Poisoned sweets

[Michael]

Yesterday I was reading the East Kent Gazette dated 23/2/18. It contained the startling news that poisoned sweets had been dropped in Essex during a raid by Gothas. After the raid, children had rushed outside to search for shrapnel which had been falling on the roof. The shrapnel turned out to be sweets which at the time of writing were being analysed

A police constable had found chocolates in the road which contained arsenic. The article also said that the Germans had done the same in Belgium where several children had been poisoned.

Is this propoganda or have any of you heard similar stories ?

Michael

[paul guthrie]

I am going to bet that's propaganda, this is not mentioned in the acclaimed German Atrocities 1914 1918 A History of Denial, US Branch WFA gave it our prize for best work in English on WW1 2 years ago, superb book.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

Sounds like a vivid imagination to me. I have never come across any reports of this nature. I doubt the German air crews would fly the great distance in order to drop a few poisoned candies and just think of their condition after falling such a great height.

Much greater damage would be achieved by dropping ordinary bombs. What next, melting down bodies of German dead for glycerin?

Ralph

[Guest Pete Wood]

The only food (of any kind) that I have heard of, dropped on the UK, was a 'decorated' ham bone that was deliberately slung out of a Zeppelin.

This really did happen.

[Max]

I doubt the German air crews would fly the great distance in order to drop a few poisoned candies and just think of their condition after falling such a great height.

The story really does have the smell of a scare put out by the press. There are a whole raft of stories and rumour illustrating the dastardly nature of the average German put out at this time, the vast majority with no basis in truth. Are there equivalent press stories told to the German public about dirty tricks and atrocities performed by the Allies?

Andy

[Tim Birch]

1918 seems a bit late in the war for such stories of Hun beastliness to circulate. If it had been 1914 or 1915 it would no doubt have helped swell the rush to the recruiting stations, after all poisoning little children by such a nasty trick would have been a natural progression from bayoneting babies.

Tim

[Guest]

If you check out James Haywood's "Myths and Legends of the First World War" he traces back this myth to probably having been started by a discovery in Hull of sweets containing arsenic which subsequently turned out to be a manufacturing fault in the factory.

Ian