Page 44 - Sutclifffe-APD_Censorship_PoW

Prisoner of War, Internment Camps and Gibra1tar Camp , Jamaica .

section XI . Gibra1tar Camp .
· 1 c ) arose from the evacuation of many of
This camp {herein referred t~ as G~bra ~arftampthe fall of France in 1940, as there
the inhabitants of Gibraltar wh~ch occurre da er th h Spa'n Had this happened it
'b'l't fa German a vance roug • ·
was then a strong poss~ ~ ~ y o 'b lt d could have denied the Allies access
would have threatened the fortress ~f.G~ ra .ardan evacuate the "Rock" of as many
to the Mediterranean. Hence the Br~t~sh dec~tdhe Ut~ted Kingdom but on the 25~ October ,
· · · 'bl · most of them went to e n~
c~v~l~ans as poss~ .e' . d n the 15~h November, 1940 a further 400 evacuees
~9~0 some 1, 104 ar~~ved at K~ngstonta~asobeen suggested that amongst the Gibraltarians
JO~ned the other v~a Port RfoyalM. lit but to date no evidence has been seen to support
there were a few evacuees rom a a ,
t his theory . As the Low Countr ies were overrun by the Germans many Dutch nationals,
including many Jews fled South, first to France and later to Gibraltar through Sp[ain .
Many were also evacuated to Jamaica.

All the evacuees were housed in a camp on the Southern end of the Old Mona estate,
lying between the Hope River and Long Mountain, formerly part of the Prisoner of War
camp at Up Par k Camp . This camp was named Gibraltar Camp, {herei n in this Section
a l so called the "Camp") to distinguish it from the nearby Mona Camp; later married
quarters in the main Up Park Camp were made available to the evacuees, leaving the
unmarried ones at the Camp .

This Section deals with the Camp in some detail because of its very close
connection with the Prisoner of War and Internment Camps .

The Camp was run on quasi military lines with its own Orderly Room; the Commandant
being Mr. J . L. Wortledge and his deputy Mr . A.E . Rae, a former Ki ngston Councillor .
The evacuees were Wards of the Crown and were prohibited from either pursuing crafts
or professions for reward in Jamaica - a provision imposed to protect the employment
of Jamaicans - or residing outside the Up Park Camp complex . As British subjects
most of the men of military age were liable to conscription, many were drafted into
the Pioneer Corps of the British Army - in which capacity they acted as infantry .
After training they acted as guards for the Prisoner of War and Internment Camps -
both adjacent to their Camp whilst other evacuees acted as supervisory staff and
domestics.

Mail passed through the Orderly Room and like other A.rmy mail was sent to a
Civilian Post Office until a civilian Post Office opened at Up Park Camp. There is
conflicting evidence as when this Post Office opened; Tom Foster suggested this was
as early as 1st November, 1940, when he stated that a Mr. G. W. Campbell was Postmaster.
5
Earlier he had stated that the date of opening was 1 ~ April, 1942, whilst others
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believe the date was the 1 ~ April, 1941 . However, it may be possible to reconcile
these conflicting dates .
The Jamaica Post Office system basically provides for three grades of postal
Facility, the lowest being that of a Sub Postal Agency, which may be regarded as a
receiving office without its own dater as it transmitted mail to it's Forwarding
Office ; either a Postal Agency or Post Office which dealt with such mail. There
are a few cases where the officer in charge of a Sub Postal Agency had acquired
his or her own "postmark" .

The second facility was that of a Postal Agency, which had it ' s own dater and
wider facilities than the Sub Postal Agency but usually was not allowed to register
mail, merely applying it's dater.

The third category of office was that of the Post Office, a facility similar in
facilities to the Post Offices i n the United Kingdom in the 1940's. A postal
facility usually s t arted off as a Sub Postal Agency and progressed upwards as it' s
volume of mail increased; the salary of the officer also depended on the volume of
mail generated from a office.