TREBITSCH LINCOLN DEAD

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 13, 11 October 1943, Page 5

TREBITSCH LINCOLN DEAD

Professional Spy And Cleric

(Received October 10, 7.5 p.m.) LONDON, October 9. Tokio official radio reported that Ignhtius Trebitsch Lincoln, professional spy and Buddhist monk, died in a Shanghai hospital after an operation..

Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln was born in Paks, on the banks of the Danube. In 1892 he moved to Budapest, where he studied in a Roman Catholic College, and in 1898 went to Montreal, where he attended the Presbyterian College. In 1903 he went to England, and for 13 months was curate of the Church of England in a Kentish village. He resigned the curacy to go to London as secretary to Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree, of York. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1909. In 1910 he was elected M.P. for the Darlington Division of Yorkshire, and in the early days of the last war went to the G.P.O. as censor of Hungarian correspondence, but resigned almost immediately after being reprimanded. In the last months of 1914 and in early 1915 be visited Rotterdam, and on his return to

England offered information about Germany to the War Office, but in. June of the latter year appeared in New York, where, in the “New York World,” he published “Revelations of I. T. T. Lincoln, former member of Parliament, who became a German spy.” Two months later he was arrested in Brooklyn on forgery charges, which were followed by extradition proceedings. In January, 1916, he escaped from custody in Brooklyn, but was recaptured in disguise a month later and taken to England, where, in the following July, he was sentenced at the Central Criminal Court, to three years’ penal servitude on charges of forgerv and false pretences. In December, 1918, his certificate of naturalization was revoked.

He reappeared in the world's news in April, 1934, when, as a professing Buddhist abbot, he arrived at Montreal from China on his way to Europe to establish a Buddhist monastery on the shores of Lake Constance. He was detained, together with his nine European companions—“five monks and four nuns” —but was later permitted to cross Canada. Arriving at Liverpool on May 7, 1934, he was again detained, and was deported a week later. He returned across Canada, and, having been refused permission to live in Japan, went back to Shanghai, whence he later found his way back to Tibet.