On Friday, August 14, a small story appeared on an inside page of the Bradford Weekly Telegraph. It was a message of reassurance to that portion of Bradford's population of German origin.

"The members of the German Evangelical Church in Horton lane, Bradford, may rest perfectly assured that if any desire to continue their services and avail themselves of the consolations of public worship during the war they will suffer no molestation.

"Any attempt at German-baiting would arouse the resentment of all that is best in the community. Considering the part the Germany colony has played in Bradford commerce and the city's life it would be base indeed to allow the first feeling of resentment caused by a war levied by the German autocracy to destroy our feelings of hospitality, to say nothing of our sense of chivalry...

"Both Englishmen and Germans, who have to live side by side, will be wise in abstaining from any form of provocation while this unhappy war is on."

If the paper hoped that well-meaning bit of moralising would defuse feelings of resentment it was wrong. Page three of the September 4th edition was full of photographs of wrecked shops in Keighley following outbursts of violence against German pork butchers.

According to the paper the trouble had started the previous Saturday night when an Irishman named Kelley entered the shop of Carl Andrassy and asked for a pie 'without any poison in it'.

A row started, blows were exchanged and before the night was out other shops in South Street and Church Street were attacked. Windows in Keighley police station were also smashed.

The Telegraph said thousands of people were in the streets. Police charged with drawn batons but only two men were arrested.

For more than 80 years people of German origin had been a feature of Bradford's commercial, cultural and civic life. Places such as Little Germany, Heidelberg Road, Mannheim Road - J B Priestley was born at number 34 - came to form a layer in Bradford's anthropological geology.

Priestley said the presence of mostly affluent German-Jews in Bradford was so common he never gave a thought as to why they were here.

He wrote: "That small colony of foreign or mixed Bradfordians produced some men of great distinction, including a famous composer, two renowned painters and a well-known poet.

"I can remember when one of the best-known clubs in Bradford was the Schillerverein (on Rawson Square off Manor Row, from 1862 to 1910). And in those days a Londoner was a stranger sight than a German.

"There was, then, this odd mixture in pre-war Bradford. A dash of the Rhine and the Oder found its way into our grim runnel - 't'mucky beck'. Bradford was determinedly Yorkshire and provincial, yet some of its suburbs stretched as far as Frankfurt and Leipzig. It was odd enough. But it worked. The war changed all that."

Bradford World War 1 Group say in its book Bradford in the Great War that by August 20, more than 20 ethnic Germans had been taken to the new military prison at Bradford Moor Barracks. The 1914 Aliens (Restrictions) Act required ethnic Germans to register with the authorities.

"Approximately 300 out of the estimated 500 German population registered their names, addresses, ages and occupations. After the sinking of the |Lusitania in April 1916, ant-German feeling entered a new phase.

"Women at Manningham Mills refused to work with Germans. German bands were banned from playing in public parks. German language classes were removed from schools."

About 139 Germans avoided deportation. Some anglicised their names (like the royal family who abandoned the name Saxe-Coburg for Windsor) and lived a quiet life for the remainder of the war..