Spandu to Corfu 1915

[Chris Grimshaw]

Afternoon Team

Many seen to have gone very quiet lately,  gardening and end of total lock down I suppose.

Staying with the Near East in WWI scans show a German Postkarte for POWs from RUHLEBEN to Corfu.  This was a Civilian Interment Camp

Cancelled 28 7 15 with a pencil date on reverse of 17/7/15  Received Corfu? 10 AYT 15 which equates to 10 August 15.

Addressed to George Raymond, British Consulate, Corfu.  (Superintendent Eastern Telegraph Company in Corfu in 1907)  British Consul by this date.

Interesting massage on reverse talks about visiting Albania etc.

Sent by Earl of Putt?  Barrack No 7. which held seamen, fishermen etc,  No professional classes as far as I can tell. 

Anyone add anything,  I've not got a clue about  the F. a. in Red 

Chris 

[Alan Baker]

I think it might be the Earl of Perth, William Huntley Drummond, 6th Earl, 1871 - 1937, although I haven't found any personal information on him on Wiki

[Peter Harvey]

Chris,

F.a. is common on POW mail from Germany in WW1 and stands for Frist abgelaufen (time limit expired) - the mail was censored and then held I think for 10 days prior to despatch, to negate any time sensitive messages arriving 'in time'.

Peter

[Graham Mark]

Hello Chris
The Earl of Perth was William Huntly Drummond, born at Simla 5Aug1871, he succeeded his father the 11th Viscount Strathallan in 1893, and his cousin the 14th Earl of Perth in 1902. None of my reference books gives any clue to his life other than "owns about 7,100 acres", (Note: this is about 11 square miles), and that he was formerly Capt 3rd Bn The Black Watch, a Reserve Bn so he never saw active service.  However of the off-chance I looked in J Davidson Ketchum "Ruhleben, a Prison Camp Society" (1965). At p179 there is a nice story about the Germans trying to count the prisoners, and although the soldiers kept getting different figures, after 4 hours they gave up and stated the official number was 4,168.  Confusion was created by the Earl of Perth because he got listed under D for Drummond, E for Earl and P for Perth.
Best wishes
Graham

[Chris Grimshaw]

A little more on the 'Earl of Perth'

In 1911, William married Anna, the daughter of Jacob Strauss of Prague, and at the outbreak of the Great War had been resident in Munich for several years, whereupon he was immediately seized by the German authorities as a suspicious alien. He was imprisoned in a fortress in southern Germany before being moved to Ruhleben Camp, a converted racecourse near Berlin, where he spent the duration of the war with 5,500 others. Although conditions there were tough, the Geneva Convention was observed, and as the probable alternative for him, as a former Captain in the Black Watch, was the trenches of the Western Front, it is a matter of some conjecture which was the better option. One fellow prisoner, Francis Gribble, recalled in his memoirs of the camp�"our most brilliant chess-player, if a player of my own poor capacity may presume to judge, was the Earl of Perth, who had long settled at Munich".

Chris