.  Other sources indicate that he was asked by the police to release the trunks to them. 

The Casement interrogation transcript announces the arrival of the trunks in Scotland Yard on 25th April but without any reference to Germain.  

This lack of clarity gives cause for maximum caution about Germain. 

However, natural scepticism need not extend to the existence or otherwise of Germain.  In early 1915, MI5 scrutinised Casement’s London bank account and found a cheque payable to Mr. W.P. Germain.  Cheques payable to others were found and verified as innocuous. 

The Electoral Registers also confirm his name and address.  

Suspicion therefore about Germain’s role on 25th April arises from Assistant Police Commissioner Basil Thomson’s denial that the trunks arrived in Scotland Yard on 25th April 1916.  

Moreover, Thomson never mentions the name Germain!   Indeed, the police chief effectively denied Germain’s involvement not once but three times by publishing three contradictory accounts in 1921, 1922, and in 1925. 

Yet these are only three of seven conflicting accounts of provenance furnished by British officials, and even the 1959 version refers only to a nameless landlord. 

It is therefore legitimate to ask if Germain played any role at all!

Until 1959 no-one had heard of the alleged role of this landlord.  His name does appear in police papers but the dates of these cannot be verified externally.  Nor is there in those papers any detail about Germain or any comment from him.

Nonetheless, there was a raison d’être for the Germain allegation of 25th April 1916.  This derived from official claims that the trunks contained Casement’s obscene diaries.  

Within about ten days it was rumoured and widely believed that these diaries were being shown to the press and influential political figures.  

The date of 25th April, which was announced in 1959, was not casual but was chosen in order to demonstrate that the brief time gap excluded any possibility of tampering with, or forgery of, the purported diaries.  This chicanery has indeed been successful in the greater deception, serving to explain both their provenance and also to verify their alleged authenticity. 

Thus a minor tactical falsehood about Germain supports a major falsehood about diaries which in fact, as we now know, did not exist. 

The trunks, whenever they came into police custody, contained no compromising diaries, and what was shown to discredit Casement were the decoy police typescripts—purportedly official copies of non-existent originals. 

And there is no external evidence that Germain was involved in these machinations in April.

Two facts will begin to clarify the role that Germain did not play.  The first fact is that, in June 1916, Casement told Gavan Duffy that his luggage had been “burgled”.  

The second fact is that he also referred to outstanding debts owed to Edward Peacock and to Allison’s storage company.  Casement was anxious that these be paid somehow.  

The only source of information about  his luggage was Basil Thomson during the interrogations. 

MI5 had known about Allison’s, Peacock and Germain since early 1915 but in June 1916 Casement acknowledged his debts only to the storage company and to Peacock. He did not mention Germain. 

Therefore his reference to his luggage being burgled indicates he knew that the trunks were no longer with Germain in Ebury Street and that they had been seized by the Metropolitan Police under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act and forcibly opened. 

These circumstances he felt cancelled the debt to Germain since his property had been confiscated by the state.   

To recap:  

On 25th April the trunks had been in Scotland Yard for many months, as verified by Inspector Thomson himself in his published articles. 

Therefore the official date announced by the Home Secretary in 1959 is false and this has been confirmed by many commentators including those who adhere to authenticity. 

Thus, even what purported to be a long overdue official disclosure of facts to parliament in a pivotal moment of truth concealed a further deceit.  

This effectively sanctioned even more duplicity, leading to over six decades of media propaganda, supported by no less than a dozen books—including the recent ones by Roland Philipps and Rory Carroll. 

These thousands of pages  constitute over one million words, which serve only to emphasise the incoherence of alleged authenticity. 

The debts owed to Allison’s and to Peacock amount to about £84 and £232 respectively in today’s values, and it can be reasonably inferred that the debt to Germain would have amounted to approximately Peacock’s £232.  It is not credible that Germain voluntarily renounced such a sum by delivering the trunks to the police as alleged. 

When the trunks were seized early in 1915, he was still due  eight months rental and he probably claimed this from the police.  But the fact that he made no claim upon Casement in 1916 exposes how he was already compromised;  unlike Peacock who sent his outstanding account to Gavan Duffy two days after the execution!

However, it is no longer strictly necessary to verify anything about Germain because whatever role he may have played can have  no effect today on the verified fact that no obscene diaries existed in 1916.  His significance was always false and at last it has expired. Like Millar Gordon, Germain never knew his name had been used in the complex deceit. 

Jack Lane

Paul Hyde