Tag: escape

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.

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!

I hope that you have enjoyed reading the blog post.

I also co-host a podcast with Keith Pengelley in which we talk about the occupation of the Channel Islands month by month using first hand accounts, diaries and our research in the archives. You can find us on all the major podcast services. Just search “Islands at War” or visit our podcast page here.

You can also follow the blog on Twitter at @Fortress_Island where I share other information and photographs. If you prefer Facebook I also have a page there. 

If you would like to receive email notifications of future blogs, you can sign up to the right of this blog post or here. Feel free to look around the website, where I have categorised posts to make them easier to find and other resources such as tours, places to visit and films that may be of interest.

If you have questions or information to share you can contact me by email on Contact@Island-Fortress.Com.

You can also find articles, podcasts, TV appearances and other social media etc here.

I will be adding more as time permits. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed it. Please share it on social media or add a comment if you did. Feedback is always appreciated.

Also happy to be contacted with questions about the war in the Channel Islands, media appearances, podcasts etc.

© Nick Le Huray

1. Jersey Archives B/A/L42/12/166 ↩︎