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Was my arsonist grandfather deported?
QMy grandfather, Julius Brust, was born in 1881 in Austria. He married Fanny Gratzer ( Greicer) in 1911. Fanny’s first child was Harry, from a previous marriage. Julius and Fanny produced Anne, Jane and my father Solly ( Sidney). He was a member of a gang of arsonists, operating in the East End of London and was sentenced to four years in jail at the Old Bailey in 1923. Classed as an ‘alien’, he was to be deported after his jail sentence. Could you tell me more about his crime and where he was deported to? Dennis Bruce, by email
AThe 1939 register shows Julius’s wife, Fanny, at 291 Brick Lane, living with Sidney (possibly her son), a cabinet maker, born 16 September 1913. It records Fanny as a widow born in 1882. There is no mention of Julius in the GRO Marriage and Death indexes after 1911 and it appears that Fanny died in Hackney in 1957 aged 74. Searches for Julius on Ancestry and Findmypast also drew a blank. This indicates he may well have been deported upon his release from prison.
To learn more about Julius’s trial, official records of the indictment may be found at TNA in series CRIM 4 with the attendant depositions in CRIM 5. Trials at the Old Bailey were also widely reported especially by The Times, archived copies of which may be accessed using a county library card. You will also find reports of the trial online at the British Newspaper Archive that show the offence was for setting fire to the Stolerman Bros workshop in Shoreditch in order to get the Sun Insurance company to pay out. It is worth searching the online London Gazette to see if the company had been declared bankrupt or was in the course of being wound up. The Sun Insurance records will also show details of policies and claims made against them and are viewable by arrangement at the London Metropolitan Archive.
The official records of the trial should show which prison Julius was taken to, beginning his four years, using the prison calendars at the LMA will show when he was released. Details of his deportation (or lack of it) may be discovered at The National Archives in series HO 372 which details deportations chronologically. Years 1921-1926 are in HO 372/ 8 and 1926-1932 in HO 372/9. John Fowler