Memories of Clacton

My memories of Clacton in 1982 are a hazy mixture of imagination, Spider-Man, Superman and Batman costumes, the smell of jacket potatos mixed with the salty air, a huge amount of freedom that would shock today's helicoptor parents, a videogame arcade, fairground rides, Dracula ice lollies, adventures around a caravan site, losing at least one milk tooth and many, many other things that concern a five year old turning six. I was a circus kid and our circus had stopped touring.

Around me raged drama, anxiety, laughter, conflict and all the trappings of the great traditional circus in its last valiant death throes; spectucular live performances juxtaposed against a world set for change but not quite there yet. My father's dreams and my mother's nostalgia.

We were working in buidings now, like our cultural ancestors in the Victorian era. Back then temporary circus buildings were replaced by permanent structures like the Hippodrome in anticipation of ever-growing circuses. Now we had swapped in our canvas to work in ice rinks, theatres and pavillion buildings. We arrived just two years into the pier being bought by a consortium of businessmen who sought to bring back the dolpinarium and renovate the old Jolly Roger building. Apparently this would be the last performance given at the building. Now,  in 2017, the old structure is about to host a circus again.

My father recently discussed our time at Clacton. Here are his words:

How did they shoot the leopard scenes in "2001: A Space Odyssey"?

Chipperfield Circus caravans, Town Moor, Newcastle (Photo credit: Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums)

Cover via Amazon

History is often referred to as the tapestry of life. It is a romantic notion and conjures up our intuitive linear way of viewing things. Our stories, we are instructed, must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Unfortunately no one told these rules to the God of Chaos who seems to spawn a type of tangled tree or weaves the confused web of a spider on acid. This is the way history can unfold when you research people and events. Certainly this was the case when I researched "The Legend of Salt and Sauce". I also indulged in recording the life stories of many of the individuals that were connected to these two famous elephants, as I felt it demonstrated just how many extraordinary lives were entwined. This blog have deviated into a variety of subjects often, but not always related to historical circus and their animals. As a result I am delighted when I discover various historians - from academic scholars to amateur genealogists - use this blog for their research.

The Legacy Endures...

It was always a delight when I discover an another angle on the history covered in my book, The Legend of Salt and Sauce. Of course, my story is not just the story of these two elephants. It is also the story of the people who worked with them and, in this instance, the other elephants connected to them. The first part of my book tells the life story of the elephant trainer, George William Lockhart. Lockhart would meet his untimely demise at Whalthamstow Goods Yard when Sauce accidentally crushed him to death. However, before he even owned Salt, Sauce, Mustard, Pepper, Vinegar and Mustard II, he had a trio of elephants that brought him fame and renown all over Europe, in Russia and in America. These were Boney, Molly and Waddy.

Passport to yesterday? The Trefoil Guild and exploring the "other country"

With “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” now reaching its second edition’s second anniversary, it has been a little while now since I have attended any signings. Therefore my father and I were delighted to visit the Trefoil Guild to give a one hour talk and PowerPoint presentation on our book. When we launched the first edition of the book it was in front of the Circus Friends Association. When we launched the second edition it was in front of the Wolverhampton Historical Society. Both institutions obviously had a strong interest in the subject. On other occasions we have done signings for zoo enthusiasts and historians who were either interested in the general subject of performing animals in music halls, zoos and circuses or in how the legend of these two elephants impacted on their locality. However, from time to time we get requests from societies – like the Ladies Probus Club – who booked us on the basis of the unusual quality of our subject. The Trefoil Club was this sort of booking.
It is always interesting to not only help bring people’s memories alive again – some of our audience members were into their 80s – but also to listen to their accounts of the times I only know through researching documents, books, photographs and newspaper articles. The era Salt and Sauce lived in was one that dramatically changed around the time their demise thus helping to condemn these once exceptionally well-known elephants to the “forgotten history” archives. Although none of those who attended our talk remembered these elephants - despite one contemporary author quoted in my book calling them the most famous elephants of their time - they did have very fond memories of my family’s elephants. One lady even had several photographs she had published taken in the early ‘60s of my family’s elephants being walked from the now non-existent Chipping Norton station. Despite being interested and buying plenty of copies of our book, much of the discussion and questions centred on my father’s involvement with my grandparents’ large number of elephants.

George Sanger: Pseudohistorian? Making a Circus of History

In recent times I have become almost as interested in methods to study history as I have in the actual subjects. This has led me to read Richard J. Evans’ book “In Defence of History”. So far, it is an engrossing read that details the history of history and the various competing methods that have evolved over time. I was particularly fascinated in the many attempts to define history as a science, even a social or “weak” science, which it does not happily fit. Nevertheless, the struggle to keep history as an objective study of the past and to establish “facts” is a valiant one, especially in the face of postmodern ideas that have challenged the validity of history altogether. Anyway, having only got through the first few chapters I was delighted to come across a passage that mentions a member of my historical culture, a circus man, “Lord” George Sanger.

Sanger crops up in my book “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” and a relation of his, George Sanger Coleman, in “The Sanger Story”, gave me an interesting if dramatic description of one the characters I was researching, “Lieutenant” Frank Taylor (Aka Alpine Charlie). “Lord” George and his brother “Lord” John Sanger hobnobbed with royalty and ran a circus in the later 19^th and early 20^th century. George is known for making a presentation to Queen Victoria. A disease similar to the one that almost killed the elephant Salt even bore the Sanger name when it wiped out of their herds. George was murdered in 1911, providing a dramatic ending to a dramatic life.

“In Defence of History” cites Sanger as being a notorious source for another murder, the alleged kicking to death of a gingerbread salesman by a drunken mob in 1850 at the Stalybridge Wakes. His memoirs had been read by historian, George Kitson Clark and referenced in his book on Victorian England. The report was then repeated as an historical “fact”. According to Richard J. Evans no contemporary reports support this story. There are detailed newspaper reports of the fair, which included archery, morris dancing and a description of an ascent in a balloon. In fact, very little drunkeness was reported at all. We cannot just dismiss Sanger's report, but its validity should be held in question. I spoke quite extensively in “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” about the way fanciful tales were woven around various events in circus history. This helped contribute to my fascination in the way fiction becomes “fact” if a certain story is not checked, but repeated without question and then passed on.

Forgotten Fame III: Captain Herbert Clarke

Thanks to cousin, Jim Stockley, I have been able to read yet more "forgotten fame". Anyone who has read my blog for a decent period of time will know I am a particular fan of this stuff. This is why I enjoy reading work from historians like Heather Vallance and Cathy Barrett (who seek out hard to find primary source material in order to reconstruct periods from the past. It is also why I actively ferret out and oppose pseudohistory, alternative history and crackpot conspiracy theories (see my blog www.beelzebubsbroker.blogspot.com for more on this). There is more than enough fascinating data and lost information that can be uncovered through legitimate research.

My book "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" focuses on two elephants and their trainers that became legendary almost mythical in the circus world, a community I grew up in, but were virtually forgotten by the outside world. It made me consider other examples of even more famous events and people who also became stuck in time. This was my first post on the subject http://jamieclubb.blogspot.com/2009/03/forgotten-fame-salt-and-sauce-meet.html

Prompted by a response from cousin Jim again, I posted a piece on one of his favourite examples of forgotten fame http://jamieclubb.blogspot.com/2009/04/forgotten-fame-ii-incredible-abernathy.html

Now Jim has found an excellent blog that details a piece of history seemingly forgotten by our own community, the life and times of "Captain" Herbert Clarke. Clarke is a character not found in any of the circus encyclopaedias or anywhere else on the net, which is what prompted the author of the historical blog to write about him. What is even more amazing is that my father is an avid researcher into the history of Bostock and Wombwelle's Menagerie, the very show that booked Clarke, and this was the first time he had heard about the trainer. It just goes to show how easily the past can be forgotten even within the microcosm of the circus. Enjoy! http://www.thebloxidgetallygraph.com/patcollinsliontamer.htm

Recently I was prompted to post up my notes on my modern definitions of cynicism, pseudoscepticism, ancient scepticism and modern scepticism. They are virtually unedited, completely unbalanced and taken straight out of an email conversation. I also admit them to being partial as there is a lot more I could have added. However, seeing that more people I am in contact with have taken some interest in the scepticism and what is often meant by the term I thought I'd best share it here. For the record, this is not a sceptical blog, although I am an unashamed modern sceptic and individualist.

Cynic = A person who always assumes worst in everything. Varies from a Samuel Beckett or Phillip Larkin (both who I enjoy reading) pessimist to someone who has a generally nihilistic view on life and an irrational capacity to seeing the worst in everything. It’s a position that should be avoided, but we all have it in us in some form.

Pseudosceptic = Teenage syndrome! In short, those who attack something that has the biggest body of evidence, but refuses to accept the burden of proof. Some are controversial for the sake of being controversial whereas others are your typical confirmation bias conspiracists etc.

Ancient scepticism = I can’t pretend I have a large amount of knowledge on this subject, but from what I can gather this form of scepticism started off with very good intentions – like today’s modern version – but ended up becoming very much like the pseudosceptics. Advocators of this traditional form of scepticism ended up posing improvable academia like “Prove that the world wasn’t created five minutes ago and we arrived with all our memories intact” or “Everything is just a figment of our imagination”. This is where my prejudice may come in, but at its worst I see this as cowardly cop-out mental masturbation. It’s the sort of nonsense I loathe in martial arts - “Ah but in a real situation I would do this and you wouldn’t do that”. If we can’t replicate it, test it or see workable examples to support the hypothesis aside from “philosophical evidence” (there’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever seen one) then it doesn’t warrant an equal oppositional argument. It’s the same sort of thinking that con-theos or conspiracists use when all their arguments have been debunked by hard evidence – “Everything is a conspiracy!”

See a description George Edward Moore' s philosophical argument against traditional scepticism and the case for "common sense": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_a_hand

Modern sceptic = Not to be confused with the ancient Greek school of philosophy, which many do. I think the modern sceptic at his best is a hard rational thinker with a genuine open mind. He accepts facts as “temporary conclusions with the biggest body evidence”. He doesn’t accept absolutes, but will go where the evidence is strongest and continually tests and questions with logic. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Lister, Jenner and Einstein all questioned the prevailing opinion of their times, but they did so with hard data and compelling evidence. They took their burden of proof and were willing to prove their ideas. What I love most about these examples is that they didn’t do it through force of personality – often the staple tactic of religions, cults and philosophies – but through ideas that could be proven the world over by similarly educated individuals.

Damoo Dhotre Celebrations in India

Following up from a post I made on my father's behalf regarding the career of Damoo Dhotre, we were recently sent photographs of a special event held in the great Damoo's native land of India to celebrate the 36th anniversay of his death 23 January 1973. The event was organized by his great grandson, Anand Dhotre who very kindly sent me some photographs of the event and gave me permission to reproduce them on my blog.

New Blog for Pen and Spindle

The Pen And The Spindle: The Pen And The Spindle Post Updates February 22, 2009

Can History be Objective? A Conversation with Heather Vallance

“...conspiracy theorists are the ignorant and bored amusing themselves in areas they are least qualified to speak” – Dr Heather Vallance

We all need our teachers. I have always felt a great desire to honour and remember all of mine. I dedicated my first book “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” to my first teacher, the person who helped set me on the path of telling, reading and listening to stories. Years later I got bitten by the history bug, and became equally interested in investigating so-called “true” stories. During my time writing and researching “Salt and Sauce”, which is an historical investigation, I was put into contact with a brilliant historian from Canada who specialized in researching hard to find data and, in particular, primary source material. Dr Heather Vallance is a writer whose work is inspirational in the way it tries to quite literally bring history to life. In addition to recording and fighting to preserve historical data with a relentless passion, she is not frightened to use different mediums to convey her ideas. This has ranged from homemade documentaries to an actual historical novel, “The Tumbleweed Wars”. It is this combination of fact-sticking self-discipline and relentless imaginative energy that inspires me to regularly consult Heather, as a teacher, regarding most writing matters and particularly those concerning historical research.

In recent years I have taken the approach of the sceptic, after the fashion of the scientific sceptical community. It was a long “soul” searching decision that gradually progressed from a desire to establish facts and to filter out irrationality. It is now a philosophical approach that affects all parts of my life from my approach to teaching martial arts to the way I approach history. My book, “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” was all about filtering out myths and distortions of facts to establish the closest account of the truth I could find. However, I have noticed that the scientific community takes the lion’s share of sceptical analysis and debunking. They certainly have a lot to fight, but so do historians and, like science, history is also a discipline that is concerned with establishing hard facts. Just as there is pseudoscience baffling the ignorant, naïve and ill-informed there is pseudo-history fuelling paranoia and distorting our understanding of past events. It was this subject I broached with Heather and I learned a lot.
For me, the worst example of the pseudo-historian is a group of people we have ended up describing as the “conspiracy theorists”. Conspiracies, of course, do exist and have existed, but they rarely operate in the manner described by those who believe that the moon landings were faked, Princess Diana was assassinated, the Freemasons were behind the Jack the Ripper murders, the US government engineered the 9/11 tragedy or that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. People lie and secrets are kept, but there has yet to be a truly plausible account given of how a conspiracy orchestrated any of these events, and often it is the approach taken by conspiracy theorists that goes against rational and sober historical investigation. They operate on confirmation biases, counting anything that supports their theory and disregarding anything that opposes it, often the point of nitpicking small inconsistencies that always turn up in anecdotal evidence. At best such approaches bring history into disrepute at worst they fuel paranoia, unfairly hurt the relatives and descendents of those involved in the period of history being reported and draw attention away from thorough historical research. The conspiracy theorist is to historians what the lowest of the sensationalist gutter press is to responsible journalism.

So I took my attitude towards pseudo-history to Heather. She had just completed writing the third of her trilogy of books on Anglo-American history between the two Boer Wars, “Golden Nemesis”. No stranger to “misinformation and disinformation” in history, Heather had done a lot of debunking with the life of US solider John Young Filmore Blake in her first book of the trilogy “An Unconventional Soldier”. Her email responses to me, as always, were frank and informative for which I am very grateful:

“There is no such thing as objectivity or truth but there is a space in all research where we can try to see things as they are and not as we want them to be. Strangely, skepticism can get in the way of reaching that space as much as the inability to face what lies there.
“What is essential in seeking lived experience is that we build checks and balances on ourselves and our own responses rather than do what is believed to be the correct thing and that is place checks and balances on external things. By monitoring ourselves scientifically we automatically apply principles of internal integrity onto our subject of study.

“History as a discipline alone is too steeped in 'tradition' and mainstream to explore lived experience using just its principles. That is why I encourage people to go into parallel philosophies such as phenomenology for inspiration”.

On the subject of conspiracy theories, Heather described to me the difference between a conspiracy, and the methods used by conspiracy theorists, and something she calls “networks of intention”, which have solid historical validity:

“If you can plot the interaction between people it is not a conspiracy. If researchers think in conspiracies they can never unearth the truth about things. It becomes an intellectual game rather than a plotted lived experience. This type of thinking is as much a fantasy as is the rigidly adhered to traditional history.

“There are reports and congressional documents which show that Cecil Rhodes was in talks with John Hay and other Americans about bringing down German commercial power by 1920. That is not a conspiracy that is business advantage. If you do not plan and project in business you fail.

“Now, if the conspiracy theorists get going then the truth of that experience is lost in silliness. I often say that conspiracy theorists are the ignorant and bored amusing themselves in areas they are least qualified to speak. Unfortunately, conspiracy theory has become a fad and is 'taught' in history classes. Which perhaps just goes to prove my point.

“Anyhow, conspiracy theory is a game not an actual research method and its proponents either have to go around in circles or grow out of it and become thinking analysts. And, as we both know, some people just don't grow up.

“I don't cater for that type of individual as a writer, researcher, and historian. From seeing your work and how you process you findings I doubt that you do and will. The aim in primary source research is to build patterns of interaction over time and across space and let them speak for themselves. Questioning and curious minds who can accept that life is not what we try to pretend it is will always be drawn to you and your work.

“From my part, and this is not related to your own comment at all, I am maddened by individuals who refuse to accept that networks of intention do exist and have existed and treat these as 'conspiracy' thereby undermining our understanding of human interaction over time.

“The case in point is in [Golden] Nemesis which is a chaos of interwoven relationships of self-interest that eventually explode and shatter lives and countries.

“The story which is chronologically logged step by step is a chess board of greed, power, and money enveloping not just the so-called terrorist organizations and idealists but respected historical figures such as Rhodes and Barnato. They used systems of aggression to underpin their own aims and ambitions. There is nothing conspiratorial about this. The same thing goes on today. Sometimes, you have to live the chaos to identify it, and often those who sit around debating conspiracy theory come from very closed and protected homes and societies where everything can appear cut and dry.

“Hence the power of perception in writing history and my statement about objectifying our own responses rather than the data”.

This returned us to our discussion regarding objectivity and the area of confirmation biases, which brought up a very interesting discussion regarding personal preferences, fact-finding and the right attitude a historian needs to take:

“I think researchers in any sphere of interest who say that they do not hope for a set of results when they begin their projects are liars. We all engage in projects because we have specific beliefs, hopes, and hypotheses. The test is to separate the impetus for a study from the data as it reveals itself during the study.

“For example, I do believe that John Young Filmore Blake was an honorable man and an idealist who adhered to a set of morals which made him different from many others in his day. There is a substantial body of data to support this belief and to challenge the characteristics assigned to him by those who did not wish him well either during or after his life time. I also know from the data that he was a man who saw no problem with using physical violence against his perceived enemies - as long as there were no civilian casualties, a self-delusion suffered by many activists because there are always civilian casualties in guerrilla warfare.

“I am also a pacifist who believes that war is never an answer to anything if we as a species wish to remain civilized and/or to continue reaching our potential as a species. I had to temporarily overcome my aversion to war and violence in order to research and record a narrative largely about acts of violence and amoral behaviour which eventually implode on the perpetrators and bystanders alike.

“If as a researcher you want to reach into a muddle of lived experience through primary sources or any other means then you have to learn how to disassociate yourself and your personal beliefs from those of the actors of the time and their narrative. But you also have to saturate yourself in their world to understand something of what they saw and experienced.

“I cannot pass judgment on men like Blake because I have never experienced the horror of their lives and the lives of their families, nor should I become so empathetic that I endorse actions that do not adhere to the Geneva Convention. For instance, a group of fighters who joined Blake in Africa during the Anglo Boer War did so wearing the Red Cross, an inexcusable misuse of a neutral symbol. However, had they not done so they would not have reached the battle lines. There is no way an historian can weigh the two sides of the coin morally, but practically, as a method of attainment of a goal at the time these men lived and planned their engagement in the war, there can be no judgment passed on the plan they used to attain that goal.

“Cecil John Rhodes, equally, has been portrayed as a higher being or at worst a flawed god, even by historians I admire. In truth, he was an amoral megalomaniac who cast aside lives as Nancy Hammond said, like trees shed leaves. I respect Rhodes in many ways, but I think that we also need to understand that the underlying narrative of men like Rhodes is that even treason has a place in the world, and all things are expendable. Rhodes became the role model for many front runners of the early 20th century, and that to me is scary.

“We talk about blood diamonds today without any association of the meaning to our own present and past.

“I know I am about to bring down the wrath of the gods for this, - but the Rhodes scholarship funds are comprised of the interest garnered off the sale of blood diamonds in the past. That blood did not belong exclusively to traditional African men and women. The original 'mineral' blood was shed by Irish, American, Native American, South American, European, and even English men, women and children. In essence, what this means is that many students have gained knowledge off the backs and blood of men and women who are their own ancestors.
“Heather the person sees this as a form of unconscious cannibalism. Heather the historian sees it as a fact to be recorded, as a facet of what made the Anglo American 20th century at once both good and bad, strong and weak. Admirable and frightening”.

Her closing remarks in connection with her latest work, “Golden Nemesis”, are a reflection of the type of historian I aspire to be. Like “The Legend of Salt and Sauce” Heather’s book is not intended to be an absolute, but rather a platform for future historical researchers. I am happy to be in contact with more and more people who are secure enough in themselves and passionate enough in the interests of furthering history that they can accept their work is never a closed book:

“What I am trying to do with Nemesis is not formulate a definitive narrative but show through a progression of interaction composed of the relics of the lived experience that we have limited the story to what we want to remember instead of exploring all its angles and themes. It is my hope that others can add to the narrative or tweak bits that are not up to speed, using additional primary sources which I do not have access to. I think of it in terms of a 3D panorama which grows as each new, individual and independent photo is added”.

Links: http://heathervallance.blogspot.com http://penandspindle.blogspot.com

New Edition of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce"

This post is something of a sequel to one I wrote called "No Absolutes". My first book, "The Legend of Salt and Sauce", has been extensively revised since its first publication. This is very exciting news for me. In the spirit of historical writing the book was never intended to be the final word on Salt and Sauce the elephants, and there incredible lives. It was, after all, only the first time their entire story was put together and first serious attempt was made to separate the fact from the fiction. My intentions have always been to inspire others to do further research, fill in gaps with solid evidence and, above all else, correct my errors. Some historians and writers have done just that and were good enough to send me their findings and annotations. I have gratefully received them and used them to improve my book.

The new version of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" is now a virtual second edition that should include extensive revisions of the text thanks to Geoff Stevens, extra information from Mark Twitchett and Ned Williams - including a letter from the deathbed of John "Broncho Bill" Swallow's grandson who was able to read the book shortly before he sadly passed away, an index, a completely rewritten appendix on Sam Lockhart - thanks to Robin Stott and additional colour pictures.

Of course, this will mean that the first print run of the book will be more valuable now, so if you haven't purchased a copy now I would advise you do so soon. We have very limited stocks!

Sam Lockhart's Elephant Walk - Video

On 24th May I attended the unveiling of "Elephant Circle" in Leamington Spa and set up a stand to sign the first copies of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce". The event was organized to not only unveiled this newly repaired and re-located sculpture by Nicholas Dimbleby, but also to celebrate Leamington's historical links to elephants. The root of this association starts with Sam Lockhart the circus elephant trainer. Sam features in "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" as he was the brother of fellow elephant trainer George Lockhart who was tragically killed by Sauce in 1904. I also dedicated an appendix in my book to Sam's life. Despite George's elephants having a more celebrated history in the UK, Sam was the more successful of the two brothers, and during the early part of the twentieth century he famously walked his elephants around Leamington Spa. While I attended the unveiling I couldn't resist the opportunity of filming the famous "Elephant Walk", the slipway where Sam walked his elephants down to bathe in the river Leam. Here is the footage we took: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1zKlz4j7sc

No Absolutes!

When I first made the decision that my story, "The Legend of Salt and Sauce", was going to be a book I thought it would be finished by 2002. Sure enough, by this time we had enough information to produce the life story of these two famous elephants. We knew where they started off, the names of all their owners, how one of them died and, so we thought, how the other died. We also had some good photos. However, as I sent off my proposals to various publishers we started to uncover yet more information. The story changed - not only the content, but my writing style too. As time went on I started hearing words of advice like "you must have a cut off point" - mind you, this was coming from someone who had surpassed Dr. Johnson's ten years in writing his book and five years on he still hasn't had it published! I began to realize that writing an historical book despite having its strict parameters was a completely organic process and one where it was not easy to estimate when its "life" would end.

As time went on I met some terrific writing coaches who helped me develop my writing style. As in the writing of any book, a huge amount of time was put into refining my writing style and then into editing. Please read my friend Geoff Thompson's philosophical article on this particular area, "There is No Such Thing as a Locked Script" http://www.geoffthompson.com/detailArticles.asp?id=86 My book changed from its initial conception, as a type of "Pulp Non-Fiction" (this style is retained in the book's prologue), to being a first person narrative of my father and my investigation into the story of Salt and Sauce (this is retained in the book's footnotes, introduction and afterward), and then finally into the book that it is today - a straightforward fact-based biography. The people who enabled me to take this route were Jonathan Burt, a social historian and author, Laura Longrigg, a literary agent who noticed that I had become infected by the Victorian writing style of the material I had been researching, and Ian Lewis, a retired teacher who did a tremendous amount of kind work for me.

Now, this is just the writing side of things. The trouble with history is that the content is also very temperamental. New evidence crops up all the time. And it was this side of things that became a constant source of jubilation and frustration. By October 2007 I was happy that I had researched all that needed to be researched. I had covered every important area of the elephants' lives that needed to be covered and I had all my sources noted and verified as far as practicable. The story was completely finished. I was happy with how it read. Now my father and I were completing the final tasks. We were listing all the photographs, putting a timeline together for the elephants lives and writing the introduction and afterward. We had a deadline and we were assembling everything to be sent off on time. The book was scheduled to be published by March with the first proofs through by January. Then, the emails came in. Emails from family connected to people who had owned the elephants. These people had more information that filled in gaps, presented new interesting and related anecdotes, and even new photographs. They had to go into the book.I worked hard to include the new material and photographs and still felt that I would make the deadline. As it turned out my publisher moved the deadline back, so I need not had worried at that time. After doing all this I began work on this blog with the very kind help and coaching of historian/author, Heather Vallance of http://www.penandspindle.blogspot.com/ I also started promoting elsewhere to garner local support. The next thing I knew Robin Stott a local historian was in contact with me regarding Sam Lockhart, the elephant training brother of George Lockhart, one time owner of Salt and Sauce. He gave me more information for my appendix on Sam, which I hurriedly included and begged my publisher to include. It made it to him on the eleventh hour. I sent Robin my completed appendix, but there was yet more information he had and a few errors in the appendix. This time my publisher could not allow it and this will be reserved for the second edition of the book.In my introduction to "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" I wrote that my book was not intended to be the "final word" on the lives of Salt and Sauce. Now I realize the weight of that statement. Over the past two years I have become more sceptical in my nature, which has been quite a liberating process. I have come to understand something that I have pondered for most of my life: there are rarely any absolutes in anything. It is a bitter pill for many people to swallow, but when you are in the field of history or science it is essential that you understand that research goes on and that even so-called facts are temporary conclusions. We need to embrace the idea that our work will attract constructive critics who will add to our research and present new information.

I carry this same concept over to my martial arts/self-defence classes. By not listing any techniques in my grading syllabus we have created an atmosphere of constant questioning, researching, testing and individualistic development. Nature seems to tell us that everything changes and develops or it dies. The same goes with history and science, however, this changing should only happen through objective research and the presence empirical evidence. Therefore it is fine to say "that's just a theory", but the theory with the most evidence temporally prevails.

The human desire for knowledge, however, is all too often checked by the human desire for assurance. This is why it is very easy for scientists, historians, religious people, politicians, philosophers and academics of all descriptions to rest on their laurels or become immovable in the face contradictory evidence. The same passion that drives assurance appears to be similar to the passion that drives belief in the improbable. Conspiracy theorists, alternative historians, pseudoscientists and their ilk are all driven by the need of wanting something to be true. We can all empathise with this feeling, so we should perhaps be a little wary of being too scornful of such "believers". I doubt there are many people who hear about the latest reports from Mars and don't get excited about the idea of there perhaps being "signs of life" - anything, please, a fossil of an amoeba will do.

However, being sceptical and accepting the concept of change is exciting too. In fact, it is through this questioning and progressing procedure that exciting prospects and new levels of awareness are initiated. An old maxim of mine was "love the flower but respect the root" and now I see that perhaps I might become a root. I remember getting quite frustrated with a lot of my original sources - books like George Lockhart Jnr's "Grey Titan" - and say "this bloody thing led me completely down the wrong road altogether". However, looking back it did present me with some fairly sturdy facts that actually gave some structure and helped fill the first third of the book - which doesn't even cover a decade - with vivid first hand accounts that were rarely equalled. There may come a day when an historian, who is interested in the areas of my research, picks up a copy of "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" and says "look how far we've come on from this". Putting my ego to one side that is a day the true historian in me wants to happen.

First signing date for "The Legend of Salt and Sauce"

I am happy to announce that "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" will be launched at Blackpool in conjunction with the Circus Friends Association AGM and rally on Saturday 7th June. I will be reading an extract from the book accompanied by my father, who helped me out on a lot of research, and will also be giving a Power Point display of photographs. The exact venue has not yet been confirmed - I was hoping and partly assuming it was going to be at Blackpool Tower Circus (as reported in the above link). Further details will follow in future blogs.

Blackpool is a great location for the launch of the book, as the elephants worked there at the Tower Circus at various times. The Tower was also the place where Lockhart Jnr. continued to cement his reputation as the "Doyen of ringmasters".

Myths, Faction and Pulp Nonfiction

If you are an avid reader with a loose discrimination over what you read you will understand that there is something excitingly decadent about visiting “The Works” discount book store. Don’t get me wrong I love second hand bookshops too, but they seem to have a different level of dignity that rises above the brand new miscellanea of cut-price paperbacks. Recently I browsed in a “The Works” shop and caught a glimpse of a series of books I hadn’t properly flicked through for years: The “World’s Greatest” series for Chancellor Press. These sensationalist factual books are the embodiment of what the great historian Robert Lacey called “Pulp Non-Fiction”.

Each book centres on a sensational subject from paranormal case studies to criminal biographies to the most celebrated stories of physical abnormalities, often bearing the title “The World’s Greatest-“or “The World’s Most-” prefixing the subject matter. Each chapter is a short self-contained account of a particular type of event or a particular person’s biography. There are no endnotes or bibliographies like you would find in most historical books, hell, they don’t even credit the actual book’s author in most of them (although you can find the names through simple internet searches). However, it is the content that says it all. These are the sensational stories that astound us, titillate us, intrigue us and terrify us in the manner of a Victorian penny dreadful, but have one supposed advantage over even the most engaging of literary works: they tell the truth. Or so you would think.

Pulp Non-Fiction is really a tabloid newspaper in book form. It sensationalizes true facts, mixes in rumour and produces light reading material for the mass market. Robert Lacey sees the beginning of the mass market of Pulp Non-Fiction coming from the 1950s publication of books on the mafia. These books mixed documented facts with a prose style that resembled a novel. The books Lacey refers to contained descriptions of what the authors imagined the gangsters had thought or even said, relayed like facts. Such aspects went unchallenged and became “anecdotal evidence” when later True Crime historians cited them for their books and thus certain myths were born. The old maxim “if a myth is repeated often enough it becomes the truth” was never more aptly applied than with Pulp Non-Fiction.

Pulp Non-Fiction, for all its myth-making and sometimes dubious pseudoscientific slant is essentially an account about true events, however, amid anthologies like “The World’s Greatest” series we find that there is the odd account, which is actually a complete fabrication. Take, for example, the story of the notorious Alexander “Sawney” Bean. “The World’s Most Evil Men” gives a single page account of this man monster and his grisly incestuously-bred family of sixteenth century cannibals who terrorized South Ayrshire. The tale has no historical basis whatsoever. In fact, despite it cropping up in many a Pulp Non-Fiction compilation of True Crime, there is virtually no mention of Sawney or his gruesome family before the publication of 18th century periodical “The Newgate Calendar”. The collections of these periodicals read like an early edition of “The World’s Greatest” series and, it could be argued are the Georgian prototype of Pulp Non-Fiction.

As I have discussed, the danger with Pulp Non-Fiction is that a lot of its dubious areas are repeated in future accounts and therefore become accepted as facts. The case of Sawney Bean is a perfect example. On the odd occasion I have even read historians actually referencing the case to show parallels with their subject matter despite the story’s undisputed debunking by Ronald Holmes in his “The Legend of Sawney Bean”. The story lives on and it appears as a self-contained appendix in another type of historical book that takes the style of Pulp Non-Fiction into the realm of complete pseudohistory.

This is the subgenre known as Faction. Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” has been considered to be an instigator in this type of popular Non-Fiction, although I see it as coming more under the Pulp Non-Fiction heading, as it essentially deals in primary source facts yet written in the style of a novel. Faction differs from Pulp Non-Fiction in that its core is not true despite being surrounded by historical facts and historical figures. There are two types of Faction: intentional and unintentional.

Intentional factional books knowingly mesh well researched historical facts with clever fiction – this form has its roots in plays and ballads of antiquity. The 12th century clergyman, Geoffrey of Monmouth, is cited as a good example of a Faction writer. One that was so good that his writings, a la Pulp Non-Fiction, were taken by the historian Raphael Holinshed to be the literal truth. There is obvious danger in this, but the intentions of the author – who is essentially an historical novelist – should not be called into question.

Unintentional Faction is an historical book that tries to earnestly prove the validity of a mythical story. The author, in this case, actually believes in what he is writing despite the evidence against his claim. It can be quite contentious as to what we call unintentional Faction, as the authors often hold onto their beliefs with a lot of passion, a passion that is then reinforced by their converted readers. However, passion alone is not enough to get the historical majority to accept your conclusions.

The Myth element, when isolated, is what surrounds a lot of Pulp Non-Fiction, adding to it and distorting the overall picture. The Myth element in Faction, whether intentional or unintentional, runs straight through it and decides the actual plot. As previously mentioned, there are completely mythical characters that have somehow found their way into both Pulp Non-Fiction and Faction. Sawney Bean and Sweeney Todd are good examples of this. Bean cropped up in Pulp Non-Fiction because he is often found in anthologies that contain accounts of real people, but essentially, like Todd, he is more suited for the Faction category. However, because of the lack of actual real events or any form of actual evidence weaved around the various accounts of Bean it would appear that he is far closer to being a pure Myth than actual Faction.

Myths, of course, are believed by many people and that is why they have their own class away from straight fiction unless someone decides to develop the myth into an historical novel (a genre that has a passing resemblance to some Faction). We may talk of the “mythology of super heroes” or fictional adventurers, but I don’t see a tidy historical comparison between a fictional character like Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man and Ancient Greece’s divine hero, Heracles. The reason being that we know who created the former and there are no allusions of his actual existence whereas the latter was a religiously and historically venerated figure.

The urban myth or legend is the modern evolution of what used to be referred to as “Old Wives Tales”. They thrive so long as people want to believe despite the growing army of scientific and historical sceptics producing volumes of well researched and proven material through every conceivable media.

In the world of martial arts, where I spend a lot of time teaching and training, there is a terrible mess of misinformation and misdirection thanks to a combination of propaganda, mysticism, religion, business policy and the “cult of personality” that has built up around the various fighting disciplines. The pseudohistory, such as the myth that all martial arts stemmed from yogic exercises introduced to the Chinese Shaolin temple, is taken as fact and then influences modern development and research. Following the premise “it all comes from Buddhism” or “it all comes from Yoga” it is easy for the modern practitioner to believe that this is at the core of what they are doing rather than the clear objective of developing a “combative craft” (one literal translation of martial art). The trouble with Myths, Faction and Pulp Non-Fiction is that it only takes a relatively intelligent, passionate and influential person to invest in a false idea for it to become a part of volumes of fundamentally erroneous work. In its most extreme cases it can contribute to the creation of dangerous ideologies. The Myth and the ideology will attract followers and very soon we have passionate supporters following and adding to what is essentially a wrong map.

When I embarked on my historical investigation into the lives of two famous circus elephants that became my book, “The Legend of Salt and Sauce”, I was responding to an inaccurate account given in a magazine. Every step of the way my father, an avid circus and zoo historian, and I found variations on the elephants’ story. The whole story had become modern folklore in the way it had been passed by word of mouth around the circus community both during the elephants’ lives and afterwards. Early in my research I went straight to the most well known primary sources on the topic: a book, a radio broadcast and a newspaper article written by George Claude Lockhart, the son of the elephants’ most famous trainer, George William Lockhart. G.C. Lockhart was the first man to wear the “pink” coat and tails that is now so closely associated with his profession. Being a hugely successful public speaking entertainer he also could spin a good yarn, and it was this personality trait that would also inevitably help lead me completely on the wrong track.

G.C. Lockhart’s book and his other works were essentially Pulp Non-Fiction. He embellished the past, removed certain important details, like the fact the elephants had been trained before G.W. Lockhart took ownership of them, and added in new ones, such as the unsupported reports of the elephants’ destructive stampedes around the UK. As our research progressed we found further myths regarding the elephants told by other people and some built on the original myths told by G.C. Lockhart. In the end we endeavoured to objectively research every important apparent “truism” on the Salt and Sauce story. On the plus side the whole experience taught me to be a better historian and a better researcher. It was certainly a contributory factor that pushed me towards the approach of reasoned historical scepticism.

Having said all this, I cannot completely deliver the killing blow to Myths, Faction and Pulp Non-Fiction in terms of research. I would certainly advise that a researcher applies a great deal of discretion when he uses the obvious sensationalist accounts of historical figures and events, but let us not forget that these imaginative and colourful stories are often what draws us into doing research on a subject in the first place. In fact, in an interview with Radio 4, historic author Philappa Gregory, of “The Other Boleyn Girl” fame, remarked how her historical novels are often starting points for future researchers.

On a personal note I would have never read such thoroughly well researched and lengthy books on true crime as Robert Lacey’s “Little Man” or John Dickie’s “Cosa Nostra” if I hadn’t first read about organized crime in a “World’s Greatest” anthology. For that matter I wouldn’t have picked up on that if I wasn’t reading about the adventures of those now forgotten “fowl fiends”, “Budgie Malone and Owl Capone” in a British comic-book when I was ten years old. Such affectionate memories will always ensure that my nose will never be moved to jerk upwards from a discount book store.

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A Woman's Book Of Allegory by Heather Vallance

Heather Vallance is a thorough historian whose interest in the more obscure areas of history has led her to unearth some amazing stories about some incredible people. This new book, written by her, is a more personal contribution, collecting together various pieces she written regarding women: "our purpose, place, and propensity to betray ourselves".

This book is also available as a paperback on http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1434830071/ref=cm_plog_item_link

The Death of George William Lockhart, Elephant Trainer

One hundred and four years to this very day a terrible accident in the circus world decided three different fates. For one individual it brought an end to an exciting, prosperous and famous life. To another it prompted a new career path that would see him become the "Doyen of Ringmasters", the first circus compare to wear the top hat and "pink" huntsman tails that would be associated with his profession up until the present day. And to two elephants in particular it would mark them in infamy for the remaining five more decades of their lives and make become a part of circus folklore as they passed through the hands of some of the most famous elephant trainers and circus impresarios in history.

On the morning of 24th January 1904 the famous elephant trainer George William Lockhart arrived at Hoe Street Station Walthamstow with his four elephants, "The Cruet", "Salt", "Sauce", "Vinegar" and "Mustard". He had previously been engaged at a venue in Norwich and was now booked at the local "Palace of Varities" for a week. The engagement was not to be. After unloading the elephants the group would stampede down the station goods yard and George William Lockhart, the toast of Victorian Music Hall entertainment and internationally famous elephant trainer, would be dead. The details of his death would be obscured through the constant re-telling of the story and the blame that would be placed on one elephant would often be shifted to another: was it Salt or was it Sauce? A single fact would remain unchanged, George William Lockhart was crushed against some rolling stock when the elephant he was trying to control ran down a narrow channel between stationary vehicles.

George's son, George Claude Lockhart was assisting his father on the day and witnessed the tragedy unfold. Over the next fifty years he would re-tell the story on radio broadcasts, in newspapers and even in his own book "Grey Titan". The information would change, which would add to the folklore that would forever surround the elephants, Salt and Sauce. Meanwhile George Jnr would pursure a career that would see become the world's most famous ringmaster. On the instructions of the great Bertram Mills he presented their famous circus at Olympia wearing a costume that would become the standard uniform of the traditional ringmaster. Lockhart's lengthy career would see him become a celebrity at Belle Vue in Manchester and at Blackpool Tower before his retirement in 1970. He died in 1979.

As for "The Cruet" and the fates of the elephants, Salt and Sauce, their careers too were only just beginning. My book "The Legend of Salt and Sauce" gives the full facts regarding the elephants' career with the Lockharts, including the revelation of who killed George Lockhart, and their long and exciting life afterwards. The book is due out in March. Please check this blog's side bar for ordering information.

Interview with Heather Vallance, author of "An Unconventional Soldier"

The following is an interview I conducted with Heather Vallance, an exemplorary historian and co-founder of the Pen and Spindle historical blog http://penandspindle.blogspot.com/ This blog is an excellent source for specialist historical information and research, promoting lesser known aspects of history and obscure yet significant characters of the past. My interview focused on her new e-book, "An Unconvential Solidier", which appears to be the embodiment of the Pen and Spindle's mission.




Jamie Clubb: Where did you first hear about John Young Filmore Blake?



Heather Vallance: I first came across John Blake around 1997 or 1998. I was helping Cathy Barrett with some research on Texas Jack, the Wild West Show proprietor who gave Will Rogers his entertainment break in South Africa in 1902. As you know, Cathy has spent the last 12 or so years trying to piece together the real Texas Jack because he left us with no memory of himself. Every once in a while she calls on me for research back up. This was one of those occasions. I was scanning material from the early 20th century and I happened on John Blake's book, *A West Pointer With The Boers*. I remembered the stories that had been handed down to me about the Boer War, and the Irish and Americans who fought for the Boers. I was intrigued, but at first I accepted what everyone else said, that John Blake was a bit of a loser and a mercenary.





Jamie Clubb: Outside (and inside) America, the South and the Confederates are often presented as the suppressors. In many ways "An Unconventional Solider" turns this on its head, both in the way that Blake's Confederate family are persecuted and in the way that Blake fought for the suppressed. Please could you elaborate on this?



Heather Vallance: The Civil War symbolizes two clear-cut viewpoints. For those who still embrace the Confederate flag, it represents a very deep cut. For the remainder of Americans, the Civil War and the period prior to it represent the struggle to return dignity to an enslaved people. But, wars are complex and messy things, and at the time they happen the reasons for fighting are very personal and often unrelated to the causes we later associate with them. For a body of Southerners the Civil War was not about the right to own slaves, it was about the right to own the land that they, their fathers and grandfathers had been awarded in government treaties when Indian ancestral lands became fair game for settlers and prospectors. This has been forgotten. General Stand Watie led his volunteer Native Americans into battle during the Civil War because he believed that the Union government was once again going to strip Indian land from the Five Civilized Nations.



Even those Native Americans who fought for the Union were fighting for the same reason. The Indian factor in the Civil War was about protecting what little they had left of their share of America. Stand Watie was Cherokee and most of his men were Cherokee, the rest came from other Indian Territory nations. The letters from well-placed Arkansas men pleading with Watie to lead the Cherokee into battle were not about slavery. These letters were about the preservation of Indian Territory lands. What the Native Americans perceived in the run-up to the war was yet another betrayal, another whole scale land theft in motion. Some may have conjoined racial prejudice to their land struggle, but in the story I am telling, this was not the case.



Jamie Clubb: The Clan-na-Gael was a Masonic/terrorist organization that is virtually unheard of today, but at the time they were clearly a feared and influential group, comparable to the "Scowerers" in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1914 Sherlock Holmes novel "The Valley of Fear". Could you provide a little background on them and the role they played in the South African gold mine situation in the late 1800s?



Heather Vallance: The Clan-na-Gael, like all Irish rebel organizations, was created as a response to the British imperial confiscation of Ireland. Members saw themselves as exiles whose only way to get at their enemy was to take the other side, no matter what that 'other side' was. The Irish rebellion motto was *England's disadvantage is Ireland's advantage*. Of course, this is the idealism that drives rebel membership. Beneath the membership lies the politics. The Clan-na-Gael was an incredibly powerful political organization, as you say. It was powerful because its executive was made up of Irish Americans with formidable networks and often high profile positions in government and in the military and it was tied, in many ways, to the early rise of America as an imperial power. For a period of thirty years, from the 1870s through to the turn of the 20th century, the Clan-na-Gael dictated policy internationally.



The intriguing thing is that British Intelligence only recognized the threat the organization posed in the 1880s. Before that, the Clan-na-Gael seems to have been lumped into the same pot as the 'Fenians' who were perceived as a bunch of loose but controllable Irish canons. I am not even sure if the financial and advisory contribution made by the Clan-na-Gael to the first Anglo-Boer War registered as a warning signal. It seems that those in the British government responsible for security issues were somehow blinded by confidence in their own ability to read the Irish. That, of course, was a huge mistake. They weren't technically dealing with the Irish. They were dealing with Americans some of whom were first generation Irish. Southern Africa was mineral rich and all organizations whether they are government or rebel organizations need money to stay afloat. Gold had been discovered in the 1850s on Boer lands known as the Transvaal Republic. The Boer executive did everything short of murdering those who mentioned 'gold' to keep the discovery under wraps.



The British annexed the Transvaal Republic at the end of the 1870s but their surveyors could find no trace of gold. So, try to imagine a chess board with randomly animated pieces and a gaggle of players with hands raised in anticipation, waiting from any sign of movement on the board. That is what conditions were like before the official discovery of gold in the 1880s in the Transvaal Republic. The Clan-na-Gael was one of the players at the table.



Jamie Clubb: You say the material was "hard-to-access". Do you feel that it was suppressed in some way or is this so much "conspiracy theory" for the "buffs"?



Heather Vallance: *Suppressed* is a loaded word. Information about this period in history was written by those who took control of African gold under the banner of an Anglo-American alliance. By the very laws that govern the nature of information, sources that do not support the dominant written history of an epoch carry little or no value. Information that carries little or no value, in turn, is 'weeded' – a perfectly legitimate archival process of keeping for posterity documents that are important and perceived as beneficial to our knowledge of the past. Of course, perspectives change, histories are re-evaluated and re-written, and the flaws in the methods of knowledge preservation are again highlighted. The act of *suppressing* information, if you will, is more often than not unintentional, almost knee-jerk, and dictated by the worldview of epochs, cultures, rulers, ideologies, and even the supposedly neutral archivists who are custodians of the past. Should they all be lined up and shot before dawn? Not if you are of the opinion that your decisions are as fallible as theirs.



When we research a subject or event we need to be rational about how we look at the context in which the information came into being, and then trace how this information was shaped by the contexts of each era of hands through which it has passed. If we fail to do this we start subjecting our ancestors to some very weird accusations. Conspiracy theory, on the other hand, and those who keep crying conspiracy theory are, for me, a little like those who insist that everything is the fault of the Devil. There is either no real thought going on in the heads of both groups, or they are somehow in on the scam. I have a nasty feeling that a cry of 'conspiracy theory' is just another way of beating researchers into submission, discouraging them from asking really hard questions. It's a wonderful catch-all. Don't believe what he or she says because it is conspiracy theory stuff that isn't valid. The only so-called gain from attitudes like this lies in the fact that important research often lands up on the trash heap and, you have to ask yourself, who exactly benefits from this?



Jamie Clubb: *An Unconventional Soldier* is about the war for gold in Africa. Where do Wild West Shows fit into this story?



Heather Vallance: What does Hollywood have to do with oil in the Middle East? Politics rides on the back of what works. What works is what blurs the boundary between reality and fiction, and keeps the masses from questioning the motives, direction and deeds of the governing classes. The British royal family and government benefited from association with the Wild West Show and its performers in the same way they benefit from the iconic cult of Diana. Theodore Roosevelt created the Rough Riders straight out of the pages of the Wild West, and he fought a war powered by the myth of good versus evil. Go as far back as the earliest expressions of an epoch, as far back as the first rune or glyph and you will find that popular culture is both the drug of the masses, and the impetus which drives the political will of a nation or an empire.
The 'Wild West' was the international standard in popular culture from the 1870s into the era of silent movies. In the same way Hollywood defines our vision of the world as we know it, Wild West Shows defined the vision of America and the world as John Blake knew it. If we want to understand the epochs we research we have to understand these in the context of their popular culture. *An Unconventional Soldier* takes place at the time Africa became the new frontier in the 1880s and 1890s. Americans flocked to subSaharan Africa, taking with them all their preconceptions of their world which had been shaped by American popular culture. Wild West Show performers, like movie stars today, metamorphosed into expressions of the politics of the time. John Blake was often referred to as not unlike Buffalo Bill. Stars themselves over-stepped the boundaries between their fictional world and the real world, placing their mark directly on the political truth of the day. No different, to any number of actors and actresses who rise through the political ranks or become outspoken critics of ideologies today. We simply can't ignore their influence on or their presence in history. The same can be said about the Wild West and the shows it spawned.



Jamie Clubb: Why do you say that the term "cowboys" entered our vocabulary as a result of the Civil War?



Heather Vallance: The Civil War destroyed the South. It left a lot of men and women scraping about for a living. Among these were some of the future artistes of Wild West Shows. They used what they knew to create a story that would bring in enough money to pay the bills. Buffalo Bill popularized the 'cowboy' in his Wild West Shows. He created the 'universal protector of good against evil' with his guns by his side, riding into the sunset. This icon in real life was a humble cattle driver who, before the rise to fame of the Wild West Shows, had never been heard of by British queens or Danish princes, and certainly not by Boer farmers.



Jamie Clubb: When we think of Wild West Shows we think of Indians as people who attacked stage coaches while wearing headdresses, people who lived in tepees and remote places. You claim that this is not the whole picture in *An Unconventional Soldier*, why?


Heather Vallance: Native American culture has been hugely misrepresented in popular culture, and in the history of 19th century politics. Native American society throughout history has been as diverse in its political ideologies and attitudes toward things as any other culture. Popular culture was allowed, in a sense, by the political pundits of the day, to pack this diversity into a single image – the feathered barbarian. The single image facilitated the aims of those who wanted to annihilate the Indians as a political force in American society – to assimilate them. *An Unconventional Soldier* contains stories of Native Americans who were indistinguishable from their settler neighbours, not only in dress but in daily life and activity.


Jamie Clubb: Without revealing too much of your material, just how did the American Indians end up fighting for the Boers?



Heather Vallance: *An Unconventional Soldier* is all about gold, yes, but it is also about the struggle to save land from those whose intention it was to claim that land as their own. Evidence suggests that the struggle for land rights was a universally shared ideology at the turn of the 20th century, much in the same way that you get associations of labour unions today. This is a part of history that really has to be excavated more fully. I say 'excavated' because here is a classic example of the destruction of historical sources because those who weeded information thought that Indians were irrelevant to the history of their own culture, whatever that culture was at the time.



Jamie Clubb: What has attracted you to the material that we see mainly promoted on the Pen and Spindle Blog?



Heather Vallance: The vision behind the Pen and the Spindle is to provide a virtual home for stories that have either been weeded out of traditional history or stories that are too humble to be considered important by the keepers of documents. I am also attracted to these stories because they reveal more about the truth of the times in which they play out than the written-to-order histories that perpetuate the same tedious themes and ideologies we are fed from birth. The world is, and was, a far more exciting place than we're led to believe.


Jamie Clubb: When I first corresponded with you, you and Cathy Barrett were on the trail of Texas Jack who was yet another figure who was famous in his time, but yet almost forgotten today. What attracts you to these figures? Cathy still has some unravelling to do on Texas Jack. She hopes to have his story out to pasture within a few more years. And, as you ask, what is it that draws me, and other researchers like Cathy, to characters who have essentially lost their history?



Heather Vallance: The answer is quite straightforward, actually. We are attracted by the challenge of reconstructing lost histories from the shadows that remain behind, shadows that tell us that something once existed in that spot. 1. Another topic I have seen reoccur in your writing is the subject of platonic relationships and how, all too often, modern day historians jump to assumptions regarding the friendship people have with each other. How do you feel this obscures history? I think that the popular culture of our own era is to blame for the contemporary approach to perceiving historical and present day relationships as sexual only.
We're trapped in a sort of fifteen-year-old, giggly girl approach to deciphering the complexity of human nature and interaction, and that disturbs me. Knowledge building is not a plaything. It is the method of survival of identity, of culture, and nationhood. By adopting a Butterfly Express method to our intellectual asset building for the future, we treat learning as a superficial, self-gratifying game that takes us down the road to our own obscurity. I suppose I've never understood people who are consciously and deliberately self-destructive, and part of that self-destruction is to water down the interaction between and among people to its most basic form. We're a bit more complex than that and a bit more interesting, and so I always look for the power of collective and platonic friendship in history and in life. There is just so much more to explore.



Ultimately, from an historical perspective, we have replaced the *Who's Who*study of Great Men with the *Who Slept With Whom* study of social history. Neither furthers our understanding of past epochs or of ourselves as a species trying to survive under increasingly difficult conditions.



Jamie Clubb: *An Unconventional Soldier* will form part of a larger piece of work you hope to finish in two years time. Can you give me more information on this book and will be published in a hardcopy format?



Heather Vallance: *An Unconventional Soldier* is a stand-alone story whose core research will play a role in a more complete story about the politics and popular culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. It was published initially as an eBook because the cost of hard copy and shipping these days discourages many potential readers whose international currency exchange is horrible. eBooks can retail for half the price of a hard copy but contain exactly the same information. I will probably produce a hard copy in early 2008 which will include verbatim copies of public domain sources important to the story. This hard copy will be for the serious researcher, but anyone simply interested in the story will benefit from the eBook, for the exact reason I gave in the beginning, - cost.



Jamie Clubb: Where do you see the Pen and Spindle blog going? It certainly seems to be gathering steam.



Heather Vallance: I would like to see it become a respected resource and a touchstone for people who are truly curious about the past.

Big Charlie - A Giant Contemporary

Salt and Sauce may have been Britain's most famous elephants, but "Elephant" Bill Williams ensured that a contemporary of theirs - a prospective "husband" in fact - was immortalized in words almost half a century before my book will be published. Williams was a good friend of my grandfather's, Dick Chipperfield Snr., and mentions our circus family several times in his first book "Elephant Bill". "Big Charlie" was his final book.

Big Charlie - A Giant Contemporary

It is difficult to say when Salt and Sauce’s fame peaked. After Salt’s death, the Kentish Gazette recalls a dubious “40 years” of visits to the city by the two well-known elephants. Whether the overwhelming response to Salt’s death by the inhabitants of the city can be seen as a reflection on her fame, as the journalist suggests, or just simply because many had seen her trapped in the lake, we will never really know. Sadly it is most likely the latter. By the time “Saucy” was sold to Harry Coady a new name had already been decided for her: Jumbo. She would be called “Saucy” again when she appeared at Butlin’s Holiday camp in Skegness, but, although she was featured on many of their postcards and souvenirs, such as mugs and toys, her fame existed only in the considerable shadow of another grey giant. His name was Big Charlie and if Salt and Sauce were the elephant queens of British Circus, Charlie certainly ruled as the king tusker of Butlin’s Holiday Camps.

Charlie’s fame really hit its height when Billy Butlin decided to move him from his Holiday camp in Ayr, Scotland. Originally Sauce was to be scheduled to be his “bride” when he arrived at Butlin’s larger camp in Filey, Yorkshire. However, it was decided that she was too old and was instead used in an attempt to replicate Charlie’s success at Butlin’s Holiday Camp in Skegness. In a move that was part-request-part-publicity stunt, the holiday camp innovator placed an advert in “The Times” offering £1,000 in cash for the safe delivery of Big Charlie from Ayr to Filey. Of the recorded 3,500 applicants, Billy Butlin chose elephant expert Colonel J.H. “Elephant Bill” Williams to act in an advisory capacity alongside Charlie’s former owner, Willie Wilson. Wilson had moved Charlie before, from his zoo in Craigend to Ayr. Williams was brought in mainly for his fame, but also helped a lot with the move. He had written two books, “Elephant Bill” and “Bandoola”, which detailed his experiences with domestic elephants in Burma (now Myanmar), and it was thought he would help add to the public profile of the move.

As predicted, the advertisement caused a media storm and Big Charlie became an overnight celebrity. He was described by Butlin’s publicity as “the largest elephant in captivity” and Williams was so impressed by him that he wrote his last book about the move and Charlie’s life entitled “Big Charlie”. The journey took three days and over the period, Williams absorbed a lot new knowledge about circus elephants, such as Charlie, and became very impressed by Charlie’s dedicated mahoot, Shaik Ibrahim.

Unfortunately Charlie, like Salt and Sauce, was also notoriously dangerous. He was a bull elephant, which was something the British circuses generally tended to keep away from. Williams had argued quite a few times with both Ibrahim and Willie Wilson about the dangers of not controlling a bull elephant when it came into “musth”. Musth was the sexual condition that male elephants experienced periodically around the year. The most obvious sign of an elephant coming into musth was the large secretion of moisture around his cheeks. As Charlie matured his temper at these times became worse. Shaik Ibrahim was really the only man who could properly control Charlie and it was upon his death that serious problems arose resulting in Charlie’s tragic death.

Charlie had been coming into “musth”, which made him, as a bull elephant, become unmanageable and very dangerous. Famous Director, Dick Chipperfield had foreseen Charlie’s dangerous potential, when Mrs. Cotrelli first purchased him in India. Dick shared the same ship as Charlie and on being fully aware of the damage a bull elephant could do when in must he made a point of purchasing an elephant gun when he arrived back in UK. This was all in spite of the fact that Dick had nothing to do with Charlie; the elephant did not even appear on his circus. He was sure that one day someone was going to require the services of an elephant gun and someone who knew how to use it. Years later the call came from Andy Wilson, who ran his zoo at Craigend. He now owned Charlie who he feared had now become uncontrollable and was a dangerous liability. Dick arrived ready to take on the task, but as he approached Charlie his heart sank. Dick later told me how he apologised to Andy that he could not shoot such a “beautiful animal” for no real reason.

Allegedly the RSPCA were called in years later when it was once again decided Big Charlie was unmanageable and therefore dangerous. Once again, the order was given for Big Charlie to be killed. Apparently the method decided upon was by gassing. On hearing the news of Charlie’s eventual demise, Dick Chipperfield lamented “what a tragic end to such a magnificent creature”.

Sources: WILLIAMS, J. H. "Big Charlie" London, Rupert Hart-Davies. 1959.
Also: Reports given to me by my father through his conversations with my grandfather, Dick Chipperfield Snr.
©Copyright. Jamie Clubb 2007