• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Lost & Found

That letter in full:

"Greeting Knaben in Backrooms!

When late I was going up and down your wooden think, mein lughole-diamontz ist gone. Weh! I weine alle the nacht! My pillows is wet true!

So, you will find it for me, not? Ich liebe alle you menschen of Blackpool lots!

Marlene XXX

PS: If mein falsen gnashers, eye of glass, hairpiece of donkeys and padding of die neeps ist also found, please do not be having them in the press.

PPS: If anyone ist doubting the realness of this litter, he ist not mein fiend and I do not kiss him so much!"

I hope this settles the matter. :shock:
 
this week, i had 2 lost items come back to me.

before xmas, my (new) watch disappeared, and i thought it had been stolen. i bought a cheap replacement, but a few days ago i found the original watch, in a bag which i thought i had searched thoroughly.

and a few months back, i lost my bus pass, so had to apply for a replacement. today on a bus, the driver recocognised me and handed me my old card, which he'd previously tried unsuccesfully to deliver to my home.

not really fortean, except in a coincidental kind of way.

(i wonder if some third item will turn up too..?)
 
Fishermen find bust worth a fortune at bottom of sea
Will Pavia

It was a bitterly cold day on the Firth of Clyde and their catch was looking poor until the surprising moment when three fishermen pulled up a 19th-century Italian sculpture, valued at up to £45,000.

Hector Stewart, skipper of the Eyedent, went out last Tuesday with James Turner and Sean D’Arcy, to scrabble in the seabed for sand gapers, a clam-like shellfish.

Their meat tastes rather like lobster, and though the market is still small, on a good day the fishermen might pull up 300kg (660lb), a catch that would earn £800.

At eight o’clock on the chilly morning, the water looked particulary uninviting, but it was Mr Turner’s turn to go, so he dropped overboard in his diving suit and swam for the bottom.

He was carrying a hose connected to a water pump on the boat, which the fishermen use to blow aside the sand and reveal the shells. Almost immediately he came up against what he thought was a large rock.

Mr Turner tried to work around it but, blowing silt from one side, he saw the outline of a necklace.

Mr D’Arcy went down and together the fishermen managed to get the object into a fish box, to which they attached ropes and airbags. It weighed 80kg (13st), requiring all three of them to pull it out.

Mr Stewart said: “We washed away the sand and realised we were looking at a woman’s face.” It was a white marble bust, tinged with green and marked with worm casts.

“We didn’t realise how valuable it was. I actually phoned my wife and told her it would look great among the roses in our garden.”

There was one clue that it ought not to serve as a garden gnome. On the back of the bust was an inscription: “Rinaldo Rinaldi 7 Roma 1869.”

Mr Stewart’s wife, Diana, who handles shellfish sales from their home in Tarbert, Argyll, looked the name up on the internet. She told The Times: “It seemed that he was a very important Italian sculptor from the 19th century. A piece of his work was in the Louvre.”

Another piece, it seemed, had been for over a century in the Firth of Clyde. On the advice of Sotheby’s, she called the Receiver of Wreck. “They are rather busy at the moment,” she said. “What with all these BMW motorbikes and Japanese nappies from the sinking of the Napoli in Devon, but they seemed quite excited about it.”

The office is now investigating whether there was a 19th-century version of the MSC Napoli, a ship with a cargo of Italian art, that foundered off western Scotland.

Similar works by the artist have sold for £45,000. Angus Milner-Brown, a valuer from Sotheby’s, said: “It’s staggering that a sculpture by Rinaldo Rinaldi would be found after all this time.” He thought that the sculpture might have been bound for a wealthy landowner on Scotland’s western coast.

The Stewarts do not plan to keep the sculpture in the garden, or the house. Mrs Stewart said: “We have a coal fire and she would be a bugger to dust.”

The proceeds will be split between the fishermen. “It was definitely a very good day for us,” Mrs Stewart said.


An Italian master

Rinaldo Rinaldi was born in Padua in 1793. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice

He then travelled to Rome to work in the studio of Antonio Canova, considered to be the dominant force in early 19th-century sculpture

Rinaldi became renowned for his busts in white Carrara marble and for his metal funeral ornaments, which are to be found in churches in Rome and Venice

He was imprisoned by the Pope in 1849 for his involvement with revolutionary groups

He died in 1873. His work is now prized by collectors all over the world

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 68,00.html
 
You wouldn't think you could lose an entire county. But all sorts of stuff will slip down the back of the sofa.

The not soIndependent

Winchcombeshire, England's lost county, to ring in its 1,000th year
By Martin Hickman
Published: 22 March 2007
During Liz Hurley's glamorous wedding to Arun Nayar this month, the small Cotswolds town of Winchcombe teemed with the world's media.

This spring, the 5,000 residents of this corner of Gloucestershire have another celebration to mark, though it is unlikely to attract a single red-top reporter or autograph hunter.

When the bells ring out in Winchcombe this May, they will be marking the anniversary of a long-forgotten municipal oddity.

One thousand years ago, the county of Winchombeshire began its short life under the ill-named Ethelred the Unready. Alas, just a decade later, in 1017, the county was abolished by the invading Dane King Cnut and absorbed into Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.

Its contribution to history would have remained lost in time but for a small band of the town's residents. One of them, Clare Pritchard, 59, an IT worker and campanologist, is organising a bell-ringing celebration on 7 May to mark the 1,000th anniversary of one of the tiniest English counties. She hopes to hear peals from 66 churches she has identified as residing within its historic boundary.

"We didn't want the 1,000th anniversary of Winchcombeshire to pass without any celebration - we're quite proud to live in the old county town," said Mrs Pritchard. "We've decided to encourage people to ring the bells in as many of the old parish churches as possible during the year.

"It is fitting because churches would have been at the centre of these parishes, and in many cases still are. Winchcombeshire was based around Winchcombe Abbey, which owned land over quite a wide area. The abbey has now gone, but there is a stone cross to mark the spot."

Before the arrival of county status, Winchcombe - believed to be the last resting place of the Saint Kenelm, an Anglo-Saxon saint - was governed by King Coenwulf of Mercia. Mrs Pritchard explained: "The county was created in 1007 but was absorbed into neighbouring shires just 10 years later, but I'm not sure why. It consisted of 139 parishes that were divided into 12 Hundreds, and I have done some research and found evidence of all the parishes.

"Some have gone and the only clues to their existence are local place names, such as Hoffington, which is the name of a copse and only locals seem to know of it. But the vast majority survive, and there are 66 churches which have five or more bells with the potential to be rung. We are hoping to get as many ringing as possible during the year."
 
I once found all the keys to a branch of the NatWest bank on the pavement outside. They were in a leatherette pouch with a NatWest logo, and there were 18, including Chubb safe keys. 8)

Rather then go in with them, I thought it would be funnier to take them to the police.

The bobby on t'desk couldn't stop laughing, as he promised me that if the bank didn't claim them, I could have them back, and if I didn't want them they would be auctioned along with other unclaimed property. That was an auction he'd LOVE to see! :lol:

Of course the bank immediately claimed the keys and the manager brought me a huge box of chocolates.
Seems that the assistant manager had left them on top of a car, forgotten and driven off. Well, we've all done it, haven't we!

I still have both the police 'found property' receipt and the 'claimed property' letter which came a week or two later.
 
Nine years late, Dad's lost ashes come home

David Smith reports on a daughter's joy after a longed-for but unexpected discovery

Sunday April 1, 2007
The Observer

A stranger tomb is hard to imagine. For more than eight years the lost property office of London Underground - a basement filled with tens of thousands of glasses, gloves, iPods, mobile phones, pushchairs, scarves, schoolbags, toys, umbrellas and wallets - has hosted a highly incongruous object. An urn containing human ashes.
Like a diligent graveyard caretaker, Ted Batchelor, the lost property supervisor, has done his best to make it a decent resting place. Each December he would wish the remains a merry Christmas, while in his spare time he tried to crack a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Who was the deceased? How had their ashes got lost? And who were the rightful owners? There was only one clue. A label that said: 'W Maile, 5/10/98.'

Batchelor appealed for information in Arena: Underground, a TV documentary shown last month as part of BBC4's 'Tube Night'. It caught the eye of a member of the public, John Fisher, who set about using the phone and internet to trace the enigmatic W Maile. Two days later, he had his man - and his relatives. Molly Schofield, a pensioner living in Leyland near Preston, Lancashire, received a call from Fisher informing her that her father's long lost ashes had been found.
'I went into a flat spin,' Molly, 75, recalled. 'He said the item about the urn had caught his interest and he'd followed it up and identified my dad's ashes. It was a surprise and a shock and it made me feel a lot better to finally know what happened. My children are delighted.'

William Maile, who took part in the Normandy landings and was a driver at the Potsdam conference, died in September 1998 at the age of 91 and was cremated in Preston. Molly had fond memories of visiting London with him, so she decided to take his ashes to Westminster Bridge and scatter them on the Thames, where he would go fishing. She took a train south with her daughter and her two grandchildren, placing a bag containing the urn under a pushchair in the luggage compartment.

But when the train reached Euston station, the bag and the urn had gone. Molly said: 'I was astounded. We felt, well, we're not going to see him again but at least he got to London. On the train two men were talking loudly and giving the impression that they'd just been released from prison. Our thoughts turned to them when we saw the bag had gone. I'd love to have seen their faces when they realised what they'd got. That's caused me some laughter over the years.'

The bag was abandoned on a tube train, from which it was handed to the lost property office in Baker Street, which receives up to 1,000 items a day.

Years passed and no one came forward to claim it. Batchelor spent weekends searching birth and death certificates and on the internet in an attempt to solve the riddle. He found the word Luton on the urn and contacted crematoriums in Luton and Stevenage without success. He decided that if no one came forward by the urn's 10th anniversary, in 2008, he would scatter the ashes in a churchyard.

Fisher was struck by Batchelor's search in the Arena special and decided to investigate via the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk. The name and date were enough to pinpoint the Preston area, so Fisher called local crematoriums and struck gold. He used the electoral register to find Molly, still living nearby.

Fisher, a researcher and analyst from Cambridge, said: 'It was such an unusual situation and a sensitive one: it must be terrible to lose the ashes of your just departed. I was impressed by Mr Batchelor's sincerity so I offered my services. It wasn't rocket science: anyone with access to the internet and telephone could have done it.'

Batchelor said he was delighted with the outcome. 'I thought it was quite depressing that somebody could spend 10 years in the basement of a lost property office, so the plan was to take the ashes to a local church and scatter them, taking lots of photos in case the family turned up one day. Then this BBC programme came along. Something like this puts a smile on your face.'

Maile, known to friends as 'Ray' or by his army nickname, 'Jumbo', was a carpenter after the war. Last week his ashes were sent by courier to Molly, a former telephony accountant. 'I felt quite emotional and a few tears appeared,' she said. 'When the parcel arrived I was making a cup of tea, so I had a cup of tea with my dad. The urn is now sitting on a shelf by his photograph.'

She added: 'We're still deciding what to do with the ashes. My thought is to go back to London and continue with our original scheme at the Thames, possibly as a holiday treat for my granddaughter's birthday in August. I don't think I'll put it in the luggage compartment this time. But my father would have enjoyed the publicity, if nothing else.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/ ... 28,00.html
 
Maharajah's bomber spreads its wings again
By Nigel Reynolds and Stephanie Condron
Last Updated: 1:37am BST 20/04/2007

A rare First World War bomber which was discovered rotting in the elephant stable of a maharajah's palace was unveiled in its fully restored glory yesterday.

The de Havilland DH9 two-seat biplane is the only one in Britain and one of only six in the world.

Its saviour, Guy Black, an aircraft restorer, said yesterday that "it was a phenomenal find, like discovering gold".

The chance discovery was made by a British backpacker, a keen aircraft enthusiast, who photographed a cannibalised DH9 in a new museum at the Palace of Bikaner in Rajasthan in 1995.

On his return to Britain, he circulated his photograph of it and Mr Black, who runs Aero Vintage, a specialist restoration company in Sussex, got to hear about the discovery. Three years later he visited the palace in India.

The aircraft - built in 1918 and the first British bomber to house its bombs in its fuselage - had vanished.

Inquiries led him to the palace's former elephant stables. There, among piles of elephant saddles, was the airframe of the DH9, engineless, its timbers partly eaten by termites and much of its fabric covering missing.

Along one wall, Mr Black saw half a dozen DH9 wings. Several tailfins were nearby.

He said: "I could not believe my eyes. The DH9 was the most manufactured bomber of the First World War - they made more than 2,000 of them - but they are as rare's as hen's teeth now and there wasn't a single one in a collection in Britain."

Mr Black had found the remains of three DH9s that been given by Britain to the Maharajah of Bikaner in the early 1920s to help him establish an air force under the post-war Imperial Gift Scheme. Mr Black bought two of the rotting hulks. D5649, the plane he restored and sold to the Imperial War Museum for nearly £1 million was unveiled at Duxford, Cambridgeshire, yesterday. The Imperial War Museum, by luck, had a DH9 engine to instal in the restored plane.

Mr Black said: "We haven't tried to fly it. I think we probably could but the museum won't allow it."

He hopes to restore the other hulk to make fit for flying in the next two years.

DH9s were used to drop bombs on the Western Front but they did not have a glorious war.

Their engines were extremely unreliable. Many DH9s had to ditch behind enemy lines because of engine failure.

Mr Black said: "I felt immensely proud seeing it being wheeled out at Duxford today. You couldn't wipe the smile from my face."
http://tinyurl.com/2zbvug
 
Lost wallet found after 55 years

A wallet misplaced during a romantic embrace has been returned to its forgetful owner after 55 years.
Two classic car collectors from the US state of Idaho found the wallet after it fell out of the back of a vintage car they were planning to restore.

After an internet search they found and contacted the owner, Glenn Goodlove.

Mr Goodlove said he probably lost the wallet in the back seat of his 1946 Hudson car while kissing a girl when he was home on leave from the US Navy.

"If it was in my sailor-mentality years, I might have attempted to, as they said in those years, 'make out,"' Mr Goodlove told the Idaho Twin Falls Times-News.

Vital clues

Jon Beck, 61, and Chuck Merrill, 72, bought the now-vintage vehicle in Idaho after placing an ad in a local newspaper to buy a classic car in need of restoration.

Since 1952, the car had travelled from Washington state, where Mr Goodlove's grandfather owned it, to finish up neglected in Idaho, changing hands several times en route.

Driving the car home after buying it, the collectors stopped at a restaurant and saw something had dislodged below the back seat.

"Like a couple of kids, we thought we had a goldmine," Mr Beck said.

Instead, they found some small change - the leather wallet held a $10 bill, Mr Goodlove's military ID, his Social Security card, his driver's licence and several jewellery receipts from 1952. But they were all in the name of Glenn Putnam.

After searching online, Mr Beck discovered that Mr Putnam had since changed his name to Glenn Goodlove and moved to San Diego, California.

He called Mr Goodlove, asking to speak to a man who used to drive a '46 Hudson.

"There was a silence for about 15 seconds," Mr Beck told the Twin Falls Times-News. "Then he said, 'Who is this?"'

Mr Goodlove, now 75, says he did not even remember losing the wallet, but the find has brought memories of his youth in Everett, Washington, flooding back.

"I could see the house and the car and the town and all the good stuff from living there," he said. "They've been flowing ever since he talked to me."

Mr Beck and Mr Merrill will post the wallet back to Mr Goodlove.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6634215.stm
 
Has anyone lost a big pirate?

Has anyone lost a big pirate?
By Fiona Murray
BBC News Website



Arr, me hearty! Captain Hook is in custody in a Belfast police station


Enlarge Image

Shiver me timbers! A wayward pirate has been captured by police in west Belfast.
A swashbucklin' Captain Hook was found abandoned in Andersonstown and is now in police custody.

The six-foot tall fibreglass figure was discovered lying on a roundabout in the Dart Hill area.

A member of the public phoned the police, and Peter Pan's nemesis was swiftly apprehended, put into the back of a Land Rover and taken to New Barnsley Police Station.

Station Sergeant Colin Hughes said the seafaring villain was one of the more unusual items to be brought into the station.



"I walked into my office at eight o'clock this morning and got a bit of a shock," he laughed.




Sgt Hughes gets to grips with the seafaring visitor

"The light was off and I saw this tall man standing there. It's not the sort of thing you expect to see in a police station!"

Police admit they are a bit puzzled as to the origins of the so-called "gentleman of fortune".

He may have come from a fancy dress shop, or perhaps from outside a video shop.

There is also a rumour that he was last seen doing panto.


Sergeant Hughes said police were keen to have Captain Hook returned to his rightful owner.

"Somebody, somewhere must have noticed this missing," he said.

"If anyone has any information, could they contact us."

In the meantime, the buccaneer is being treated as "found" property and will remain in police custody until he is claimed.

If not, he may have to walk the plank!


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/nort ... 700121.stm
 
FAMILY'S SHOCK AT MEDAL ON EBAY
11:00 - 02 June 2007

A woman who has been searching for her father's lost service medal for five years is set to have it returned - after she came across it on eBay.

Jane Shillabear's father was awarded the long-service medal for his time served with the Royal Observer Corps, which detected, tracked and reported aircraft over Britain.

When he died, Brian De Courcy Donovan passed his accolade to his grandson Rory, who was then only six years old.

To the family's dismay, he lost it in his home town of Kingsbridge, South Devon - and Mrs Shillabear was stunned to find it on Internet auction site eBay last week.

The medal, which has a diameter of 35mm, sold for £92 - but the buyer has now agreed to sell it back to the family.

Mrs Shillabear, a market stall holder, said: "I felt hurt and angry when I saw it being sold on eBay."

But she said she was "delighted" she would soon have the heirloom back where it belongs.

Former Kingsbridge Mayor Tony Child was the Group Commandant of the Royal Observer Corps, and knew Mr Donovan.

He said: "I really hope she manages to get the medal back - it is a memento and a keepsake."

Mr Donovan, whose nickname was Chuffer, was employed as a woodwork teacher at Kingsbridge College for many years.

http://tinyurl.com/2e4rd6
 
Lost WWII plane finally due in UK

An American fighter plane will be arriving in Britain from the United States next week - 65 years after taking off.
The P38 Lightning was one of eight aircraft forced to land in Greenland after encountering bad weather while en route to the UK in July 1942.

The planes became buried under 300ft of ice but 15 years ago the remains of one, renamed Glacier Girl, were dug up.

The aircraft is due to take part in an air show at Duxford, near Cambridge.

The plane is expected to land within the next few days to prepare for the Imperial War Museum annual Flying Legends weekend on 7 and 8 July.

It has previously flown at air shows in the United States.

A dedicated recovery team spent months working to retrieve the single P38 when the lost aircraft were re-discovered, immediately christening it Glacier Girl.

Forced landing

An IWM spokeswoman said: "It's a remarkable story which is set to reach an emotional conclusion.

"Sixty five years ago this July, six American P38 fighter planes and two B17 bombers took off from the east coast of the United States to make the long journey to Britain and so on to Germany.

"These aircraft made up one small part of Operation Bolero, the historically important build-up of allied aircraft in Britain championed by President Roosevelt.

"Already well into their journey, the eight aircraft encountered atrocious weather conditions over Greenland and, with fuel running low, the crews had no choice but to attempt a difficult landing directly on to the snow and ice of Greenland's glaciers.

"Miraculously, all 25 crew members survived the landings and, after a few cold days awaiting rescue, were returned safely back to the States."

The P38 Lightning is due to fly alongside more than 50 other vintage aircraft, including Spitfires and P51s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6232954.stm
 
Images from heyday of British cinema found in filing cabinet
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

A photograph of Alec Guinness in the character of Fagin, taking a break with a cigarette during filming of David Lean’s Oliver Twist 60 years ago, is among a treasure trove of unpublished photographs from the heyday of British cinema that has been unearthed.

More than 5,000 historic images, dating from the 1930s to the 1970s, have been discovered in a vault at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire. Two battered old metal filing cabinets, which had remained unopened for as long as anyone can remember, were found to be wedged full of images.

Some of the photographs are so early, they are still on glass plates. Others appear on strips of negatives.

There are shots of the biggest stars of the era, including Dirk Bogarde, who found matinee-idol fame as heart-throb medical student Simon Sparrow in the Doctor films and critical acclaim as an actor in classics such as The Servant.

The unpublished photographs show him sharing a joke with Brigitte Bardot with whom he starred in Doctor at Sea in 1955. There are also previously unseen images of a handsome Bogarde relaxing with a cigarette in his dressing-room in the late 1950s and bespectacled – filming Esther Waters in 1947 – with a block by his shoe to fix his position at a time when cameras could not move with ease.

The discovery – which also includes images of Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, Kenneth More and Lean, among many other actors and directors – was made by Morris Bright, while researching Pinewood Studios: 70 Years of Fabulous Film-making, a lavish 384-page book on the history of the studio which is published this week.

Speaking to The Times yesterday, he recalled that the images had not been catalogued and most bore numbers that did not appear to correspond to anything.

“The old filing cabinets didn’t look as if they’d been opened for 30 or 40 years,” he said “People had walked past them for years. They were just two battered old cabinets. I thought I’d seen it all, having written books over ten years. But to stumble across such pictures for the first time is incredible.” He will publish a large number of the photographs for the first time in his book, which has a foreword by the Oscar-winning actress Dame Judi Dench, a former Pinewood Studios actress.

She writes in the book: “Such images have been painstakingly researched to bring us more than just the usual shots of our favourite films and it is these behind-the-scenes images that really captivate.”

Other unpublished images show Trevor Howard – who made his name as the romantic lead in Lean’s Brief Encounter in 1945 – messing about with the beautiful French actress Anouk Aimée, showing her the finer points of cricket during a break in filming Golden Salamander in 1949. :D

Directors also feature prominently in the archive. Alfred Hitchcock, master of the thriller genre, was caught unawares while in a music recording session for Frenzy, his first British film in two decades, made at Pinewood in 1971.

On being shown the photographs of Hitchcock and Bogarde, John Russell Taylor, the film historian, said: “I have never seen any of these images before. The Hitchcock one is particularly interesting because it’s quite rare to have him caught off-guard and looking like a person, rather than playing Alfred Hitchcock, which is what he usually did.”

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 106485.ece

Pics here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/templa ... 5002595343
 
Some folks today dream of being in an accident just so they can sue the pants off someone else. Recent events in Manchester have shown the opposite attitude at work. A fingertip was discovered and it took an appeal to reuinite it with its owner:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manc ... 932188.stm

Fingertip owner contacts police

The mystery owner of a fingertip found by a woman in Greater Manchester has come forward.

The 57-year-old man, from Wigan, was delivering charity bags to a house in Farnworth, Bolton, when it is thought that a dog bit him.

His fingertip was found by a woman on Balmoral Road on Friday evening, prompting a police appeal.

The man, who received treatment at Hope Hospital in Salford, contacted officers after hearing the appeal.

Article Ends


Body parts often turn up on the streets of Manchester but iirc, the last human ear found near Strangeways turned out to be part of a piggie. :spinning
 
This almost deserves a thread of its own...

Falsely accused woman freed after 70 years
By David Sapsted
Last Updated: 1:50am BST 29/09/2007

Seventy years locked up in institutions hardly seems to be a punishment that befits the crime of stealing half-a-crown.

However, it is just such a fate that befell Jean Gambell when at the age of 15, in 1937, she was falsely accused of stealing 2s 6d (12.5p) from the doctor's surgery where she worked as a cleaner.

She was sectioned under the 1890 Lunacy Act and even though the money was later found, she has been moved from mental institution to mental institution. More recently, she went into a care home and has been lost to her family, who thought she was dead.

But last month, by chance, her brother stumbled across correspondence which led to the discovery of her existence and the family was reunited.

Her brother David Gambell, 63, who still lives in his mother's old home in Wirral, Merseyside, received a questionnaire addressed to his mother from Macclesfield Mews Care Home.

"I thought it was just a survey for old people and I was about to throw it away when I saw Jean's name pencilled in on one corner," he said yesterday.

"I couldn't believe it. I suddenly realised that my sister was still alive. I rang the care home straight away and they confirmed that our sister was there." He and his brother Alan, who had last seen their sister as small children when she was allowed to visit home with two wardens as guards, travelled to the Macclesfield home.

They were told by staff that their 85-year-old sister was deaf, could only communicate in writing and was very unlikely to remember them.

"A little old lady on walking sticks came in," said Alan. "She looked at us and cried out: 'Alan...David'. Then she put her arms around us. It was very emotional.

"I am sure that what has kept her going all these years was the challenge of proving to the authorities that she had a family. The trouble was, nobody would listen to her."

The brothers spent much of their childhood in orphanages because their parents were so poor. They said that they had later discovered that their father had tried for years to get Jean freed after she was put in Cranage Hall mental hospital in Macclesfield for being "of feeble mind", but was unsuccessful because her records had been mislaid.

She spent years, lost in a maze of instutitons and care homes, trying to convince people in authority that she had a family. But nobody would believe her.

Macclesfield Social Services are now conducting an inquiry into Miss Gambell's incarceration.

http://tinyurl.com/2wkumn

:evil: to the morons who locked her up, but :D now the family is reunited.
 
When I heard about this poor lady on t'wireless, I wondered if I'd ever met her when I worked at Cranage Hall in the 1970s. It was a 'hospital for the mentally subnormal', wherein I met many older women - and men - who seemed perfectly normal, if somewhat institutionalised, to me.

When I asked more longserving staff about them, I was told that they'd been locked up as youngsters, often on their families' request, if they seemed uncontrollable.

The girls were usually 'immoral' and the boys 'criminal'. Having an llegitimate child, or just having sex, or even being a victim of sexual abuse, were all grounds for a girl to be incarcerated. Frequent petty thieving might be enough to get a boy banged up.

A person who was, say, 60 in 1975 would've been sent there at around 15 in 1930, possibly under the Mental Deficiency Act 1927.
 
Car found before reported stolen

Cornish police had a swift resolution to a case of car theft when the missing car was reported found to police - two minutes before being reported stolen.
At 0826 BST police were called by security staff at Drake's Circus in Plymouth to report a suspicious driver of cream-coloured Rover in the area.

Two minutes later colleagues in Helston received a call to report the theft of a cream-coloured Rover overnight.

A 19-year-old was arrested in Plymouth and is awaiting questioning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7021012.stm
 
Rare wines found in forgotten cellar are expected to fetch thousands


ST AUSTELL Fine and vintage wines found in a disused store room at a brewery are expected to fetch thousands of pounds at auction. The 370 bottles, some 130 years old, were unearthed in an unlocked cellar at the St Austell Brewery in Cornwall.

The rarest is a Sauternes, produced in the middle of the First World War. There is also a 1916 Château Rieussec, few of which ever left France, a 1950 Mouton Rothschild and a 1961 RauzanSégla, which is widely regarded as one of the best wines of the 20th century. The oldest bottle is an 1875 cognac, thought to be from the personal collection of Walter Hicks, who founded the brewery in 1851.

The wines were found in an anteroom by Xenia Irwin, 40, a wine merchant and master of wine. She said: “I could never have dreamt of making such an exceptional discovery. Their historical value is inestimable.

“The door was very stiff but unlocked so anyone could have gone in there, but it clearly hadn’t been entered in decades.”

Experts from Sotheby’s are now valuing the wine, which is expected to be auctioned later this month.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 577523.ece


I expect every decade or so a little scene like the following occurred:

Manager: We ought to check out that old cellar, it hasn't been looked at for years...

Worker: Yessir, I'll do it dreckly!

:D
 
From Breaking News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lanc ... 118650.stm

WWII army bag is found in desert

A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years.

Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army.

Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross's family through a BBC website on World War II.

The bag is being sent to Burnley to Mr Ross's sister, Irene Porter.

Mr Ross, who settled in Whaddon, Buckinghamshire, after the war and died three years ago at the age of 87, was a despatch rider in the Long Range Desert Group.

According to Mrs Porter, who was only eight years old when he was serving in Egypt, her brother was a member of a unit known as Popski's Private Army, one of a number operating behind enemy lines.

She has been able to read the letters - sent by her parents, herself and her brother's two girlfriends - from photographs put onto disc by Mr Makram.

Mrs Porter, 75, of Burnley, said: "I was stunned when I found out about this and it is just incredible the way the bag has come to light.

"I will be so pleased when I can actually hold the letters in my hand and feel something my mother actually wrote to Alec all those years ago.

"I just wish the bag had been found a few years earlier so that Alec could have been reunited with its contents."

So don't give up hope for your lost keys or whatever.
 
gncxx said:
So don't give up hope for your lost keys or whatever.
Some decades ago, I lost my virginity...

I recently revisited the place in question for the first time in all those years

- and found nothing!
 
Lost and almost found...

Radio appeal unearths missing recipe for Pan Yan pickle
Amelia Hill, social affairs correspondent
Sunday January 27, 2008
The Observer

A plea by Chris Evans on Radio 2 for the return of the defunct Pan Yan pickle was met last week by a sheepish admission from the food giant behind the brand that the closely guarded secret recipe had been destroyed in a warehouse fire in 2004.
Thousands of listeners had texted and emailed Evans their memories of balmy afternoons and picnics with sandwiches filled with the pickle and even though the recipe was lost appealed to Premier Foods to bring it back.

Premier's pickle manager Jamie Crofts said he had been amazed by the public outcry: 'I've never experienced anything like it. Our computer system was getting clogged up by emails, we were getting sackfuls of letters and it was even hard to get any other work done, because so many people were ringing up.'
Finally, Crofts announced that if anyone had a jar of the pickle, they should send it in so the ingredients could be analysed and re-created in the company laboratories.

By Friday, the firm had been contacted by 13 people. 'Some had full jars, some had empty ones, and some had jars with a tiny scraping left at the bottom,' said Crofts. 'I asked them to send in whatever they had. The jars should start arriving on Monday. They will be sent immediately to our laboratories and, all being well, we will have a range of possible matches developed in less than a month.'

But Crofts now has a second task for his public: 'There's no one in this company who has any idea what this pickle looks like or tastes like. 'I would ask for anyone who has a first-hand experience of Pan Yan Pickle to contact Premier Foods so they can be invited to the great tasting.'

Pan Yan pickle, introduced in 1907, won the heart of the British public during an era when new and exotic spices and fruits were being shipped though the West India docks in the East End of London. Its name was chosen by the factory's workers in a competition to describe the pickle's Oriental taste.

But tastes change, sales drop and the final jar of Pan Yan, a distinctive spicy, apple-based spread, rolled off the production line in 2002. Two years later, the list of ingredients went up in flames when fire swept through the Branston pickle factory in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, burning it to the ground.

Crofts asked for anyone wanting to take part in the tasting to email [email protected]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/ ... 27,00.html
 
Woman reunited with ring lost 67 years ago
By Lucy Cockcroft
Last Updated: 2:28am GMT 28/01/2008

A woman who tossed her engagement ring into a field in 1941 after a disagreement with her fiancé has been reunited with it almost 70 years later.

Violet Booth, then Violet Bailey, threw the diamond ring away after arguing with her husband-to-be, Samuel.

The childhood sweethearts, who were out walking, quickly made up. But after a fruitless search for the ring, they believed it was lost for ever.

Yet, almost seven decades later, Mrs Booth, now 88, is able to wear it again after her grandson found it buried in the field.

It took two hours for Leighton Boyes, 33, to unearth the ring with his metal detector. His grandmother, who wept as she put it back on her finger, said it was the perfect way to remember her husband, who died 15 years ago.

The couple were just a few months from their wedding day when they had their disagreement in Gilmorton, Leics. They later bought a replacement ring and married as planned.

However, Mrs Booth said: "I was in such a state when we couldn't find it. Samuel didn't tell me off - he wasn't like that.

"We got a new one, but it's not the same, is it?"

Mrs Booth, of Thurmaston, Leics, added: "I didn't ever think I would see it again. I couldn't believe it when he brought it back. It's amazing. I was very emotional and shed a few tears.

"It certainly brought back a few memories. It's something to remember Samuel by - he was a very nice man.

"I suppose I had stopped thinking about it after a while. Now it's just unbelievable that I've got it back. I can't stop looking at it - it means a lot to me."

Mr Boyes said: "I do metal-detecting as a hobby, so I suggested having a look to find it - though I thought the chances were really very slim.

"I went round to my nan's with some maps, and she managed to pinpoint the field. Then I got permission from the landowner and headed out. I never expected to find it, especially after all those years of modern-day ploughing.

"It was only buried about three to four inches down - and it wasn't even damaged. I just gave it a wipe, and that was it. It was incredible."

He said that his grandmother was able to slip the ring on her little finger, adding: "She was in bits when I gave it to her. It was lovely - she was so chuffed."

Mrs Booth's son Andrew, who lives with her, said: "I remember hearing all about the tale of this lost ring - and I remember going with my mum and dad to the spot when I was younger.

"I suppose that, with it being gold, it doesn't tarnish. It just makes you think about all the things that have happened while it has been lying there.

"It's wonderful to have found it after all this time. But there is some sadness to the story, because we all wish dad could have been here to see it as well."

http://tinyurl.com/2wxtyj
 
The dominant flavour of Pan Yan Pickle was cinnamon. Its ingredients and texture were otherwise not very different from other sweet pickles.

On the subject of lost pickles, I seem to recall that the ever-popular Branston by Crosse & Blackwell was once part of a range, which included a Boston Pickle and some others. Online I can see that the name is owned by a Swedish company now and applies to a cucumber relish. Maybe my memory is playing tricks. Anyone recall Crosse & Blackwell's other pickles? :?:
 
From Breaking News:
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News ... 03,00.html

Fish 'returns' girl's letter
25/01/2008 17:08 - (SA)

Tokyo - A letter that a young girl in Japan sent into the sky in a balloon about 15 years ago has been found on a fish hauled from 1, 000m below the Pacific.

A fisherman found the still legible piece of paper sitting on a sticky flatfish in his catch on Thursday, along with a torn-off string and the fragment of a red balloon.

He opened the folded paper, discovering it was a handwritten letter from a six-year-old girl at an elementary school in Kawasaki, 150km away from where the fish was caught off Choshi port.

The sender, Natsumi Shirahige, and her friends released letters as part of events to mark the school's 120th anniversary, which was in 1993.

"Our school is 120 years old... If you pick up this letter, please write to me," the letter reads, listing the school's address.

The 52-year-old fisherman said the letter was a nice surprise.

"I've been in fishing for a long time but this is unbelievable," the smiling man told the Asahi television network.

Shirahige, now a 21-year-old university student, said: "I can't get over the wonder of how the letter survived 15 years. I never expected I'd get a reply this way."

Not lost exactly, but found no doubt.
 
In the Akashic lost-property office, they must apply Karmic principles...

At the weekend, doing some house-work, I found a pocket knife (that I'd lost many months ago) under the sofa... :)

And then today I realised I had lost my thermal hat.... :(
 
Lost WWII desert satchel returned

An Egyptian tour guide who found a World War II soldier's bag which was lost in the desert for 60 years has returned it to the man's family.
Kahled Makram travelled 2,339 miles (3,765km) from Cairo to Burnley, Lancs, to return the leather satchel lost by 8th Army despatch rider Alec Ross.

He traced Mr Ross's family through a BBC website on WWII.

Mr Ross died three years ago but his sister, Irene Porter, received the bag which contained letters and photos.

Mrs Porter, 75, said she was eight when her brother lost the bag while serving with the Long Range Desert Group in Egypt.

Mr Ross, who settled in Whaddon, Buckinghamshire, after the war died three years ago at the age of 87.

Letters written by Mrs Porter's parents and older brother were among the personal items inside the bag.

"It's incredible, not just the condition of the items, but it brings Alec back to me," she told the BBC.

Mrs Porter said her brother was a member of a unit known as Popski's Private Army, one of a number operating behind enemy lines.

Mr Makram found the bag lying in the sand in the Sahara desert during an excursion in November 2007.

It is likely to go on display at a local museum later in the year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lanc ... 271300.stm
 
Easter egg lay hidden for 70 years
Last Updated: 2:13am GMT 08/03/2008

An Easter egg which lay unopened for more than 70 years has been discovered in the loft of a house.

Moir Taylor, 61, found the chocolate still in its original wrapping. She said: "It was bought as a present for my cousin, John Henry, who died just 13 months after his mother, Lilian, when he was only 22 months old. It was a gift to him just before we lost him - a few days before Easter 1934."

Mrs Taylor said that John's father kept the egg to remind him of his only son.

The chocolate went with him when he moved from Featherstone to near Doncaster, South Yorks, where it stayed for almost 70 years before being uncovered by Mrs Taylor.

She is now having trouble keeping it safe from her grandchildren, Jamie-Lee, 11, and Kyle, nine, who she thinks would love to get their hands on it.

Mrs Taylor said: "It's such a shame that it has been locked away in an attic for so long. It belongs in a museum."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... egg108.xml
 
Never mind pickles and Easter eggs

When are they going to bring back Callard and Bowsers's nougat? My life hasn't been the same since it was lost to the UK market.
 
An interesting piece on the radio today about a missing medal belonging to Humphrey Davey, the Cornish born chemist (but the beeb website doesn't have any reference to the story).
In October 1813 he and his wife, accompanied by Michael Faraday as his scientific assistant (and valet) traveled to France to collect a medal that Napoleon Bonaparte had awarded Davy for his electro-chemical work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphry_Davy

A descendent of Davey spoke on the programme, and said she believed that the medal was thrown into the sea, possibly from the causeway leading to St Michaels Mount, by Davey's wife. It had bad memories for her, as apparently they were arrested in France en route to collect the medal (and she and Davey were not close, according to Wiki).

This raises the possibility that modern metal-detectors might yet recover the medal....

NB Different online sources have different spellings for the chemist's name - there are permutations of Humphr(e)y and Dav(e)y, which makes a search for further info rather tedious!
 
Here we are!

Napoleon's medal 'cast into sea'

A medal Napoleon gave to British scientist Humphry Davy while France and Britain were at war was thrown away by Davy's widow, a relative has said.
Jane Davy threw her husband's medal into the sea near her Cornish home as it raised bad memories, Margaret Tottle-Smith said.

The couple had made a dangerous voyage to collect the award in 1813, but were mistakenly arrested in Brittany.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has offered over £1,800 for the medal.

It followed the discovery of the letter shedding more light on Napoleon's decision to honour the scientist.

But Ms Tottle-Smith, Davy's fourth great niece, said his widow Jane had thrown it into Cornwall's Mounts Bay.

"It's a very sad story. Humphry married a young widow," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"She was a socialite - she loved parties, she loved balls and when he died suddenly and the money was cut off, Jane was a widow again with no children.

"She had had a very bad experience going to collect that medal. It was a shocking memory for her.

"A lot of his possessions she gave to the Society because he was president there, but not the medal. I have a feeling that Jane was very ashamed of the medal and hated it."

When she stood at Mounts Bay and threw it off the coast she "got rid of the memories", she added.

The letter - dated March 14 1808, exactly 200 years ago on Friday - was sent by a French navy officer to Jean-Baptiste Delambre, an astronomer and general secretary of the Institut de France.

It said the Emperor's award was intended to "promote and share scientific knowledge" but the British naval blockade prevented news getting through to Mr Davy for years.

In 1813, in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, :?: he began a voyage across the Channel with Jane and his assistant Michael Faraday in tow.

Davy safety lamps

The RSC believes the three were arrested at Brittany after getting off a ship carrying prisoners-of-war from Plymouth, but were later released.

In Paris they did not meet the Emperor, but met Napoleon's wife Marie Louise instead.

Davy, from Cornwall, was knighted in 1812 and made a baronet in 1818.

He pioneered electrochemistry but is perhaps best known for inventing the Davy safety lamp for miners. He also identified iodine as an element for the first time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7298375.stm

I thought Napoleon's reign ended in 1812....?
Somebody enlighten me!
 
Back
Top