
A Mystery Manuscript Found in a Used Copy of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ - samclemens
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lost-mystery-manuscript-australia-secondhand-bookshop-alice-wonderland
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madaxe_again
I've found some fascinating stuff snuck into old books over the years. To wit:

A serviceman's military records, discharge papers, tickets for transport etc.
from the Boer war, in a volume of Pope's letters.

A family tree in a 17th c. Bible, behind a pasted over frontispiece, going
back hundreds of years, complete with a baby's handprint from the late 18th
century.

War cabinet correspondence with an editor at the Times from WWI inside a BBC
archives bound copy of the times from the quarter surrounding the outbreak of
the war.

A £5 note - one of the old white fivers the size of a dinner-napkin, inside
Dulac's Arabian Nights (one of my favourite purchases - £1 from a charity
shop, first edition, gorgeous book).

A land deed for a farm in Wales from the 1680s, although this was in a
Victorian desk-tidy, under the lining paper, and half eaten by woodworm.

All in all, about 5% of the books and objects I buy end up coming with some
sort of history bonus.

On a larger sort of scale, my mother bought a house in southern France in the
late 80's, and while doing renovation discovered a walled up loft containing a
hoarde of art up to the early 1960's - we did eventually track down the
rightful heir, who in gratitude for our discovery allowed us our pick of
anything we wanted within reason. It had long been thought that his
grandmother's husband had done a runner with the lot - turns out granny was
just bitter and disinheriting his children after he ran off without the art.

Funny old world. Funny old humans.

Edit: just remembered another hoarde of mementos I found: under the
floorboards of a Georgian building in Bath while laying network cable in our
office. Found a Radio Times poster advertising Dame Nelly Melba on 2LO, the
BBC's first station, tiny bottles of Victorian pharmaceuticals (the only one
still full was Oleum Lavandin, which smelt as good as new), a wages book from
a hairdresser in the 30's, and a whole stack of newspapers from the late 19th
- early 20th century. And soot. So much soot.

~~~
xefer
It would be great if you could post the details that you found in that Bible
somewhere so that interested genealogists could pick them up. Most English
church records go back to the 1530s or so; anything earlier than that relies
on these sorts of private documents.

~~~
madaxe_again
Oh, I did years ago - chucked it on geni - although iirc it went back to 1580
or so. I also shared scans of the letters with the BBC, as while I'm sure
they've got digitised copies of the times from then (hence they were flogging
the originals in an auction house in Hampshire), I don't think the inclusion
of the correspondence was deliberate - assume someone left them there 80 years
ago while working on research for a story. The rest is of fairly limited
interest other than as oddities - although the radio times poster graces the
wall of the business I founded still, I gather.

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erichurkman
The use of uniquely cut zig zags to confirm two document halves came from the
same pair is really interesting.

~~~
paulsutter
The split tally (used prior to paper money) used a similar method with wood to
create a primitive distributed* ledger:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_stick](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_stick)

[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40189959](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40189959)

*if two nodes counts as “distributed”

~~~
Turing_Machine
The jagged, toothed edge is called an "indenture", which is also where the
term "indentured servant" comes from.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indenture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indenture)

~~~
juanuys
Reminds me of a book I read a while ago: 'Debt: the first 5000 years' [0]

[0]:
[http://dbpedia.org/page/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](http://dbpedia.org/page/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)

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sjclemmy
Being local to the area in West Yorkshire described in the article, I’d just
like to correct the impression given in the article that Gildersome is a
quaint ye olde english ‘hamlet... dominated by farmland’. It’s a suburb in the
centre of a densely populated urban conurbation right next to one of the
busiest motorways in Britain.

~~~
INTPenis
Interesting because I got the impression that someone on the Brown side didn't
want to part with it because it might be valuable.

Having handed it down several generations, just a deed. Until the story of it
became lost and it was accidentally donated with the book.

And then returned to its rightful family.

My imagination concocts all kinds of scenarios where the Appleyards were
forced to leave england destitute because they could never prove ownership of
the land.

Or perhaps the Browns just thought it was interesting and didn't know its
significance.

The article never mentions which family the land was deeded to though.

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uhhyeahdude
This is really very interesting for those of us afflicted by bibliomania;
thank you for the article.

