I.T.T. Lincoln, the Adventurer MP
British MP, German Spy, Vicar and Buddhist Abbot: the Early Years
Aug 11, 2008 Alistair McCulloch
Early Days
Lincoln was born an Othordox Jew in 1879 in the city of Paks in Hungary but, at the age of 16, sought to make his fortune further west. His first stop was London where he was given assistance by the Society for the Propagation of Christianity Amongst the Jews, a Church of England mission, and he soon had the first of his many conversions. Soon after, he visited Hamburg, Germany, where he flirted with Presbyterianism and Lutheranism. Settling on Presbyterianism, he was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada where his job was to convert Jews to Christianity. Whilst in Canada, he settled on another orthodoxy and became a member of the Church of England.
He soon returned to England where, at the age of 24, he obtained a job as a Church of England curate in Appledore, Kent. A mere two years later, he was appointed as the Senior Researcher (Secretary) to a major project on poverty in Belgium being undertaken by Seebohm Rowntree, one of the York Quaker chocolate magnates.
Lincoln the MP
The Rowntree family were staunch Liberals and through them, Lincoln was selected to fight the British parliamentary seat of Darlington in County Durham at the forthcoming general election. This was held in 1910 and, against all the odds, Darlington being a seat hitherto always won by a member of the ‘Pease’ family who basically owned the town, won it by the very small majority of 29. This despite his opponent being one Pike Pease.
Lincoln did well as an MP and during his year in post developed his oil interests in Eastern Europe. He was even the subject of a cartoon in the humorous magazine ‘Punch’. At the time, however, MPs were not paid and when Lincoln’s oil interest began to do did badly and another general election came along in November 1910, he was unable to stand again and soon was forced into bankruptcy.
Lincoln the German Spy
Lincoln found World War 1 difficult. As an East European, he was suspected of partiality and, when he needed money and forged a letter of guarantee from his old mentor Seebohm Rowntree, his fate was sealed. He was about to be charged with fraud. His first move was audacious. He offered himself to the British government as a spy against Germany. When they refused his offer, he offered his services to the Germans, they were suspicious but took him on. He was now, as he noted in his memoirs. An ‘International Spy’.
However, the fraud charges had not gone away and, to avoid arrest and trial, he had fled to the United States. The British government sought his extradition and he was arrested. Whilst on remand in prison, he was given work in the censors’ office reading mail written in German and was transported to and fro the prison each day. A born conman, he talked his guards into taking him into a bar for a drink on the way back to the jail and one evening escaped through a toilet window.
During his time on the run, he obtained funds by writing articles for the US newspaper ‘The World’ on his largely fictitious spying career. This bragging was not welcome by the British government and the US government, keen to help an ally, employed Pinkerton Detectives to track down Lincoln. Eventually they succeeded and he was sent back to London to stand trial before being released after the end of the War, stripped of his British citizenship and deported to the continent of Europe.
This was not the end of his adventures, the remainder of which can be read here.
I.T.T. Lincoln as Chao Kung, Buddhist Abbot
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