During the First World War, Britain interned hundreds of thousands of people within its shores. From about 1917 the majority of these came from French battlefields, but throughout the conflict a significant percentage consisted of non-combatants. The latter came from two sources. Most originated from the German community in Britain, whose number totalled 53,324 according to the census of 1911. They consisted of both permanent settlers and those who happened to find themselves in Britain in the summer of 1914.1 However, London became the centre of an international system of incarceration of Germans and other enemy aliens during the Great War. This coordination of imperial internment meant that different parts of the empire from Canada to India and Australia followed the Home Office lead once it began imprisonment from August 1914. This global system also meant that Germans, in particular, found themselves transported from one part of the British Empire to another, while overrun German imperial possessions in Africa also witnessed a system of transportation, which resulted in journeys to camps in Britain.