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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Robert James Lees
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Research Issues / Philosophy:
Robert James Lees
Author: Stephen Butt
Tuesday, 06 February 2001 - 11:04 am |        | I am researching the life, writings and activities of Robert James Lees, and obviously his alleged involvement in the Jack the Ripper events form a part of this research. I would emphasise that my approach is as an historian, and I have a totally open mind with regard to the familiar Lees/Ripper story. I would also add that I am not a spiritualist.
However, my research to date does indicate that the story - in its various versions - should not be discounted without further scrutiny. I have to say that there are considerable inaccuracies in Harris's treatment of Lees.
I would much appreciate an exchange of views, thoughts, and especially facts, as far as this interesting character is concerned.
Thanks, all.
Stephen Butt. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 06 February 2001 - 01:49 pm | | Hi Stephen:
Welcome to the boards. We welcome an exchange of views with you. One thing you should be aware about, if you have not come across it, is that the famous 1889 letter in which the Ripper supposedly taunted that he could not be caught despite all the coppers on the case and "all your Lees" was misread by Stephen Knight and other authors. The actual wording, as revealed by Stewart P. Evans in 1999, is "all your blue bottles [uniformed police] and all your tecs [plainclothed detectives]." This reinterpretation of the wording was discussed on these message boards in the past. If you look under "Tree View" you will find the discussions under "General Discussion: Research Issues / Philosophy: A Question of Spelling: Archive through September 17, 1999"; "Ripper Letters: General Discussion: Jack the Ripper Letters"; and "Ripper Victims: Specific Victims: Catherine Eddowes: The Goulston Street Graffito: Archive through June 19, 1999."
Chris George |
Author: Stephen Butt
Wednesday, 07 February 2001 - 02:38 am | | Dear Chris,
Thank you for your guidance regarding the Lees letter. I was not aware of Stewart Evans' work on the matter, but had mentally discounted the letter because it didn't seem to prove anything. Although Lees was not a `household name' in 1888, he was certainly well-known to many journalists because he had been working a number of newspapers and journals in London since 1875. He was also running a busy philanthropic organisation in Peckham which saw several thousand people through its doors every week, so there were plenty of people who would have known that Lees had contacted the police re JTR.
I had also discounted the Lees letter because, as far as I was aware, it hasn't been seen since Knight referred to it. Does Stewart Evans' work mean that it has been rediscovered?
Incidentally, I do have a letter from a member of Sir Robert Anderson's staff, accepting Lees' offer of help regarding the detection of Fenian terrorists. This is material that Melvyn Harris - who says emphatically that Lees' claims (that he assisted the police with regard to Fenian activity) are pure fiction - does not know exists.
As far as I can ascertain, Lees' first recorded involvement in the JTR investigation was his visit to the police on the morning after the double murders. Can anyone correct me on this?
Best wishes,
Stephen. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Wednesday, 07 February 2001 - 04:02 am | | Dear Stephen,
Has your letter, accepting Lees' offer, been authenticated? Of course, you must know how Melvin Harris will react to this - he will say the letter is a fake, or he will say that accepting an offer of help doesn't prove that the help was subsequently given.
You will find that being wrong is not one of the redoubtable Mr. Harris's faults. ;-)
Very best wishes and good luck with the research.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 07 February 2001 - 06:22 am | | Dear Stephen,
During the latter half of the 1980s when I was researching and writing on the Ripper, I attended Friends' House (Quaker) Meeting in Euston Road. An elderly lady who was a member of the meeting discussed her experience of Lees with me one day. I told her that from my reading of some of his spiritualist writing I had concluded that he would take an interest in the Ripper case because he had rather a deep-seated and possibly neurotic perception of himself as a strong masculine soul with the power to influence and improve weak and fallen female souls. The old lady, who had met Lees, said I was absolutely right. Her mother died in the early 1920s and her distressed father included two appointments with Lees among his efforts to alleviate his grief. He took her (as a little girl) along with him, and was shocked when Lees 'went into a trance' and under the 'control' of his spirit guide - (I don't remember whether it was the usual Red Indian!) - became jocularly familiar with the little girl in ways that her father regarded as sexually provocative and quite unacceptable - also quite different from Lees's natural manner when not 'in a trance'. When this occurred on the second visit, the father broke off the appointment and refused to see Lees again.
But what I found peculiarly interesting was the old lady's recollection that while they were waiting for one of their appointments to begin, Lees's daughter showed them a document showing that Lees was consulted by royalty - but it was from Queen Alexandra, not Queen Victoria. This made absolute sense to me, as it is easier to imagine the sweet but bone-headed Alexandra consulting a medium after the death of her firstborn than the obsessive but hard-headed widow of Albert the Intolerably Good believing in spirits unauthorized by a somewhat dull Anglicanism. I cannot remember whether anything was said to indicate that this document was anything more than what Melvin Harris has suggested - an envelope with the royal address such as might be received by any author who made the unsolicited gift of a book to the royal library.
Nor, unfortunately, can I remember the name of the old lady, who I imagine has died by now. If you could obtain for me a copy of the list of members of Friends' House Meeting in 1988 I might be able to remember who she was. (It should be in the Monthly Meeting booklet of members and attenders listed under Preparative Meetings which I hope the Friends' House Library maintains. Almost opposite Euston Station.)
With all good wishes,
Martin Fido |
Author: Stephen Butt
Wednesday, 07 February 2001 - 07:55 am | | Dear Martin,
What a fantastic story. I'll get back to you with some thoughts, once I've absorbed it fully. However, briefly, I know that Eva (Lees' eldest daughter) frequently made this sort of claim about her father and associations with royalty. I have four cards from four different members of the royal household, one being Alexandra, thanking Lees for his gift of a specially-bound copy of "Through the Mists" (his first novel).
Elizabeth Longford, in her biography of Victoria, refers to a specially-bound copy of the book in Eva's possession, suggesting that Lees had at least five copies made. I think `Le Matin' or another newspaper article from 1031, just after Lees' death, mentions Eva showing the reporter four envelopes with royal arms upon them, claiming they were personal letters from Queen Victoria.
These four cards and their envelopes are the only evidence I have for Lees having any communication with the royal household, and sadly prove nothing other than that he did proffer copies of his book to the royal personages.
Incidentally, many authors seem to ascribe Eva's claims to her father. This really isn't right, as he spoke very rarely to anyone about JTR or his alleged connections with Queen Victoria. Almost all the claims came from Eva.
Regarding the sexual overtones in the psychic encounter you mention, I am reminded of an account of the healing by Lees of a teenage girl in Ilfracombe in the 1920s. The account talks of Lees `holding' the girl, and of a fairly `physical' encounter. Also, the girl went to stay with Lees at his home, for a few weeks' recuperative holiday. Although Eva was present, I would think that eyebrows would certainly be raised these days, if a young girl patient went on holiday with her therapist!
Thanks for writing. I'll see what I can find re the Euston Road Friends Meeting House.
Kind regards,
Stephen. |
Author: Stephen Butt
Wednesday, 07 February 2001 - 08:05 am | | Dear Caz,
Yes!! The letter has been authenticated, but probably not to the satisfaction of certain researchers. It's handwritten onto the lined pages of a notebook, and signed `F Powell'.
I agree that the existence of this letter in Lees' personal effects does not indicate anything other than the fact that Anderson was not dismissing Lees' offer of help out-of-hand. The tone of the letter suggests that Anderson was quite anxious to see Lees, offering any date and time Lees would like to suggest.
For some years, Lees worked as a tourist guide in London for visiting Americans. Some of his tour notes have survived. So he certainly had the opportunity to meet with newly-arrived American visitors - and what better cover for Fenian terrorists than to act as tourists, and invite Lees to show them the sites of London, including those they were planning to blow up?
Thanks for your best wishes,
May I say..
`love',
Stephen. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Wednesday, 07 February 2001 - 01:08 pm | | There is an excellent photograph of the page in question of the so-called 'Lees Letter' in the book Jack the Ripper a Psychic Investigation by Pamela Balls, Arcturus 1998.
I thought that Melvin Harris' dismissal of the Lees and the Ripper story was pretty conclusive and I wondered what the 'considerable inaccuracies' in his treatment of Lees were. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Thursday, 08 February 2001 - 09:03 am | | Apropos the above I have checked my copy of Jack the Ripper The Bloody Truth by Melvin Harris, London, Columbus Books, 1987, and I find the following account on pages 101/102 -
"Among these tales was one involving his [Lees'] actions as a government agent years before the Ripper murders. He assured his daughter Eva that, back in 1883, he'd even been responsible for the capture of a Fenian bombing team, the group masterminded by the Irish revolutionary, Dr Gallacher. Lees's feat was performed after he had guided some American visitors around places of interest in London. Apparently a psychic voice had urged him to report these tourists to Scotland Yard. He did so, calling on his 'old friend Anderson', the police chief. The police acted, raided the address in Villiers Street given them by Lees, and the bomb-plot was squashed.
Unfortunately for Lees's yarn, this particular affair is extremely well documented. The records show that the bomb-plot was foiled as a result of the astuteness of George Pritchard, a strictly non-psychic storeman in Birmingham. The bombers had set out to manufacture nitro-glycerine at 128 Ledsham Street, Ladywood, Birmingham, approaching Pritchard's firm with an order for a quantity of glycerine, stating that they were about to manufacture a hair oil. But they demanded a quality of chemical purity that was way above that needed even for a luxury hair oil. Pritchard guessed they were lying. He checked on their workshop and found enough incongruities to justify a visit to the police, and the police used skeleton keys to enter the place. Once inside they discovered a bomb factory but realized that it was far too soon to pounce, so they made their exit, leaving the materials intact. From then on, careful observation and the study of seized letters led to the arrest of the whole gang, including the London team headed by Dr Gallacher."
This seems a fairly straightforward and accurate account of Lees claiming to have helped the police with the arrest of the terrorists whereas in reality he had nothing to do with it.
I agree that Lees was an interesting character and his peripheral linking with the 'Ripper' case has always been of interest to me. With that in mind I have always endeavoured to read up on him. It would be of great interest if Mr Butt were to enlighten us more on Lees' involvement. He is certainly a now neglected area of study. Once he was quite popular but these 'fringe characters' in the case seem to enjoy only sporadic popularity. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Friday, 09 February 2001 - 07:10 am | | | Have we lost Mr Butt? He has raised some interesting questions regarding Lees. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 09 February 2001 - 07:28 am | | Harris? Butt?
Hello Stewart,
I think you'll find it's Pamela Ball - not Balls. But could someone be pulling yet another part of the anatomy? I'm beginning to wonder...
Have a great weekend.
Love and best wishes,
Caz |
Author: Stephen Butt
Friday, 09 February 2001 - 09:25 am | | Dear Mr Stewart,
No, you haven't lost me yet! Last night I wrote a fairly long explanation of my concerns about Mr Harris's comments on Lees, put the file onto a floppy because I needed to add something at my workplace and then left it at home. So I'll mail it tomorrow.
But my basic standpoint is that most of the stories quoted by Mr Harris, or used by other writers such as Stephen Knight, did not originate with Lees, but rather from either his daughter Eva, or a spiritualist friend of Lees. Most of them are outrageous in their present form (and thus provide excellent material for someone wishing to disparage Lees), but actually have their foundation in a much simpler and factual real event.
Mr Harris always seems to provide the provenance of any material that seems to show Lees to be a fraud, and even prints the long Chicago article in full; but where is the Conan Doyle letter asking Lees to spill the beans about JTR? I have a letter from C-D to Lees, and it doesn't mention JTR at all.
Anyway, I'll be back in about 18 hours from now!
Regards,
SB. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Friday, 09 February 2001 - 09:27 am | | | Obviously a Freudian slip... |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Friday, 09 February 2001 - 09:34 am | | | We posted at the same time, thank you Mr Butt. |
Author: Stephen Butt
Saturday, 10 February 2001 - 02:07 am | | Dear Mr Evans,
I must confess that I hesitated before writing to this site because I am well aware of the contempt with which most JTR writers view the usual Lees narratives. It must seem strange to you that someone should want to give credence to stories that have been discounted by so many people who have been researching the subject for longer than myself. I am reminded that the police called Lees `a lunatic and a fool’ on Wednesday 3 October 1888 when he offered his `services’, and that few people outside his close family and spiritualist circles have since been any more favourably disposed towards him. To some, I am probably in danger of `taking heed of a fantasist’, to quote Mr Harris.
I am in the process of writing a biography of Lees. His early years prior to his marriage in 1873 and his move to Manchester where he joined the staff of the Manchester Guardian are relatively easy to research, as is the period between his departure from London in 1895 until his death in Leicester in 1931. The difficult period is his time in London.
My interest in Lees came from the discovery of a scrapbook of letters and press cuttings, once owned by Eva Lees, that I found in a secondhand shop in Leicester. This led me to other Lees papers including those offered for auction at Sotherbys on 30 June 1982. In all, they make up an archive of thousands of letters, letterbooks, diaries, bank statements, press cuttings, manuscripts, magic lantern slides, photographs and other ephemera that together have begun to give me a picture of the `real’ Lees. There is nothing `spectacular’ in this collection – no new revelations about JTR, just lots of bits and pieces that give you a `feel’ about Lees and his family.
The more I look at these items (and I haven’t yet ploughed my way through all of them), the more worried I become about the picture painted by Mr Harris. Here is original source material, the paperwork that is generated every day by families. Taken as a whole, it presents a far fuller picture of Lees (warts and all) than the snapshot approach of previous writers.
I agree that most references to Lees in JTR literature have been derived from versions of the fictional Chicago story. But at the time of the murders, Lees was undertaking philanthropic work in the area, he had associations with the other philanthropists, he met with American tourists, and he knew a number of the editors and publishers of the leading London newspapers and journals. How could Lees have not been across the current street-gossip?
But all sorts of inaccuracies have occurred when writers have referred to Lees and the usual story of his alleged involvement in the JTR investigation, and such inaccuracies are still happening.
Stephen Knight was very selective in the aspects of the Lees narrative that he chose to use. He tried to give credibility to his use of the Lees story by quoting Mrs Emily Porter “who knew her Uncle James well”. I had several long conversations with Mrs Porter, and she told me she could hardly remember Lees, and simply related to Knight (in what was apparently a very brief meeting) what Eva Lees had told her, answering `yes’ to all the questions Knight asked her. Knight also claimed that Lees’ family roots were in Bournemouth, and implied a connection between Inspector Abberline who retired to Bournemouth, and an executor of his will, one Nelson Edwin Lees. Lees family roots were definitely not in Bournemouth. Descendants of Lees have worked with me in checking his family tree, and apart from two of his youngest daughters having lived in the Bournemouth area for a short while, not one of over one hundred members of the Lees family, from three generations before Lees to three generations after him, had any association with the area, and we have found no trace at all of a Nelson Edwin Lees. Knight did in fact miss a gem of oral testimony from Emily’s brother. He has always been very fearful of spiritualism after an encounter with Lees as a child, when he says he was healed by him. His frank, clear testimony is a wonderful piece of writing, but would not have been relevant to what Knight was trying to prove.
Nick Warren in his article The Great Conspiracy states:
“The idea of a doctor was taken up by the maverick medium Robert James Lees (1849-1931) who just before his death claimed in the Daily Express to have solved the crime and received a royal pension for his pains.”
Lees died on Sunday 11 January 1931. The first Daily Express article was published on Saturday 7 March 1931, two months after Lees’ death. It was, as Mr Harris points out, a blatant re-write of the Chicago article. The claims in the Daily Express are not those of Lees.
I agree that the relevant chapters of Jack the Ripper – the Bloody Truth (ch8 – 11 inc) seem a convincing and comprehensive demolition of all the popular Lees stories, but I am concerned that most of the criticisms of Lees’ stories are really criticisms of someone else’s accounts of what Lees might have said or done. They are not Lees’ own words. In most cases, they are the dramatic expansions of the basic facts by Lees’ daughter Eva. So many times, I see the phrase `Lees claimed that ….’ where no supporting evidence or documentation is offered.
The thematic structure of Mr Harris’ argument against Lees is:
The Chicago article was a fictitious prank constructed by rogue journalists.
Lees did not speak out against it because he realised the article had exposed him as a fantasist.
Lees had a misguided image of his own role in life, which led him to regard some fantasies as real events.
Lees told his daughter that he had been responsible for the capture of the Irish terrorist Gallacher, but in fact, the police apprehended Gallacher because of their own intelligence-gathering in Birmingham.
Lees also claimed his books were written by his spirit guides and said he had a photograph of one of them; but the photograph was a fake by Boursnell, and various examples of Boursnell’s fakery are available.
These incidents combine to prove that there is no substance in the story that Lees had an involvement in the JTR investigation.
Proving that the Chicago Sunday Times-Herald article of 28 April 1895 is a work of fiction does not prove that Lees had no involvement in the JTR case. In the Fenian case, the claim that Lees was instrumental in the arrest of Gallacher is a story that again came from his daughter Eva, repeated by countless spiritualist friends. It is not from Lees himself. Mr Harris says that “he (Lees) assured his daughter Eva that, back in 1883, he’d even been responsible for the capture of a Fenian bombing gang….” Can we really be sure that Lees did say that to Eva?
Mr Harris asks why Lees did not come forward to renounce the Chicago article and thus `save his reputation.’ I do not know, but what I am sure of was that Lees was not in London at the time the article was reprinted by the British press. He was ill – very ill - and being nursed by his family in St Ives, in Cornwall. He was not capable of reading a newspaper, let alone writing a letter to one.
The only Boursnell picture I know of is the one included as the frontispiece in Lees’ Through the Mists. Of course, it is a fake, and a very simple one, being merely a double exposure. However, what I do not know is whether this picture appeared in the first edition of the book published in 1898. I have two copies of the book, but these are from the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth impressions, published after Lees’ death. It may be that the photograph was included in the later impressions only by Eva. Perhaps I am being naïve in suggesting that Lees did not know of Boursnell’s fakery, as the spirit `friend’ would have been added by Boursnell later, in his dark room. One of Lees’ sons, Claude, became a professional photographer, and took portraits of his father in his later years. He would certainly not have allowed his father to be deluded by such simple fakery.
Mr Harris denounces Eva’s claims about the Fenian arrests by noting that much of the police’ investigation was carried out in Birmingham, and that intelligence from that source led them to observe the gang in London. This does not mean that there is no substance in the basic Lees story which suggests that some of the gang were using the cover of being American tourists in order to get to know the layout of some of the public buildings they intended to bomb, and that Lees was, at that time, acting as a guide for American tourists in London. Some of his tour notes have survived, and from these it can confirmed that the likely terrorist targets such as the Tower of London were on his route. He also notes that at times he was asked by tourists to be taken to certain London landmarks and areas.
Mr Harris adds that in later years, after an article in the Leicester Chronicle published on 23 November 1929, “fellow-spiritualist Conan Doyle tried his best as well but even he couldn’t persuade Lees to divulge the name (of JTR)”. My concern here is that, to the best of my knowledge, Conan Doyle wrote only one letter to Lees, and that was nothing to do with JTR. It was about the much earlier story of Lees’ alleged seances with Queen Victoria. Although Mr Harris reprints the entire Chicago article, he does not publish the Conan Doyle letter to which he refers, nor gives any clue to where it is, or its provenance. The full text of the one Conan Doyle letter I know about, dated 6 November 1928, is as follows:
Dear Mr Lees,
I was wondering whether the remarkable story of the late Queen and your psychic experiences could not be put on record – even if it were not publicly used. It seems to me, so far as I understand it, to be a point of great historical interest.
The general outline as it reached me was that as a young medium you got a message from Prince A. That you sent it. That two Court Officials came to investigate. That they got messages. That these messages indicated JB as having the same powers as you, and that from then onwards JB did act as medium.
We are all growing older and it would be good to leave a clear record behind.
Yours sincerely,
A Conan Doyle.
The Leicester Chronicle article, by the way, was written by a spiritualist (Hugh Mogford) who was a great admirer of Lees, so cannot be taken as being an objective report.
Lees lived in London from 1877 to 1895. When he moved to London, he was not an active spiritualist, and had in fact been speaking against spiritualism in the north of England. His earlier flirtation with spiritualism had ended when he realised he had been deceived by two fraudulent mediums. He turned against spiritualism, and even shared a platform with the Revd Thomas Ashcroft who was arguably the strongest critic of spiritualism at that time.
Lees moved to London at the behest of his employer, the Manchester Guardian, his brief being to investigate the practicalities of setting up a London bureau. He left that newspaper to join one of the many new journals that were being launched at that time, and as a consequence, became unemployed, and lost his home and most of his effects. To earn a living, he started showing American visitors around the sights of London. He also became aware of the poverty of the East End, and worked with several of the philanthropists of the time. His belief in spiritualism gradually returned, and later, he also set up a philanthropic establishment in Peckham called the `Peoples’ League’.
It is my contention that if he knew anything about JTR, the knowledge could have come his way through his various activities – as a journalist (in that he was acquainted with the likes of W.T.Stead etc), as a philanthropist (in that he heard all the street-gossip, and he frequented the area himself, in the same way as Barnardo, and the other philanthropists), and as a tourist guide. Any knowledge he had need not have come to him because of supernatural events. The same argument stands for any knowledge he might have had of Fenian activity.
I hope some of this makes sense. I suspect it all sounds rather flimsy, but that is the reason why I have joined these messageboards. To quote the old medium himself, from the foreword to his Life Elysian:
“I can see you start … almost catch the emphatic exclamation with which you are tempted to throw the book aside and read no more. But … I am not mad but speak the words of truth and soberness.”
With best wishes,
Stephen Butt. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Saturday, 10 February 2001 - 04:14 am | | Dear Stephen,
Thank you for a lengthy and most detailed response on your work. However, it does leave several of the questions posed by your previous posts unanswered. I too have done some extended research on Lees, in a peripheral sense only I hasten to add, not in the depth that you obviously have. Also, it must be said, I have made an extensive study of all the official material available on the Whitechapel murders and there is no mention of Lees anywhere.
I can understand your bias towards Lees in that you are his biographer. It is gratifying to know that a researcher has devoted himself to a full study of this most interesting character, he is most certainly worthy of such a study. Also, as a collector of rare documents, books and other ephemera, I find your story of the Lees material you have found fascinating. With all the material you say there is in this collection I am amazed that there is "nothing 'spectacular'" amongst it, given the nature of Lees, his life and the interesting people he knew. If you acquired this material in 1982, some nineteen years ago, and still 'haven't yet ploughed your way through all of them,' there must be a veritable mass of documentation.
Obviously, as you have this unique material, I am not in a position to comment on it unless you decide to post some of it here. I have to say that from all I know of the case and of Lees I find the idea of any involvement, other than his rejected approaches to the police on 2, 3 and 4 October, 1888, totally unproven. Knight was an author with an agenda and I am aware of various errors and distortions in his work. As you have seen I have reproduced Mr. Harris' piece on the Fenian connection above, and it would be he, not I, who could shed light on his sources. I accept the fact that Lees was ill, as you say, at the time the report of the Chicago Sunday Times-Herald article in the English press, but the story was an ongoing one in Lees lifetime and he never rejected it. There is no evidence of any involvement of Lees with the Fenian activities in 1883, nor in 1888 (when there was a plot to assassinate Balfour afoot).
Both Stead and Doyle were ardent spiritualists and undoubtedly knew Lees well, he was by then a spiritualist himself. I notice that Mr Harris mentions Doyle on page 105 of his book but I see no mention of a letter by Doyle. The text of the Doyle letter you quote is interesting but, as you say, bears no relevance to the 'Ripper' case.
His acquaintance with Stead was, so far as I can tell, established through their joint beliefs in spiritualism, as much as any press connection. That Lees took an interest in the 'Ripper' murders cannot be in doubt as his diary entries prove. However, there were very few prominent and professional men in those days who were not interested in the East End crimes. But, as I have said, there is no evidence whatsoever that Lees interest extended beyond the abortive approaches to the police.
Again you are to be thanked for your lengthy and most interesting response, and to be commended for your pioneering work on Lees. But are you able to furnish any evidence of Lees having any involvement at all with the 'Ripper' inquiry, and, if so, what is that evidence. Also, are you going to furnish any more detail of the alleged letter from Anderson's staff to Lees (and its authentication), and I see, on another board, that Mr. Skinner has asked for your source for the Stead correspondence you quote.
Best Wishes,
Stewart |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Monday, 12 February 2001 - 09:30 am | | Dear Stephen,
Another point, that I omitted to address above, relates to the Boursnell picture described on page 102 of Jack the Ripper - The Bloody Truth. You say,
"The only Boursnell picture I know of is the one included as the frontispiece in Lees' Through The Mists. Of course, it is a fake, and a very simple one, being merely a double exposure. However, what I do not know is whether this picture appeared in the first edition of the book published in 1898. I have two copies of the book, but these are from the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth impressions, published after Lees' death. It may be that the photograph was included in the later impressions only by Eva. Perhaps I am being naive in suggesting that Lees did not know of Boursnell's fakery, as the spirit 'friend' would have been added by Boursnell later, in his dark room..."
My copy of Through The Mists also post-dates Lees' death, so I cannot comment on the frontispiece in this book either. However, that is rather irrelevant because we do know that the photograph was published in the Illustrated Leicester Chronicle in November, 1929, while Lees was still alive and living in Fosse Road South, Leicester. The photograph is accompanied by a report of an interview with Lees himself and he described the taking of the photograph and the appearance of the 'spirit.' The claim, by Lees, that the 'spirit photograph' was indeed genuine was further made in another article on December 14, 1929. So, I am afraid, the frontispiece of Lees' book is rather irrelevant as he makes it patently clear in his interview that he endorsed the 'spirit photograph' fully.
As I have said, I am very interested in the letter you say you have from one of Anderson's staff to Lees as this bears more directly on Lees' alleged association with the police.
Best Wishes,
Stewart |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Monday, 12 February 2001 - 09:32 pm | | Dear Mr. Butt,
I wish you well on this interesting sounding
biography of Robert Lees. There are only two
points I want to mention.
First, there was an author named Trevor Hall
who wrote several pretty interesting studies on
spritualists, although as a debunker. He was also
the author of several books on Sherlock Holmes
and Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't know if he is
still alive, but if he is he may serve as a good
critic of your work or even as a person to suggest
areas to make further research.
Secondly, the story of the 1883 Fenian plot strikes me as very curious for Lees' daughter to
remember. While in its day the explosions were
quite a sensation, I seem to recall that most of
the damage done in them was to building property.
The only fatalities were a party of three Fenians
who were blown up by the premature explosion of
their device when transporting it to a bridge.
I bring this up because it is odd that the daughter would recall only these two occurences,
one a long forgotten arrest, and the other a still
world - reknowned mystery. That they both happened within five years is curious, but many
better known sensations than the arrest of those
Fenians had occurred in the 1880s. I just wonder
why that would be so memorable to her.
Sincerely yours,
Jeff Bloomfield |
Author: Stephen Butt
Tuesday, 13 February 2001 - 02:24 am | | Dear Stewart,
Thank you again for your further comments. I hold my hand up with regard to the Boursnell picture, as I had forgotten the Leicester Chronicle article.
The reasons why it has taken so long for me to study the Lees archive are twofold: for some years the material was inaccessible, and it was only the fairly recent transfer of the material from a library to a record office that gave me easy access; and I have a full-time job which means that any research has to take place in the twilight hours or on occasional free weekends.
I agree with you that I have no firm evidence to show that Lees had any involvement with the JTR investigations (other than the brief diary entries you cite). But I still have a nagging doubt about dismissing everything relating to his alleged involvement by simply denouncing him as a fantasist or a fraud.
I am happy to offer the Police Fenian letter for wider scrutiny. Would you like me to send you a scanned image of it?
Also, I regret I have not seen the request from Mr Skinner regarding the W.T.Stead letters. Please can you indicate on which board you saw this mail?
Best wishes,
Stephen. |
Author: Stephen Butt
Tuesday, 13 February 2001 - 02:41 am | | Dear Jeff,
Thanks for writing. I'll see if I can trace the Trevor Hall book.
I know I'm speculating, but to me, the fact that Eva could speak of one specific incident in the Fenian `campaign' of that period (and an incident that took place well before she was born) does suggest that its significance to her was that her father had some involvement in it.
We know that at that time, Lees was acting as a tourist guide for American visitors to London. He would often start and finish his tours at the their hotels, and would wine and dine with them. The tours would include some of the major London public buildings such as the Tower of London.
Eva often misconstrued facts about her father, consciously or unconsciously. For instance, she would often tell her spiritualist friends that Lees ``was able to gain access to all the important and royal buildings in London', implying that her father could do this because he had some privileged status deriving from a prior association with Queen Victoria. In reality, he DID have this access, but he gained it simply be writing and asking for permission to incorporate these buildings in his tours, just as guides in my own town do today.
But Eva's fables do not negate the fact that he WAS in these buildings, with American visitors, at this time.
Thanks for your interest.
Stephen. |
Author: Stewart P Evans
Tuesday, 13 February 2001 - 05:01 am | | Dear Stephen,
Many thanks for your quick response.
I am guilty of a slight misapprehension for I had thought that you had purchased the Lees collection and had it in your possession. I now understand how it has been a long job accessing the material.
I would appreciate a scanned copy of the police Fenian letter and I will e-mail you regarding this. I believe that it may be the same as one I already have in my possession, but which is not a very good copy. If this is one and the same letter to which you refer, then I am seriously concerned about its authenticity, and I still wonder what authentication you have had done.
Regarding Mr Skinner's query, it appears on the 'The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion: The Real James Maybrick' thread and you may be interested to read it. As regards the Stead letters, I have copies of these. I have informed Keith of the source and I am providing him with copies of them.
I still congratulate you on your work, which I feel is a vital and neglected area of research. You are to be commended.
Regarding Jeff Bloomfield's post above, Trevor Hall died several years ago, coincidentally I spoke with him on the telephone shortly before he died. It is unfortunate that he is not available for comment. Hall's major de-bunking work was on Harry Price and the Borley Rectory ('The Most Haunted House in England') story. The Fenian bombings in London, of course, were big news at the time and I am sure that Lees, taking an interest in them, would have kept press cuttings on all such things.
Keep up the good work Stephen.
Best Wishes,
Stewart |
Author: Stephen Butt
Tuesday, 13 February 2001 - 08:35 am | | Dear Stewart,
I've now replied to Keith Skinner.
Forgive me for asking, but are you sure we're talking about the same Stead letters?
The Fenian letter you have does interest me, because the one I have hasn't been very accessible, having been in private hands for some time. I'll await your email so we can compare them.
Stephen. |
Author: Jeff Bloomfield
Tuesday, 13 February 2001 - 10:22 pm | | I want to suggest another source for Stephen to
look for. There is a good, well researched
account of the Fenian bombing campaign of the
1880s, K.R.M. Short's THE DYNAMITE WAR (Dublin:
Gill and MacMillan, 1979). Unfortunately, there
is no mention of Robert Lees in the book's index,
but one of the individuals involved in the
investigation was Sir Robert Anderson.
Jeff Bloomfield |
Author: jennifer pegg
Monday, 04 February 2002 - 01:39 pm | | | hiya does anyone know what is meant by the remark that keith skinner thinks there is more to this story which i read somewhere? |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 05 February 2002 - 04:56 am | | Hi Jennifer,
Keith gives me the impression that he thinks there could be more to a lot of stories, ie they start with a grain of truth somewhere and become embellished or distorted over time.
This may be just one of those stories.
Hope this helps.
Love,
Caz |
Author: jennifer pegg
Tuesday, 05 February 2002 - 07:31 am | | well what i really am interested in is the life and times of rj lees. i am very aware of the chicagos storys lack of merits as i became interested in Lees this way. it would probably be accurate to state there was a grain of truth somewhere, though how big a grain is really what i want to try to discover. i was simply getting board with reading this or that and keith skinner said this but not actually that at all , if this makes sense so thank you for your help
jennifer |
Author: Martin Fido
Wednesday, 06 February 2002 - 08:27 am | | How is Mr Butt's work going? I really look forward to seeing a proper, well-researched and objective life of Lees, after he has been used as a football by spiritualists and some Ripper historians for so long, and evidently Stewart E feels the same.
All the best,
Martin F |
Author: jennifer pegg
Thursday, 07 February 2002 - 01:46 pm | | hi martin,
me and stephen are in regular contact. he can be contacted via his website. the address of which is www.rjlees.co.uk, im sure he would love to hear from you. send my best wishes if you do!
i too am really interested in this line of research and find mr lees most interesting because he is and if i dont stop now ill be writing this all day!
would love to hear your views on my old friend rj!
jennifer |
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