Constituency : Darlington 1910
Ignatius unseated the Liberal Unionist Herbert Pease in a seat the Liberals hadn't contested since 1898. He won by 29 votes.
Ignatius was born Ignaz Trebitsch in Hungary to an Orthodox Jewish family. He was a drama student there but fled to London after the police investigated him over stolen gold watches in 1897 and converted to Christianity. He trained as a Lutheran missionary in Germany and operated in Canada until 1903 when he fell out with his masters over pay. He changed his name by deed poll in 1904 and became a British national in 1909. He became a curate in Kent after meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury but then failed his theological exams. He then met the millionaire philanthropist Seebohm Rowntree and became his private secretary. Rowntree sponsored a fact-finding tour of Europe to come up with new ideas for social policy. Rowntree loaned him £10,000 and secured him the Liberal nomination for Darlington in 1909 before his citizenship had come through. Opponents chanted "cocoa cocoa" at him when he campaigned in the town.
Ignatius's maiden speech was a long defence of Free Trade.
Ignatius did not have the financial means to support himself as an MP and details of his murky past were coming to light . He was obliged to stand down in December when Pease recaptured the seat.
Ignatius went to Romania to try and get involved in the oil business. At the start of World War one he offered his services to the government as a spy; when they rejected him he turned to the Germans. They did briefly use him but he was soon uncovered and he fled to the USA where he published a wildly exaggerated account of his exploits. When the USA joined the war Britain was able to extradite him. He was prosecuted for fraud and served three years in Pankhurst. He was deported on release.
Ignatius went to Germany and fell in with the extreme right. He took part in the Kapp Putsch and was appointed press censor in the new government. He fled from Germany when the putsch collapsed and became involved in the White International movement only to sell information to security forces. He was forced to leave Europe and ended up in China where he became a Buddhist monk. In 1925 his son was hanged for murder . In 1931 he became an abbot in Shaghai but used his position to enrich himself and seduce nuns. From 1937 onwards he began working for the Japanese who supported his failed bid to become the Dalai Lama.
In 1943, Ignatius wrote to Hitler protesting against his anti-semitic policies. The response to his letter was a request that the Japanese poison him when they captured Shanghai in 1943. This might have been behind his death from stomach trouble that year aged 64.
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