An historical pattern

[Bridewell]

Originally Posted by jerryd

Hopefully Bridewell won't mind me posting an old post of his. His source is Dicken's Dictionary of London 1888. He only posted the fixed points in Whitechapel. I did notice, though, "A" division had a fixed point at the Bridge Street Rail Station which is exactly where the underground tunnel I've mentioned before led to the Whitehall worksite.

Bridewell doesn't mind in the least, Jerry!

Pierre, if you're interested, The Works used to sell reprint copies of both "The Dickens Dictionary of London 1888" & "The Dickens Dictionary of the Thames" for about £3 each. That was a couple of years ago, but they may still have a few.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Bridewell

Bridewell doesn't mind in the least, Jerry!

Pierre, if you're interested, The Works used to sell reprint copies of both "The Dickens Dictionary of London 1888" & "The Dickens Dictionary of the Thames" for about £3 each. That was a couple of years ago, but they may still have a few.

Thanks, Bridewell. But those sources are not connected to the murders.

Regards, Pierre

[Mayerling]

Originally Posted by Caligo Umbrator

Hi, Jeff.

Knowing your interest in all matters maritime and with this thread having taken on a Nautical quality, I feel this is an ideal place to make this post.
I came upon this article today regarding the discovery of the steamship 'The Thames', which was lost in the Russian Arctic in 1878.
Discovery of The Thames

Yours, Caligo

Hi Caligo,

Sorry but I just noticed your kind cite of an article on the rediscovery of the lost steamship, "The Thames". I read it, and it is on a subject few people are well versed about in Western Europe and North America - the search for the "North-EAST" passage to Siberia and Asia. Most of us know about the "North-WEST" passage in Canadian Arctic waters, especially regarding the loss of the Franklin Expedition in 1845-59. About a dozen expeditions went out from the U.S. and Britain to find Sir John Franklin, his two ships, and his 100 or so men, all of whom we now know were dead by 1851. Sir Leopold McClintock finally found that Franklin died in 1847, and his men deserted the two ice bound ships ("Erebus" and "Terror") in a doomed attempt to get to civilized settlements. They were attacked by lead poisoning from badly tinned food they brought, by scurvy, and many succumbed to either the extreme cold, exhaustion, and even cannibalism. McClintock found a document that gave the death toll (including Franklin, an elderly former imperial governor of Tasmania and the leader of two prior Arctic exploration parties in the 1820s) up to 1847. Remains filled in later details. Franklin and his expedition was caught in the sea ice around King William's Island, but (ironically) he actually had found the point where the Northwest passage was located. Recently his ship, "HMS Erebus" was finally found sunk in the waters off King William's Island, but the Canadian government was planning to continue looking for "HMS Terror", the other lost vessel. They would also like to find Sir John Franklin's grave.

The article you sent included the fact that Henry Morton Stanley, back from finding Dr. David Livingston (in 1871) wanted to go on this fatal expedition of "The Thames". Stanley was a reporter for the New York Herald, then owned and edited by the eccentric James Gordon Bennett Jr., but from Paris, not New York. Bennett's refusal to let Stanley go seems puzzling, but likely he had other uses for Stanley as a reporter. But interestingly enough, in 1879, Stanley was a full fledged explorer in Africa. Bennett, in that year, financed an American expedition to explore the North-East Passage from Alaska and the Behring Sea. It was on a ship renamed "the Jeannette", and the ship was under command of Captain George Washington De Long. In place of Morton, the science officer on the "Jeanette" was the meteoralogical reporter on the New York Herald, Jerome Collins. Collins was lost with most of the men (including De Long) when the ship was icebound (like Franklin's ships) and men died of scurvy (like Collins) or were lost in trying to reach land in boats (like De Long, who were lost on the northern coast of Siberia. The survivors were rescued. Wreckage from the Jeanette did flow through the North-WEST passage, and it's discovery in 1887 lead to the Norwegian explorer and diplomat, Frijold Nansen, to construct his special ship "the Fram" to follow the polar seas drifts around Greenland in 1893.

Jeff