During our research into the Lodge Temperance members who served in the First World War, the registers record two members with the words “alien enemy birth interned”. To try and understand this further our research looked at one of these members, Bro George Shyfler.
Bro George was initiated into Lodge Temperance in 1902 and remained a fully subscribed member until his life was turned upside down in 1915.
He was a successful German pork butcher with the skills to make special products like German sausage, bath chaps, jellied brawn, rissoles or trotters, which in effect were the first takeaway foods, long before burgers, fish and chips and kebabs.
At the outbreak of the First World War and especially following the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, the situation of German pork butchers radically changed for the worse. Intolerance gripped the country and many became victims of widespread riots. Bro George was arrested, along with many others of German birth, as an alien enemy and interned for the duration of the war.
You can read his story here.
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