Among the many delights of being a volunteer for Distributed Proofreaders is having the privilege of working on some very beautiful and unusual old books. One such book is The Box of Whistles (1877), a short but fascinating study of the most exquisite pipe organ cases in Europe.
Author John Norbury, who did not actually play the organ but had long been fascinated by it, explains the title: “The Box of Whistles! what a quaint title! Yes, but a good one, I think, for this book, as the old organ of Father Smith’s in St. Paul’s, ‘The Box of Whistles,’ as Sir Christopher Wren contemptuously called it, was the first organ I ever saw, and which gave me my bent in the liking of things pertaining to the organ.” A color lithograph of Norbury’s own sketch of the original Smith organ in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (now the much-renovated Grand Organ), is the frontispiece to the book.
The first part of The Box of Whistles provides an overview of the different types of organ cases. Norbury then gives his opinion on what constitutes a good organ case, fearing that he “may a little shock some persons with my views,” perhaps because he did not believe that the organ case should necessarily match the church’s architectural period, as long as it is of high quality. He touches on the number and arrangement of pipes and the use of separate choir cases. And he expresses definite opinions on how organ lofts should be arranged and what accessories they should have: “A looking-glass, which should be a part of the organ, and not a shaving-glass hung up with string and nails, should be fixed so that the player can see down the church; and something better than fastening with a pin to the side of the desk a shabby bit of paper with the list of music, &c., might be arranged.”
Then comes the true delight of The Box of Whistles: Norbury’s notes on various organ cases in England and on the Continent, with 20 color illustrations from his sketches. He reserves the highest praise for the organ case at St. Janskirk (St. John’s Cathedral) in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, which he describes as “perhaps the finest in Europe.” It is indeed impressive – a monumental 17th-Century case in rich, dark wood, with elaborate carvings and a clock at its summit.
The Box of Whistles is a delightful tour of lesser-known but truly lovely works of art. Thanks to the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg, you can join that tour for free, anywhere, any time.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
When William the Conqueror took the throne of England in 1066, he brought with him a body of legal principles and procedures that had been developed in Normandy over the preceding centuries. Norman law was then adapted on an ad-hoc basis to suit English conditions and customs. But over the next century, it became clear that this inefficient patchwork of laws and conflicting judicial authorities was neither viable nor just. By the time of Henry II, who took the throne in 1154, it was clear that reform was necessary.
Henry II consolidated the courts into a centralized system of King’s Courts with uniform rules of procedure. This was not entirely an altruistic act – he wanted to consolidate royal power by making judges answerable to him. He also sought to reduce the influence of the Church by cutting back on the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. But the result of Henry’s reforms was a much fairer and more consistent judicial process. And it provided a firm foundation for the modern common-law systems of the United Kingdom and those nations (such as the United States and the British Commonwealth countries) that derive their own legal principles from English law.
In order to promulgate these reforms, Ranulf de Glanvill (or Ranulph de Glanville), Chief Justiciar of England under Henry II, put together a compendium of the new legal rules (in Latin, the scholarly language of the day) for the edification of judges and lawyers. The Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae (Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England) was written in 1187-1189 and is considered to be the earliest treatise on English law. Thanks to the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg, a 19th-Century English version, A Translation of Glanville, is available for those who are curious about justice in 12th-Century England.
The translation, by English barrister John Beames, is copiously annotated, comparing Glanville’s work with the legal developments that grew out of it. Being a product of the Middle Ages, Glanville’s treatise describes some rather primitive procedures and ideas. People classed as “villeins” – essentially slaves – had very limited rights, as did women. Although the jury system was beginning to gain traction, some lawsuits could still be determined by a trial by combat (i.e., a duel) as an alternative to court proceedings. Even a judge accused of giving a false judgment could be tried by a duel!
Another barbaric practice of the time was the trial by ordeal, which was still very much a part of the 12th-Century criminal justice system, though beginning with Henry II’s reforms it began to fade slowly. The accused was subjected to some extremely painful experience, on the presumption that if the person was innocent, God would preserve him or her from lasting harm. Common ordeals included holding or walking over red-hot irons, or plunging the accused’s hand into boiling water. Glanville notes that, in a case of “Mayhem” (defined as “the breaking of any bone, or injuring the head, either by wounding or abrasion”), the accused had to prove his or her innocence “by the Ordeal, that is, by the hot Iron, if he be a free Man—by water, if he be a Rustic.” If the resulting injury seemed to be healing within a few days, the accused was declared innocent; if it festered, the accused was declared guilty and subjected to whatever dreadful punishment was prescribed for the crime.
Among the most important and immediate reforms Glanville described, however, were the new procedures for bringing a civil lawsuit in the new King’s Courts. The treatise gives meticulous attention to what the plaintiff must allege, when the parties must appear, and how many “essoins,” or postponements, they could get, so that lawsuits could not be dragged on indefinitely. Glanville also discussed property issues, such as when and how a tenant can be removed from land – without the landlord resorting to forcible self-help – and how lawsuits regarding inheritances ought to proceed. These new rules brought order and fairness to what were once disorderly, arbitrary, and even violent processes.
The reforms Glanville expounded in his treatise brought England’s legal system out of the dark ages, making it fairer and more efficient, and led to the more enlightened legal systems of today. Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg are proud to make this Translation of Glanville freely available to all.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
“FIRE … flaming, burning, searing, and penetrating far beneath the superficial items of the flesh to boil the sluggish blood.”
This is how the legendary magazine Fire!! begins. Some of the best and brightest African-American artists of the Harlem Renaissance created their stories, poems, plays, artwork, and essays to stir your blood. They didn’t want you to just read but also to feel their art!
The Harlem Renaissance was a rebirth of African-American culture that lasted mainly between 1920 and 1930. It began in Harlem, New York City, but it influenced Black artists in other places like Paris. It embraced every art form, from music to literature to art.
Fire!! was founded by many of the artists that were featured in its pages. They wanted to challenge the older ideas and give a place for new ones. These artists included poet Langston Hughes, novelist and playwright Zora Neale Hurston, novelist Wallace Thurman (also the editor), and poet Countee Cullen. The American painter Aaron Douglas created all of the artwork, including the cover above.
One of the poems by Hughes is “Elevator Boy,” which focuses on the reality of African-American employment at that time.
I got a job now Runnin’ an elevator In the Dennison Hotel in Jersey, Job aint no good though. No money around. Jobs are just chances Like everything else. Maybe a little luck now, Maybe not. Maybe a good job sometimes: Step out o’ the barrel, boy. Two new suits an’ A woman to sleep with. Maybe no luck for a long time. Only the elevators Goin’ up an’ down, Up an’ down, Or somebody else’s shoes To shine, Or greasy pots in a dirty kitchen. I been runnin’ this Elevator too long. Guess I’ll quit now.
Hurston shares a short play (“Color Struck”) and a story (“Sweat”). Both of these explore relationship dynamics. The play also looks at intra-racial bias within the African-American community.
Part of Fire!!‘s fame lies in the fact that there was only one issue. Sales for it were low, and reception was poor. Some found it offensive because a few pieces dealt with prostitution and homosexuality. Other people disliked the use of Black slang (found in Hurston’s contributions). Probably the final, and ironic, nail in the coffin for Fire!! was that its headquarters went up in flames. Perhaps the magazine was just too hot for the times.
We are lucky to have it.
This post was contributed by Carla Foust, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
You may wonder why the free e-books that Distributed Proofreaders provides to Project Gutenberg are primarily older ones. That’s because they can make only public domain books available to the public. “Public domain” means that anyone can legally use the work for any purpose without having to get a copyright holder’s permission or to pay royalties. Karyn A. Temple, former United States Register of Copyrights, described the public domain as “part of copyright’s lifecycle, the next stage of life for that creative work. The public domain is an inherent and integral part of the copyright system. . . . It provides authors the inspiration and raw material to create something new.”
In the United States, copyright protection generally lasts for a period of 95 years for books published prior to 1978. This means that works published in 1927 and earlier are, as of this writing, automatically in the public domain. For works published in the United States before January 1, 1964, however, copyright renewal – a legal process that extends copyright protection for an additional 28 years – was required. Works published before that date whose copyrights were not renewed by the end of their 28th year entered the public domain.
As an example, if a work was published on December 1, 1963, a copyright extension could be granted to November 30, 1991. If the extension was not renewed, the work would enter the public domain on December 1, 1991.
There are a few exceptions to the copyright renewal requirement. For example, works published by the United States Government are not subject to copyright, so renewal is unnecessary. Additionally, works published by authors who died before the end of the 28th year from the work’s publication date are automatically renewed from the date of their death for 28 years, for the benefit of their heirs. And copyright renewal does not affect the automatic public domain status of works published more than 95 years ago.
For works published before January 1, 1964, but after the current 95-year public domain date, the Copyright Renewal summaries produced by Distributed Proofreaders and posted to Project Gutenberg can help determine whether a work’s copyright was not renewed, placing the work in the public domain. That enables Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg to make the work freely available to the public, like Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, by Margaret Sanger, published in 1938, and All in the Day’s Work: An Autobiography, by Ida M. Tarbell, published in 1939, whose copyrights were not renewed.
Copyright renewal summaries have also proven valuable to other important cultural repositories. HathiTrust, a large nonprofit digital library, recently asked Distributed Proofreaders to prepare a series of artwork copyright renewals from 1965 to 1977. Their team started the process by providing an initial round of proofreading and were extremely grateful for Distributed Proofreaders’ help in preparing these renewal summaries for posting to Project Gutenberg. Among the lovely works that HathiTrust was able to release based on that renewal information are Four Seasons in Your Garden, by John C. Wister, illustrated by Natalie Harlan Davis (1938), and Flipper: A Sea-Lion, by Irma S. Black, illustrated by Glen Rounds (1940).
As with all copyright issues, there are complexities to copyright renewals. In order to make certain that a work is in the public domain, Project Gutenberg has established requirements for copyright clearances based on non-renewal, termed “Rule 6 clearances.” Volunteers seeking clearance under this rule must thoroughly research several things:
the author’s nationality, pen name, date of death if applicable, and other biographical information;
the date and location the work was first published and other details such as serialization, alternate titles, inclusion in collections, etc.;
whether and when there were any copyright renewals.
Complete information about this and all of Project Gutenberg’s copyright rules can be found on their Copyright How-To page.
All the U.S. copyright renewal volumes that Distributed Proofreaders volunteers have created, proofread, and posted to Project Gutenberg can be found here.
This post was contributed by Richard Tonsing, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
This post celebrates the 46,000th unique title Distributed Proofreaders has posted to Project Gutenberg: the fifth and final volume of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads by Francis James Child. Congratulations and thanks to all the Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg volunteers who worked on these interesting and complex projects!
The 19th Century saw a great resurgence of interest in old English and Scottish folk songs. Fearing that these songs might be forgotten, a number of scholars, amateur and professional, sought to preserve them as best they could. Today we celebrate these efforts in our 46,000th title, the final volume of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, a monumental five-volume study edited by Harvard professor Francis James Child, collectively known as the Child Ballads.
Published from 1882 to 1898, the Child Ballads are a fascinating collection of 305 traditional English and Scottish ballads that Child compiled along with their American variants. These ballads contain the roots of much of English-language folk music, and many have inspired and been recorded by modern folk artists.
From a 16th-Century edition of A Gest of Robyn Hode (Child Ballad 117)
Child, being a specialist in English poetry, focused primarily on the lyrics of the ballads. But he did include, in the fifth volume, an index of published ballad music, along with an appendix containing the tunes of 55 of the ballads. (You can play these tunes as mp3 files in the HTML version of the e-book at Project Gutenberg.) Child also drew on the work of English musicologists, acknowledging his debt to the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, who famously compiled both the music and the lyrics of songs from Devon and Cornwall in Songs of the West.
Child’s scholarly work introduces and thoroughly annotates each ballad, closely examining textual variations in the various sources. Famous ballads include “Sir Patrick Spens” (Ballad 58, 18 versions) and “Bonny Barbara Allan” (Ballad 84, three versions). Several dozen of the ballads concern the adventures of the legendary Robin Hood.
Many Distributed Proofreaders volunteers have worked hard since 2007 on the varied challenges of the Child Ballad volumes. We are proud to celebrate the concluding volume of this important work as our 46,000th title posted to Project Gutenberg.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
“I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.” — Cathy in Wuthering Heights
England’s Yorkshire moorland can be a wild, windy, and wet place, but in late summer it bursts into a breathtaking sea of the purple heather that Cathy yearned for as she lay dying and pining for Heathcliff. A fragrant evergreen, heather is the subject of an important and beautiful series of monographs, The Heathery, by early 19th-Century botanist H.C. Andrews. Thanks to the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg, all six volumes are now available to enjoy online.
Andrews was not just a botanist. He was also a talented artist who drew, colored, and engraved the illustrations for his works, and even published his books himself. The Heathery series, filled with his marvelously detailed color illustrations, was originally published between 1804 and 1812. It was so well regarded that a second edition, “corrected and enlarged,” was published in 1845; that is the edition at Project Gutenberg.
Several varieties of heather are native to the British Isles, the most common being ling or Scotch heather. But in The Heathery Andrews gives special attention to the many varieties in the genus Ericathat had recently been imported to Britain from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Andrews mentions in his introduction to The Heathery that there were about 137 identified varieties. He notes, however, “This is certainly far short of the number at present cultivated in Britain; … we may fairly conjecture that the Genus is by no means bounded by the species we at present possess.” He was right: today there are over 850 identified species of Erica.
Andrews took a scientific approach in his monograph. Each description in The Heathery is presented in Latin and English. And, in his richly-colored illustrations, Andrews depicted not only the entire plant, but also its constituent parts, such as leaves and blossoms, in magnified form.
Distributed Proofreaders volunteers have contributed to Project Gutenberg several other botanical works written and illustrated by Andrews:
Coloured Engravings of Heaths, published in four volumes from 1794-1830. Volumes 2 through 4 are available at Project Gutenberg; Volume 1 is in progress at Distributed Proofreaders.
The Botanist’s Repository, a 10-volume work on “new and rare plants,” published from 1797-1812. Volumes 1 and 2 (combined in one volume) are available at Project Gutenberg; the remaining volumes are in progress at Distributed Proofreaders. Andrews’s father-in-law, John Kennedy, of the prominent Lee and Kennedy plant nursery, helped him with the descriptions of the plants.
A lovely monograph on Roses, published from 1805-1828.
Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg are proud to have preserved, for the free use of anyone anywhere, these exquisite works of botany.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
The Joachim Quartet, founded by violinist Joseph Joachim
Chamber music – sometimes called “the music of friends” – is one of the most intimate genres of classical music. In its ideal form, a handful of musicians – professional or amateur – play together in a private space for a small audience. There is no orchestra, no conductor, no soloist. In The Story of Chamber Music, you can read about its rich history and hear some of its music, thanks to the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg.
The author of The Story of Chamber Music, Nicholas Kilburn (1843-1923), was himself an amateur musician – his “day job” was running a locomotive repair company – with a music degree from the University of Cambridge. In his spare time, he was actively involved with a variety of British amateur musical groups as a conductor, pianist, organist, and cellist. Kilburn made a point of supporting the music of British composers, becoming a close friend of Edward Elgar. He was also an ardent disciple of Richard Wagner and wrote two books about his music.
Published in 1904, The Story of Chamber Music traces the origins of chamber music back to medieval times in Europe, when musicians entertained kings in private palace chambers. Noblemen took up the practice and used chamber music at their banquets “as a stimulus and a cover for conversation, a practice not even yet quite obsolete,” as Kilburn notes.
From these early times, Kilburn takes us to the 17th Century, when both private and public concerts of chamber music became popular entertainments. Two famous diarists of the era, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn (both of whose diaries are available at Project Gutenberg), mention attending chamber concerts, with Pepys so transported by a wind ensemble that he “remained all night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any musique hath that real command over the soul of a man as this did upon me.”
Kilburn then shows how the musical giants of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic Eras – Bach, Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and others – further refined chamber music into the brilliant form we know today. The Story of Chamber Music was written at the tail-end of the Late Romantic Era, so Kilburn included studies of chamber music by later composers like Dvořák, Richard Strauss, and Bruckner. There is a chapter devoted to chamber music by Russian composers such as Glinka and Tchaikovsky. And he concludes with a chapter on contemporary chamber music, selecting for inclusion “[o]nly what is thought may prove acceptable and useful to earnest amateurs.” Kilburn speaks admiringly of the black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and highlights the work of several other British composers.
The Story of Chamber Music contains over 75 music notation excerpts from string quartets and other chamber works. The e-book version at Project Gutenberg enhances the enjoyment of it by including audio files in MP3 format to accompany these excerpts. Distributed Proofreaders has a Music Team devoted to transcribing music notation and creating audio files using music software. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a Mozart string quartet, cited by Kilburn on page 67 and transcribed by a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer:
The e-book version also includes MusicXML files for the music excerpts – a standard open file format designed for sharing music notation. If you’re a musician, you can download MusicXML files into your favorite notation software for your own use.
Kilburn’s enthusiasm for chamber music is apparent on every page of his book. As he put it in his introduction:
[W]e may ask ourselves which of the great forms of musical composition we would plead for in case all the rest were doomed to destruction. Music for the orchestra, with its vivid colours, its strength and delicacy; the vast range of choral music; works for the organ, that huge modern plexus of pipe and reed;—these and others no doubt have strong claims on our musical affections. But, if forced to such a choice, it is certain that many a musician would, without hesitation, pledge himself to uphold the claims of Chamber music, for who can measure the almost infinite variety and charm which it affords, and that, too, with the slenderest means?
The Story of Chamber Music lets us read and listen to some of the “infinite variety and charm” of this lovely musical genre.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
On the rainy evening of December 21, 1908, Miss Marion Gilchrist, an elderly lady living in a flat in Glasgow, was found lying on her dining room floor with horrific blunt-force injuries. Blood was spattered all over the area where she lay and was soaked into the back leg of a nearby dining chair, the probable weapon. She had endured some 20 to 40 blows in a “furious … continuous assault” that smashed almost every bone in her face and skull.
Miss Gilchrist’s murder led to the arrest and conviction of an innocent man. But after nearly 20 years in prison, he was exonerated, thanks to Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the greatest fictional detective in English literature, Sherlock Holmes. In The Case of Oscar Slater, he dissected the evidence, much as Holmes would have done, and his book ultimately led officials to review the case and free the man.
On the night of the murder, the family living in the flat below had heard a loud thud and three knocks coming from above – the knocks being a signal Miss Gilchrist had prearranged with the family in case she needed help. The head of the family, Arthur Adams, went up to see what had happened. He rang the bell, to no avail. Miss Gilchrist’s servant, Helen Lambie, who had gone out for about 10 minutes to buy the evening newspaper, arrived and unlocked the flat door. A “well-dressed” man came out of the spare bedroom, walked past Lambie and Adams without saying anything, went downstairs, and left the house. Lambie then discovered the dying Miss Gilchrist in the dining room.
Neither Lambie nor Adams recognized the man, and neither could give a definite description of him. Adams described him as “well-featured and clean-shaven.” Just before the discovery of the murder, Adams’s sister had seen a man loitering in front of the house. This man had “a long nose, with a most peculiar dip.” Another description, given a few days after the murder, came from 15-year-old Mary Barrowman, who claimed she had seen a man running down the steps of the house on the night of the murder. He had a “nose slightly turned to the right.” Neither Lambie nor Adams had mentioned any peculiarities in the nose of the man they saw.
The police thought the motive for the murder was robbery. Though she lived modestly, Miss Gilchrist collected fine jewelry. Some of it was found scattered around the spare bedroom, along with a broken wooden box and papers. A diamond brooch was missing.
The police put out a description of the suspect in the press. Then came a breakthrough. A member of a local gambling club reported to police that a fellow member, Oscar Slater, a German Jew with a “nose twisted to one side,” had attempted to sell a pawn ticket for a diamond brooch.
And so Oscar Slater’s nightmare began. On the flimsiest of evidence, he was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. This created an outcry that led many prominent people to agitate for a review of the case. One of these was Conan Doyle.
Conan Doyle had already been devoting himself to righting real-life miscarriages of justice. In his 1924 memoir, Memories and Adventures, he noted, “The sad fact is that officialdom in England stands solid together, and that when you are forced to attack it you need not expect justice…” Thanks to him, a young Anglo-Indian lawyer named George Edalji, who had been wrongfully convicted of maiming livestock, was pardoned in 1907 after serving three years at hard labor. Conan Doyle’s efforts on Edalji’s behalf were in part responsible for the establishment that same year of England’s Court of Criminal Appeal.
Fresh from this success, Conan Doyle turned his attention to Oscar Slater’s case. There had already been some action on it: A petition sponsored by a Glasgow rabbi that garnered some 20,000 signatures, as well as a detailed brief (called a “memorial”) from Slater’s lawyers, prompted the government to stay the execution just two days before it was to take place in May 1909. In 1910, a volume of the Notable Scottish Trials series was devoted to Slater’s trial, edited by criminologist William Roughead, who became one of the greats of the true crime genre. Although Roughead couldn’t come right out and say there had been a miscarriage of justice – government officials had provided substantial information for his book, and he didn’t want to alienate them – he did hint at it.
Conan Doyle had no such strictures. Prompted by Roughead’s book, he wrote a 103-page pamphlet, The Case of Oscar Slater, published in 1912. In it, he tore the evidence to shreds with clarity and precision. He also appended the “memorial” of Slater’s lawyers.
First, Conan Doyle noted the curious behavior of the servant, Helen Lambie, at the scene. When Arthur Adams told her he had heard a loud noise, as if the “ceiling was like to crack,” she speculated that the clothesline pulley in the kitchen must have fallen down – not something likely to crack a ceiling. She expressed no surprise upon seeing a stranger emerge from one of the bedrooms, but let him pass without challenge. And instead of going to the dining room, where Miss Gilchrist had been sitting when Lambie left, she went first to the kitchen, ostensibly to check the pulley, and then to the spare bedroom. It was only after Adams asked where her mistress was that she went into the dining room and discovered the body.
Second, the descriptions of the suspect, though they generally fit Slater, were vague and inconsistent. In the end, Conan Doyle noted, the only points of similarity among them were that the suspect was clean-shaven, slim, and about 25-30 years old. Slater was 37 and had a mustache. Neither Adams nor Lambie, who had had the clearest view of him, had mentioned any peculiarity in his nose, though Slater did have a broken nose. And when they and Barrowman were brought in to identify Slater, they were first shown his photograph, and then saw him being led through a corridor by the police, casting grave doubt on the reliability of the formal identification. Even then, though the witnesses could say he resembled the man they had seen, they could not conclusively identify him.
Third, one of the most damning flaws in the evidence was that the diamond brooch that Slater had pawned was not Miss Gilchrist’s, but his own. And the police confirmed this very early in the case. This should have ended the matter immediately, as there was no other evidence connecting Slater to the crime.
But the police pursued it, in part because Slater had left for America right after the murder and had traveled under an assumed name. Slater, however, had been talking about the trip for some time, according to those who knew him, and he was traveling with a woman who was not his wife. His explanation that he used an alias (something he had done before in the course of his louche gambler’s life) to prevent his wife from finding out about his mistress was perfectly reasonable.
Conan Doyle meticulously went through many other inconsistencies and weaknesses in the evidence, including the lack of blood on the suspect’s clothes despite the very bloody scene. But the crown of his efforts was a potential defense theory that Slater’s attorneys never pursued: “One question which has to be asked was whether the assassin was after the jewels at all.” He pointed out that the suspect, in the very short time he had while Lambie was out, went to a spare bedroom, ignored several visible pieces of jewelry, and broke open a wooden box containing papers. How did he get in, if Lambie had locked the door as she claimed? What was he looking for, and how did he know where to find it? As Conan Doyle put it, “One is averse to throw out vague suspicions which may give pain to innocent people, and yet it is clear that there are lines of inquiry here which should be followed up, however negative the results.” He concluded that “it is on the conscience of the authorities, and in the last resort on that of the community that this verdict obtained under the circumstances which I have indicated, shall now be reconsidered.”
The Case of Oscar Slater was a best-seller, thanks to Conan Doyle’s fame and the low price of the pamphlet. But some critics were not impressed. The Times opined that his objections to the evidence “have probably been considered already, and with extreme care.” Another less circumspect newspaper referred to Slater as “a slimy blackguard of whom the community is well rid.” Nonetheless, Conan Doyle pressed on with his efforts to obtain a review of Slater’s case, spending his own money and supported by many people, including one of the original jurors. Slater languished in prison until 1927, when the original witnesses against him began retracting their testimony, and the government suddenly paroled him without public explanation. Upon Slater’s petition to the Secretary of State of Scotland, he was granted an appeal, thanks in no small part to the publicity Conan Doyle’s dogged efforts had garnered. On July 20, 1928, the verdict was quashed. Oscar Slater was truly free at last.
The postscript to this victory is a sorry one. The government awarded Slater £6,000 (just under half a million pounds in today’s money) as compensation. Conan Doyle asked him to remunerate those who had laid out money for his exoneration, including himself. Slater couldn’t understand why he should pay when they could apply to the government for reimbursement. The government refused to pay the costs, however, leaving Conan Doyle to threaten publicly to sue Slater. Slater ultimately sent him £250. And although the two men apparently never corresponded again, Slater was not bitter, and contributed to a memorial fund when Conan Doyle died in 1930. Slater retired quietly to a bungalow in Ayr, where he made a late and happy marriage to a young woman and tended his garden. He died peacefully in 1948.
Thanks to the volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg, The Case of Oscar Slater, possibly Conan Doyle’s greatest work given the grave wrong that it helped to right, is now freely available to everyone.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
On February 9, 2023, Project Gutenberg posted its 70,000th title, Wakeman’s Handbook of Irish Antiquities (3rd ed.). Congratulations to all the Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders volunteers who made this milestone possible!
Knockmany Chamber, an ancient burial chamber in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
In 1848, W.F. Wakeman, a young Irish draughtsman who had helped to map Ireland for the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, published a ground-breaking study of Irish archaeology, Archaeologia Hibernica. It featured numerous drawings he had made of the ancient buildings, monuments, and objects that he had come across in the course of his mapping work. The selling point of his book was that these archaeological wonders were “within easy access of Dublin.” He noted that a whole host of monuments, such as burial mounds, stone circles, cromlechs, and other artifacts, “lie within a journey of less than two hours from our metropolis.”
Sepulchral Chamber, Phoenix Park (Dublin)
In 1891, Wakeman published an updated edition of his handbook. He died in 1900, but his work remained in the forefront of Irish archaeology. John Cooke, a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquarians of Ireland, took up the challenge of further updating Wakeman’s handbook, publishing a much expanded third edition in 1903 under the title Wakeman’s Handbook of Irish Antiquities, which is the edition now available at Project Gutenberg. Following Wakeman’s lead, Cooke’s edition uses decorative capitals at the start of each chapter that were taken from the famous Book of Kells. And it adds 60 illustrations to the already extensive list of Wakeman’s original drawings, for a total of 185. It even brings Wakeman’s work into the 20th Century by adding several photographs. (Cooke himself may have taken some of these photographs; he is best known today for his 1913 photographs of the slums of Dublin for a report on housing conditions among the poor.)
Many monuments omitted from the previous editions of Wakeman’s handbook are featured in Cooke’s edition, such as Knockmany Chamber, a photograph of which (above) is the frontispiece of that edition. Of course, archaeology continues to march on — that monument is now known as Knockmany Passage Tomb, and rather than dating from 500 B.C., as Cooke has it, it is now believed to date from about 3000 B.C. But Wakeman’s and Cooke’s patient groundwork in documenting these antiquities made further study possible, and, even more importantly, prevented them from being overlooked or even inadvertently destroyed by the unknowing.
The e-book version of Wakeman’s Handbook of Irish Antiquities is an outstanding example of the important books that the volunteers of Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders work hard to preserve and make freely available to the world. It is a fitting way to celebrate the milestone of Project Gutenberg’s 70,000th title.
This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.
Posted by LCantoni 
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