Introduction
In the Second World War, Margery Booth, a Wigan born, internationally acclaimed opera singer found herself in the heart of Berlin spying for the Allies .If it wasn’t for Margery’s name being mentioned in the personal memoirs of World War Two soldier spy, John Brown DCM, which came to light after his death in 1964, her story would have gone untold.
An autobiographical book based on Brown’s memoirs, entitled ‘In Durance Vile’ was revised and edited by a fellow prisoner of war, New Zealander John Borrie in 1981. Although world famous in her time, very little is known of Margery’s private life. Also, the very nature of the Intelligence Services makes detailed information hard to come by concerning her time in Germany during the Second World War.
Using public records, newspaper reports and personal memoirs this extensive research encompasses her family history, singing career, war time exploits and details of the main characters in her life. It also puts into context the political and military situation in Europe at the time.
Booth Family History
Margery Myers Booth, the only child of Levi Booth and Florence Beatrice Myers Tetley, was born 25 January 1906 at 53 Hodges Street, Wigan. A bay windowed terraced property off Park Road to north of the town centre.
Census and parish records show that Margery’s paternal line, the Booth’s, were living in Bolton as far back as the late 1700’s. Margery’s grandfather, Levi Booth, who was born in 1838, started a business as a wholesale brush manufacturer in 1860 working from 41 Cheapside, Newport Street in Bolton. He married a Yorkshire girl, Caroline Roberts Jackson, on 6 August 1863 at St. John the Baptist church in Halifax. They were to have seven children, four boys and three girls.
The couple lived in Bolton for a few years but soon after their son Joseph’s birth in 1867, Levi moved his family and business to Wigan. He is listed in the 1869 Slaters Trade Directory as a brush maker living at 47 Wallgate, opposite the Victoria Hotel, calling his business the ‘Wigan Brush Works’.
The census of 2 April 1871 finds Levi, Caroline, two year old son Richard and two day old baby daughter Sarah living above their shop in Wallgate. At the time their two older children Walter and Joseph were staying with their grandparents near Halifax. It was at 47 Wallgate that Margery’s father, also named Levi, was born In 1875. He was destined to become a brush maker like his father.
Levi later moved his premises from number 47 to 18 Wallgate, nearer to Market Place in the centre of town. Here he advertised that he was a brush wholesaler and retailer, also selling baskets, washing lines, cord and twine. A passionate angler himself, he was also a fishing tackle dealer.
By the time of the 1881 census Levi was employing four workers at his business in Wallgate but was now living at 29 Upper Dicconson St. As his business grew he moved to Sicklefield House off Wigan Lane then out of town to firstly Gathurst Lane in Shevington, then to Common Road in Parbold.
In 1906 he advertised in local newspapers that he was having a moving sale and
relocating his business premises from Wallgate to 25-27 the Wiend, off Millgate.
Two years later In 1908 Levi was to lose his third eldest son Richard, aged 39, in tragic circumstances. Richard had been working as a commercial traveller for his father but had been in ill health for several years and had been unable to work for the previous month.
On Saturday 20 November Levi received a letter from his son dated the previous day, as a consequence the Leeds & Liverpool Canal near Richard’s home in Clarence Street in Ince was dragged. Richard’s body was found with two handkerchiefs tied around his legs. At the inquest held in front of Coroner Brighouse the jury returned a verdict of ‘Suicide while of unsound mind’.
His two older brothers had chosen to make their own way in life. Walter became a brewery manager in Bolton, whilst Joseph opened a shop in St. Helens selling general goods and brushes manufactured at the Wigan Brush Works. This left just Levi Jnr working in the family business in Wigan.
By 1911 Levi Snr and Caroline, who was now blind, had moved from Parbold back into Wigan. They were living above a shop at 25 Mesnes Street, opposite the Market Hall, that their divorced daughter Sarah was running. She was selling brushes that her brother Levi Jnr was producing in the Wiend.
Levi Snr died in 1915 in Lytham St. Annes. He had served as a Wigan Town Councillor for over a quarter of a century, being elected to represent the All Saints Ward in 1886. He served on all the Council committees and became an Alderman of the Borough in 1901. As well as sitting as a Magistrate on the Borough bench he was also a Churchwarden of St. Thomas CE church in Wallgate where for a time he was an overseer of the poor.
For over 30 years he was a member of the Independent Order of Oddfellows, a fraternal order, set up to provide care for the needy in a time before the NHS and the Welfare State. As well he was instrumental in setting up the Wigan & District Amalgamated Anglers Association and was its first President.
Levi Booth Snr was buried in Wigan Cemetery in Lower Ince in a double grave alongside his six month old daughter Sarah who had died in 1874 and his wife Caroline who had predeceased him two years previously. His son Richard, who had tragically drowned lies in an adjoining grave.
Maternal Roots
Margery’s mother, Florence Tetley came from an old Yorkshire family that can be traced back to the 1680’s. In the 1800’s they were cloth merchants in the Bradford area. Margery’s maternal grandfather James Edward Tetley married a Manchester girl Sarah Elizabeth Myers in 1870. They then moved to Leigh and on the 1871 census are shown living at 71 Lord Street, James’s occupation is shown as a coal proprietor.
James then seems to disappear from the picture and his whereabouts are unclear, the next official record is his death on 11 May 1898 in Queensland, Australia, aged 58. On the 1881 census Sarah is shown living with her parents Henry and Elizabeth Myers at 1 Florence St in Hindley with her one year old daughter Florence.
Sarah remarried under her maiden name of Myers on 12 April 1882 at St. James CE church in Poolstock, Wigan. Her new husband, who she was to have three children with, was Thomas Mort, a shoemaker and pawnbroker who had a business in Market Street, Hindley.
The census of 1901 shows that 22 year old Florence had left her step family and was once again living with her grandparents Henry and Elizabeth Myers in nearby Castle Hill. She married Levi Booth four months later on 17 July 1901 at All Saints CE church in Hindley. Five years later, on 31 January 1906 a notice in the births, marriages and deaths section of the Wigan Observer & Advertiser announced the arrival of Margery Myers Booth into the world.
The 1911 census shows five year old Margery and her mother Florence were now living with her great grandparents Henry and Elizabeth Myers at 90 Barnsley Street, a terraced property just round the corner from her birth place in Hodges Street. Margery’s father, Levi Jnr is shown as being at The Wiend, his business address in Wigan on the night of the census.
Margery’s name first appeared in the newspaper when the Wigan Observer & District Advertiser dated 11 Jan 1913 showed Margery’s name amongst the list of all the school children invited to Mayor Edward Dickinson’s Juvenile Ball at the Pavilion Theatre in Library St, Wigan.
A New Life in Southport
It was around this time that Levi relocated his family to the Meols Cop district of Southport, moving into a semi detached house at 87 Clifton Road. Levi commuted daily to his business in Wigan and Margery attended the nearby Norwood Primary school.
The first written record of Margery performing live is an article in the Southport Advertiser reporting that she sang in an operetta in St. Luke’s church on Good Friday, 10 April 1914, aged eight. The following year, her great grandparents Henry and Elizabeth Myers moved from Wigan to live with them in retirement at Clifton Road.
Alas all was not well in her parents’ marriage, in 1918 they separated. Levi petitioned for divorce from Florence, on the grounds of her misconduct with a man named William Fairhurst at his home in Clifton Road. Fairhurst was said to keep an off licenced house in Woodhouse Lane, Wigan. He told Mr. Justice Shearman that his wife had taken to drink and they then entered into a deed of separation. A Decree Nisi was granted in 1919.
Margery’s parents both remarried in 1920. Her father married Ada Sidebotham in July at Hope St Congregational Chapel in Wigan town centre. Ada had been living above his brush shop in the Wiend for a number of years. Her brother was Ezra Sidebotham, a printer of long standing, who also had premises in the Wiend.
Her mother Florence married William Fairhurst, 20 years her senior, at Ormskirk Register Office in September. William, whose father was a publican, had been in the brewery trade all his life and described on various censuses as barman, brewer, mineral water bottler and publican.
Margery’s talent as a singer had been recognised at an early age and it was after her mother’s second marriage that she was given the chance of professional training as an opera singer.
At the age of 14 she started on the long road to stardom which would require dedication and years of hard work. Opera singers have to be extraordinarily disciplined, mastering the art of acting and stage presence. Being bilingual and the ability to sing in several languages is essential therefore the study of foreign languages at music school is mandatory.
Margery firstly began a two year course of singing lessons in Bolton under the tuition of Welshman Richard Evans, an ex-miner from Ruabon near Wrexham. There then followed a move down to London for six months private tuition with Eileen D’Orme in Knightsbridge.
She then attended the prestigious Guildhall School of Music for a further two years training to perfect her mezzo soprano voice. In 1924 she won the Mercer Scholarship of 50 Guineas, which she repeated the following year, also gaining the Liza Lehman prize of 10 Guineas.
It was whilst at the Guildhall School that she met and struck up a friendship with a young German student who was staying in the same digs. His name was Egon Strohm and he was in London studying English language. They both went their separate ways to pursue their careers but were destined to meet again.
The Journey to Berlin and Fame
On completion of her training Margery found it difficult to secure engagements and after an illness travelled to Switzerland in order to recuperate. It was here she was advised to go to Berlin to pursue her dream of being a professional opera singer.
In 1928 she made a successful audition with the Berlin State Opera House (Staatsoper Unter den Linden). The iconic building, close to the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate and built by Frederick the Great in 1741 had just reopened after a two year refurbishment.
After a further six months training under the tutelage of the famous French soprano, Lola Artot de Padilla she signed a one year contract and made her first appearance in Berlin that year, a minor part in the opera ‘La Tosca’.
Margery soon became a favourite with Berlin audiences. In 1930 she had a lead part in the new German opera ‘Der Fremde Erde’’, an honour rarely accorded to foreigners.
On 17 Aug 1932 the Lancashire Evening Post published a short article with the headline banner ‘A Southport Girl Who Sings in Berlin’, Margery is quoted as saying:
“I love coming back to Southport for a holiday, but I love Germany so much now that I would not like to leave it. If you have talent the German people will back you up, second rate is not sufficient, nor will they find excuse for an artist who is out of condition. The Germans don’t think the English have any talent and will only believe you are English when you have thoroughly convinced them”.
Little did she know that the following year events would unfold that would lead to Germany becoming a Fascist Dictatorship, the destruction of Europe in the Second World War and the end of her singing career.
1933 was an eventful year for Margery, her mentor Lola de Padilla, whom she had served her apprenticeship under, died in Berlin on 12 April. A few weeks later on 9 May her mother Florence died of cancer, aged 54. She was buried in Duke Street Cemetery in Southport. alongside her grandparents Henry and Elizabeth Myers who had died during the Great war in 1915 and 1918 respectively.
Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. It was through his love of classical music that Hitler’s and Margery’s paths were to cross a few months later. After five years at the Berlin State Opera she was now a principal singer and the only English Prima Donna in Berlin, singing in German, French, Italian and Spanish. That year she was invited to sing at the Bayreuth Festival in northern Bavaria, and was chosen to carry the Holy Grail in the opera ‘Parsifal’ which opened on 22 July.
Hitler had an almost fanatical devotion to the work of the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner, which to him represented everything that was good about culture in Nazi Germany. His attendance at the Bayreuth Festival was very well publicised by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Margery revealed in an interview with the Lancashire Daily Post in December 1933 that she had met Hitler and also Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and his wife Cecilie, the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She told the reporter: “I had dinner with Herr Hitler and the Crown Prince and his wife. I received a beautiful bouquet of red roses and the people I met were all very charming. The ex-Crown Princess introduced me to her friends as ‘her baby’ and has promised to promote a concert at Potsdam at which I shall sing”.
The Crown Prince or ‘Little Willie’ as he was known as, was a passionate devotee of opera. He admired Margery’s singing and they were to become firm friends, this friendship was to prove invaluable a decade later.
During a later interview with the Liverpool Echo in 1936 she recounts that after her performance she was presented to Adolph Hitler and said of him: “He was perfectly charming and they talked about art and music”. Margery was to become one of Hitlers favourite singers.
Held annually in July since 1876 the Bayreuth Festival is a month long performance of operas presented by the Wagner family. Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the ‘Bayreuth Festpielhaus ‘which Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of.
The overall Director was English born Winifred Marjorie Wagner (nee Williams). Originally from Hastings in Sussex and orphaned at an early age, she was sent to live with relatives in Germany. She married 46 year old Siegfried, the bisexual son of Richard Wagner at the age of 18 in 1915.
She took over the running of the Festival after her husband's death in 1930 until the end of World War II in 1945. A personal friend and supporter of Adolf Hitler, she maintained a regular correspondence with him. They had met in 1923, the year that Hitler was jailed for his part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.
She sent him food parcels and stationery in Landsberg Prison, on which it is thought he wrote his autobiography ‘Mein Kampf’. Her anti Semitic views led to her joining the Nazi Party in 1926 and in the late 1930’s she served as Hitler’s personal translator during treaty negotiations with Britain.
Margery’s father Levi died on 12 August 1933 in Wigan, aged 58, whilst Margery was performing at Bayreuth. He was buried three days later in Wigan Cemetery, Lower Ince, alongside his parents and sister Martha Annie who had died aged five and half months in 1874. Margery’s parents had both remarried in 1920 and by a quirk of fate she was to lose them both in the same year.
In late 1933 Margery was hospitalised in Berlin, after an operation she started a period of recuperation which included a visit back to Southport for a short holiday.
The following year she was invited back to Bayreuth, this time with the solo role of a flower maiden in the opera ‘Parsifal’ and of Flosshilde, a Rhine maiden in the opera ‘Gotterdammerung’. In the lavish production 1,500 costumes were used and 800 people employed, 137 musicians alone.
At the time no one was aware that Margery was unwell again and had sung at least 20 times at Bayreuth in agonising pain, this led to her undergoing surgery again. She wrote to her step father William from her hospital bed in Erlangen, just north of Nuremberg in Bavaria, telling him she had had an operation for an internal complaint.
Hitler expressed concern and gave orders that she was to be well looked after and Goering and Goebbels sent messages of sympathy. The Queen of Denmark also sent good wishes and invited her to her country to sing. It was after a two month recovery that Margery was fit enough to start singing again.
Recognition at Home
Although famous in Germany and on the continent Margery was up to now virtually unknown at home. After her success at Bayreuth this was about to change. In 1935 she was invited to sing at the Promenade Concerts, more commonly known as the Proms,with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Queens
Hall in London. (The building was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941 and the proms then moved to it’s new home at the Albert Hall).
The Proms Concerts were broadcast on the radio and soon Margery’s voice was to be heard in every home in the land. After years of hard work she was finally getting the recognition she deserved.
Following her mother’s death from cancer, Margery became a keen supporter of cancer charities and research. Whilst based in London singing with the BBC orchestra she took the opportunity to sing in a benefit concert at the Palace Theatre in the West End, in aid of the Holt Radium Institute which had amalgamated with Christies Cancer Hospital in Manchester two years previously.
On 4 October 1935 she sang professionally for the first time outside of London when she performed at a concert at the Queens Hall, Market Street in her home town of Wigan.
Now at the height of her fame, 1936 was a busy year for Margery. Her new contract with the Berlin Opera stipulated that she spend seven months of the year in Berlin, singing on 60 nights during that time. During the other five months she was allowed to undertake tours. She finally fulfilled her greatest ambition of singing at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London on 27 April when she played the role of Magdalene in Wagner’s opera ‘Die Meistersinger’. That year she was to create a record 23 appearances in the Covent Garden opera season.
It was after her successful debut in London that she announced her engagement to Egon Strohm, the German who she had first met as a student in London eleven years previously.
She had hoped to marry Egon in a quiet ceremony in her adopted town of Southport four months later. However the news of her impending marriage leaked out, not wanting to turn her special day into a media circus she cancelled the wedding indefinitely on the pretence that she was suffering from influenza.
She then discreetly rearranged for the wedding to go ahead the next day with only herself, Egon and the Vicar in the know, with the guests to be only informed at the last possible moment. Such was the secrecy that the officiating minister Rev. Canon Walter Morris, the Rural Dean of North Meols, was only given one hours notice of the time of the ceremony. He married Margery and Egon by special licence at All Saints CE church in Rawlinson Road the next day, Wednesday 26 August.
Margery’s stepfather William Fairhurst gave her away. The best man, Thomas Forshaw, the Managing Director of Burtonwood Breweries at Newton Le Willows, near Warrington was unable to make it in time and missed the ceremony completely, only arriving in time for the reception at Margery’s family home.
A neighbour from Lethbridge Road, fifty six year old Hubert Hunt, was drafted in at the last minute to be the second witness. Margery and Egon spent their honeymoon in Scotland before returning to Germany. In an interview with the Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser she is quoted as saying;
“When in England, nothing delights me more than go north and sing among my own people”.
A German Husband
Margery’s new husband Dr. Egon Strohm was born 24 Oct 1904 in Trossingen in the State of Baden-Wurttemberg, the picturesque Black Forest region of south west Germany. His father Christian, was a member of a prominent Brewing family and lived in a villa he had built in 1925 in Schwenningen, a town close by Trossingen where Egon was born.
The brewery in Trossingen was founded in the late 19th century and by 1904 it was known as ‘Zum Baeren’ and owned by Johannes Strohm. It was renamed the ‘Baerenbrauerei’ in 1920. The family operated a second brewery in the nearby town of Schwenningen with the owners being Gebrueder Strohm (Strohm Brothers). The brewery used a bear as its symbol and this became as famous as the animals on the State crest, a lion, stag and griffon.
Egon didn’t enter into the family business but instead pursued an academic career. After University he moved to Berlin where on 14 August 1928 he married Elisabeth Martha Czaika. The marriage banns show he was a 23 old student living at Prinzregentenstrasse 83, Wilmersdorf in the south west suburbs of the city. Elizabeth, also 23, had been born in Lodz, Poland.
The marriage was not to last very long however. It was dissolved in Jan 1930 and Elizabeth reverted back to her maiden name, marrying for a second time to Raimond Fredrich Anton Spitzer on 4 April 1931.
During the 1930’s Egon worked as a journalist and radio reporter, whilst also studying for his Doctorate degree at Heidelberg University. In 1935 he qualified as a Doctor of Law and Economics after writing a dissertation for his PhD. entitled ‘The British Empire as an Economic Entity’ .
At some point after Margery’s arrival in Berlin, which coincided with Egon’s first marriage, the pair eventually renewed their friendship from their student days in London and this led to a romance and marriage in England.
With her new contract giving her more freedom, Margery spent her time touring and commuting between Germany, England and America. She made a flying visit to Lancashire on 31 January 1937 to sing in a Manchester concert in aid of Christies Cancer Hospital and to visit Southport.
Egon met up with her in Southport after a trip to New York, arriving in Southampton on 16 March on SS Westernland, a German owned transatlantic liner, sailing the Antwerp, New York, Southampton route.
On Saturday 15 May she sang again at the Queens Hall in Wigan, fulfilling a promise she had made two years previously that she would return to her home town. The concert was to celebrate the Coronation of King George VI that had taken place three days beforehand. All benefits went towards Mayor Peter Winstanley’s Royal Albert Edward Infirmary fund.
In July she was back in Southport for six weeks to stay with her step father in Lethbridge Road. Events led her to put all her engagements to one side, including a planned trip to the Isle of Man. Instead she spent her time frantically searching for her lost dog, a Terrier named Terry who had been missing for 10 days. She put notices in shop windows, appealed in the newspapers and visited all the police stations in the area.
At Ormskirk police station they told her they had found a dog answering Terry’s description and had sent it to Walton dogs home. At Walton she found it had been sold to a Bootle man. At Bootle the buyer said he sold it to a man in the same street. The search ended in the home of the second buyer where Margery was able to buy Terry back.
War Clouds Looming
By 1938 the situation in Europe was deteriorating fast. Germany was now a fascist state with Hitler as Fuhrer having full control of all political and military matters. The country had secretly been rearming for a number of years and war in Europe was now inevitable.
On 12 March German troops marched unopposed into Austria. In what's known as the ‘Anschluss’, Austria was annexed into Greater Germany. Hitler next set his eyes on the Sudetenland, the border regions of Czechoslovakia. On the pretext that German speaking Czechs were being victimised he demanded the region be handed to Germany by 1 October.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy met in Munich on 29-30 September 1938 and following a policy of appeasement by England and France the Czech President Edvard Benes was persuaded to submit to Hitlers demands. The next day the Sudetenland was annexed to Germany.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to England waving a worthless piece of paper declaring ‘Peace in our time’. Six months later on 14 March 1939 Germany invaded the Czech lands and proclaimed the State of Slovakia, moving one step closer to all out war in Europe.
Three weeks later on 7 April Egon departed on a trip to America, sailing on SS Bremen from the northern port of Bremen for the week long voyage to New York. The ship’s passenger list shows that Egon was travelling second class with three other radio reporters, two German and an Argentinian.
Their passages were paid for by the German Government. In what seems like a diplomatic trade mission, other passengers sailing courtesy of the government were businessmen and diplomats from Germany, Japan and other various countries.