Frederick H. U. Bowman

The Stage, 27 March 1969, published Bowman’s obituary: ‘Frederick H. U. Bowman, the Liverpool author and former editor of “The Talking Picture News”, has died. A former actor and theatrical manager, he was something of a character in Liverpool and for many years devoted his interests to animal welfare. He was a fervent anti-vivisectionist’. That only scratches the surface of Bowman’s life. The following has been put together from contemporary newspaper reports (including profiles in the Liverpool Echo, 17 November 1971 and 16 February 1972), an autobiographical essay in ‘Saucy and Serious … a readable volume of wit and wisdom for casual readers, especially those interested in the stage and the cinema’ (1931), and A. W. Brian Simpson’s ‘In The Highest Degree Odious. Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Frederick Bowman was born on 25 January 1894; he added the middle initials H.U. to create a nom de plume, once joking that they stood for ‘hard up’. He wrote for newspapers and magazines, including the Kinematograph Weekly, being especially interested in films and the cinema; owned and edited a weekly newspaper, the Liverpool Examiner; wrote and acted in stage plays; wrote film scripts, poems and music; sang both soprano and baritone; supported women’s suffrage; campaigned against cruelty to animals, especially cats and horses, and conditions in slaughterhouses and hen batteries (he called his home Humanimal House); criticised the Royal family for engaging in hunting and the Earl of Sefton for allowing his land to be used for hare coursing; opposed the partition of Ireland; and repeatedly failed to be elected to Liverpool City Council as an Independent Candidate, once polling only nine votes. In 1916 he tried unsuccessfully to avoid conscription, on the grounds that he and his mother could not bear to be separated, and enlisted in the 23rd Works Battalion, later the 1st Labour Battalion, King’s (Liverpool) Regiment. After demobilisation in February 1919 he started a newspaper devoted to film, the ‘Trade Show Critic’ (later the ‘Talking Picture News and Examiner’). It lost money and when he and its printer were ordered to pay £460 in damages and costs after losing a libel action Bowman could not afford to pay his share. He also lost money running a theatre for a few months. When he won a libel case and was awarded £400 the other party did not pay up. In 1936 he was declared bankrupt with debts of £2513 and assets that realised £6, and was discharged from bankruptcy in 1938 with his debts still unpaid. Bowman was a pacifist throughout the Second World War, being an ardent supporter of the Marquess of Tavistock, the 12th Duke of Bedford, and his proposals for a negotiated peace with Germany. In June 1940 he was arrested and charged with unlawfully possessing a document about the nation’s defences, a plan thought to be relevant to the defences of the Mersey Tunnel. In July 1940 the charges were dropped and Bowman was ordered to be interned for the duration of the war under Regulation 18B of the Defence Regulations. Bowman ‘was the most persistently non-co-operative detainee whose case is documented’ (Simpson, p. 253). In July 1942 he declined the offer of a conditional release as it would have meant reporting to the police every month and not changing his address without permission. Instead he tried to escape from Brixton Gaol by shaving off his beard and walking out with his collar turned back to front to look like a priest. He refused to accept the punishment of a bread and water diet and was forcibly fed. In February 1943 he was released unconditionally and the following year tried unsuccessfully to sue medical officers and warders at Brixton for assault. Meanwhile, in March 1943, in recognition of his work for peace, he was ‘knighted’ by Count Geoffrey Wladislas Vaile Potocki de Montalk, the self-styled King Wladislav the Fifth of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, thereafter preferring to be known as ‘Sir Frederick’. In January 1945 he was fined £20, reduced on appeal to £5, for failing to comply with a National Service Officer’s direction to undertake land work in Wales, and then unsuccessfully petitioned the (British) King for a free pardon. In 'Blushes and Bliss' (1948), twenty-eight pages of short pieces on a variety of topics, Bowman criticised the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the British bombing of Germany, what he regarded as the undignified treatment of Germans tried and executed at Nuremberg, the execution of William Joyce, British hospitality to Poles and the number of Jewish Members of Parliament; and he regarded the convicted murderer Neville Heath as an example of how ‘killing in war-time is bound to make men callous about killing in time of peace’. In January 1944 he had denied being a fascist. In 1965 Bowman asked the Home Secretary to reopen the case of Florence Maybrick who was convicted of murdering her husband in 1889 and who had died in October 1941. In January 1969 he was interviewed on Granada Television by Brian Trueman. He died two months later, on 14 March 1969. A profile of Bowman in the Liverpool Echo, 16 February 1972, concluded: ‘By the exacting standards of a materially minded world, his life had been a failure. But by other standards he had many talents. He loved his country and saw himself as the Bowman of England. He had great courage, and was kind, generous and fearless. His title may have been as empty as his purse, but there was a nobility about him, and in his own eccentric fashion he distributed the largesse of a warm and colourful personality to a city which seems the greyer for his passing’.

Performances associated with Frederick H. U. Bowman