Damning evidence of state collusion with Nazi Germany to racially profile Caithness travellers as part of ‘Tinker Experiment’
A retired academic has leaked a report which she believes shows widespread state collusion over the visit of a Nazi eugenicist to racially profile Caithness travellers in 1938.
Dr Lynne Tammi (68) is from a traveller background and though retired from a position at the University of Dundee now works as an independent researcher. Due to her heritage and academic knowledge, she was asked to sit on a “scrutiny panel” for a research document on historical aspects of the Scottish traveller community that revealed damning details of endemic prejudice at a state level.
“I took no pleasure from leaking this report but felt I had to in case any of the information, which could be embarrassing to the government, is redacted,” said Dr Tammi who lives in Montrose and had previously done work on the “trafficking” of Scottish traveller children to Canada as part of a forced resettlement programme.
The 80-page report was commissioned by the Scottish government in 2023 and is yet to be officially published. Researchers at the University of St Andrews trawled through centuries of historical data to produce an in-depth analysis of the forced resettlement of Scottish travellers as part of a state-sponsored programme known as the ‘Tinker Experiment’.
“At a state level, they wanted to eradicate the culture, put them into concentration camps and remove the children,” said Dr Tammi.
One area of the report outlines the visit of one of Nazi Germany's top anthropologists to Caithness in 1938 to racially profile traveller communities in the county. Professor Wolfgang Abel carried out anthropological research for the Third Reich, with a particular focus on his attempts to situate gypsies and travellers as enemies of the Reich and a “danger to the purity of the Aryan race”.
Dr Tammi says that the report has details that will be embarrassing to the Scottish government such as the references to Wolfgang Abel’s links to leading figures in the British establishment and the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC), the charity now known as Children First.
“Abel was in Caithness studying travellers and it was part of a bigger plan. There was an application for a return visit but that was interrupted by the war. My fear is the report was reducing this to a footnote.” She said that the Nazi eugenicist and his team interrogated and carried out “invasive examinations on members of gypsy and traveller communities” in Caithness. “The aristocracy were involved and knew all about it; the church knew all about it and the Archbishop of Canterbury met him; and the ambassador to Germany, Neville Henderson, also met him. They were all involved and not one of them said a word against him.
“People know what went on in Nazi Germany with the Jews and how they wanted to eradicate them. Wolfgang Abel was already involved in programmes of sterilisation and euthanasia of gypsies. It was a Europe-wide plan to deal with race and purity. My thinking is that we’d be part of that and if not for the war it would have started to kick in.”
Caithness travellers were already subject to great local prejudice and had been forced to live on the outskirts of towns and villages in caves and tents. Stephanie Waterston wrote a dissertation on the cave dwellers of Caithness that was not published in the media despite it dating back to 2018. She thinks that part of the reason is that it is still a very “charged topic” in Caithness and bitter memories persist.
She said: "I commend Dr Lynne Tammi’s work in bringing wider recognition and accountability to the profound consequences of the forced assimilation programme, known as, 'The Tinker Experiment' and her commitment to ensuring the principles of historical integrity are upheld in respect to it."
When Abel visited Scotland in 1938 he spoke with Gordon Shennan, the then SSPCC Inspector for the Highlands and Islands who noted in his diary: “One day the County Police phoned me to say that a German Professor, visiting Scotland, wanted information about tinkers. They sent him to me.
“He said he would be very grateful if I could tell him where he might be able to meet gypsies, primitives and cave dwellers. As an anthropologist, he wanted to take certain head measurements – for scientific purposes.”
Shennan thought Professor Abel would best visit Caithness and get information from the police in Wick and Thurso to guide him in the right direction. Armed with names and directions, Abel embarked on a tour of gypsy traveller camps in Caithness. A tour which saw him measuring skulls and facial features and taking hand prints and photographs of children and adults alike.
Dr Tammi outlined the case of a 13-year-old Caithness traveller known only as ‘James’ from Wick who met with the Nazi professor. Dr Tammi said: “Abel’s request was so very different that it stayed with James into adulthood and it was a cautionary tale that he told on many an occasion to his children and other community members.”
James passed away some years ago but Dr Tammi spoke with two of his now adult children, Hammie and Belle, and shared some of her research. Hammie felt “repulsed” and said that the “insidious, clandestine intent is bone-shuddering”.
He added: “I feel lucky to be here, despite how I’ve been tortured by the Tinker Experiments. Dad told us that he had his head measured by a German Nazi scientist and that he got something for cooperating. We assumed it was a tall tale, how wrong we were.”
Belle added: “I felt a great welling up of sadness that one human being could inflict such physical, emotional and psychological damage on the vulnerable but glad that my dad escaped to serve against such Nazi ideology in WWII with nothing more than his head measured and a sixpence for the flicks. Others were not so lucky. It’s ironic, really, that a Nazi-instigated war saved my dad and the other poor kids in Wick from such eugenic horrors for which Abel was famed.”
Dr Tammi believes that the Tinker Experiment shows state collusion at the highest levels for dealing with what was seen as a problem within the community. “I realise that I have taken a considerable risk in leaking the report and expect there to be personal repercussions.
“Nonetheless, I feel that the laying bare of the heinous legislation and practice, including the trafficking of children to the colonies and forced assimilation directed towards gypsies and travellers in Scotland is more important than whatever 'punishment' awaits me.”
Dr Tammi said it is time for the Scottish government to make an official apology for the Tinker Experiment and other injustices aimed at the traveller communities.
Read her blog for more info at: ayeright.scot/
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