John Vincent Cain

John Vincent Cain (1907 – 7 August 1940 ) was a British civilian aviator, AWOL soldier, convicted petty criminal, and confidence man who appeared as an unreliable narrator in newspaper coverage of 1930s European international relations. He may (or may not) have been involved in delivering planes and weapons to both sides of the Spanish Civil War. He was also apparently a passenger on the plane from which Max Wenner fell to his death in 1937. He himself committed suicide when about to be arrested in 1940.

Biography

Born in 1907, at Romford, Essex, son of Ernest Harry Cain and his wife Ada Eleanor (née Newman), Cain's schooling in childhood was disturbed by ill-health, he attended a preparatory school from where, aged 12, he was expelled after a sexual incident with a school's master. He was found another school where at 16 he was reportedly involved in "another unfortunate incident". Cain was reportedly convicted on "false pretences" charges in 1927 at which time he moved to Australia and New Zealand for seven years.

On return to England, his brother Harold Newman Cain employed him within his business as a travelling salesman and he enjoyed some success until he left it in 1936 after losing the confidence of customers through lying and dishonesty. Cain and Drecquer also allegedly planned to fly films of the coronation of George VI to the United States, with a hoped-for profit of , but their plane supposedly crashed during a test so the plan was never carried out. Drecquer, of whom little other record can be found, was described as an American financier or "company promoter." According to Cain, Drecquer committed suicide sometime between 1937 and 1938. Mr. and Mrs. Cain, who then lived at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, their daughter and nanny were all traveling together that day.

Cain "was known to many leading fliers as a lavish entertainer." He was sentenced to serve three months in prison per charge, to be served consecutively. Detective-Sergeant Broom told the bankruptcy court in April 1938 that Cain was "so full of deceit he almost deceives himself" and that "this man is extremely fond of luxury and seems unable to adjust his mode of living to his circumstances."

Death

On 2 August 1940, Cain fled his home at 48 Upper Berkeley Street in west London in a car in company with a woman friend, Edith Leslie Knight, trailed by the police. He drove west into Wales then back into England where they stayed overnight in a hotel at Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 6-7 August. After Cain's public suicide it was reported, "Cain, who was a lance-corporal in a London regiment, had been absent from his unit for some time. Scotland Yard was interested in his recent activities, and Special Branch officers visited the neighbourhood, but it is officially denied that Cain was engaged in espionage." He had told the woman he threatened to kill that, variously, he had an important job with the Air Ministry, he had a dangerous job and thus needed a revolver, two of his friends who were said to have committed suicide were actually killed by German agents, England was presently being invaded on three fronts, he was a German, he had held important machinery (or a set of stolen plans)

Reputation After his death, one newspaper in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, wrote: "Fair-haired and slightly built, Cain always gave the impression of becoming one of the leading air aces, but his ventures came to naught. He was a mystery, even to his closest friends, most of whom had lost touch with him in recent years. Some were astonished to learn he had joined the Army."

A 1946 book called They Came to Spy by Stanley Firmin mentions Cain as an example of "the sort of thing Intelligence officers in Britain had to deal with."