§ Mr. HOHLERasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that letters of naturalisation recently granted to German subjects resident in the county of Kent is creating some anxiety; and will he, to allay this feeling, state the reasons why such letters were granted in April and May last to Julia Apelt, of independent means, Minster, Sheerness; Ignaz Hermann, watchmaker, Tunbridge Wells; Sophia Mary Kluelas, apartment house keeper, Ramsgate; Katherine Anne Kluver, or Mitchell, apartment house keeper, Ramsgate; Caroline W. Matthaei, private governess, Bromley; Oskar E. R. Thiebwasser, tailor, Bexley Heath; and Karaser, of independent means, Bromley?
§ Sir J. SIMONI have heard of no anxiety on this subject in the county of Kent. If any exists, it arises entirely from misapprehension of the facts. Of the five women named in the question (one of whom lives in Aberdeen, not in Ramsgate) four are widows, born in the United Kingdom, of British parents, who have lived all, or almost all, their lives in the United Kingdom, and have in some cases been 1477W widows for a long time. One of them has a son serving in the Navy. The fifth is a single woman who has been in the United Kingdom since the age of six. She is not of German extraction, but was born in Germany of Italian parentage, and probably had no nationality previous to her naturalisation here. Of the two men, one, aged seventy-nine, has been sixty-four years in the United Kingdom, his father was naturalised in 1850, and he himself, though technically an alien, had always been considered to be a British subject. The other is aged fifty, has been thirty years in the United Kingdom, has two sons serving in the Army, and is thoroughly loyal.