Duncan Scott-Ford

Repatriated to Britain to serve his sentence, Scott-Ford was released in July 1941 and stayed briefly with his mother. They quarrelled over his mother's use of the allowance from his Royal Navy pay which he sent home, with Scott-Ford accusing his mother of using it to buy a fur coat. Shortly afterwards he joined the Merchant Navy. He was on board the SS Finland, which arrived in Lisbon on 10 May 1942.

On arriving at Salford Docks on 18 August, Scott-Ford was again routinely asked about approach attempts from German intelligence, and this time described a man who had asked him about communism in Britain. The authorities had already had word from Lisbon that an agent codenamed 'RUTHERFORD' by the Germans had been talking and therefore arranged to see him again the next day. Scott-Ford admitted that he had received 1,600 escudos (about £18 in 1942, or £893 in 2021) for information. He was taken into custody and sent to the 'London Reception Centre', where refugees were routinely screened for German agents. The notes which Scott-Ford had made about the convoy were found in a search of his quarters on the Finland.

Camp 020 were asked for their recommendation on whether Scott-Ford should be reprieved. The commandant wrote that there were no reasons for a reprieve: "Indeed, there may well be many who will agree that death by hanging is almost too good for a sailor who will encompass the death of thousands of his shipmates without qualm." Scott-Ford was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at 9:00 am on 3 November 1942 at Wandsworth Prison.

Scott-Ford was charged under the Treachery Act 1940, and after an in camera trial before Mr Justice Birkett, was convicted on 16 October. The only sentence on conviction under the Treachery Act was death; it was the first occasion on which Birkett had found himself pronouncing a death sentence. Interviewed in 1959 by John Freeman on Face to Face, Birkett said that he "had always rather dreaded it, but when the actual moment came, I did it without the slightest trace of emotion".

In June 1939 Scott-Ford was serving on HMS Gloucester which had called at Dar-es-Salaam on a goodwill visit. He met and became infatuated by a German girl; the Security Service later came to believe that he may have told her secret naval codes. Later in 1940 his ship was stationed in Egypt and Scott-Ford became obsessed with a prostitute whom he often visited; he was discovered to have altered the book of his Post Office Savings account and sent to a court martial which convicted him. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and dismissed from the service with ignominy but, after a successful appeal by his mother, the sentence was remitted to six months' imprisonment and an honourable discharge.

Scott-Ford was born in Plymouth, Devon, with the name Duncan Alexander Croall Smith, the son of Duncan Scott Smith who worked as a sick bed orderly in the Royal Navy. His father died on 23 March 1933 after catching pneumonia from the effects of taking an overdose of morphine in a suicide attempt, and Scott-Ford changed his surname in an attempt to improve his social status. He was educated at the Royal Hospital School, Holbrook from 1933 to 1937, and then on turning 16, enlisted in the Royal Navy and joined the shore establishment HMS Impregnable in Devonport in December 1937.

Duncan Alexander Croall Scott-Ford (4 September 1921 – 3 November 1942) was a British merchant seaman who was hanged for treachery after giving information to an enemy agent during the Second World War.