Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony, by David C. Woodman

9780773545410
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015
(second edition)

390 pp

paperback

This is the second edition of this book, originally finished in 1988 and published in 1991.   In the preface to this second edition, the author notes that it "could not have come at a more appropriate time," citing the 2014 discovery of Franklin's HMS Erebus, a find that has "widely been seen as validation of oral history,"  in  "the area uniformly indicated by Inuit testimony." Woodman's book not only, as the back-cover blurb says, stands as a challenge to "standard interpretations and offered a new and compelling alternative" but as he states in the preface, questions "the prevalent dismissal of non-documentary sources."   His assumption throughout his research was that "all Inuit stories concerning white men should have a discoverable factual basis," even though many historians had often completely ignored these oral traditions

"because of the inherent difficulties of translation and analysis. When historians did consult the oral record, they often selectively used tales that supported their own preconceptions or the physical evidence, while ignoring the other tales as impossibly vague or unreliable."

It took ten years for Mr. Woodman to research his book and another five to put it all together, and what emerges are a number of accounts offered by a number of different witnesses, painstakingly and thoroughly examined by the author.   A very large part of the process involved sifting through recorded oral histories that were taken over a century earlier, which in itself seems to have been problematic, often because there were issues with the original interrogators, whose translations weren't always perfect and who had their own preconceived notions, often leading to misunderstandings.   The author had to read and correlate all of these accounts while also trying to sort out Inuit conceptions of time as well as place, no easy task given that in some cases, for example, place names used by one group of Inuits might be used by others to denote a different place altogether.  In the long run, however,  he was able to

"discover a scenario which allowed use of all of the native recollections, solved some troubling discrepancies in the physical evidence, and led to some significant new conclusions as to the fate of the beleaguered sailors."

It is important to realize that the author doesn't claim to have definitive answers here, since as he says, the Franklin mystery is a "puzzle without the prospect of complete solution," but he does point out in the preface that the 2014 discovery of the Erebus "validates the long-known Inuit traditions" that he explores so thoroughly in this book.

from "Inuit Tales of Terror: The location of Franklin's Missing Ship," by David C. Woodman
(note "Woodman's search area," the area where the Erebus was eventually discovered.) 

There is so much worthwhile happening in this book that I can't begin to cover it all.   As only one example, after the discovery of HMS Terror in 2016,  Mr. Jim Basillie, founder of the Arctic Research Foundation stated in a Guardian article that finding the missing Franklin ship "changes history," noting that

"it's almost certain that HMS Terror was operationally closed down by the remaining crew who then re-boarded HMS Erebus and sailed south where they met their ultimate tragic fate."

By examining different but amazingly consistent Inuit accounts, Mr. Woodman had come to  much the same conclusion in this book over twenty years earlier.  And while he was a bit off when it came to the location of the Terror,  in terms of the location of the Erebus he relied on clues given by the Inuit that put one of Franklin's ships somewhere near O'Reilly Island on the western side of the Adelaide Peninsula that ultimately proved correct -- including the fact that not only had it been visited by Inuit people while still intact, but he also discovered what would turn out to be an important revelation: the ship eventually sank in shallower waters where they could still see mast heads above the surface. 

While I'm just a very casual armchair explorer, it wouldn't surprise me if  Unravelling the Franklin Mystery might someday gain recognition as one of the most significant works about the expedition, not just for the author's theories but mainly because of its focus on illuminating the importance of Inuit oral tradition.   At the same time, it can be a difficult and most challenging book to read, since it often gets a bit confusing with threads of one story that are picked up in later chapters as he tries to connect dots between accounts, often causing me to have to go back and reread what was said earlier.  The other thing I wasn't in love with were the maps in this book.  I had several tablet windows open off and on while I read, each with a map so that I could follow the known progress of the expedition, the routes of previous polar expeditions,  more specific maps of both coasts of King William Island and then, of course, the western side of the Adelaide Peninsula where the author posited that one of the ships had finally come to rest.  Having said all that, I was immediately engrossed and I probably can't even look at another book about the Franklin Expedition for a while, because this one is so good.   Very highly recommended to anyone even remotely interested in the subject.

All I have left to say is that I'm completely in awe of the author's research skills and what he's done here;  I'll have to work very hard to find another one that can impress me as much as this book.

Dr. James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time, by Michael du Preez & Jeremy Dronfield

9781780748313
Oneworld, 2016
479 pp

hardcover

"Were I not a girl, I would be a soldier!" 


In trying to make a dent in my hugely-oversized tbr pile, I picked up this book some time ago to read alongside Patricia Duncker's novel about James Miranda Barry, The Doctor (0060090413, Ecco, 1999),  which has probably been sitting there since it was published.    As I noted on my brief post-reading entry for this book at Goodreads, Dr. James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time  is probably one of the best biographies I've ever read, and trust me, I don't say that lightly.

The dustjacket blurb reveals that Dr. James Barry

"was many things in his life: Inspector General of Hospitals, army surgeon, duellist, reformer, ladykiller, eccentric.  He performed the first successful Caesarean in the British Empire, outraged the military establishment, and gave Florence Nightingale a dressing down at Scutari."

Barry had left Ireland and enrolled in medical school in Edinburgh in 1809, and in his last year of study nearly missed being able to take his final exams because he was believed to be "too young to take a degree."  By 1812, though, he had graduated as an MD.  It was then that "Dr. James Barry had been officially conjured into existence," which may seem an odd statement except for the fact that James Barry had started his life as Margaret Bulkley in 1789.

The book, however, opens with Barry's death in 1865 and the discovery of Barry's long-held secret.  It was  shortly afterward that "the sensational story flew around the Empire,

reaching the ears of people who'd known James Barry throughout his career and all the way back to his youth more than half a century earlier."

The question then arises not only as to how all of these people who'd known him could have missed the fact that Barry was  actually a woman, but also how he had managed to pull off this "audacious deception," but more importantly, as the authors ask,

"...if she wasn't 'James Barry' -- which she manifestly wasn't -- then who the devil was she?"

The two authors of this book then move back in time to answer this question, starting in Ireland with Margaret's childhood, moving on to the plan for Margaret to pose as a young man as a means to acquire an excellent education and then move on to university in Edinburgh for medical training.  The idea, it seems, was that after Margaret finished medical school as James Miranda Barry, she would travel as Margaret to practice medicine in Venezuela after General Don Francisco de Miranda had  liberated the country.  After Barry obtained his degree and "the coveted 'MD' after his name,"

"the time was coming for Margaret to cross the ocean and fight for revolution, putting aise the shell of James Barry, casting off the surtout, the cravat, the breeches and hat, the posture and imposture, Margaret Bulkley would emerge again, bringing her dresses out of storage, saved forever from the doom of drudgery as a governess or a man's possession. In the new revolutionary utopia of Venezuela, all that would matter would be her hard-won skills and knowledge."

According to the authors, the plan hit a snag when Miranda was arrested and sent back to Spain, where he would spend the rest of his life in prison.  Because of this turn of events,  Margaret was left with little choice regarding her future:

"Without her principal benefactor and the unique escape route he had offered, she had no choice but to remain in Britain, no more able to escape her male persona than Miranda could free himself from his Spanish gaol. Whatever the future held, Dr. James Barry was not yet done with, and the trunk of dresses and petticoats would remain shut."

James Miranda Barry from the website of the University of Edinburgh College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. 

Her options as Margaret were rather few -- she might have become a governess or a  married with limited  freedom; instead she decided to continue as Dr. James Miranda Barry,  and the authors go on to document his long and distinguished Army career which began in 1813.  He was fortunate enough to have great connections which helped him through rough spots more than once; he was  compassionate toward his patients, and made a number of innovative reforms.  On the other hand, Barry also had a tendency to rub some important people the wrong way due to his temperament, most especially people who either got in his way or proved themselves to be quacks or ill qualified to be practicing medicine, garnering the  reputation as a "tyrant," with  an "irritable and impatient temper" which "brought him into constant collision with authority."   As the authors explore the course of his career which took him throughout the British Empire, they reveal that there were several people who likely knew or at least guessed at Barry's secret, and never revealed it.  Sometimes, "the general impression and general belief were that he was a hermaphrodite,"  but the few others who knew protected him, keeping their first-hand information to themselves.

Anyone considering reading this book ought to know that while each and every facet of this study has been meticulously researched, Dr. James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time is a compelling read that kept me turning pages.  Margaret Bulkley made a choice that allowed her to live life to its fullest, and while we get some hints that she may have missed her  identity as a woman at times (for example her trunk with the pictures of ladies' fashions on the lid), for Margaret and for James Miranda Barry it seemed to have been the right choice. 

An excellent and truly exquisite book, I would recommend this book to anyone.

The Littlehampton Libels: A Miscarriage of Justice & a Mystery about Words in 1920s England, by Christopher Hilliard

9780198799658
Oxford University Press, 2017
241 pp

hardcover

A series of poison pen letters being circulated in a small English village is the subject of Agatha Christie's 1942 novel The Moving Finger, yet there are a number of other books in which they appear as well.  Dorothy Sayers, Edmund Crispin, and John Dickson Carr spring to mind immediately as just a few examples; in the hands of these authors murder generally followed as a result.  In The Littlehampton Libels there are no killings, but the poison pen letters circulating in the 1920s within Littlehampton, a "middling town" along the Sussex coast (and beyond), eventually merited police investigations, resulted in four different trials, widespread news coverage,  imprisonment, and, as the title reveals, "a miscarriage of justice."  The stories of the two women involved, according to the author, is a

"kind of English story told over and over in fiction and film but rarely in works of history..."

 And it all began with "a quarrel between neighbors."

In 1918, Bill and Rose Gooding moved into the town of Littlehampton, at No. 45 Western Road.  Rose's sister Ruth Russell shared the house with them and their daughter Dorothy; Ruth had two children of her own.   No. 45 shared garden space with two other houses:  No. 47, the home of the Swan family, as well as No. 49, the "police cottage," where police officers and their families could sublet the house which was rented by the West Sussex Constabulary.  At the time "the libels started flying," the police cottage housed Constable Alfred Russell and his family.  At first, Rose Gooding and Edith Swan (age 30 and living with her parents), seemed to get along well, but an incident in May of 1920 led Edith to call in the National Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Children against Rose, in a complaint of "illtreating a child."  The inspector who came out in response to Edith's complaint found nothing amiss, but it was just after his visit that "a flood of filthy postcards" began, with the bad language escalating each time; since they were signed "R--", "R.G.," or "with Mrs. Gooding's compliments," the assumption was that the letters had come from Rose Gooding in retaliation for Edith's complaints.   Rose consistently denied that the letters had been her doing, and the police were satisfied, but that wasn't enough for Edith -- eventually she consulted a solicitor and instituted a prosecution against Rose for "criminal libel," which ultimately resulted in a two-week imprisonment for  Rose, as well as her being responsible for keeping the peace for two years after her release.   While I won't go into details here, mainly because this bizarre story really has to be experienced on one's own, Rose found herself back into prison, appealed, and her case was reopened, along with a major investigation to find the true culprit which reads at times like something you'd find in a work of crime fiction.

In this truly splendid work of microhistory, written in a way I personally believe the best histories should be written,  the author traces not only the events in this case, but uses his investigation to also examine how, as he says, these

 "outlandish insults form part of a larger story of individuality and originality in unexpected places."

 As Bee Wilson says in her review in the London Review of Books, (which you should absolutely refrain from reading until you've finished the book),  The Littlehampton Libels  reveals "the uses and abuses of literacy. " It also gives a concise history of the legal use of libel up to this point in time as well as an insight into how the legal system was used by members of the working class.  It's important to note here that one's respectability as a member of this class was based on several factors and there were gradations in the class structure.  In this particular case, as Mr. Hilliard notes, it wasn't "just circumstances that counted against Rose Gooding," but more to the point, it was the fact that she and her family were viewed as belonging to "a slightly rougher class" than her accuser, a woman seen to be of  "very good character" and one who would never use the sort of language found in the poison pen letters.  As the trial testimony was given, and that particular point was made, something popped into my head right out of Christie's  The Moving Finger  and I had to go look it up.   There's a scene in which Jerry Burton tells us that

"In novels, I have noticed, anonymous letters of a foul and disgusting character are never shown, if possible, to women.  It is implied that women must at all cost be shielded from the shock it might give their delicate nervous systems." 

Given the "foul and disgusting character" of the Littlehampton poison pen letters and the truth behind who actually wrote them, well, I couldn't help but inwardly giggle thinking about that particular passage.

Obviously my short post here just scratches the surface of this book, but The Littlehampton Libels is a phenomenal work of history,  giving credence to the idea that quite often truth is stranger than fiction. I knew it was going to be something right up my alley when I first read about it, and I don't regret forking over more than I generally pay for a book to read it.  I can't speak highly enough about it.

A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment, by John Preston

9781590518144
Other Press, 2016
340 pp

hardcover


 Jeremy Thorpe's leadership of the  Liberal Party began in 1967.  Then, after a career which set him on a path to participation in the highest ranks of British politics,  just twelve short years later he was not only out of a job and in disgrace, but standing trial for conspiracy to murder.

In this book, the author traces exactly how this happened, following the story of Norman (Josiffe) Scott, who had claimed that he and Thorpe had had a sexual relationship starting in 1960  when Thorpe forcibly sodomized Scott.   Thorpe, of course, denied the claim, while Scott would tell others exactly how Thorpe had ruined his life. One huge bone of contention between Scott and Thorpe was that Scott had lost his National Insurance Card, which Thorpe had promised to replace and never did.  As Thorpe continued to rise in the political firmament, Scott's mental health and living situation deteriorated to the point where Scott felt compelled to tell his story to anyone who would listen.While nothing was really done about Scott's accusations, over the years Thorpe realized that Scott had documents (letters that could prove Scott's claims)  -- and that his very existence could become problematic vis-a-vis Thorpe's career.  He allegedly hired a hitman to take care of Scott, who proceeded to bungle the job, garnering the attention of the police and the press by killing a dog instead.

I'm not someone who is much into reading about scandals, since I prefer to devote my reading time to other pursuits.  However, while the murder plot is interesting, there's much more in this book worth examining.  First, of course, is how quickly Thorpe's political connections closed ranks to protect their man and their party, down to the prosecutor who obviously failed to "prosecute the case as vigorously as he might have done," with some people commenting that his ambitions led him to not wish "to ruffle too many feathers." Thorpe's friend Peter Bessell continued to cover up for him even after he knew about the murder plot, based on some long-standing, blind loyalty until Thorpe began to throw Bessell under the bus.  Even the judge in the case, if Preston is correct here, had already taken sides as the trial began. Then there are the police -- shutting down any inquiries that may have revealed the truth of things, hiding documents that could wreck Thorpe's career, accusing Scott of "hysterical fantasizing," and putting Scott through the emotional wringer instead of treating his complaints as valid. Second, and probably the most interesting aspect of this book for me, is the fact that until 1967, homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. Even after the law was changed (a brief history given here as well),  gay men continued to be treated contemptuously, and politicians like Thorpe continued to remain reluctant to come out of the closet publicly.  During the trial against Thorpe, for example, Scott's sexuality was put on trial more than once, with one barrister saying that homosexuals were known for their "terrible propensity for malice."

While Preston can tell a story like nobody's business, I was a little disoriented at first with the lack of footnotes. Sources are also nonexistent, except for mentions of people and books in the Acknowledgements section, and even there we're told that "All the exchanges between Jeremy Thorpe and Peter Bessell come from Bessell's book, Cover-Up," Bessell's aide-memoire, so buyer beware.  On the other hand, it is so well told that you'll find yourself becoming immersed from the beginning and unable to stop reading.

Recommended.

simply unputdownable: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, by Erik Larson

9780307408860
Crown, 2015 (March)
448 pp

(arc - thank you, LTER and Crown Publishing)

My huge thanks to Library Thing's early reviewers' program for selecting me to read this book. I figured I had the proverbial snowball's chance in hell to win this book, since there were hundreds of people requesting only 15 or so copies.  I had even preordered the book betting that I wouldn't win. I'm not cancelling that order now; I know this is a book I want to read again.  

On May 7th, 1915 at 2:10 pm GMT, a single torpedo fired from a German U-boat slammed into the passenger liner RMS Lusitania; by 2:28, the ship was completely gone.  Okay, so that's old news -- everyone who's ever taken US history in school has at least been introduced to this information, normally related as one of the events leading up to neutral America's entry into World War I. [That's not quite the case, as it turns out -- America wouldn't start sending ships and troops over to Britain until two years later.]   So if this is a story that's already been told, why read about it again?  The answer is simple: it's written by Erik Larson, and it is darn-near perfect. And although I will always rank his Isaac's Storm my favorite of all of his books, this one comes very close. 

Mr. Larson sets up his account on a day-to-day basis, covering not only what's happening on board the ship during its voyage from New York to Liverpool,  but he covers what's going on in London, Washington DC, and occasionally Berlin. He also presents the unique perspective of the commander of the U-20, who ultimately gave the order to launch the torpedo that sunk the Lusitania.  He brings together and explains a "chance confluence of forces" that led to the sinking, beginning in New York the day of the Lusitania's departure.  He also reveals the story of the very hush-hush "Room 40," and how this secret "holy of holies" run by Winston Churchill had information regarding U-20 that somehow failed to be provided to the Lusitania's captain, which in hindsight would have saved hundreds of lives.  All of this is related in an account that grabs the reader's attention from the very beginning, then in Larson's very capable hands, builds little by little, gaining in suspense and tension all the way through to the end.  I mean, come on ... we know the ship sinks ... it's the getting there and the unfolding of all of the "confluence of forces" that kept me hanging onto each word.  Larson also discusses the events that came afterwards from the points of view of the Germans, the British and the Americans, up to two years and one day after the Lusitania went down along the coast of Ireland.   And if the historical parts fail to impress,  there are the personal stories of the passengers who survived this ordeal -- some of whom actually saw the torpedo coming straight at them while they were out on deck. 

RMS Lusitania. From http://www.pbs.org/lostliners/lusitania.html

There's just something about the word "Lusitania" that has stirred the public imagination for years. It's been widely written about,  and its sinking has sparked long-standing controversy over what was in its hold or whether or not the British purposefully failed to protect it as a means to force America into the war.  Larson has picked a great topic here and he makes it very easy for anyone to understand not only the sequence of events both before, during and after the Lusitania went down, but also the significance of this event on the wider world stage.  He has done a tremendous amount of research for this project as revealed by his sources both primary and secondary, and provides notes in the back of the book for easy reference. He also mentions the help of Michael Poirier, who himself has done immense amounts of research on the Lusitania and other ocean liners, a name I was quite happy to see cited here -- if anyone knows his stuff, it's Poirier.  The reader does not need to have any sort of background in history nor does he or she need to know anything at all about the Lusitania to enjoy this book -- everything is so well explained here that you could absolutely hate history before going into Dead Wake, and come out a huge fan of this little slice of it. My biggest issue with this book is that I don't understand why he felt the need to include Woodrow Wilson's ongoing courtship of second wife Edith, a topic that took up way too much space and almost made Wilson's role as president superfluous until the events of 1917 that ended American neutrality.  

I am so happy to have read this book -- and it certainly was an eye-opener for me.  There is so much going on here, but as always, Larson keeps tight control over the material making it flow like a novel.  I am also happy to recommend it to anyone who is a regular Larson reader or anyone even remotely interested in the topic.  To use an old cliché, I could not put this book down -- it's that good.