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Your Story: Adolf Hitler - did he visit Liverpool during 1912-13? |
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The Toxteth Hitlers
According to an interview given to the Daily Express in the ‘30s, Bridget may have met Alois at a staff dance at the Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin. This contrasts with the version she gave in her memoirs where she states she met Alois for the first time at the Dublin Horse Show in 1909. There she said her father and neighbour began talking to a stranger. The young man cut a dashing figure in his smart suit and waxed, turned up handle bar moustache. He introduced himself as Alois Hitler from Austria, and with his “fine foreign manners and his debonair Viennese ways'” he made a great impression on the teenage Bridget. "He fairly won my heart with his sugary talk and foreign ways", she declared.
They agreed to meet and a close friendship soon developed between them. However, Alois had already created suspicion in the family with his fancy talk about being in the “hotel business” and being there on a fact finding trip covering France, Belgium, and the British Isles to study the trade. It wasn't long before they discovered he was actually a waiter at the Shelbourne Hotel, sent there by a London employment agency. Despite this, Bridget was “head over heels in love” and they began to see more of each other.
The Dowlings clearly did not approve of the relationship, especially once they became aware of his true station. Having decided to marry, the couple then eloped to London where they were married at Marylebone Registry Office on 3 June 1910. William Dowling, Bridget's father and a farm labourer from Kilnamanagh, was so incensed he even wanted the police to arrest Alois for kidnapping.
"My father - rest his soul - was a real Irishman", said Bridget. "He would not hear tell of a wedding to a foreigner. Alois and I used to meet every afternoon in the museum and make plans to elope. Four months later when Alois had saved enough money we went to England on the night boat and came to London. I wrote to my mother and said I would not return until we got permission to marry. She talked my father around and he gave his consent".
Words: M W Royden
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