The Blandford Express

Operation Countryman was an investigation into corrupt practices in both the City of London and Metropolitan Police Forces.  It was led in the late 1970s by the Assistant Chief Constable of Dorset, Leonard Burt (above). When younger, he had played a key role in the uncovering of the Portland Spy Ring. This resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of local spies Ethel Gee and Harry Houghton.                     The investigation was set up following allegations that police officers in the capital were accepting money from criminals. In return, it was believed the officers were interfering with evidence, giving advance notice of police raids and assisting with payroll robberies. At the time many workers had their wages paid weekly in cash. This necessitated the transfer from banks to businesses of large amounts of cash required  to make up wage packets. During the 1970s, London was awash with meticulously planned robberies man...

William Whittle was a seaman with a lucrative sideline. He was a smuggler of foreign spirits.  The Dorset coastal village of Langton Herrimg was his place of birth and he was born there in 1810 on New Year’s Eve. His secondary trade of smuggling seems to have been a family affair as relative Thomas Whittle, a Langton Herring shoemaker, had been sent to prison for smuggling three years earlier. In 1835, William Whittle was charged with assaulting Lieutenant Rowe, a Customs Officer at Abbotsbury and of being the leader of a large smuggling gang. It was reported that a gang of around 600 men were helping with the landing of the liquor. Many were carrying bludgeons. One of the Customs Officers suffered three broken ribs and was unfit for work for seven weeks. Smuggling of wines, spirits and luxury goods from France was a local industry and the men of Abbotsbury and Langton Herring were much involved in the activity. At Dorchester Assizes in March 1835, William Whittle was found guilty ...

Elm Tree Inn, Langton Herring in South Dorset is a 400-year-old hostelry with a colourfully checkered history - that includes smugglers, bouncing bombs, espionage and knicker bunting. Originally leased by the Prince of Wales, it became a known haunt for wreckers and smugglers. Wreckers plundered cargo from shipwrecks. The dangerous shingle banks and deep waters off nearby Chesil Bank led to many local shipwrecks. Folklore has it that wreckers would tie a lantern to a cow’s tail and the gentle up and down motion would simulate that of a ship at anchor. Passing captains would mistake the false light for a safe harbour. Disaster would follow. A fisherman who had cheated others on the size of his catch was chased through the village in 1780 and was hung from a beam at the Elm Tree Inn. In 1834, William Whittle was sentenced to death for smuggling and for assaulting a Revenue Official. Following a petition for clemency, signed by more than 600, he was transported to Australia. The village’s...

‘Ring of Spies’ is a British spy film, released in 1964, which is much based on the true story of the Portland Spy Ring. Filmed in Dorset, it featured Bernard Lee, who later played ‘M’ in the Bond movies, Margaret Tyzack, William Sylvester and David Kossof. Harry Houghton and his girl friend, Elizabeth ‘Bunty’ Gee were civil servants who worked at the Admiralty’s Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland. Development work for Britain’s first nuclear submarine was taking place there. Both the heavy drinking Houghton and Gee developed a taste for the finer things in life that their modest Civil Service salaries were unable to finance. Houghton bought a car for which he paid cash and would spend more than his weekly salary on alcohol alone. Bunty was a middle aged spinster, with few friends, who lived with her mother. Until she met Houghton she had lived a sheltered life. Bunty had a reputation for being a particularly bad cook. Bunty had access to highly top secret files so in league ...

Leonard Burt was a Dorset Constabulary policeman whose groundwork led to the arrest of five members of the Portland Spy Ring in 1961. During the autumn of 1959 the Detective Officer became aware of Harry Houghton, a Portland Naval Base clerk whose lifestyle and excessive drinking were incompatible with his clerk’s salary. Burt found it quite incredible that this man, who had been sent back from Poland because of his excessive drinking and black market activities, had been posted to the Portland Underwater Establishment. Here, some of Britain’s most secret submarine defence activities were carried out. Houghton had been involved in selling penicillin, a drug which was in short supply in Poland. He also frequently boasted about his invitations to attend parties at the Polish Embassy where he met up with old Polish friends. Burt’s discreet observations led to him finding that Houghton spent many evenings drinking heavily in the Elm Tree public house, Langton Herring. He would then make hi...

Ethel Elizabeth Gee, known as ‘ Bunty’ , was an unassuming spinster who lived in a Portland red brick terraced house in Hambro Road with her elderly relatives. A blacksmith’s daughter, she worked as a filing clerk in the Admiralty’s top underwater establishment at Portland. Despite this lowly status, she still handled top secret papers on Britain’s submarines and underwater detection capabilities. Indeed, much of the development work for Britain’s first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought had been undertaken at Portland. Born in Portland in May 1914, ‘ Bunty ’ has been described as ‘ plain ’ and an ‘ awful cook’ . Yet for a period in the 1950s, as a member of the Portland Spy Ring, she was one of Russia’s most valuable spies. Around 1955, she met fellow civil servant, Harry Houghton, who lived in Weymouth, a former sailor who was spying for both Poland and Russia. He was a heavy drinking divorcee who enjoyed a lifestyle far beyond his civil service income. He had bought a four bedroom...

Gordon Arnold Lonsdale was an apparently successful London based, Canadian businessman who had made his money by hiring out and selling jukeboxes, bubble gum and gambling machines. Another of his products, an electronic car locking device was awarded a gold award at an International Inventors’ Exhibition in Brussels. He was a stocky built man of medium height with a broad cheerful face and ‘very intelligent eyes. ’ On the 28 th June 1960, he had booked himself into the Crown Hotel in Blandford Forum. Yet, all was not what it seemed as Gordon Lonsdale was not his real name neither was he Canadian. His real name was Konon Trofimovich Molody and he was a 38 year old, Moscow born, Russian intelligence agent and master spy. He spoke excellent English with an American accent as he had lived for several years in the USA. Molody had stolen the identity of a dead man who had died in 1943. Purpose of his Blandford stay was later to meet two associates at a house in Meadow View Road, Weymouth...

It was almost two o’ clock in the morning when civil servant Harry Houghton said he turned his Renault Dauphine into Blandford’s Ham car park. In the car’s back seats were two Soviet intelligence agents. They had been put ashore just before midnight from a submarine or trawler at Church Ope Cove on Portland. Also known as Smugglers Cove, it had been chosen because of its seclusion and was out of the sight of coastguards. Harry had in the early hours parked in Blandford at some distance from the only other parked car. This was driven by a Soviet agent, known just as John. He had met John previously in a lay by between Puddletown and Blandford. The second parked car had a square of white paper in its window, a sign that Harry had been told to look out for. It could have been a spy movie scene set in Blandford Forum but Harry Houghton was no James Bond. He was a middle aged, heavy drinking clerical officer in Portland Naval Base having previously been a Royal Navy Senior NCO. However Harr...