As many of you will know I am writing a book about escapes from the Channel Islands. Whilst doing some research I found a reference to a court case involving am Irishman, Joseph Ridgeway, who claimed to have escaped from the Channel Islands in January 1944. I thought the escape would be interesting to write about so did some more digging in the archives in Guernsey, Jersey and the UK.
He was prosecuted in Carlisle in December 1944 for assuming ‘a name other than that by which he was originally known.’ Having researched this further it would seem that his name was not the only thing that wasn’t true. His claim of escaping would also seem to be untrue! It becomes even more curious!
If he had been in Jersey until January 1944 he couldn’t have avoided having registered with the German authorities and I can find no record of him having done so. The Jersey Archives contain a record of all of these registration documents and he cannot be found under his assumed name or his real name. He also doesn’t appear in any of the lists that exist of people that escaped after the Germans arrived.
You can read about the court case in the articles below. You can find the rest of my thoughts on this after the articles.
Dundee Evening Telegraph – Friday 01 December 1944 Image © D.C.Thomson & Co. Ltd. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
Image © Reach PLC. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
Interestingly the£2 cost of telephone calls to investigate this would have been £77.21 in today’s money at the time of writing!
The only Joseph Ridgeway I can find in the Jersey Archives, with the same year of birth, is a man who applied to return to Jersey after the war.1 In his application he states that he left the Channel Islands on 21st June 1940. That means that he would have left on one of the evacuation ships rather than his story of escaping.
All in all a bit of a mystery! If you know anything about this drop me a line!
Keen to learn more about the occupation? Read on!
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© Nick Le Huray
