Michael Harrison

[m_w_r]

Hi folks,

A question apropos of nothing:

Does anyone know whether Michael Harrison, author of The Life of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, 1864-1892, or, in America, Clarence: Was He Jack the Ripper?, had legal training?

All answers gratefully received.

Regards,

Mark

[Monty]

Hey Mark,

Im putting it out here, and Im sure you are aware but incase you are not, Harrison was a pen name. His birth name was Maurice Desmond Rohan.

Ive done the briefest of checks and found nothing of legal training. However Im ill at the mo and my concentration levels are low.

Sorry.

Monty

[m_w_r]

Hi Monty,

Thanks - I did know that, but I had forgotten it. Regardless of the name, I still wonder.

Get well soon, old chap.

Regards,

Mark

[Monty]

The pickled onion cheese has gone orf I reckon but cheers mate.

Have you tried the University of London records? Depends how deep you want to delve.

Monty

[Supe]

Mark,

The A to Z says Harrison was an "editor, market research executive and creative director of an advertising agency,' none of which suggests a legal background. Even more than that, however, he was a very notable Sherlockian and that is where I first encountered him. Among his books on the subject of Holmes are The London of Sherlock Holmes and In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, both of which I devoured when young.

Don.

[m_w_r]

Hi Don,

Thanks for this. I've got quite a nice copy of In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes. Supposing that the question of the legal training isn't easy to answer, let me try this one: Where do people think that Harrison might have lived?

Regards,

Mark

[The Grave Maurice]

Well, this is intriguing, Mark. Like Don, I was introduced to Harrison through his SH books and, until Monty pointed it out, I didn't know that he used a pseudonym. I just checked the dust jackets of the books of his that I own, and there are no biographical details. What are you on to?

[Dave O]

Hi Mark,

At the time of his death, wasn't he in Hove, Sussex? At least, according to this. I think this is the same fellow, anyway: http://thepeerage.com/p15319.htm

I'm not very familiar with him, so apologies if I'm leading you astray or if you already know this.

Dave

[m_w_r]

Hi all,

Thanks for your help. Basically the story is this:

In 1963, the Profumo Affair blew considerable holes in the public's confidence in British politics. John Profumo, before his indiscretions with Christine Keeler, had been the Minister for War, but he was forced to resign, later enduring a self-imposed Sisyphean penalty, cleaning the toilets at Toynbee Hall.

Stephen Ward, who, at the time of the indiscretions in question was Keeler's pimp, was prosecuted at the Old Bailey in the summer of 1963, but he killed himself before the jury's verdict could be announced. The prosecution seemed, to conspiratorial minds, little less than persecution - Ward, some thought, was the establishment's patsy, set up to be brought down for Profumo's sins. This way of thinking generated a considerable number of rumours, some of which Lord Denning dealt with in his report into the matter.

On Saturday 19 October 1963, Jane Picton met a man on the train who told her a story about the Ward trial. She later made this note:





But was Miss Picton's Michael Harrison our Michael Harrison?

It seems probable that he was not. The website to which Dave provided the link has these details for our Michael Harrison:



Here are the details of his death - recorded in the name of Michael Harrison - in Hove in 1991:



And here are the details of his marriage, from 1950q2:



And here are some Harrisons living at the appropriate address at Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, taken from a couple of contemporary telephone directories. First, from 1943:



Then, from 1964:



The initials of these Harrisons, who are known to have lived at the same address as Jane Picton's "informer", do not match those of our Michael Harrison's parents, siblings, or spouse; and it seems very likely indeed that our Michael Harrison was not the man involved in this incident. Shame. But it was always an outside bet. I had hoped that it would make a good story. Thanks again to all for your contributions.

Regards,

Mark

[Mayerling]

Harrison and his writings

Like several of you I first encountered Harrison when I read his classic of Sherlockiana, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. It is a meaty book in terms of the style of late Victorian England that it recaptures, but it also has its flaws. One of the best chapters was one dealing with people who disappeared in West Ham between 1882 and 1890. Subsequently I read a book called DISAPPEARANCES by Elliott O'Donnell, and discovered that his listing of these disappearances is word for word identical to Harrison's, so that I realized Harrison was actually plagiarizing (O'Donnell's book was written nearly three decades earlier.

Still if he did it was an interesting piece of plagiarism, and made the reader sit up. Unfortunately it turned out that it suffers from the fate of most plagiarism - anything O'Donnell overlooked or fudged on would be repeated by Harrison if he did not do any further studying of the matter involved. I happened to do some on two of the cases and found that far from being situations the police could make nothing about, the police brought charges against one party who was acquitted, and the inquest narrowed the murderer of a young girl to either the grandfather, father, or son of one household (who stonewalled further discovery successfully but lost their reputations as a result).

There was another book about Holmes that Harrison wrote called THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (published after the Clarence book) which suggested that James Kenneth Stephen was the "Bert Stephens, the terrible murderer" in one of the Holmes stories.

The final book by Harrison that I read was his study on "spontaneous combustion" deaths FIRE FROM HEAVEN. Again an interesting book, although subsequently I read a critical rebuttal to some of his "facts" on one incident in it (which I regret I no longer recall). I think it had to do with someone burned up in the cab of a truck he was driving.

Jeff