Category Archives: Criminology

by | January 17, 2024 · 6:17 am

Part 2 : where the name Sherlock came from

First class cricket has a very long history in England, and Nottinghamshire is one of the oldest counties.  Teams of that name have, in fact, played cricket since at least 1835. During that time, they have played their home games at a world famous ground called Trent Bridge……

One of their most famous, and colourful, nineteenth century players was Mordecai Sherwin who was born in 1851 and died in 1910. In the wintertime, when cricket was impossible because of the weather, “Mordy”, an expert at catching a moving ball, actually played football for Notts County, the local football club. He was very agile and, despite weighing seventeen stones (238 pounds, 108 kilos), he always played as a goalkeeper. Even though he carried a lot of weight, every time that Notts County scored a goal, he would treat the crowd to a cartwheel.

In those days, goalkeepers could be barged into the net to score a goal, so Mordy’s weight frequently came in useful. On one famous occasion, the Blackburn Rovers outside right, Joe Lofthouse, barged him, but merely bounced off. Sherwin famously said:

“Young man, you’ll hurt yourself if you do that again.”

A little while later, Lofthouse tried his luck again, but Mordy stepped aside and Lofthouse collided with the goalpost and cut himself .

Mordy was much more famous, though, as a first class cricketer for his native county. He played 328 times for Nottinghamshire and three times for England in international “Test” matches. He scored 2362 runs as a batsman and as a wicketkeeper he caught 616 batsmen and stumped 227. We have not looked at stumpings but it is basically a way which only the wicketkeeper can use to dismiss the batsman. If the batsman tries to hit the ball but misses it, the wicketkeeper can catch it and knock the wicket over himself, but only if the batsman has wandered too far down the pitch, beyond the special white line, about a yard or so from the wicket. Here’s Mordecai. You can just about see the white line for stumpings…..

During Mordy’s golden years, one of Nottinghamshire’s most effective bowlers was called Francis “Frank” Joseph Shacklock (1861-1937). He played for Nottinghamshire from 1886-1893 and took around 120 wickets. In his entire career, playing also for Derbyshire, the MCC/Marylebone Cricket Club and Otago in New Zealand, he took 497 wickets.

It didn’t take me too long to find some examples of Frank Shacklock’s partnership with Mordy Sherwin as they played together for Nottinghamshire.

These scorecards come from the annually appearing almanac of cricket entitled “Wisden”. Here is part of the scorecard for a Nottinghamshire v Sussex game in July 1891:

In this game, Shacklock  managed eight wickets for 144 runs, with four in the first innings (in a a total of 332 runs by Sussex) and four more in the second (a pathetic 38). That is a remarkable difference in the two innings totals for Sussex. Below are the bowling statistics. Shacklock took his four wickets in the first innings at a cost of 117 runs but at a cost of only 27 runs in the second.  :

Here’s Frank Shacklock :

In this next game, Shacklock took nine wickets in the match, which was a fixture against Somerset in June 1892. First come the statistics for Nottinghamshire’s two innings, and then Somerset’s two innings. Look how many times the phrase “b Shacklock” appears, particularly in the second Somerset innings of just under one hundred……

A frequent visitor to watch Nottinghamshire cricket at Trent Bridge around this time was an up-and-coming young author called Arthur Conan Doyle. Arthur was a huge sports fan. He actually played in ten first class cricket matches with a highest score of 43 and just one wicket as a bowler, that of WG Grace, the greatest cricketer in the world at the time. Arthur enjoyed bodybuilding and he was an amateur boxer as well as a keen skier, a talented billiards player, a golfer and, in amateur football, a goalkeeper for Portsmouth FC, the predecessor of the present club. Here he is:

Arthur had enormous regard for the wicketkeeping skills of Mordecai Sherwin and the bowling skills of Frank Shacklock. He was very much taken with how frequently batsmen were out, “caught Sherwin bowled Shacklock”.

Arthur decided that he would commemorate the skills of these two cricketers in the forthcoming detective novel he was about to start writing. The book was to be called “A Study in Scarlet” and it would appear in 1887. The best idea, Arthur thought, would be to have “caught Sherwin bowled Shacklock” become an important part of the book. One way of doing this would be to use the two men’s names in the name of the book’s hero, by taking the first syllable from one cricketer’s surname and the second one from the second cricketr’s surname. An excellent idea, although his first effort was a very poor one, it must be said. Who could admire a detective with the first name “Shackwin” ?

And so…….Arthur Conan Doyle turned the name on its head, came up with “Sherlock”, and the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, was born.

“But what’s the connection between Mordecai Sherwin, Frank Shacklock and a Victorian pub called the Grove”, I hear you all ask. Well, with the money he had made playing cricket, Mordecai Sherwin bought the Grove pub. I have only got a few photographs from its very last days…

…..but it would have been a nice pub during the last few years of Queen Victoria’s reign. And I cannot imagine that with a character like Mordecai in charge, his old pal rank Shacklock didn’t come along every now and again for some free ale!

Next time, two other major characters in Sherlock Holmes stories who arrived directly from a fine bowling performance at Lord’s, probably witnessed by Arthur Conann Doyle, who was a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club and who would have visited this famous old ground on many occasions.

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by | January 5, 2024 · 6:17 am

Sherlock Holmes : Part 1

Bear with me, but before we get to the meat of this post, I need to explain a little bit about cricket for those of my readers who think that cricket is some kind of insect, albeit a big, scary one, that you definitely wouldn’t want to find on your knee. This one can be up to four inches long…..

Cricket can be a very complicated sport but most people can recognise the two wickets, one at either end of the pitch.

Then there are two “batsmen”, one of whom, Batsman A, tries to hit the ball as far as possible when it is bowled at his wicket.

The other batsman, B, stands at the other end of the pitch and awaits developments.  By coincidence, he is near where the “bowler” bowls from.

If Batsman A hits the ball a long way, then both batsmen, both A and B, may then decide to run as fast as they can to the wicket at the other end. Every time they do this, they exchange their original positions and their team scores one “run”.  The batsmen here are wearing yellow helmets……

The two batsmen’s immediate opponents are the bowler who bowls the ball, subject to a rather long list of rules, and the wicketkeeper.  Any ball hit by Batsman A is eventually returned to the bowler so he can have another go.  By that point, more or less, the batsmen will have stopped running.  Here’s the bowler bowling, and Batsman B waiting for Batsman A at the other end to hit the ball to the moon so that they can run 10,000 times.

Now comes the complicated bit.

Batsman A is trying to defend his wicket against the bowler, who bowls the ball from a position level with the opposite wicket. Batsman B is standing nearby (picture above).

Batsman A, at the other end, will try to hit the ball as far as possible.

The bowler, though, is trying to dismiss Batsman A so that he will have to return to the dressing room and cannot bat any more. The most obvious way for the bowler to do this is to hit the wicket and to knock at least some of it over. And then the batsman is “out” ! :

And now, the wicketkeeper. He is on the same side as the bowler, and his primary job is to stop any balls bowled by the bowler and then missed by Batsman A. If he doesn’t stop the ball, the batsmen can run, just as if Batsman A had hit it:

The wicketkeeper also has another job to do. If Batsman A hits the ball, but only nicks it, then wicketkeeper can catch it as it whizzes past at high speed, and Batsman A will be “out”, dismissed from the game, provided that the ball doesn’t touch the ground.

Indeed, this same rule applies to all the members of the bowling side. If Batsman A is a fool, he will hit the ball in the air and then when any opponent catches it before it touches the ground, it’s “Goodnight, Vienna” for him. This way of being, literally, “caught out” is the commonest way to be dismissed for a batsman:

Extremely common too is the situation mentioned above where Batsman A just nicks the ball as it passes him, and the wicketkeeper then catches it. The reason is that the ball may well be travelling extremely fast when Batsman A nicks it…perhaps 80 or 90 mph in top class cricket. If a team has a very good fast bowler, then the bowling team’s main tactic will be to get the batsman to nick the ball and then have the wicketkeeper catch it.

In the 1970s, the Australians’ main bowler was Dennis Lillee, and he bowled extremely fast, and with any luck, his colleague, Rodney Marsh, the Australian wicketkeeper, would catch the ball when it was nicked by the terrified Batsman A.

Here’s Dennis Lillee, my favourite ever bowler:

And here’s Rodney Marsh, who died recently, in March 2022. Dennis Lillee is also in the picture:

In the scorebook, that particular dismissal of the batsman would be recorded as:

Batsman A        caught Marsh        bowled Lillee        0

In the more usual abbreviated form…..

Batsman A         c    Marsh                b  Lillee                  0

Those five words soon became the most frequent means of dismissal in the history of international cricket, with more than 200 occurrences. Here’s just one of them:

Lillee is on the right, Marsh is flying, and the English batsman is Tony Greig.

And here’s another. Lillee is on the left, flying, Marsh is on the extreme right and the English batsman is doomed.

Be patient. This blog post is definitely leading somewhere. On a journey. A journey that takes in a world famous cricket ground. An author with a household name. And a demolished pub about a mile away from where I am sitting right now. Just bear with me.

In the meantime, here’s that pub, just before the demolition men got to it:

And here it is now;

It was a great pity to lose a real Victorian pub, even if social housing replaces it.

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by | October 5, 2023 · 6:17 am

Goose Fair (2)

Goose Fair always brought with it a host of what could be called “camp followers” who, to be honest, would probably have made their way to pretty well every large fair in the country.

Wandering the streets, therefore, were a good number of distinctively dressed gypsy women, who sold “tickling sticks”, bags of confetti, balls on elastic, ropes of beads and “monkeys on sticks”. All vital commodities in Victorian England!

The gypsy women were extremely popular as fortune tellers, and were always recognisable as such because they traditionally carried a linnet in a cage at the end of a long, thin staff.

And in this photograph of a gipsy woman, notice the boy’s funky pillbox hat. Eagerly, he ia waiting for the birth of  Bob Dylan:

A linnet was chosen, incidentally, because:

“When finches come into our awareness, it is a sure sign of joy-filled, happy times ahead.”

I knew that.

Here are some “sundry sellers, who no doubt had access to their own private supplies of tickling sticks, bags of confetti, balls on elastic, ropes of beads and monkeys on sticks:

And at the other end of the spectrum, a little further away, on Upper Parliament Street, around the columns in front of the Theatre Royal, stood the “nymphs of fashion”.

Here are the columns of the Theatre Royal which is to the left of the now long demolished Empire Theatre :

The “nymphs of fashion” were what we would nowadays call prostitutes. They charged men for their sexual favours. Here’s one of the hottest, preparing to drive the young men wild, or perhaps straight to their doctor:

And here she is without her make-up. Surely, I’m not the only one who thinks that’s a man:

Setting aside for a moment the delights of these disease ridden lovelies, I investigated the attractions which appeared most frequently at Goose Fair around 1900. I discovered that, on Long Row, there was “Wadbrook’s Ghost Exhibition” with the celebrated “Pepper’s Illusion”. In front of the Exchange Building, Pat Collins had his roundabouts including his “Mountain Ponies”, his “Venetian Gala Gondolas” and his “Pneumatic Steam Bicycles”. There was “music produced by electricity on the latest musical instrument, the “Gaviolophone”, equivalent to a String Band of 60 performers, playing Opera, Classical and Popular Music.”

Incidentally, here’s Long Row to the north of the Old Market Square. The western end:

The central area:

And finally, the eastern end, with the incomparable Black Boy Hotel, which, during the Second World War, supplied all of the beds required for the sexual adventures of every single member of Bomber Command in all the RAF bases for fifty miles around:

There may well have been “Wadbrook’s Ghost Exhibition” with “Pepper’s Illusion”. There may well have been roundabouts such as the “Mountain Ponies”, the “Venetian Gala Gondolas” and the “Pneumatic Steam Bicycles”. Despite all of them, though, despite even the “Gaviolophone”, many people, and all the children, still liked to see a few exotic animals, no matter how moth eaten they might have appeared.

By 1898, Day’s “No 1 Royal Menagerie” had returned to the Market Square after a short absence. Day’s was “a Special Engagement of the Greatest Lion Tamers on Earth” with “Captain Laurance & Delvonico, The Lion Kings” (96 years before Disney!). There were “20 noble lions of all ages and sizes” who provided the members of “Delvonico’s Wrestling Lions”, “Delvonico’s Boxing Lions”, “The Clown Lions” and “A Lion in a Trance”. All of them were acts which had been “The Rage and Talk of Europe”, as was “The Daring Performance of Captain Laurance” along with “the only Real Original and Absolutely Untameable Lion Wallace”. Wallace had also appeared in 1896 and 1897. He doesn’t look very fierce in this photograph, though:

Among the animals were “Many Specimens of Birds, Beasts and Reptiles” some of which must have been stuffed, as there was actually a humming bird mentioned, a species which, even nowadays, cannot easily be kept in captivity. At the same time though, there was an elephant called “Elephant Jumbo” who was surely a live animal, as an elephant would be a bit of a nightmare for the taxidermist.

Overall, the proprietors of Day’s “No 1 Royal Menagerie” were happy to call themselves, “The People’s Show at the People’s Price”.

Slightly less exotic as animals were Mr Pat Collins’ “Giant Nottingham Geese, All Alive and Kicking”:

“For rollicking fun, there’s nothing to beat them

If you are “out for the night” don’t miss them;

And while you are there, try the razzle-dazzle cars

Drawn by ostriches, and spinning round at lightning speed.”

And the judges’ verdicts……….. “No rhyme and very little reason.”

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by | May 5, 2023 · 6:16 am

My Dad’s cars (2)

My Dad’s first car was an Austin A40 Devon, in Connaught green, with the registration leters of LXJ 701…..

After the Austin A40 Devon, Fred had a 1959 Ford Anglia, registration number SNR 863, which he bought from a garage in nearby Ashby-de-la-Zouch. It was exactly like this:

I can still remember how the milometer on the Ford Anglia spun round as Fred drove sedately along, recording three or four miles for every mile travelled. This, of course, was because the seller had wound back the mileage clock to make the car seem less used than it really was. Here’s the crooked garage today. It has been replaced by an award winning architect’s supermarket:
When I was around eleven or twelve we used to go and visit a nearby toy shop, “Shellbrook Motors” which used to sell Dinky and Corgi die-cast models of cars and larger vehicles, Airfix and Frog aircraft kits, and Hornby model electric railways. By 2017, they had changed a little and were selling artists’ materials, although they did refuse to pay the signwriter’s bill on this occasion:
There were no Ford Anglia type problems of low level criminality and cheap plastic with Fred’s next car, an English Hillman Minx De Luxe, BLT 141B. This beautiful blue car with the metallic chrome side stripe was “the one” as far as Fred’s motoring career was concerned.
He had taken me to Derby one day, and we visited Peveril Garage, on Friar Gate, near the headquarters of the Derby County Supporters’ Club:

Fred told me not to mention anything whatsoever about the day to my mother, under any circumstances. Without consulting her at all, therefore, he bought the car, priced at £510, which was, in those days, a princely sum. Indeed, the price was such a total royal that, when my mother did eventually find out how much the car had cost, she would have had Fred beheaded if she could have organised it. The car was a rich pale blue, half way between sky blue and navy blue. Here is one today:

In later years, when he had problems with rust on one of the wings, Fred was to opt for a total respray, which allowed him to retain the same colour blue for the body, but to incorporate a black roof which added that extra, unique, little detail. Here it is, with James Bond driving it, back in the days when I was 28. I had always wanted a personalised number plate, and this was the time when I changed my name to “BLT 141B”:

This was also the day that I caught both Francisco Scaramanga and Auric Goldfinger hiding together on a building site:

It was in this car that Fred had what were probably the most outstanding motoring experiences of his life. I can still recall, for example, just how scared he was, and indeed, we all were, when he drove a circuit of the Alpine like road which ran around the Great Orme near Llandudno in North Wales.

Indeed, some thirty years later, I returned to look at this road for myself, to see whether it was quite the challenge that it had seemed in the late 1960s. And, of course, the circuit had been considerably watered down since then. All the sheer drops down to the sea had now been fenced off, and, most significant of all, perhaps, a narrow road which I remember as having been two way, had been limited nowadays to just one way traffic. Gentrified, I think the word is:

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by | December 17, 2022 · 6:16 am

Headless Valley (3)

The Nahanni Valley is in the middle of nowhere in Canada’s Northwest Territories, some 300 miles or so west of Yellowknife. It is a very hostile region accessible only on foot, by boat or by floatplane. For many years tales were told about fur trappers and gold prospectors going into the area, and either disappearing without trace or being found beheaded  and dead. The number of decapitated bodies found within Nahanni Valley earned it the nickname “Valley of Headless Men”.

In 1971, the intrepid explorer, traveller and writer, Ranulph Fiennes, aka “Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes” took a small expedition of soldiers from the Scots Greys to explore the region. Ranulph’s book is called “The Headless Valley” and contains a very perceptive account of the murders that gave it its name. Clearly, from his writings, the author seems to have discovered that many of the victims had quite simply not lost their heads. Here he is, in his comfy trousers:

Ranulph Fiennes, throughout his book, seems to tease the reader a little. He repeatedly mentions details which to a person interested in Bigfoot seem to be very strong indications that there is a Bigfoot very close to them, but then Ranulph chooses to feign innocence, just reporting any strange events as something which can easily be dismissed with a simple, normal, everyday explanation. For example, we have a moment when they are moving through very thick cover and suddenly….

“A crackling of breaking alder sounded ahead and the ground trembled as some great beast moved away.”

Perhaps it was a moose or a bear but I really do wonder if the ground trembles as they walk along. It frequently does for Bigfoot. who can weigh up to a thousand pounds for a mature male. Here’s a moose:

And then:

“(we went) to find rabbits beyond Prairie Creek. We followed the stream inland for an hour and smelled the stench of sulphur pools, though we saw none. Moving through a tall forest in dark undergrowth we heard a roar from higher up the valley: perhaps it was a bear or cougar we didn’t know, and, finding no rabbits…”

Bigfoot roars extremely loudly and very often, and he certainly stinks. Usually it is described as the smell of excrement, sewage, dead, rotting flesh, a wet skunk but also as the smell of sulphur.

And then, as they camped overnight….

“Some of the animals that moved about around us that night were large enough to shake the ground- perhaps bears but more probably deer since we had seen a great many deer spoor along the narrow “game” runs.”

This is the same argument as I mentioned the first time, when they are moving through very thick cover.  And my point of view is still the same. Deer do not make the ground shake. And then….

“We heard the thud of hooves or paws as heavy creatures moved ahead through the trees.”

A classic mark of Bigfoot. Yes, they could be bears, or moose, or elk, but don’t forget that Bigfoot is always very keen to get away from human observers. Here’s that elk. He isn’t big enough to make the ground shake:

Bigfoot frequently wanders around a campsite at night looking for food, but he is also capable of stealing other things that he likes, such as in this short anecdote….

“An aged prospector, returning from a fruitless three year search in the Yukon found his mug had been stolen and a chunk of rock left in its place. The rock contained gold quartz and the prospector made a fortune.”

And:

“Jack told us of a large black bear which he had watched ambling through some bush”.

People who say they have seen a black bigfoot are frequently told that they have seen a black bear, so, presumably, the two must be similar. I have seen neither, unfortunately!

Overall, “The Headless Valley” is a really good read, if you like tales of the wilderness. Ranulph Fiennes captures well the thrills of  shooting the rapids, or, equally, the awful couple of hours when he is a long way from camp and is totally lost. If you like that kind of book, then a second hand copy is very easy to acquire via the usual websites, and well worth taking the trouble.

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by | December 5, 2022 · 6:16 am

Headless Valley (2)

The Nahanni Valley is in the middle of nowhere in Canada’s Northwest Territories, some 300 miles or so west of Yellowknife. It is a very hostile region accessible only on foot, by boat or by floatplane. It’s very beautiful, though:

For many years there have been large numbers of tales told about fur trappers and gold prospectors going into the area, and then either disappearing without trace or being found dead minus their heads. All these decapitated bodies found within the Nahanni Valley have earned it the nickname “Valley of Headless Men”. You can read what I have already written about this region here.

In 1971, the intrepid explorer, traveller and writer, Ranulph Fiennes, aka “Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes” took a small expedition of soldiers from the Scots Greys to explore the region. Ranulph’s book is called “The Headless Valley” and contains a very perceptive account of the murders that gave it its name. Clearly, from his writings, the author seems to have discovered that a great many of the victims had quite simply not lost their heads. Here he is:

In 1926, Annie Laferte was lost in the bush. There was a sighting of her some time afterwards, by an Indian named Big Charley. She was climbing a nearby hill, almost naked, but was never seen again. Supposedly, she had lost her mind, rather than her entire head.

In 1927, the bones of “Yukon Fisher,” a man wanted by the RCMP, were found on Bennett Creek. They included the bones of his head. The anticipation of gold had claimed his life. Far too impatient, he had pushed on ahead of the main party and was never seen again.

In 1932, a prospector named Phil Powers was found dead by a Mountie patrol.  Constable Martin found his bones in a burnt down cottage  upstream of the mouth of the Flat River.  Powers lay on the remains of a bunk and had been laid out in the outline of a human being, as though he had been sleeping. The skull was there at the opposite ending to the footbones and a rifle was laid over the knees. So, not a lot of decapitation there, then!

In 1936, William Epier and Joseph Mulholland were trapping and prospecting when they disappeared up the Nahanni. A bush pilot called Dalziel (pronounced “Dee-Ell”) located their cabin on Glacier Lake. It was burnt down to the ground. He reported it to Constable Graham at Fort Liard. Here’s Glacier Lake:

In 1940, a prospector named Holmberg was found dead of no established cause.

In 1945, a miner from Ontario, whose name has not survived for definite, but who may well have been Ernest Savard, was found dead in his sleeping bag. His head had been ripped off and was never found. At last! The hint of a reason for the area to be called “The Valley of the Headless Men”.

Ranulph Fiennes was told by Brian Doke of Nahanni Butte, how…….

“His father-in-law, Mr Turner, had travelled up the Nahanni in 1953, to take some food to a man who lived upstream. He was a prospector or trapper or both and Mr Turner found him dead with his cabin burnt down around him. His head was firmly intact.”

In 1961, Alec Mieskonen, a gold prospector, was blown up by dynamite, despite his well-known fear of explosives. This was thought to be a case of suicide, despite Mieskonen’s deep seated fear that one day he would die through trying to use explosives. What a strange story!!

In the same year, 1961, two partners, Orville Webb and Tom Pappas, set off overland for Nahanni Butte since they were short of food, but they were never seen again.

In the 1961 quarterly magazine of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Constable Shaw said….

“Of the deaths….there is one aspect common to all….fire of undetermined origin has often been a factor in each in some way or another.”

No mention there of heads being ripped off, then! And so many of the deaths reported to the RCMP did involve fire, a factor which may well exclude Bigfoot, who has never been known to use fire. And if it isn’t Bigfoot decapitating his victims, I simply don’t know whether there might be another predator which enjoys the challenge of pulling the heads off its victims so that it can eat them. On the other hand, so many TV nature programmes here in England will tell you that apex predators always go first for two extremely nutritious parts of the body.  Indeed, they are quite capable of leaving the rest if they are not particularly hungry. Those two best bits are the brain and the liver.

In 1962 Blake MacKenzie survived an aircraft crash but then disappeared completely.  He was a strong healthy man with an ample supply of food and was seen close to the river. He kept a diary and survived at least 42 days after the crash and was well and healthy. And then suddenly, MacKenzie’s  daily diary entries stopped, abruptly and inexplicably.

A second aircraft crashed in the Nahanni Valley in 1962. A prospector named Hudson was found dead by the plane. The other two occupants and the pilot were never found.

For many of these men, especially those who just disappeared, the best candidate as the killer will be the supposedly much more violent and much larger northern variety of Bigfoot. Hundreds of years ago, the First Nations people regularly fought wars with Bigfoot because of their violence and their cannibalism.

A gentleman called David Paulides (pronounced “Poor–Lid–Uss”, with the emphasis on the first syllable), has written a number of books about the many unexplained disappearances in the National Parks of the USA.  He has written quite a few of these “Missing 411” books and estimates that well over 1,600 people may disappear there every year. Paulides used to be a police officer. This link takes you to his website :

This is one of his many excellent books about disappearances in the North American national parks:

 

 

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by | November 23, 2022 · 6:16 am

Headless Valley 1

The Nahanni Valley is in the middle of more or less nowhere in Canada’s Northwest Territories, some 300 miles or so west of Yellowknife. It is, however, unbelievably beautiful:

It is a very hostile region, much of it accessible only on foot, by boat or by floatplane. For well over a hundred years, there have been countless tales told about fur trappers and gold prospectors who went into the area, and then either disappeared without trace or were found minus their heads. And obviously dead.

One website, taken more or less at random from the many, states that

“Over the years, many unfortunate travellers and explorers have gone missing, or turned up dead and beheaded. The number of decapitated bodies found within Nahanni Valley have earned it the nickname “Valley of Headless Men”. 

The number of headless bodies found in the Nahanni Valley varies enormously from one website to another or from one book to another. It is usually quoted as between somewhere 30-50 deaths. Explanations vary. The chief suspects include the extremely naughty Naha tribe who are apparently extremely aggressive and extremely elusive and guard their land very jealously. Or perhaps it’s a different group of people, namely a race of hairy, cave-dwelling cannibals who are extremely aggressive and extremely hungry too. And don’t forget that legendary scary hominid who goes by the name of “Nuk-luk”, a Neanderthal-like creature, five feet tall with a long beard. He doesn’t wear any clothes. Here he is, in a very blurred photograph, thank goodness:

In first place in the long list of suspects, though, is the supposedly much more violent northern variety of Bigfoot, examples of which supposedly measuring up to twelve feet tall or even more are regularly claimed in this area. This is a perfect application of Bergmann’s Rule :

“According to Bergmann’s rule, the body size of vertebrates is closely related to the average ambient air temperature in the region in which the vertebrate lives, so organisms in warmer regions are typically smaller than members of the same species in colder regions.”

Given this colourful and perhaps rather horrific, background to the area, in 1971, the intrepid English explorer, traveller and writer, Ranulph Fiennes, aka “Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes” to give him his full name, took a small expedition of soldiers from the Royal Scots Greys to explore the Nahanni Valley. Ranulph’s book is called “The Headless Valley” and contains a very detailed account of the murders that have given the area its name (and his book its title). Clearly, from his writings, the author seems to have discovered that many of the victims had, quite simply, not lost their heads.

But first, from the internet, the famous tale of the McLeod brothers, who were mixed race, with one First Nation parent and one white:

 

“In 1908, after a lengthy search which had lasted two years, their brother Charley finally found the skeletons of Frank and Willie McLeod. Both men had been shot as they lay warm in their blankets, one either side the fire. They still had their heads. There was no sign of Weir, their partner, he was never seen again.”

I did find, though, in a rather more sensationalist book, an account which recorded the tale of the McLeod brothers as being found “reportedly decapitated”.  To be fair, though, there were some men on the list who did lack their heads:

” In 1916, a mounted policeman called Corporal Churchill found the headless skeleton of a prospector called Jorgensen up the Nahanni.”

Jorgenson evidently died a rather painful death, although one which had been particularly thoroughly carried out:

“a tough experienced woodsman, his remains were found by a log cabin near the Flat River’s confluence with the Nahanni. A loaded rifle close to the body, the cabin had been burnt down…. However heavy a sleeper Jorgensen would surely have woken up if the cabin had been on fire …..if he was still alive.”

And next, one with no head mentioned:

“In 1922, a prospector named John O’ Brien went up the Nahanni and never came back…”

The Nahanni Valley stories are good examples of how a rather shaky, iffy, perhaps somewhat gossipy piece of evidence can take on a life of its own. Granted, there may have been a small number of trappers and prospectors found minus their heads, but such a fate was certainly not what happened to every single person killed or disappeared in the Nahanni Valley, and there were certainly not thirty to fifty of them. More blood-soaked examples next time, when we will further examine that familiar old dilemna:

“Head or no Head?”

 

 

 

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by | July 2, 2022 · 6:17 am

An impossible Beatles Quiz (2….the Answers)

I know that a lot of you have already offered me your answers to this quiz and I have checked them and told you your scores. Anyway, for the benefit of Mr Kite and anybody else who doesn’t yet know whether their answers were right or wrong, here are the answers to my second even more difficult Beatles quiz. Hopefully, you didn’t do the quiz by writing “Dunno” ten times. Or:

“Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”,

“Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”.

As in the first quiz, all of the questions and answers involved Sergeant Pepper and the other LPs after this.

1     Who had a silver hammer?

One of the comparatively  few Beatles songs about a serial killer:

“….Maxwell Edison majoring in medicine
Calls her on the phone
Can I take you out to the pictures, Joan?
But as she’s getting ready to go
A knock comes on the door
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Came down upon her head
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Made sure that she was dead.”

Your clue was about coffee. What brand of coffee is it in the picture ?

Maxwell House, of course. No marks for anybody who thought it was either “Nescafé’s Silver Hammer” or  “House’s Silver Hammer”.

2     Who always arrived late for tea?

This is a humdinger of a question, though I say so myself. In the song “Cry baby, cry” on the White Album, the song suddenly includes various verses from the Beatles version of “Sing a Song of Sixpence”, which is one of the many traditional English nursery rhymes:

“Cry baby cry
Make your mother sigh
She’s old enough to know better
So cry baby cry
The Duchess of Kirkcaldy always smiling
And arriving late for tea
The Duke was having problems
With a message at the local bird and bee”.
Kirkcaldy is a town in Scotland, and the home of Raith Rovers Football Club.

The photograph provides an easy answer. Look at the name of the pub:

3     Which fairground attraction gives its name to a Beatles song?

Well, as everybody knows except Charles Manson, it’s a helter skelter, as we English call it:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again

Charles Manson didn’t know what a “helter skelter” was, and interpreted it differently. Paul McCartney explained:

“Charles Manson interpreted that ‘Helter Skelter’ was something to do with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse….. It’s from the Bible, Revelation . Manson interpreted the whole thing – that the Beatles were the four horsemen, ‘Helter Skelter’ was the song – and he arrived at having to go out and kill everyone.”

4     What was the name of the lovely meter maid?

In the song her name is Rita:

“Took her out and tried to win her
Had a laugh and over dinner
Told her I would really like to see her again
Got the bill and Rita paid it
Took her home I nearly made it
Sitting on the sofa with a sister or two
Oh, lovely Rita meter maid
Where would I be without you?
Give us a wink and make me think of you 
Lovely Rita meter maid, Rita meter maid“

5      What was anybody doing in “Penny Lane?

There are so many that you could make it up and probably get it right! Here’s a list:

“a barber showing photographs             all the people stop and say hello

(a banker with a motorcar) the little children laugh at him behind his back

I sit                      a fireman with an hourglass  he likes to keep his fire engine clean

the pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray                               she feels as if she’s in a play

the barber shaves another customer       we see the banker sitting waiting for a trim        the fireman rushes in”

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6      She was a working girl, north of England way. But what happened to her?

Well, success on a fabulous scale:

“She was a working girl
North of England way
Now she’s hit the big time
In the U.S.A.“
7      What had the crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess done to be such a naughty girl ?

She had been so bad, in actual fact, that the song was banned immediately from the BBC.

“Yellow matter custard
Dripping from a dead dog’s eye
Crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess
Boy you been a naughty girl
You let your knickers down  I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g’ joob”
And here again are the said knickers:

Apparently the BBC did not allow any reference on air to sex, body parts south of the navel, underwear in the same location and so on. For the BBC censor, the mere use of the word “knickers” was enough to condemn the song into the fires of hell. Implied drug use saw off a further two Beatles songs, another was banned  for mentioning suicide, and the final one was banned twenty years after it was released for political reasons.

8     Who has a barrow in the market place and what did Molly do?

Well, in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” :

“Desmond has a barrow in the market place”

and Molly gets up to quite a lot. Any one of :

“Molly is the singer in a band                         Molly says “I like your face” as she takes him by the hand

she begins to sing                       Molly stays at home and does her pretty face

in the evening she still sings with the band                      

happy ever after in the market place                  Molly lets the children lend a hand*

The picture, by the way, refers to the fact that a group, called “Marmalade”, released this song as their own single.

9     Which two other colours are mentioned in “Yellow Submarine” as well as yellow?

Take your pick:

White, red, brown, blue and possibly purple. That’s about it for me.

And the origin of the song? Well, Paul explained:

“in that moment before you’re falling asleep – that little twilight moment when a silly idea comes into your head – and thinking of ‘Yellow Submarine’. ‘We all live in a yellow submarine…”
One Spanish soccer team is nicknamed “The Yellow Submarine”. An explanation here…..

10   “Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly.” Who is it?”

Well the song begins with the answer:

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”
The song is, of course,  “Lucy in the Sky  with Diamonds”. Its origin is:
Either
John Lennon’s son, Julian, comes h0me with a picture and tells his Dad, “It’s about “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
Or
Lysergic acid diethylamide
Or
It’s taken from Alice in Wonderland when Alice is in the boat. Lewis Carroll was a hard core user of Lysergic acid diethylamide, of course.
Or

“It’s the image of this female who would come and save me – this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn’t met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.” (John Lennon)

Supposedly, we even know the identity of “Lucy”.

“She was Lucy O’Donnell, and she was a fellow pupil at Heath House, a nursery school, with Julian Lennon. She only found out she was in a Beatles song when she was 13, in 1976.”

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by | June 22, 2022 · 6:17 am

Another impossible Beatles Quiz (2….the Questions)

Hello there again, sad children of the sixties! I’d like to cheer you up with the second of a series of four Beatles quizzes. The questions all refer to albums, including “Sergeant Pepper” and afterwards. If you want to look up the answers and do it that way, then good for you, but you might enjoy the questions more if you tried to do them yourself without any help from the Internet. I have tried to make the questions doable, but clearly, one or two are meant to be difficult. Incidentally, the questions do not necessarily relate to the illustrations, although sometimes the illustrations are a very large clue.

1     Who had a silver hammer?

2     And the most difficult question of the lot, who always arrived late for tea? Mind you, the answer is staring you in the face!

3     Which fairground attraction gives its name to a Beatles song?

4     What is the name of the lovely meter maid?

5      What were any of the people doing in “Penny Lane?

6      She was a working girl, north of England way. But what happened to her?

7      What had the crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess done to be such a naughty girl ?

8     Who had a barrow in the market place and what did Molly do?

9     Which two other colours occur on the cover of “Yellow Submarine” as well as yellow?

10   Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly. Who is it?

 

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by | March 17, 2022 · 6:17 am

The Flannan Isle disappearances (2)

This is the second of a series of four blog posts about the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on Flannan Isle on December 15th 1900. If you feel that you need to read a previous blog post again, just search for “Flannan”. If you need it, then here’s a link to Post No 1

Last time you had the list of what Lighthouseman Joseph Moore found during his search of the island on December 26th, and I promised that I would explain what they all proved. Well….

“clocks were stopped” and “fire was not lighted for some days” means whatever it was that happened, happened well before the Hesperus, and Joseph Moore, arrived at the island.

“the beds were empty just as they left them in the early morning” means that the disaster was an afternoon affair, probably in the late afternoon.

“The outside gate and two doors to the outside were closed” because the men left calmly.

“the light room was in proper order” means that everybody was doing their job properly and that it is unlikely the crisis was based on madness or violence. And whatever the problem was, it began and ended in much less than a day.

“Nothing appears touched at East Landing” means that whatever happened, it was probably not here, but at……

“the West side……… old box halfway up the railway has gone…the ropes got washed out of it, they lie strewn on the rocks….The iron railings on the footpath to the landing … broken in several places…the railing round the crane, and the handrail for making the mooring rope fast entirely carried away” means that it was highly probable that the West Landing was where all three men met their deaths.

Robert Muirhead, the NLB Superintendent, submitted his final report on the events of Flannan Isle on January 8th 1901. Details included in his report, as far as the West Landing was concerned, that……

“the crane was found to be unharmed….. the canvas was securely lashed round it……no evidence that the men had been doing anything at the crane.”

The West Landing is in the bottom left of the photograph below:

“The mooring ropes, landing ropes, derrick landing ropes and crane handles, and also a wooden box in which they were kept, in a crevice in the rocks 110 feet above the sea level, had been washed away… the ropes were strewn in the crevices of the rocks… they were all coiled up, no single coil being found unfastened.”

“The iron railings round the crane platform and from the terminus of the tramway to the concrete steps up from the West landing were displaced and twisted.”

“A large block of stone, weighing upwards of 20 cwt (one ton), had been dislodged from its position higher up, and carried down, and left on the concrete path leading to the top of the steps.”

“A life buoy fastened to the railings had disappeared….. on examining the ropes by which it was fastened, they had not been touched, and it was evident that the force of the sea pouring through the railings had, even at this great height (110 feet above sea level) torn the life buoy off the ropes.”

“Ducat was wearing sea boots and a waterproof, and Marshall sea boots and oilskins……..the men only wore those articles when going down to the landings”

“they must have intended, when they left the lighthouse, either to go down to the landing or the proximity of it.”

Here’s the extremely steep path down to the West Landing. Just beyond the right turn, if you stumble and fall, is a sheer drop to the rocks and the sea far, far below:

Robert Muirhead, the NLB Superintendent continued…..

” I am of opinion that the most likely explanation of the disappearance of the men is that they had all gone down on the afternoon of Saturday, 15 December to the West landing, to secure the box with the mooring ropes, etc and that an unexpectedly large roller had come up on the Island, and a large body of water going up higher than where they were and coming down upon them had swept them away with resistless force.”

“I have considered the possibility of the men being blown away by the wind, but, as the wind was westerly…….the more probable explanation is that they have been washed away as, had the wind caught them, it would, from its direction, have blown up the Island and I feel certain that they would have managed to throw themselves down before they had reached the summit or brow of the Island.”

Some of the distances between the lighthouse and the top of a three hundred foot sheer cliff down to the sea were extremely small. It would have been easy to have been blown off if the wind was particularly strong:

The second picture shows pretty much the same situation:

One interesting additional detail in the Superintendent’s report was that……..

“The Commissioners appointed Roderick MacKenzie, Gamekeeper, Uig, near Meavaig, to look out daily for signals that might be shown from Flannan Isle, and to note each night whether the light was seen or not seen. The light had not been lit from the 15th-25th December, so I resolved to see him on Sunday morning. He was away, but his two sons, aged about 16 and 18 – two most intelligent lads of the gamekeeper class, and who actually performed the duty of looking out for signals, I had a conversation with them, and I also examined the Return Book. From the December Return, I saw that the Tower itself was not seen, even with the assistance of a powerful telescope, between the 7th and the 29th December. The light was, however, seen on 7th December, but was not seen on the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th. It was seen on the 12th, but not seen again until the 26th, the night when it was lit by Moore.”

The lighthouse was around 23 miles north west of Uig which is on the northern edge of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. In those days there was no light pollution, so a lighthouse that distance away could be seen if conditions were favourable. I think that the telescope was at Gallan Head, the furthest and remotest place that the Orange Arrow has ever been. The locals, for example, did not speak English as their first language but Gaelic, a Celtic language related to Breton, Cornish and Welsh :

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