Events in the Two Lives of an Anti-Jewish Camel-Doctor
by

ARNOLD SPENCER LEESE M.R.C.V.S.

Events in the Two Lives of an Anti-lewish Camel-Doctor.

Ьy

ARNOLD SPENCER LEESE, M.R.C.V.S.

PREFACE

This autobiographical effort is in two parts: the first deals with my experiences until I retired from the Veterinary Profession in 1928; the second, with events in the political pioneering career that I carried on after that year by opposing the secret Jewish Power. It was not until 1946 that I thought seriously of publishing it. On reading one of the numerous "smearing" articles about myself in the political columns of newspapers, I learned that my career, "told in full, would read like an Oppenheim thriller", and then it struck me that although there was much doubt as to whether it was as bad as all that, there were possibly some rather unusual events in it which might interest the small proportion of the public that reads.

For political reasons I have not mentioned in this book the names of most of my friends; and I hope my readers will not, therefore, attribute the fact that the word "I" too frequently occurs in the text to any want of modesty on my part; a man who has been in prison, with or without trial, for well over four years isn't likely to overestimate his own importance! I think that there will be many lovers of animals, veterinary surgeons amongst them, who may find something new to them, particularly in the first ten Chapters; whilst anyone concerned with political realism can learn a little from the experiences related in the second part of the book, since those experiences are rather unique. This, however, is neither a veterinary textbook nor a political treatise; it is simply an account of some of the things that happened to Your Humble Servant,

ARNOLD SPENCER LEESE.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I thank the Editor of Wide World Magazine for permission to use my article Bill of the Desert; and for kindly supplying the block for the photograph reproduced on Plate III (1).

The Author.

CONTENTS.

NOTE.

A number of the original photographs from which the plates were taken, had faded.

The Author.

BORN 1878 - DIED 1956

The Root of the Trouble.

Surely, everyone who attempts to write an autobiography should give his readers an adequate ancestral background against which to judge him.

Heredity always seemed to me to be a far more important factor in the basic character-formation of the individual than mere environment; it is one's forebears who hand down instinct, and what is instinct but hereditary memory born of fundamental experiences of past generations?

I have been able, thanks to the collaboration of many distant relations, to trace my ancestry through many generations. But, of the Leese family itself, I have no knowledge beyond that of a great-grandfather, Joseph Leese, of Richmond Hill, Bowdon, whose dates were 1783 to 1861: he married the daughter of a John Harrison, of Burton, and had a considerable family of which my grandfather, Joseph, was the youngest and the only son. I knew my grandfather when I was a boy and stood in great awe of him, although he was kindness itself: the rather formal interviews which I had with him seldom ended without a silver coin being passed by him into one of my pockets and no doubt my shy reaction amused him a lot. He had a grand head out of which many improvements in machinery for cotton-mills had developed, and he had owned mills in Preston. He was a Liberal in politics, but a Liberal of very different calibre to that of the ones I see when I look around me now. He married the daughter of "Honest John Scurr", a Brazil merchant, and well I remember this gentle old lady who never could do enough for her grandchildren. My father, Spencer Leese, was the eldest son of their numerous family.

The Leese family runs to a type which evidently has a strong prepotency: both sexes are generally tall, fair, blue-eyed, with heads broader than the typical Nordic average: any Mediterranean mixture by marriage soon seems to lose any trace; the general run of the family is of good intelligence with a strong sporting trend.

The Scurr family derived from one of William the Conqueror's Knights who was given Beeston Castle, near Morley, Leeds; that is the only claim I have on the aristocracy! But I amperhaps unreasonably proud of being distantly connected to

RICHARD OASTLER (1789-1861), the Factory King, the man who did the pioneering and rough street work in stopping the atrocious conditions under which child labour was then employed in the northern mills, a cause in which the Parliamentary activity was done by the Earl of Shaftesbury; Oastler's political enemies silenced him for a time by foreclosing on him for debt, and he was imprisoned in the Fleet for over three years; then his friends bought him out, and his return to Bradford was in the van of a procession a mile long. After his death, a bronze statue was erected in that town, with the simple inscription "Oastler", in which he is portrayed with two ragged children at his feet. Oastler was the grandson of the brother of my great-great-grandfather, Robert Scurr. I hope I may be excused for boasting such a slender relationship to so grand a man. Mr. Cecil Driver wrote a very fine biography of Oastler, naming it Tory Radical (Oxford University Press, New York, 1946).

My mother was daughter of Charles Hudson, Coroner of Stockport, and of a sound Unitarian stock of Lancashire and Cheshire. In the Unitarian community, I always found a high standard of citizenship and sense of public duty.

My uncle, Joseph Leese, was made a Baronet, having been Recorder of Manchester and Member of Parliament (Liberal) for Accrington; he and his brother, Ernest, played as amateurs in the Lancashire County Cricket Team and two of his sons were captains of the Winchester School cricket team. His grandson was Sir Oliver Leese, veteran of two world wars.

CHAPTER II.

A Slow Starter.

My father was an artist, but he had a modest independent income on which he reared a large family. As a young man, he was of immense muscular strength and I still possess copies of photographs of him "in the raw", the most striking of which is a back view showing a physique of broad sloping shoulders and narrow waist which reminds me of nothing so much as a section of the Cantilever Bridge across the Firth of Forth. He could lift, with one hand, a dumb-bell weighing 160 lbs. and raise it at arm's length above his head. I remember how, when the family removed from Southport after his death, my mother gave this relic away to a local circus. I never could lift the thing even off the floor with one hand; it just forced my fingers open if I tried. On several occasions, my father had accepted challenges by professional weight-lifters, and had beaten them, with lucky results for local hospitals. But with all this strength, of which I seldom really was forced to feel the weight myself, he was of the most gentle disposition and a good family man. In his early married life, he took a keen interest in horses and his honeymoon was spent in the Lakes where he drove his own very smart four-in-hand. Later, he owned the well-known harness cob Rattler which won many prizes at shows all over the country. But these horsey days were all before my time, as I was a late arrival in a very large family.

My mother was a very beautiful woman, a fact which I usually have to keep to myself, otherwise people are apt to crack the old joke, leaning forward, looking interestedly into my face to say: "Then it was your father who was not good-looking?" Her life was devoted entirely to the family and she taught us all to be civilised. Her eyes were blue and her hair was dark. I don't think any of us really knew what we owed to her until after she was dead. My parents lived in several places in the north, and before I was born there were already one son and five daughters. My eldest brother, Joe, was not a typical Leese; he was a strange mixture of scientist and musician and, as he was 13 years older than I was, we were never of much use to one another. Later in life, I found him so different in temperament and outlook to myself, that I decided the best policy to avoid a quarrel was to avoid him, which I did; and thank God, we never did quarrel. After him, every year or two

there came a sister, until five had appeared on the scene. Being thus so close together in age, they tended not to look outside the family for companionship and I believe they were very happy together. Then came a gap of four years and, at Lytham, in Lancashire, I was born in 1878. Four years later, we moved to Southport, where my early youth was spent. I was, perhaps, a lonely child and it is not an ideal condition for a small boy to have a large number of elder sisters and to be separated by more than four years from the youngest of them. I grew up in a very sheltered atmosphere, rather spoiled, selfish and with few attractive qualities as I can see them now! Remembering what I was myself as a child, I have never really been very fond of children ever since! I suppose I must have had redeeming features or all the others would not have always been so kind to me; but the only one I can recognise at this distance was a great and sympathetic love of animals which has been my joy throughout life. My first canine love was Gyp, a large white terrier and we grew up together. He wasn't really my dog, but my brother's: what Gyp didn't know about life in general wasn't really worth knowing; a wise dog, with a temper like an angel, and when his time came (a shattered leg) I knew tragedy. It has always been like that with me when my dogs have died.

I was sent first to a dame school, where I kicked a girl on the ankle and was "kept in" for an hour, bellowing the whole time: later to a boys' day-school which bored me stiff. Finally, I was sent to Giggleswick School, Settle, Yorkshire, in which I spent five years receiving an apology for an education, but at least losing some of the worst effects of a too sheltered life at home. My father died just before my last term, and the family fortunes declined with a bang. I remember quite well how, even in these early days, I felt that my time at this school was really being wasted and that I was growing up in an atmosphere remote from the realities of ordinary existence. I felt acutely my own want of experience, but had not then the initiative to take matters into my own hands.

My mother had to do the best she could; I was, myself, very slow to mature. It was unusual for a lad not to know the facts of life at the age of fifteen; I was a very innocent lad. Thinking it all for the best, she had me articled to a chartered accountant where I spent nearly three rather miserable years in the City. Then I woke up, decided that the totting up of the profits of others was not for me and, with the help of my dear old grandfather, overcame my mother's doubts and went into the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town, to live my life with my beloved animals. I got scholarships three years out of the four, lifted thirteen first medals and spent my vacation with practising veterinary surgeons first as pupil, then as "improver" and, after that, as assistant. I had found my vocation, but had wasted three years. Well, perhaps they were not

altogether to be written off as a loss; at least I got a fine training in two things: firstly, in sticking out a monotonous job; secondly, rapid and accurate casting up of figures. Both these, especially the first, have been of great use to me in after-life. To think that I once passed the Intermediate Examination for Chartered Accountants with Honours!

Whilst I was at the accountants' office (M

About this time, I became aware of the fact that I had been suffering from astigmatism (with short sight) for many years. It is impossible now to make any estimate of the extent of this handicap; it meant that I had gone about without seeing a number of things which were within the range of normal sight, but beyond mine. However, I have much to thank my parents for in possessing a healthy body and an active brain. I had grown up well fed and had never known real hardship, and during my holidays had covered a large area of England and Wales; but I still felt that I had been sheltered too much and that I knew my country a great deal better than I knew my countrymen. However, from the time I began to go out "to see practice" in my vacations at the Veterinary College, I made up for lost time in that respect, because veterinary practice involves the treatment of owners as well as their animals! I always selected country practitioners with whom to serve, so as to obtain as much contact as possible with farm practice, and had many rough experiences which included concussion of the brain following a fall from a horse, with total obliteration from memory of about four days of my life. I also had the interesting experience of veterinary work with coal-pit ponies when I did "locum tenens" for a veterinary surgeon at Seaham Harbour; I used to descend the Seaham and Silksworth pits daily; each pit contained 400 ponies. They were, of course, shod cold, and there were more injuries than sickness.

I had a younger brother, John Scurr Leese, born ten years later than myself with no other children in between, my parents having increased the population over a period covering twenty-five years! He, of course, was even more isolated from the others than I had been; he grew up a typical Leese, broke the high-jump

record at his school and vanished for ever at Krithia, Gallipoli, where he was serving in the first World War as a private in the 6th Manchesters. When I look back, I realise that I hardly knew him: circumstances and difference in age prevented it.

the subjects, but I think that the bovine complacency with which John Bull allowed himself to be reduced to a second-class Power by engaging in a wholly unnecessary war in 1939 is partly explicable by these drug habits, which I think are superlatively silly.

CHAPTER III.

Into the Hard Cold World.

Although I had, during my college career, a large number of temporary spells of "independence" when working with veterinary surgeons in the vacations, the summer of 1903 brought my diploma and full professional status, and the first thing I did was to become an Assistant to a firm of Veterinary Surgeons, Messrs. Batt & Sons, of Oxford Street, London. In those days, there were few cars, and London's traffic—'bus, cab, commercial and private—was all horse-drawn. There were four qualified veterinary surgeons in the practice, two being the partners who owned it; the other Assistant at the time was the afterwards very well-known Veterinary Surgeon, Mr. Guy Sutton. We were kept busy all day long, driving all over West London to our equine patients. We were often called out to accidents in the streets and on such occasions I found it necessary to force my way through crowds of spectators, every one of whom, I gathered, knew what to do much better than I did. I became very expert at handling heavy and partly inert bodies, placing, roping, extending or folding the limbs so that the poor beast would rise under his own strength. This is a fine art which isn't taught in books and needs great strength, particularly when a horse has gone down in a narrow stall. In the street, there is more room; often when we found the animal could not rise from the side it was down on, we would turn it over on its back to the other side, when, with help it could generally rise to its feet. On one occasion, Sutton was beaten over the head with an umbrella by an angry old woman in the crowd who thought his well-meant efforts to assist his patient were superfluous.