State of card ticket

[The Doctor]

I've always wondered about this. Assuming the railway tickets were of the Edmundson type I.E. cardboard about 3 by 1 inch, how did they survive being in the water? Would they have not deteriorated?

[aspallek]

As I had said countless times, I myself have seen paper documents from the Titanic that were legible after 80 years at the bottom of the Atlantic. Anyway, not to be critical of your question (as there are no dumb questions) but I have always thought this discussion rather pointless since we know that (1) these documents were indeed found on Druitt's body and (2) they were indeed legible.

[Robert]

Andy's right. Another one that comes up is "People didn't shout 'Oh murder' when about to be killed." But they did.

[Simon Wood]

Hi Andy,

Documents surviving the 1912 Titanic sinking are understandable. Never mind salt water: the documents were 'free' [not constrained], able to be collected by robotic submarine arms.

MJD had been in the choppy waters of the River Thames for about a month. The train ticket and cheques were either in an inside pocket or a purse/wallet within a pocket. How were these paper items retrieved [still perfectly legible] without being turned to pulp by the investigative fingers of Constable George Moulston 216T?

Regards,

Simon

[aspallek]

No sir. Many, if not all, of the paper items from the Titanic were found inside of recovered items -- not at all unlike being in Druitt's wallet.

But as I said earlier, this discussion is pointless. The documents were recovered from Druitt's body and they were legible.

[Christine]

This should be pretty easy to test out. Find a selection of printed paper items and put them in some water for a month. If you can arrange to have them dunked in a local stream, so much the better. Put at least some of them into a wallet, and chain the whole bundle to something.

[aspallek]

With all due respect, Christine, there are too many variables. I'll bet if you repeated the experiment 10 times you would get several differing results.