Guest Post: "C" of the British Secret Service

 [John Bellen, known in the feline blogosphere for "I Have Three Cats," has recently published on Amazon "Inductions Dangerous," a collection of short stories centered around the adventures of a fictional British Intelligence agent during the 1920s.  I so enjoyed the book that I asked him to provide a relevant real-life story for this blog.  He kindly responded with this following account about a man who played an important role in the development of Britain's modern Secret Service.  Take it away, John!]

I have sometimes read that the British Secret Service traces its descent back to Elizabethan times. Alas, such an association is untrue. Certainly, Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s highly capable secretary of state, organised an excellent secret service, but that is what it was: A secret service, not THE Secret Service. A personal system, Walsingham ran it, largely paid for it and placed it at the service of his monarch and country. It died with him.

John Thurloe, secretary to the Council of State during the Cromwell’s regime, also directed an efficient secret service – aided no doubt by his duties as postmaster-general – in order to support the Commonwealth government. His organisation, like Walsingham’s, was personal, and did not survive the Restoration.

It was not until the Victorian era, when Britain began to take the responsibilities of empire seriously, that the seeds of a real secret service were planted. In 1873, the War Office appointed its first Director of Military Intelligence. Though this officer’s department was to collect information of value to the government and army, there was not much thought of secret work. Indeed, to this day, much, if not most, worthwhile intelligence is gathered openly, through newspapers and other media, handbooks and reports issued by foreign governments and, of course, through military, naval and air attachés. These officers, working out of embassies, attend by invitation foreign army and navy manoeuvres, dinners, conferences; in other words, there is nothing covert about their business. The British have usually tried to maintain that openness, to guarantee their attachés’ continued availability.

Impetus for the creation of a genuine espionage service came with the ‘spy scare’ of the later Edwardian era. Novelists, adventurers, journalists and eventually politicians in Britain started demanding that something be done about the hordes of German spies allegedly in the country. One stated that the 50,000 German waiters in Britain were spies, while another asserted that 350,000 German soldiers (half the strength of that country’s peace-time army) were secretly resident in England. This led to a spate of ‘invasion literature’. As often happens, each piece of hysteria became evidence for the next.

But the government felt it had to do something, not least because, behind the hysteria, there was a serious and growing concern regarding German intentions. The problem was given to the Committee of Imperial Defence to solve. In October, 1909, it created the Secret Service Bureau. Thus, the modern British Secret Service was born.

Divided into two sections, military and naval, the former was given to a thirty-six year old half-pay army captain named Vernon Kell to run. For the latter, the choice fell on a fifty year old Royal Navy commander on the retired list, Mansfield Smith Cumming, or C, as he came to be called.

Why was C selected? He had joined the Royal Navy as a twelve year old cadet and, until 1885, led the normal life of a good but undistinguished officer: several ships at sea and participation in a naval brigade (sailors used to supplement artillery or infantry on land). Then, at only twenty-six, he retired “(unfit) on Active Half Pay”. This is the first mystery of C’s life. There is no indication why he was ‘unfit’; family tradition suggests sea-sickness, but his subsequent enjoyment of small boats, on lake, river and ocean, counters this.

A smaller mystery asks what C did for the next thirteen years, though we know he spent some, if not all, of that time as first, private secretary to the Earl of Meath, then, as agent for that aristocrat’s estates in Ireland, where C’s kindness and humour won him friends among a people with no reason to like a landlord’s man.

Then, he was returned to the navy. His ‘unfitness’ may have been cured, or it may be that his new posting – Superintendent of Boom Defences (maritime barriers) at Southampton – did not need complete health. But stories of his agility – climbing rigging and masts, and diving into the sea in winter to clear a fouled propeller – indicate a man even healthier than his age should allow. In any case, C, though reduced in rank so that he could be re-employed, seemed to enjoy his time immensely. His joviality was a characteristic.

Also characteristic was his boyish sense of adventure, often with a disregard for danger. C loved mechanics, and, along with boats, had a fondness for motor-cars, becoming an early member of the Royal Automobile Club. The early days of motoring were filled with hazards but he happily raced cars in speed and endurance tests and reconnoitered routes for the RAC over roads that had never heard internal combustion. Not content with conquering the land and sea (he had helped found the Royal Motor Yacht Club in 1905), he was a founding member of the Royal Aero Club in 1906, though he didn’t obtain his ‘aviator’s certificate’ for seven years – when he was 54.

This was the man plucked from the south coast of England and plopped into Whitehall to run the Secret Service. Why C? It’s true that a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence was one of his old captains, now an admiral. It’s true that he knew Winston Churchill, by that time a cabinet member. C had also toured Europe examining the possibilities afforded by small-boat engines (then more advanced on the Continent than in Britain); it may be that his report and observations had been remembered. Aside from these clues, the mystery of his selection remains.

Once established, however, the Secret Service Bureau grew but slowly. Kell (‘K’) and C shared one clerk, but were alone in their respective departments; the British Secret Service, feared and envied by the great powers of the world, was, in reality, one middle-aged naval officer.

Though his responsibilities were initially stated as providing information to the Admiralty, his boss was the War Office: C was administratively under the War Office’s Directorate of Military Operations’ fifth branch (MO5). This created problems, as MO5 favoured K, and handed over to him a number of agents already being run; this, despite the clarified division of labour that put foreign espionage into C’s hands. He was initially even refused permission to view War Office records. He spent most of his first months waiting in his office in Victoria Street to be contacted – even though only his bosses knew he was there. At one point, he seriously considered resigning from this vaguely Kafka-esque situation, thinking he would leave government service ‘discredited’.

With encouragement from some in the Admiralty, C persevered, and, slowly, managed to wrest some control for his tiny department from others. He started meeting agents alone – previously, he had to have a colleague present – learned German to better understand some contacts, and gradually built a respectable position for himself. That others valued him is seen in his being made a Companion of the Order of the Bath, on the eve of the Great War.

This is no place to describe the large and complicated history of the Secret Service in that gigantic conflict. It’s sufficient to note that at the war’s start, headquarters comprised four officers, four clerks, and five others. By 1917, there were more than forty officers, while staff abroad had increased ‘out of all bounds’. The number of agents must have been staggering. C was knighted in 1919. (For those – such as myself - who keep track of such things, the service became officially known as MO5j in 1914; MI1c in early 1916; MI6 in 1920 – when that designation was left empty by the war-time censorship department that had used it was disbanded. But by then, its members just called it the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).)

C rightly deserves the overused term ‘legendary’, for there are actual legends about him. They often concern his love of speed, inherited, with tragic results, by his son Alaister. The younger Cumming was an officer in a Highland regiment when the Great War broke out, and his father went to France to visit him. Alastair was behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce, with his father as passenger. The young man lost control of the car when a tire blew and there was a horrible wreck. Alastair received mortal injuries, while C was trapped under the car. Hearing his son mutter in discomfort, C used a penknife to cut off the remains of his leg, freeing himself to go to his boy. Whether or not the last part is true, it was believed even by so cynical a man as Compton Mackenzie, then chief of C’s Aegean Sea operations, and later a best-selling author. The actions attributed to C were viewed as perfectly credible by all who knew him.

There were many stories told of him, such as how he had his missing leg replaced by one of cork; he would unnerve guests by absent-mindedly sticking a letter-opener into it. He used a child’s scooter to propel himself around the corridors of Secret Service headquarters. He was a ‘gay dog’ who ‘put up his eyeglass [monocle] at the ladies’. Indeed, he was probably the source of the Secret Service tradition of having the prettiest secretaries in Whitehall. He collected motor-cars, having at one time, six, along with a motorcycle with sidecar, and a Great War tank, on which he would take children for rides. C was a favourite with youngsters, whether related by blood or marriage, or just proximity. He never lost his sense of fun, and would sometimes tell a field operator that after the war, the two of them would go spying together in disguise, as it was ‘capital sport’.

Certainly, he could be ruthless; one didn’t manage a world-wide espionage organisation otherwise. He was also efficient and intelligent: it was he who first divided an espionage service into different collection and analysis departments, so that those who gathered the information passed it on to cooler, disinterested parties for study. It may be too that he coined the term ‘station’ for secret service units permanently based abroad. In the navy, a station referred to a squadron of ships permanently assigned to a particular location (eg. the China Station, the South America Station.)

But the weight of running his one-man show, which eventually employed thousands, took its toll, and Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming died in 1923, still ‘in harness’, passing away while sitting in his office, at 64; younger than many, older than most, at the end of a very busy life. C probably would have been happy with that.

The Case of the Deadly Love Triangle

This week, my regular Monday post is appearing as a guest post on that wonderful compendium of 19th century villainies, "Murder by Gaslight."  I tell the tale of how one woman's romantic and social ambitions led to an unsolved murder.

Hope to see you all there!

http://www.murderbygaslight.com/2019/12/olive-peany.html

This Hat's So Fly: Guest Post by Ella Bessmer

[For this week's post, I'm loaning the keys to Strange Company HQ over to Ella Bessmer, author of the new(ish) history blog, Now, Where Shall We Begin.  History is full of odd fashion fads, but only a select few resulted in a body count.  Ella's here to inform us about the popularity of one of these fashion disasters, and the efforts to eradicate it.]

Your Hat's So Fly...Not: The Sordid History Of The Plume Trade


Feathers. Soft, lux, elegance made tangible. Feathers have been significant amongst many global cultures and societies for thousands of years.

The Gilded Age was a period in US history lasting from the late 1800s to about 1900. It was a time of economic prosperity and massive industrial growth.

With increased economic prosperity and rapid industrial development, many people found they had more disposable income than ever before. Meanwhile, cities were becoming more urbanized. With this rise in population and the increased reliance on machinery and factories, city dwellers found themselves wanting more exposure to the natural world. People began to keep terrariums and aquariums. Taxidermied specimens became common in many households.

Eventually, clothing was influenced by this trend. Fashion began to reflect this interest in nature and the desire to own pieces of natural beauty and extravagance.

It was during this time that the plume was taken to a new, unprecedentedly morbid level.
Hats, a sartorial staple, started to be decorated with birds. Everything from entire owls, peacocks, and egrets, to parakeets, were being proudly displayed on the heads of fashionable Victorian women. No one gave a second thought to snapping up a hat adorned with a jewel-toned bird of paradise or an animated diving gull. Birds were seen as an inexhaustible resource, a product to be freely used.

The bird of paradise had what was termed “fancy feathers”. This meant that they had feathers that were hard to come by in the plume trade. As a result, they commanded higher prices.

One well-known anecdote that describes the variety of birds used for these hats came from an ornithologist named Frank Chapman. During two instances when he was walking down a street in Manhattan, Chapman was able to spot specimens from over forty species of birds on the hats of passersby.

But this craze for birds was not without detriment. Abroad and in the US, bird populations were being decimated. Snowy egret plumes, or aigrettes, brought the highest prices at market. At their highest rate, the feathers fetched a price of $510 per ounce. The birds were sought out for the extravagant plumage they had when they were nesting and mating. As a result of this, massive numbers of egrets were killed in their nests. This meant their now orphaned chicks were left to starve. At the height of the plume trade, many species of egrets were very nearly wiped out.

Women were unfairly blamed for the mass die-off of many species of birds.

Ornithologists were scared. They observed that over 50 varieties of birds were on the verge of extinction. Campaigns were started to curb this practice. One such campaign headed by the Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds was highly sexist in nature. They preached that the sole fault of the bird-killing trend fell upon women as they were the main consumers of the hats. The people in charge of the campaign chose to neglect the fact that men also played a role in the plume trade. Ironically enough, men were the ones responsible for the relentless hunt and acquisition of the birds as well as for the selling and production of the hats.

As this ineffective campaign went on, countless birds continued to be slaughtered.

Enter, Harriet Hemenway and her cousin, Minna Hall.

Harriet Hemenway was from a wealthy Boston family. She was well-educated and came from a family of political activists. Harriet was married to Augustus Brewster, a wealthy heir to a shipping company. He had a dedication to the natural world and devoted much of his time to preserving it. Augustus was one of the original members of the Metropolitan Park Commission, an organization that is still going strong today.

After reading an article about the horrors of the cruelty of the plume trade, Harriet was shocked and disgusted. With the support of Minna and her cousin, she set out to take down the barbaric plume trade. Their first mode of action; rallying people to join the cause.

Together, Harriet and Minna identified the names of the wealthiest women in society. They then invited them to a series of tea parties. At these parties, they urged the women to boycott the hats and join them in protesting the cruel feather trade. Some women refused to join the cause and left. The ones that stayed swore off wearing feathers and joined the movement.

Eventually, the women worked out an effective strategy. They planned to have their protest target primarily upper-class women, the main consumers of the hats, rather than the people responsible for the creation of the hats.

Harriet Hemenway, conservationist, leader, BAMF

These parties proved to be a rousing success. During the time in which the society had been meeting, the movement amassed the support of over 900 women. These women, in turn, recruited men to the movement, furthering visibility for their cause in the political sphere.

Despite this, more visibility was needed. It was the late 1800’s and the women's right to vote had not passed. Harriet knew she would have to enlist the help of men to get any political friction with the movement. She recruited scientists and prominent male figures to join the cause.

Through the collective efforts of the community they had formed, in 1896 Minna and Harriet came to found the Massachusetts Audobon Society. The society was named after the famed painter, James Audobon, who was known for his lifelike portraits of birds. The Audobon society was (and continues to be) a nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve the biodiversity and habitats of birds and other wildlife. The creation of the original Massachusetts chapter led to the development of other Audobon societies in 12 states. The Audobon society later would come to be instrumental in the passage of the Lacey Act in 1900, which banned the trafficking of illegal wildlife in the United States.

The Lacey Act was a huge achievement for the conservation movement. It created severe penalties for people who illegally transported wildlife. Despite this, the plume industry was still killing birds in record numbers. The Lacey Act had been beneficial but had failed to shut down the interstate feather trade. Milliners had switched from using egrets to using shorebirds and wading birds. As a result, these populations were now threatened.

A tragic image detailing some of the many victims of the plume trade.

When others voiced their opposition to using birds on hats, milliners said that stopping the feather trade would result in many people losing their jobs. They dismissed the supporters of the anti-plume movement saying they were too weak and sentimental.

When questioned about the source of their feathers, suppliers would claim that their hats were only adorned with found feathers (only a small percentage of them were). This gave some consumers peace of mind, but by this point, more politicians and conservationists were starting to take action to stop the industry.

In 1913, the Weaks-McLean Law, otherwise known as the Migratory Bird Law, was passed. It was a direct result of the work of the Audobon society. This act was later replaced by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 due to a constitutional weakness ( it was passed as a rider to an appropriation bill for the Department of Agriculture). This act prohibited the hunting and illegal transport of wildlife, essentially protecting birds from people. It took the federal legislation of the MBTA to put an end to the plume movement. As a direct result of this law, bird populations that had been killed for the millinery industry have since rebounded to their previous levels.

President Theodore Roosevelt established Pelican Island in 1903 for birds from plume hunters. Its creation leads to a trend in other bird refuges being created.

As times and fashions changed and new laws were instated, feathers were no longer sought after. Hats were now being decorated with ribbons and fabric. As a result of this, hunters who had previously relied on the plume trade were forced to find other ways to make a living.

As feathered hats lost popularity, ribbon and hats with smaller brims became fashionable.

The movement, originally organized against the use of birds and their feathers, set the precedent for other protective conservation legislation.

I am eternally grateful for the incredible, unceasing efforts of these early pioneers. Because of them, we are still able to enjoy the elegance of the majestic snowy egret and american egret, as well as the marvels of other incredible bird species.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

What parallels can we draw between the modern-day fur and ivory trade and the plume trade?

What other impacts did the plume trade on the conservation movement?


Further Reading:

https://bt.barnard.edu/nycgildedages/exhibit/project/a-primi/

This article details the parallels between the plume trade and the modern-day fur trade.

https://www.fws.gov/news/blog/index.cfm/2016/8/29/Lessons-of-the-Feather-Trade-can-Help-Service-Combat-Wildlife-Trafficking

This post describes how the plume trade and the era of extermination lead to many modern conservation successes.

https://fashioningfeathers.info/murderous-millinery/

A fascinating article that goes into how the plume trade became an international industry stretching as far as Australia.

Guest Post: Peggy Gavan, Author of "The Cat Men of Gotham"

"Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
And my cat is, too."

Cats and weird little stories from the past.  What could be more Strange Company than that?  For this reason, I'm delighted to temporarily pass the blog's steering wheel over to Peggy Gavan, whose upcoming book, "The Cat Men of Gotham: Tales of Feline Friendships in Old New York" (Rutgers University Press, May 3, 2019,) is now available to pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  The book features 42 profiles of New York men and the stray cats that they rescued off the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Some of the tales are sad, some are funny, some are just plain odd, and all of them offer a novel and wonderfully entertaining history of New York from a cat's-eye view.  (Side note: yours truly contributed a blurb.)

The following tale comes from the files of Gavan's blog, The Hatching Cat: True and Unusual Animal Tales of Old New York.  Meet the terrifying Miss Margaret Owen, a socialite who put the "Crazy" into "Cat Lady."

Pittsburgh Press, March 1, 1922.

1922: The Curious Case of Lilly and Otto, the Dyed-Blue Cats of Midtown Manhattan

By Peggy Gavan

Every once and a while I come across an old animal story that goes into my special folder called “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up.” The following Old New York cat tale is somewhat funny, very bizarre, and a bit tragic. It most certainly belongs in my special folder.

Blue, Blue, Blue

Once upon a time, a young woman was obsessed with blue…

Blue eyes, check. Blue clothes, check. Blue rugs and draperies, check. Blue walls and electric lamp shades, check. Blue china and blue satin chairs, check. Blue cats…hmmm.

Miss Margaret Owen was a wealthy and temperamental young lady who loved the color blue (she said the color calmed her overwrought nerves). Everything she owned was blue—well, almost everything. The blue-eyed, petite singer had even performed in the chorus of “The Blue Kitten,” a musical comedy based on the book by Otto Harbach and William Cary Duncan, and directed by Arthur Hammerstein at New York’s Selwyn Theatre.

Note from Undine: This was not meant to be a how-to guide.

NEITHER WAS THIS.

Although she was only 22 years old, Margaret had her own spacious apartment in a five-story building at 75 West 50th Street in midtown Manhattan. She also had a maid to do all her washing and cleaning, courtesy of her wealthy father, H.W. Owen, a former stock broker who had retired to Florida.

One day in January 1922, Margaret’s maid took some time off. That left Margaret alone with a pair of yellowing wool stockings that were driving her mad. She simply could have no peace until she did something with those stockings.

So, Margaret rolled up the sleeves of her blue smock and turned on the hot water faucet for the marble basin in her blue dressing room. She poured in a bottle of indigo and a few packets of Diamond-brand blue dye. Her new blue stockings were going to look so perfect with her pretty blue suit.

A Wicked Idea

Everything was going fine until Lilly, one of Margaret’s two white Angora cats, came bounding into the room. When the curious, eight-month-old kitty dipped a white paw into the blue basin, Margaret clapped her hands in delight!

As it turns out, Margaret had recently bought blue leashes for her cats, because she had heard that women were walking their cats on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. She thought, wouldn’t it be romantic to be the mistress of a very beautiful blue cat that she could parade down the boardwalk? All she had to do was dunk her kitties, Lilly and Otto, in the blue water. Just like her stockings.

Margaret picked up little Lilly and dipped her in the bowl of blue water. Then it was Otto’s turn. Despite the cats’ howls, Lilly held them down in the water for about five minutes until she was sure the dye had taken. She took care not to immerse their heads—she used a piece of cotton dipped in the dye to swab their faces. (How very kind of her.) When she was all done, she wrapped the cats in an old blue towel and placed them on a blue cushion to dry.

Now, Margaret Owen was not the only person who rented an apartment at 75 West 50th Street. Hearing the cats’ howls and thinking that Margaret was killing them, several neighbors called the Humane Society. Apparently, no one responded to their calls for help that afternoon.

Over the next few days, things did not go well for poor Otto. Sensing something was wrong with the lackadaisical cat, Margaret took Otto to Dr. Harry K. Miller’s dog and cat hospital (aka, The New York Canine Infirmary), which was then located at 146 West 53rd Street. There, the blue Angora succumbed to an apparent poison in the dye.

Enter stage left, Harry Moran, Superintendent of New York’s Humane Society. Moran told Margaret he was taking her and Lilly to the West Side Magistrates Court, where she would appear before Magistrate Peter A. Hatting on charges of animal cruelty. Margaret put the blue cat in a blue silk bag and brought her to the court, where she was met by her attorney, Benedict A. Leerburger of the firm of House, Grossman & Vorhaus.

Magistrate Hatting ordered Margaret, Superintendent Moran, Mr. Leerburger, and the cat to all go to the Humane Society headquarters to have Lilly’s fur analyzed by a chemist. Pending the test results and Lilly’s status, the judge said, he would make his decision. (Margaret denied knowing anything about Otto, claiming that she had taken Otto to the animal hospital as a favor for a friend who had owned the cat.)

“If Miss Owens and Mr. Leerburger want any lunch, the Humane Society will supply them with it,” the judge reportedly said as he sent them on their way to have Lilly examined.

“What kind of lunch?” Mr. Leerburger asked the magistrate. “I can’t get along on a cat’s diet,” the attorney said. “I need more than milk for sustenance.”

Two veterinarians and a specialist on poison were called to assist with Lilly at the Humane Society (then located at 44 7th Avenue). They washed the cat and had the water analyzed. It turned out that the blue dye contained 5% arsenic.

Because Lilly had licked a lot of the dye off and become very sick, the magistrate said it was almost a case of fatal poisoning. Mrs. Anna Doyle, Margaret Owen’s probation officer, was convinced that Margaret had not intended to harm the cats. Lilly had survived the ordeal, so Mrs. Doyle asked the judge to go easy on Margaret.

New York Times, January 31, 1922

“You’re a spoiled child,” the magistrate admonished Margaret during her sentencing. “What you need is a guardian. Are you married? No? Then I’ll send you back to your father until you get another guardian.”

In addition to remanding Margaret to her parents in Florida, Judge Hatting told her that the Humane Society would have custody of Lilly until her blue color had vanished.

Margaret’s Story Goes Viral

Within days after Margaret appeared in court with Lilly, the story of the blue-dyed cat that had died from dyeing made all the major newspapers across the United States. Her story was also cabled to the Paris newspapers, where the idea of dying your pets to match your wardrobe was much appreciated
by the high-society Parisian women.

Pittsburgh Press, August 5, 1922

The Paris women were a little more intelligent, though. First, they thought it would be better to dye their dogs, since cats aren’t fond of parading about with their mistresses. They also discovered that coffee, caramel, or tea, when mixed with cream (and a little bit of quinine to discourage canine licking), made a great safe dye for their pets.

New York Humane Society Superintendent Moran was completely against this fad, and he reportedly prosecuted those who tried it in New York City. Even if coffee, tea, and caramel was used, he said, these were poisonous for animals, and thus, punishable under the law as a misdemeanor crime against animals.

10 Years Later…

I do not know what happened to Margaret Owen and Lilly. Hopefully they lived happily ever after in a blue house by the blue sea in Florida.

What I do know is that in 1930, Clarice Carleton Holland, the owner of Margaret’s apartment building, sold the building at 75 West 50th Street to William F. Beach, who in turn sold it the Underel Holding Corporation on behalf of John D. Rockefeller. By 1931 the holding corporation had acquired all the lots on the street, giving them the entire 50th Street frontage on which to construct Radio City Music Hall.

Incidentally, the animal hospital where Margaret Owen brought Otto and Lilly is still in operation as the Miller-Clark Animal Hospital in Mamaroneck, New York. Established in 1902 at 118 West 188th Street (according to old newspaper ads), it is one of the longest running veterinary practices in New York.

 In 1922, a young woman dyed her cats blue in an old brownstone and brick apartment on this very site at the northeast corner of W. 50th Street and Sixth Ave. Radio City Music Hall opened on December 27, 1932. Photo by P. Gavan

Diamond in the Rough; Or, A Tale of Two Jonahs: Guest Post by Gill Hoffs

On the open sea, a 19th century ship's captain was virtually an absolute monarch. Many handled this life-and-death power with wisdom and skill. Others turned into abusive tyrants, even monsters. Sadly for the passengers of the William and Mary, one of the worst of the lot was Timothy Reirdan Stinson.

The kindest thing one can say about Captain Stinson was that he was completely unfit for his job. He was indifferent about the quality and quantity of provisions on board the vessel. If his impoverished emigrant passengers were starved, or forced to eat rotted garbage, it was of no concern to him. He saw no reason why he should bother with a ship's surgeon, trusting instead to the curative powers of ham. (All this helps explain why 14 passengers died on the ship's Liverpool-to-New Orleans journey.) His equally barbaric crew took to torturing the cook on deck, and promised passengers a dose of the same medicine if they dared to intervene. Finally, when Stinson's incompetent seamanship caused the vessel to wreck just off the Bahamas, this captain declined to go down with his ship. Rather, he and his crew commandeered the few lifeboats on board--through the handy method of taking a hatchet to a few passengers--and sailed for shore. Stinson trusted that all witnesses to his appalling behavior would soon be at the bottom of the sea, leaving him home and dry in every sense of the phrase.

It's always embarrassing for a would-be mass murderer when some of his victims turn up alive, well, and eager to talk. Such was the case with Captain Stinson. Through a combination of amazing bravery, unselfish heroism, and sheer luck, many did survive the sinking of the William and Mary, and their incredible story ignited mass outrage.

In her latest book, "The Lost Story of the William & Mary," Gill Hoffs does a wonderful job of resurrecting this bizarre 1853 tragedy. It is a tale of hardship and adventure which highlights human nature at both its worst and best. I am delighted to help revive this unjustly obscure Victorian slice of The Weird by introducing a guest post by the author, where she looks at a peculiar footnote to her tale.  Read on, and ponder the riddle of The Two Diamonds:

HMS Tayleur

At a time when there were an average of three wrecks reported every day in British and Irish waters alone, the story of the White Star Line’s RMS Tayleur still stood out. This enormous iron clipper was sailing from Liverpool for Australia in January 1854 when a combination of bad luck and awful weather meant she wrecked 48 hours into her maiden voyage with shocking loss of life, despite the first to leave the ship literally jumping from the deck to the rocks beside her. While researching this tragedy for my book “The Sinking of RMS Tayleur: The Lost Story of the ‘Victorian Titanic’” (Pen & Sword, 2014, 2015), I looked at accounts of other shipwrecks of the time and discovered the long forgotten story of the William & Mary.

This ordinary emigrant ship met an extraordinary end in the Bahamas while sailing from Liverpool for New Orleans, when the vessel wrecked in a shallow channel and the captain and crew attempted mass murder (yes, really). Two very different emigrant ships, two unusual wrecks, one port of departure, and one other possible connection – a Jonah on board.

Out of approximately 700 people travelling toward the Australian Gold Rush on the RMS Tayleur that stormy January day, only 290 survived – and amongst them was a man travelling alone, John Diamond. Similarly, when the William & Mary holed on rocks eight months earlier, a John Diamond was able to escape the sinking ship in a longboat before being picked up by a passing vessel and returned to Liverpool.

The John Diamond who returned to England from the Bahamas appears in enough records to allow him to become one of the ‘stars’ in my latest shipwreck book, “The Lost Story of the William & Mary: The Cowardice of Captain Stinson” (Pen & Sword, 2016) – possibly enough information for a descendant reading this post to recognise him as an ancestor.

In 1851, this young Irishman married the pregnant eldest daughter of a mining family in Hartlepool in the north of England. Two years later, John and Susannah decided to emigrate to St Louis with her extended family so father and son-in-law could work in the mines there.  It was a tough voyage with a high mortality rate due in part to the lack of ship surgeon on board and the captain prescribing bacon to treat fever in passengers dying of measles and typhus.  Susannah and John’s little girl was among the 14 to die as the emigrant ship crossed the Atlantic. 

Below deck on an emigrant ship

When the captain and crew abandoned the sinking ship in the Bahamas, murdering several passengers with a hatchet as they did so, John Diamond went with them.  His pregnant wife screamed for him to come back but to no avail, and she threw her wedding ring into the water after him.  She went into labour prematurely and a Dutch doctor and midwife helped her deliver the child while she was partially submerged in the sea – literally up to her waist in water.  The baby died half an hour later but 19-year-old Susannah managed to stay alive for another 18 days, consumed with fear over the fate of her husband.  She reached the safety of the British Army barracks in Nassau then died of yellow fever, and is buried in the Bahamas.  Her family continued their journey to New Orleans then St Louis and eventually settled in Hangtown, California (so called because of the number of executions there). But what happened to Susannah’s widower?

There were around 160 adult John Diamonds of various spellings recorded in the UK census of 1851, several years prior to these wrecks. Many of the men had families, trades, or were considerably older than the average traveller looking to make their fortune in the Gold Rush or at the very least start a new life in glorious surroundings. The only information available regarding the John Diamond on RMS Tayleur is his name so it is impossible to narrow the search results down further. Did the grieving widower stay in Liverpool until a few months later when a ship meant to be one of the safest afloat sailed for Australia? Could they be one and the same? Possibly. This is just one of the many mysteries involved in these strange shipwrecks. If you can solve them, do get in touch!

Gill Hoffs is the author of “Wild: a collection” (Pure Slush, 2012) and two shipwreck books, “The Sinking of RMS Tayleur: The Lost Story of the ‘Victorian Titanic’” (Pen & Sword, 2014, 2015) and the recently released “The Lost Story of the William & Mary: The Cowardice of Captain Stinson” (Pen & Sword, 2016). She lives in Warrington, England, with Coraline Cat. If anyone has any information regarding the wrecks and the people involved, they can email her at gillhoffs@hotmail.co.uk or find her on twitter @GillHoffs.

Guest Post!

A twofer for this Wednesday:  My guest post at The Witch, The Weird, and The Wonderful about a deal with the Devil that--surprise!--probably didn't work out too well for either side.

Oy to the World

I've been doing a spot of moonlighting from this blog:  Over at Whizzpast, they have been kind enough to include my guest post, giving ten examples of Bad Santas and general holiday mayhem from the past.

Have yourselves a morbid little Christmas!

Moonlighting

This is just to mention that over at the great new blog, Yesterday Unhinged, I'm this week's participant in the Fab Five Historical Challenge.  I'm briefly discussing five of my favorite figures from history.

Incidentally, the Fab Five series is open to anyone who cares to submit an entry, whether you're a blogger or not.  If you love history, why not create your own list?