Kent writer self-combusts

In the Dartford Chronicle for 7 April 1919 appeared an extraordinary report of a fire. A local writer named J. Temple Thurston had been found dead in his blazing home, Hawley Manor, under quite bizarre circumstances. He was discovered sitting up fully clothed at three in the morning with large red patches on the thighs and lower parts of the legs. At the inquest it was remarked that ‘it was much as if, bound to a stake, the man had stood in a fire that had not mounted high.‘

Although the victim’s torso was severely burnt, his legs were not wholly consumed and his clothes remained unscorched. The firemen found the fire raging outside Thurston’s room. There were no signs of arson, robbery or any such criminal act. The cause of death was given as heart failure due to smoke inhalation.

This is one of the cases included in Charles Fort’s Wild Talents, a pioneering study of unexplained phenomena. It gets in because the seat of the fire seems to have been the torso of the victim himself. Had it begun in the room next to Thurston’s, it surely would have burnt his clothing to ash. Fort suspected ‘spontaneous human combustion ‘and in the 70 years since the book’s publication, other similar cases have occurred that tend to support this theory. Two of the most frequent features of such suspected cases are that extremities, such as legs and arms, are left comparatively untouched and that clothing is sometimes unscorched.

Recent breakthrough research by Cambridge University biologist Professor Brian J Ford, has concluded that the production of highly inflammable acetone

Vulcan 2

The second part, from the fascinating forgotten work Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts (Allan, London 1928) by R.T. Gould, on the non-existent planet Vulcan. The first part can be found here.

Vulcan Landscape (from Star Trek, the Motion Picture)

 Leverrier, once convinced as to the real character of Lescarbault's discovery, lost no time in performing the necessary calculations which that worthy had found so baffling. He obtained, for the new planet's mean distance from the sun, about 13,000,000 miles, and for its period of revolution 19 days 17 hours. Lescarbault, who had seen Mercury in transit over the sun with the same telescope, and the same magnifying power, on May 8, 1845, considered that the new planet (which he decided to name "Vulcan") had a disc rather less than a quarter as large. Accordingly, Leverrier calculated that Vulcan's volume was probably about one seventeenth that of Mercury.

R.T. Gould and The Planet Vulcan 1

T.T. Gould & his wife Muriel

Found - a fascinating forgotten  work Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts (Allan, London 1928) by R.T. Gould. Rupert Thomas Gould (1890 – 1948), was a lieutenant Commander in the British Royal Navy noted for his contributions to horology. While in the navy in WW1 he suffered a nervous breakdown. During long recuperation, he was stationed at the Hydrographer's Department at the Admiralty, where he became an expert on various aspects of naval history, cartography, and expeditions of the polar regions. He gained permission in 1920 to restore the marine chronometers of John Harrison, and this work was completed in 1933. Jeremy Irons played him in Longitude, a dramatisation of Dava Sobel's book about John Harrison Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, which recounted in part Gould's work in restoring the chronometers.

Something of a polymath, he wrote an eclectic series of books on topics ranging from horology to the Loch Ness Monster. He was a member of the Sette of Odd Volumes (Brother Hydrographer) and the book Oddities is dedicated to the club. He was a science educator, giving a series of talks for the BBC's Children's Hour starting in January 1934 under the name "The Stargazer", and these collected talks were later published. He was a member of the BBC radio panel Brains Trust. He umpired tennis matches on the Centre Court at Wimbledon on many occasions during the 1930s. This is the first part of the chapter on the planet Vulcan (more to follow)-

THE PLANET VULCAN

  Many things, ranging from collar-studs to battleships,* are quite easy to lose. Heavenly bodies, however, are not usually regarded as included in that category. Yet for such to be lost is not an absolutely unknown occurrence. Biela's comet, for example, after circling round the sun in a regular and decorous orbit for a considerable time, was seen as two comets in 1852,† failed to return in 1859, and has not since been heard of since. Some of the minor planets, too–tiny bodies a few miles in diameter–have proved so troublesome to rediscover that an American astronomer, the late Professor J. C. Watson, endowed a Home for Lost Planets‡–that is to say, he created a special fund for the purpose of having the orbits of the twenty-two minor planets discovered by himself regularly computed and kept up to date, thus ensuring that such planets would always be "present and correct" when required.

* Some years ago, on draining a disused dock at one of the French naval yards, an old and forgotten submarine was found in it. See Punch, 3-II-09.

† One, at least, of its observers was a total abstainer.

‡ In humble imitation of this kindly act, the present writer maintains a Home of Rest for Aged Typewriters–now (1944) sheltering some seventy inmates.

The Surface of Vulcan by nethskie

 
  The story of the planet Vulcan, however, is not so much that of a lost Planet as of one which, although once accepted as a member of the Solar System, never existed.

A castrato sends in his bill…

Invoices from famous castrati are pretty rare, but there is no reason why there shouldn’t be more of them around. The reason is that some of the best castrati gave singing lessons, and thus presumably sent in bills for their services. One of the greatest singing masters of them all was the brilliant Domenico Mustafa, who was also a composer and was appointed perpetual director of the Sistine Chapel in 1878.

Born in 1829 in Perugia to a Turkish father, the young Domenico doubtless had a good voice (it was later described as ‘ sweet and pleasant as that of a woman’) and, as was the custom, was castrated before puberty as a way of generating an income for his impoverished parents . He later was quoted as saying that he’d risk being indicted for murder if he could discover the man who had castrated him’. He joined the Sistine Chapel as a chorister at the age of 19.

 This invoice and letter date from 18 February 1870, when Mustafa was aged 41. He had already been director of the Sistine Chapel choir for ten years and as such must have been in great demand as a private singing tutor. For six lessons plus the sheet music he charged Signorina Holland ( perhaps an English lady ) a total of 67 francs and 50 centimes. Why the sum should be in francs, I don’t know.

Later on, in 1892, Mustafa gave lessons to the famous French soprano Emma Calve, teaching her to employ her celebrated ‘fourth voice‘, which was an unnaturally high falsetto. After hearing Mustafa himself performing this weird sound Calve described it as ‘ strange, sexless, superhuman, uncanny ‘.

Mustafa retired at the aged of 73 to his luxurious villa in Montefalco where he died in 1912. ‘ Villa Mustafa ‘became a hotel and is now a museum to his memory. [R]

The Crazy Quilt Murders (1938)

The Crazy Quilt Murders by H.W. Sandberg (Phoenix Press N.Y. 1938)

Rare book (no copies for sale anywhere online) from the Donald Rudd collection of detective fiction. The plot is summarised thus:

When Benjamin Markley willed his nephew Sam a crazy quilt, it seemed like merely one more of his eccentrics on a par with the proviso that Markley legatees spend three days together in Sam's country cabin.

But the Markleys stopped laughing when the three days were blighted by a series of murders more puzzling than any Sam, a mystery writer by profession, had ever imagined. And the colorful crazy quilt enabled Sam to stop the murders before he himself was added to the growing list of victims… 

Everything in life must perforce follow a pattern. Life, death, the very thoughts that idle in your brain at this moment, are guided by a logical, if sometimes confusing, pattern. Witness the crazy quilt; modest or gorgeous, seemingly possessing neither rhyme nor reason, yet behold, you find in it a beginning, a body, a conclusion, the very essence of a pattern.( Sam Markley)

There appear to be collectors of Quilt and Sewing mysteries,

 Clickhare lists these:

Alias Grace by Margaret Eleanor Atwood

Broken Arrow (and more) by Lizbie Brown

The Elm Creek Novels by Jennifer Chiaverini

The Grub and Stakers Quuilt a Bee by Alisa Craig

Persian Pickle Club; Alice's Tulips by Sandra Dallas

Betsy Devonshire Series by Monica Ferris

Goose in the Pond (and more) by Earlene Fowler

Buried in Quilts by Sara Frommer

The Dead of Winter by Paula Gosling

Sew Deadly  (and more) by Jean Hager

Dark Road Home (and more) by Karen Harper

Hearts and Bones by Margret Lawerence

A Phantom Death by Annette Mahon

Sew Easy to Kill by Sarah J Mason

Stitches in Time by Barbara Michaels

Too Many Crooks Spoil the Booth (and more) by Tamar Myers

The Body in the Kelp (and more) by Katherine Hall Page

Crazy Quilt Murders by H.W. Sandberg

The Clue in the Patchwork Quilt by Margaret Sutton

The Crimsom Patch by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

A Piece of Justice by Jill Paton Walsh

Murder at the Quilt Show by Aliske Webb

A Piece of Justice by Jill Paton Welsh

Mein Skunk

Found in an old Australian newspaper:

Maurice A. Hammoneau, of Brook-lyn, N.Y., bookbinder extra-ordinary,puts bindings on books to harmonise with their subject matter. Thus Hammoneau will encase a volume on reptiles in snake-skin, or dress a book on music in ivory piano keys. For Hitler's Mein Kampf, Hammoneau chose skunk skin.-Sideshow, N.C. Canberra Times, Monday 29 April 1940

On the Hitler skunk theme a novelty firm produced a complete ceramic trio set featuring the Hitler Skunk, Mussolini Pig and Tojo Rat. These are shown in the 1944 catalogue of Johnson Smith and Co.