Arrest
It was known that the Wheeldon family was sheltering young men fleeing conscription. In 1917, Alex Gordon, a secret agent from the Ministry of Munitions, (MI5) arrived at the Wheeldon home, claiming to be a conscientious objector on the run. Alice Wheeldon took him in for the night and confided in him. Gordon called his immediate superior, Herbert Wood, introducing him to Alice as an army deserter. A package containing two vials of curare and two of strychnine was sent to her. Gordon had invented the fiction that Home Office work camps were guarded by dogs. The package was intercepted and it was claimed that these chemicals were intended to kill guard dogs at a Home Office work camp for conscientious objectors. This claim formed the basis of the case against the family when the family were arrested on 30 January 1917. Alice, Hettie, Winnie and Winnie's husband, Alfred Mason, were all charged with conspiracy to murder the Prime Minister Lloyd George and Labour Party member Arthur Henderson.
Read more about this topic: Alice Wheeldon
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)