Gladys Josephine Bewhay née Sangan

Date of birth 7 December 1914
Place of birth Jersey
Deported from Jersey
Deportation date 19 June 1941
Address when deported 'Chez-Nous', Ouainé, St Brelade, Jersey
Deported to:
Caen Prison

By Gilly Carr

Gladys Josephine Bewhay née Sangan was born on 7 December 1914. We know very little about her story.

On 8 February 1933, aged 20 years old, she married William Henry Bewhay at St Helier town church. She was, at this point, in domestic service.

At the start of the occupation she was 25 years old and still living in St Helier; however, it seems that she was newly separated from her husband and children by this point. William Henry Bewhay was living elsewhere with three children born in 1933, 1935 and 1939 respectively.

Very little is known about Gladys’ experience during the occupation. However, Jersey court records show that on 6 June 1941 she was sentenced by the Court of the Field Command to five months’ imprisonment for ‘participating in serious larceny and for false accusation with malice aforethought’, and that ‘the Island Command has been verbally authorised to have her sentence published in the Evening Post at the accused’s cost, within 2 weeks from validity of sentence, i.e. 9th June 1941’. Gladys was convicted with another woman at the same address, who received a three month sentence for serious larceny. The other woman was apparently not deported.

Jersey’s political prisoner logbook shows that Gladys was deported on 19 June 1941. She next appears in Caen Prison on 22 June 1941, where she stayed until 11 November 1941. Her occupation registration card indicates that on 27 April 1942 she moved to New Street in St Helier, thus confirming her return to the Island. However, as somebody with a prison sentence, she is highly likely to have been caught up in the later deportations to a civilian internment in Germany. Although her name cannot be located on a transport list, her registration card of 21 December 1942 indicated that she had ‘left the island for Germany some months ago.’ It is thus possible that Gladys Bewhay was deported a second time for another offence against the German occupying authorities, although no archival information can be put forward to support this hypothesis.

Despite this comment on her registration card, Gladys Bewhay appears in correspondence in German file FK 28/7 in the Island Archives in Guernsey. On 1 March 1943 she was in Guernsey (and not Germany), working in the harbour office for the Germans and wishing to return to Jersey. It is not known whether Gladys chose to work in Guernsey or was forced to work for the Germans in that island.

 

Sources

Gladys Bewhay née Sangan’s Jersey occupation registration documents, Jersey Archives ref D/S/A/4/A968 & B968.

Court records relating to Gladys Bewhay, Jersey Archives ref. D/Z/H6/2/17.

Political prisoner logbook, Jersey Archives ref. D/AG/B7/1.

Marriage certificate for Gladys Sangan and William Henry Bewhay, Jersey Archives ref. G/C/03/A3/26/16.

Gladys Bewhay’s Caen Prison record, Calvados Archive ref. 1664 w 33.

Map

  • Concentration camp
  • Forced labour camp
  • Internment camp
  • Prison
  • Other