Liverpool, Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy

Liverpool Waterfront

The flyer from URBBEATZ about Liverpool’s history as a centre of the slave trend reminds us that this great merchant city and the 2008 European City of Culture has always been a cross roads for humanity. Liverpool does not just have one of England’s longest established black communities, but also a long established Chinese community, a huge Irish influx after the 1847 Famine (so much so it was nicknamed Dublin East!) and a smattering of many more cultures. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology after having a dream vision referred to Liverpool as "the Pool of Life" (in fact, Jung never set foot in Liverpool). When the US beat poet and counter-cultural icon Allen Ginsberg arrived in Liverpool in May 1965, he declared the city to be "at the present moment, the centre of consciousness of the human universe". Perhaps his pronouncement shouldn't be taken too seriously: he made similar claims for Milwaukee and Baltimore. As Liverpool poet Brian Patten, whose floor Ginsberg slept on, says: "I think Allen believed the centre of human consciousness to be wherever he was at the time."



Back in 1931, the Daily Post writer Michael O'Mahoney magisterially wrote that Liverpool was the threshold to the ends of the earth. In those days it was a self-evident truth. Earlier still, as America opened up and was linked to Europe by Liverpool's steamship lines, millions of emigrants flowed through the city. Not all of the huddled masses, though, moved on. Thousands stayed in Liverpool, adding exotic ingredients to its melting pot. But of all the stories of Liverpool immigrants the two strangest are probably those of Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy for interestingly Liverpool had a strange Axis link with both Adolph Hitler’s nephew and a relation of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito living in the city.

Hitler's half brother Alois

Adolf Hitler did not have a son, but he did have a nephew, whose given name was Paddy. Paddy, the son of Hitler's half brother Alois, lived in Liverpool as a young boy. In 1933 he moved to Germany, trying to be a car salesman and cash in on his family name. Things didn't work out and he moved to the US, denouncing his Uncle and serving in the US Navy in the war. Finally he settled in Long Island where he had four sons, including Brian Hitler. Although to be strictly correct his full name was William Patrick Hitler, rather than Paddy and in any case, Hitler's nephew changed his surname to Stuart-Houston after WW2. So there was never really a Brian Hitler, only Brian Stuart-Houston.

William Patrick Hitler Poster

William Hitler grew up in Toxteth in the early 20th century living at 102, Upper Stanhope Street. William’s father Alois Hitler, the half-brother of Adolf had married an Irish girl called Bridget Dowling. Alois and Bridget had met at a horse fair in Ireland before eloping to London and marrying and finally settled in Liverpool. The Liverpool branch of the Hitler family ran different businesses including a boarding house and a restaurant. The couple had one child, William Patrick Hitler born on March 12th 1911.

Birth certificate of William Patrick Hitler

Alois found it difficult to settle in Liverpool and changed his source of income four times in their first two years of married life. He ran a restaurant on Dale Street, a boarding house on Upper Parliament Street, and then a hotel in Mount Pleasant. When he became a salesman for a disposable razor firm, he began to have grand ideas about developing his own business in the same field. This, he hoped, would involve his sister Angela and brother-in-law Leo Raubal back in Austria. He then sent them money to cover their travelling expenses in the hope they would come to Liverpool for a visit where he could discuss his ideas further. According to Bridget, "...we were looking forward with pleasure to their visit. When we went to Lime Street Station to meet them I eagerly scanned the couples descending from the 11.30 train, wondering if I would recognise our relatives. Instead of Angela and Leo Raubal, however, a shabby young man approached and offered Alois his hand. It was my husband's younger brother, Adolf, who came in their place".

A row then broke out between the brothers and Bridget left them to it. When they returned to the flat later that evening the tension was gone, and once Adolf had retired to bed Bridget berated her husband for the way he had treated him. What then followed was a diatribe against Adolf and how Alois portrayed himself as the classic mistreated step-child, while all favouritism went to the true off spring of the mother. He described to his young wife his unhappy childhood and the way he was constantly beaten by his father, especially when he came home the worse for wear after yet another night at the local tavern.

Alois Hitler's grave

Despite his uncomfortable memories, Alois was not going to turn his half-brother away and this was to be the beginning of a stay that would keep Adolf in Upper Stanhope Street for almost 6 months, from November 1912 until April 1913.

Once his uncle rose to power in Germany, William moved to Germany and basked in the female adulation that came from having such a famous uncle. Hitler never had much time for William and eventually paid him off (there was rumour of blackmail about revealing Jewish ancestors) and he moved to the United States to go on a lecture tour organised by William Randolph Hearst. When war broke out he stayed in the USA joining the US Navy in 1944. A recurring story, that has never been proved either way, is that Adolf Hitler visited Liverpool in 1912. At the time he was practically destitute and working as a part time labourer in Vienna.

Poste House pub where Hitler
is meant to have had a drink

Local legend has it that Hitler drank in the Poste House pub in Cumberland Street. The evidence for Hitler’s visit comes from the writings of William’s mother Bridget who moved to the USA too. She wrote that her famous brother-in-law had moved to Liverpool and lived with her and Alois from November 1912 to April 1913. There is no other evidence for the visit, which many historians dismiss as a ploy by Bridget to make money from the infamous family name.

Bridget and William Patrick Hitler on tour in the USA

William Patrick Hitler at eighteen

The family home on Upper Stanhope Street where Adolf Hitler is reputed to have stayed was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1942, ironically the last street in Liverpool to be bombed in the Second World War. After the war William Patrick Hitler changed his surname and lived in relative obscurity up to his death in 1987. He was buried alongside his mother in Long Island cemetery. He had four sons Howard, Alexander Adolf, Louis and Brian. Howard died in a car crash in 1989; the three surviving sons have no children.

Hitler's Grand Nephews

Beryl Bainbridge wrote a novel about a fictional visit by a young Adolf to his Liverpudlian relative - which was dramatised on T.V. in the early 80s I. Willie's three sons, who all lived in Long Island, changed their name and made a pact never to have children. A new documentary, called "The Last of the Hitler’s," tells the story of the brothers, and their bizarre pact with each other never to have children in order to sever the bloodline of their infamous relative. The film is based on the fascinating book of the same name by journalist David Gardner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Patrick_Hitler

A relation of Emperor Hirohito escaped the stifling restrictions of life at the Imperial Court in the 20s and worked his passage to Liverpool where he worked on the docks and lived in a council tenement under the name of Paddy Murphy!

Paddy Murphy was the assumed name of Kanso Yoshida, born in Japan in 1895, settled in Liverpool in 1938 and lived there until he died in 1973, his death meriting a lengthy obituary in the Liverpool Echo. Kanso was second cousin to Princess Chichibu, who was sister-in-law to Emperor Hirohito, the father of Akihito, the current Emperor of Japan.

The peace loving Imperial Deity aka
The Emperor Hirohito

Kanso Yoshida’s grandson Frank King still lives in Liverpool where he describes himself as a pedigree mongrel. Although his features belie the fact that his grandfather was the famous Japanese Liverpool resident, known to all as Paddy Murphy, there is plenty of Irish in his family. His Grandfather left Japan to escape the stifling life of the Imperial Court and worked as a seafarer and visited Liverpool several times before deciding to make his home there. Although Frank knew Kanso all his life, only recently (2007) did he discover that Kanso was his grandfather.

"My mother told me, just before she died seven years ago. Apparently my grandmother, Mabel Dingle, had been a barmaid at The Yacht in Duke Street, Kanso's local pub (he lived in Kent Gardens then). They had a bit of a fling, which resulted in my mother. My grandmother later married George Puddifer.

"I always knew he was my step-grandfather but never knew about Kanso being my real granddad till I was in my mid-40s." When he was a child, Frank used to play dominoes with Kanso, and realised the old man had a bit of a soft spot for him. Kanso Yoshida worked as a ship's fireman and donkeyman, and was in the British Navy in both world wars. In 1917, during World War I, his ship Huntstrick was torpedoed and sunk off Gibraltar, injuring Kanso badly. Yet in World War II his ship was twice bombed, but Kanso escaped unhurt.

In 1940 Kanso became a British citizen, but unlike many, was not interned. After Japan entered the war in 1941, he was subject to snide remarks. Kanso explained his nickname: "One day I get real mad. And I yell out, 'I'm not Japanese, I'm good Englishman as any of you. If you don't like my name, then OK, I change it. Call me Paddy Murphy!' I am known as Paddy Murphy ever since."

So there you have the strange tale of Liverpool and Paddy Hitler and Paddy Murphy, relations of the leaders of Germany and Japan respectively during World War 2 which in the masterly understatement of the Emperor Hirohito when he ordered Japan’s surrender “has not necessarily worked out to Japan’s advantage!” Unfortunately Adolph Hitler’s verdict on World War 2 was not recorded but no doubt it would have been similar!

Poste House Pub, Liverpool