The 1889 Tintypes: Berkley Vanderzee

Tintype of Berkley Vanderzee. 1889.
Courtesy of the Deakin Archives, Mifflin University.

Scientist and inventor Berkley Vanderzee is the subject of our second exhibition relating to the 1889 tintypes discovered as a part of the Deakin Archives.  This tintype is especially significant in that it confirms that Vanderzee did in fact lose his right arm and ultimately replaced it with a rather sophisticated æther-powered mechanical prosthesis.

"Based on numerous written accounts, we knew that Vanderzee lost his right arm in an accident that occurred in his automaton laboratory during the summer of 1885," notes Archer Bowens, Documents Archivist for the Victorian Mechanical Museum. "We had encountered some written references to experiments with æther-based replacement arms, but the tintype is the first visual confirmation of his use of an actual mechanical device."

As with the other 1889 tintypes, the photograph was taken by Robert Deakin as members of the Society of the Mechanical Sun were preparing to confront Enoch Cyncad in his underground stronghold.  The image shows Vanderzee standing near two combat modified IA Æther Collectors.  The intelligent automations were originally created by Vanderzee in the early 1880s for the purpose of extracting æther from remote and inaccessible deposits in caverns and catacombs deep beneath London. They appear to have been retrofitted with æther-powered particle beam cannons.

The 1889 Tintypes: Geoffrey Hawkins

Tintype of Geoffrey Hawkins. 1889.

Courtesy of the Deakin Archives, Mifflin University.

After a number of recent 20th century explorations, we return to the 19th century to showcase items from the Deakin Archive.  Archive curator Matthew Alexander has provided us with a series of photographic tintypes that date to the summer of 1889. The images prominently feature members of the Society of the Mechanical Sun as they prepare to confront Enoch Cyncad in his underground stronghold.

A tintype was an early photographic process by which an image was produced by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer.  The metal sheet then provided support for the resulting emulsion.  Tintypes were widely used during the 1860s and 1870s and remained in use well into the early 20th century.  The format became especially popular due to its portability and ease of use in settings beyond a normal indoor studio.

The 1889 tintypes discovered in the Deakin Archive were likely created by Robert Deakin.  Our first featured image in the series presents Geoffrey Hawkins as he navigates an underground tunnel.  He is clad in a kind of improvised battle outfit and carrying a rifle-type weapon.  Devon Gillroy, Firearms Curator for the Victorian Mechanical Museum, clarifies, "Hawkins is armed with a æther-modified blunderbuss which could blow a hole in the side of a brick building.  In the underground setting, he likely used it for demolition in addition to assault and defense."

Item 110: Tomorrow Comics #1

The eccentricities of a retired newspaper reporter, and the potential dangers those eccentricities presented, are showcased in Collection Item 110.  The item designation encompasses a copy of issue #1 of Tomorrow Comics, published in May of 1939, and a typewritten letter found tucked within the comic's pages. The comic book was enclosed in an envelope addressed to G. Thomas at 3975 Main Street in Munhall, Pennsylvania and bearing a Los Angeles postmark of 28 August, 1939.

The retired newspaper reporter in question is Adler Fanshaw, whose association with the Society of the Mechanical Sun and the Hawkins Strongbox histories spans parts of both the 19th and 20th centuries.  Fanshaw gained admission to the secret organization in late 1882, shortly after he assisted Timothy Deakin rescue Deakin's younger brother Jack from criminal underlings working for Dr. Enoch Cyncad. Fanshaw moved to America in 1921 and in his retirement wrote pulp fiction for various publications.  As noted in a recent exhibit here, his Rocket City series of stories was adapted into three successful movie serials in the early 1940s.  With the Strongbox discovery of Tomorrow Comics #1, it is revealed that Fanshaw was also writing scripts for comic books as well.

Archer Bowens, Documents Archivist for the Victorian Mechanical Museum, was instrumental in discovering and deciphering the contents of the Fanshaw Envelope (Collection Item 111) which revealed evidence of Fanshaw's superficially disguised, Mechanical Sun inspired storytelling.  Bowens notes, "We were aware of Adler's short fiction, most notably what was published in Starling Stories.  But it never came to our attention that he was doing comic book work as well."  He adds, "Even though the comic book credits never include his first name, the Sparky Elektro story in Tomorrow Comics #1 leaves no doubt that the comic book Fanshaw and Alder Fanshaw are one in the same."

Tomorrow Comics was published by Lake City Periodicals, a small magazine company based in Chicago.  Issue #1 featured the debut of Sparky Elektro, a superhero who could "harness the raw power of electricity itself." The untitled story is credited to Fanshaw and Brooks and is highly derivative of names and places relating to the 1939 New York World's Fair.  The name Sparky Elektro is a direct lift from Elektro the robot, the premiere attraction at the fair's Westinghouse pavilion.  The story itself takes place at the fair and the fictional Robot Exhibition Building is based on the design of the actual Westinghouse pavilion.

Fanshaw's indirect but obvious allusions to the Society of the Mechanical Sun are reflected in the characters of "evil scientist Dr. Sin-Cad" and "scientist and businessman Bernard Zeevander," derived from real life counterparts Enoch Cyncad and Berkley Vanderzee.  The story focuses on Sin-Cad's attempt to steal Zeevander's World's Fair robots and then unlock the secret of the mysterious energy source that powers them.  It is a reference to Berkley Vanderzee's  æther-powered intelligent automata and Enoch Cyncad's  numerous attempts to appropriate them.

"Adler struggled with an obvious paradox for most of his life," observes Bowens. "How does one reconcile being a dedicated journalist, always striving for truth and transparency, and at the same time commit to the secrecy of a covert society of scientists whose discoveries and inventions were newsworthy beyond measure? Later in his life he could contain it no longer and it emerged in the form of pulp fiction and comic book adventures."

Fanshaw likely considered these fictionalizations benign and harmless, but the material most definitely alarmed other Society members, as indicated by the typewritten letter found tucked inside the comic book:

Geoffrey,

   Please pardon the impersonal nature of the typewritten missive but my arthritis has been paining me beyond measure these last few weeks.

   Why am I forwarding to you a child's comic? I can only relate to you my shock when little George was reading aloud from its stories. I hear him cite the names Sin Cad and Zeevander. Upon examining the comic more closely, it appears that the story is a veiled reference to events we have strived to obscure for the past half century. We have long been worried about Adler's sometimes dangerous eccentricities, and this most certainly validates those concerns. He did not even bother to conceal his own name in the publication.

   We have warned him repeatedly in recent years about tangible threats. We know that the Germans are actively searching for Society secrets and this has the potential to compromise the safety of our family and friends. But he continues to ignore all attempts at contact or correspondence. A personal visit, perhaps?

   Share with me your thoughts,

                                                           T.

The letter is significant and reveletory in many ways.  It appears to confirm that Geoffrey Hawkins was indeed the same G. Thomas who received the 1939 World's Fair Postcard (Item 107) and that Hawkins was very much alive and well almost three decades after his mysterious disappearance in 1911.  The address in Munhall, Pennsylvania is just a few miles from the location where the Hawkins Strongbox was discovered in 2003.  The Los Angeles postmark and signature "T." would indicate that the letter and comic book were sent to Hawkins by Timothy Deakin.  Deakin was living with his son Everett in southern California at the time.  Bowens notes, "The reference to the Germans seeking Society secrets is a notable and intriguing avenue of research we will need to explore further." 

The tangible threats that Deakin references eventually caught up to Fanshaw shortly before his death in 1953, as documented by the aforementioned Collection Item 111: The Adler Fanshaw Envelope.  Whether Cameron Starkweather specifically followed these same comic book breadcrumbs to Fanshaw is as yet to be determined.

Item 86: The Cyncad Packet

Collection Item 86: The Cyncad Packet

We have mentioned the name of Enoch Cyncad a number of times over the course of our online exhibition, but he has largely remained an enigmatic, albeit rather sinister player in the Hawkins Strongbox histories.  With the release of Collection Item 86, we hope to bring at least some clarity to this figure whose machinations led Geoffrey Hawkins and his associates to form the Society of the Mechanical Sun.

Item 86 is a packet that was sent from London to the Kansas City office of the Vanderzee Detective Bureau  in September of 1895.  It contains a Scotland Yard circular, a cabinet card portrait, and a short handwritten note from Berkley Vanderzee to Geoffrey Hawkins.  It appears to relate directly to Item 85: The Fitzgerald Envelope.  Items 85 and 86 have been now designated as Lot 7: Hawkins in Kansas City.  Researchers at the Victorian Mechanical Museum indicate that additional items in this lot are forthcoming.

Item 86A: Handwritten note to Geoffrey Hawkins.

The text of the handwritten note (Item 86A):

10 October, 1895

Geoffrey,Your news was indeed distressing to us all. We thought that devil was returned to hell itself. We hope these prove helpful, despite the time that has passed.  The studio in Edinburgh had retained negatives, fortunate for our purposes.

Be well my friend,

Berkley

As noted previously, the contents of the Fitzgerald Envelope indicated that Geoffrey Hawkins was in Kansas City, Missouri during the mid-1890s, apparently conducting an investigation into the whereabouts of Enoch Cyncad.  It appears that Hawkins contacted Berkley Vanderzee in London to request identifying materials relating to Cyncad. Vanderzee in turn dispatched the packet that contained the circular and cabinet card.

Item 86B: Scotland Yard Circular. October 1877.

The Scotland Yard Circular (Item 86B) is dated eighteen years earlier. It advertises a £500 reward for information leading to the capture of Cyncad, described as a convicted murderer and escapee from the then infamous Newgate Prison.  It refers to Cyncad as the Edinburgh Frankenstein and notes that the escape from Newgate took place on 21 October, 1877.

According to newspaper accounts from the summer of 1877, Cyncad, then a well known doctor and academic from the University of Edinburgh, was at the center of a London medical scandal that involved experimentation on live human subjects.  The "heinous acts" noted in the circular purportedly focused on surgically implanting mechanical automata directly into the anatomy of kidnapped victims. Cyncad had enlisted members of the London criminal underworld to procure the necessary test subjects, typically from the city's poor and indigent population.  His actions were exposed by one of his former students, Dr. Jeremiah Hawkins, older brother of Geoffrey Hawkins.  Before being taken into custody, Cyncad violently murdered Jeremiah Hawkins. That act of revenge became the most prominent of the crimes for which Cyncad was ultimately convicted.  His escape from Newgate took place mere hours before his scheduled execution by hanging.

Item 86C: Cabinet Card of Enoch Cyncad. November 1876.

The Cabinet Card of Enoch Cyncad (Item 86C) was procured from the studio of Wm. Tower and Son in Edinburgh.  A notation on the back of the card dates the studio sitting to November of 1876.

The events of 1877 were only the beginning of what would become a decades-long plague of crime and horror initiated and perpetuated by Enoch Cyncad.  He would give birth to the monstrous clock-heads, corrupt the science of ætherdynamics and rule a criminal underworld that would stretch from the old rookeries of London to the American frontier.

Item 55: Hell's Revolver

Item 55: Modified Saunders Æther V, aka Hell's Revolver.

Collection Item 55 was discovered early in our Hawkins Strongbox explorations, but required careful handling and restoration before becoming available for exhibition at the Victorian Mechanical Museum and subsequently here at our online showcase.  It was designated as Hell's Revolver by Museum researchers, the origin of said epithet to be explained later in this missive.

The path to Item 55 originated in Lot 7, from which we have previously exhibited Collection Item 31: The Deakin Bro's Trade Card.  That group of items relates specifically to the 1882 disappearance of Jack Deakin and the efforts of his brother Timothy to find him and bring him home.  According to a narrative recorded by Timothy Deakin in a small bound journal (Collection Item 29), Jack Deakin was taken prisoner by criminal underlings working for Dr. Enoch Cyncad.  He had been searching for one of Cyncad's rumored subterranean outposts deep below the city of London.

Timothy Deakin enlisted the aid of underground explorer Matthew Hardy and newspaper reporter Adler Fanshaw in locating and recovering his brother.  After a heated battle with a number of Cyncad's clockhead automatons, the trio rescued Jack and managed a strategic retreat back to the relative safety of London's surface streets.  In the process, they confiscated a firearm used by one of Cyncad's higher ranking subordinates.

In his notes, Timothy Deakin identified the weapon as a heavily modified Saunders Æther V prototype, manufactured by Saunders and Sons in 1880.  He observed ". . . that numerous ventilation ports had been added to reduce the combustibility risks," and "exterior mechanics were used to synchronise particle beam rotation through the multiple barrels."
According to Devon Gillroy, Firearms Curator for the Victorian Mechanical Museum, Saunders and Sons abandoned the Æther V design in early 1881.  As noted here previously, Kenyon Saunders was tragically killed in 1882 while developing the company's Æther VI model.

Gillroy notes there is evidence that Cyncad was just then beginning to tinker with æther-based weaponry. That tinkering apparently involved numerous flawed designs absconded from Saunders laboratories. The modified Æther V was likely one of Cyncad's earliest experiments.  Timothy Deakin examined the piece extensively and concluded " . . . it is a thoroughly volatile and dangerous modification of an exceptionally flawed concept. "  He added, "I hope to God Almighty that it is the only one of its kind."  He then neutered it by removing its æther battery core and secured it in a lead-lined box within a second lead-lined box.  At some later date it was placed within the Hawkins Strongbox.

In July 1949, the pulp magazine Startling Stories published Adler Fanshaw's short story "The Battle Below," a thinly veiled albeit exaggerated fictional recounting of the rescue of Jack Deakin.  At the story's climax, the heroes are confronted by an adversary who was "brandishing a revolver forged in the firey pits of hell itself."  Museum researchers were inspired by Fanshaw's prose and Collection Item 55 became known as Hell's Revolver.

Item 85: The Fitzgerald Envelope

The contents of the Fitzgerald Envelope.

Chicago is indeed a long way from London, but it is the focus of Collection Item 85.  Christened the Fitzgerald Envelope by the research assistants at the Victorian Mechanical Museum, its contents are both enigmatic and revealing, and appear to open an entirely new chapter in the life of Geoffrey Hawkins.

It is known that Hawkins left England sometime after his second Hawkins Steam Coach was destroyed by sabotage in early 1889.  He spent most of the following decade traveling abroad, and spent a considerable amount of time living in a number of different locations in the United States.  Many of his journals from this time period remain missing, and those discovered have yet to be researched and cataloged.  But Collection Item 85 does inform us that Hawkins was in Kansas City, Missouri during the summer of 1895 and was likely associated in some manner with the Vanderzee Detective Bureau.

The Fitzgerald Envelope contained the following items:

• a set of newspaper clippings from the Chicago Tribune, all of which were published in August, 1895.  (Item 85A)
• a Western Union telegram sent to Geoffrey Hawkins in Kansas City, dated 20 August, 1895.  (Item 85B)
• a set of small mechanical components, severely blackened due to fire damage.  (Item 85C)

Item 85A: Clippings from the Chicago Tribune. August 1895.

The newspaper clippings all focus on the then notorious case of  H.H. Holmes, a particularly heinous serial killer most famous for preying on female visitors to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  The article headlined "Modern Bluebeard," published in the Chicago Tribune on August 18, 1895, took readers on a tour of Holmes' infamous home:

A veritable murder factory ban been discovered in the house built at Chicago by H. R. Holmes, who is charged with at least eleven murders and suspected of many more. In this house built and occupied by Holmes the police have found secret rooms without light or air, a sealed chamber, a hidden trap door leading to a hanging secret room, and a steel-bound room built into the wall.

The second floor is a labyrinth of mazes, doors, and passages.  It contains a death shaft, where bodies could be lowered into into the cellar and from which a hidden passage led to the sealed chamber. One witness has already identified the room where Holmes showed him three corpses on this floor of the house. Another has described a narrow escape from death in one of the dark rooms.

The cellar, where large quantities of human remains have been discovered, contains every provision for destroying bodies. Two large vaults of quicklime. one of them containing some human remains, have been found beneath the floor.  A hidden tank was found which contained a deadly oil, and when this was unearthed an explosion followed which nearly cost three of three workmen their lives. Even more horrible than this was the discovery of a crematory in the cellar where human bodies could be incinerated.

A woman's footprint discovered in a bed of quicklime in the cellar is supposed to be that of Miss Williams, who was last seen in this house and part of whose jewelry has been identified among the contents of a stove used by Holmes. Human bones of all kinds have been dug up out of the cellar of this Bluebeard's castle, and police have found tufts of hair, blood-stained lined and pieces of clothing which had been hastily concealed.

The second clipping is dated the very next day (19 August) and reports that a devastating fire had destroyed Holmes' "notorious castle."  The third clipping is a picture engraving of Holmes himself.

Item 85B. Western Union Telegram.

Item 85B is a Western Union telegram sent to Hawkins in Kansas City, in the care of the Vanderzee Detective Bureau.  This private agency was a more specialized rival to the famous Pinkertons and was established by Nicholas Vanderzee in 1885.  The message of the telegram is brief and mysterious:

To G. Hawkins
c/o The Vanderzee Agency, Troost Ave

Items requested are forthcoming. Fire destroyed building.  Nothing remains.

Fitzgerald

Items 85C.  Fire damaged mechanical components.

Item 85C is a set of three mechanical components, severely damaged and blackened by fire.  After careful examination by scientists at the Victorian Mechanical Museum, it was determined that these pieces closely matched the augmentations found on the Clock-Head Skull (Collection Item 5).  This evidence very strongly indicated that Dr. Enoch Cyncad, at some point prior to 1893, had emigrated to America.

And apparently Geoffrey Hawkins was attempting to find and apprehend him.

It can be assumed that the Fitzgerald in the telegram is Chicago Police Detective Fitzgerald, one of two detectives who investigated the Holmes "castle."  It appears that Fitzgerald found the mechanical pieces, likely in the basement crematorium, and forwarded them to Hawkins in Kansas City.

These revelations certainly raise more questions than they answer.  But they do set the stage for a greater exploration of Hawkins' visitations to the United States in the closing years of the 19th century.

Item 5: The Clock-Head Skull

Item 5: Clock-head skull discovered by the River Thames in 1881. 

History has left few records of the clock-heads.  These mechanically deformed creatures terrified London slum dwellers throughout the late 1870s and early 1880s, but were largely considered fabrications by the police and newspaper reporters.  One documented newspaper account of a clock-head incident (The London Evening Gazette; 19 September, 1879) characterized eyewitnesses as "greatly intoxicated with drink and revelry and inclined to exaggeration." According to a number of his friends, writer Wilkie Collins was fascinated by "clock-head gossip" as it potentially related to vivisection, the subject of his 1883 book Heart and Science.  But he too ultimately dismissed the plausibility of such reports.

Geoffrey Hawkins and his associates took reports of clock-heads very seriously.  From 1878 through late 1881, Hawkins employed a number of private investigators to pursue any and all information regarding the creatures.  It was his hope to discover what person or collective was behind the creation and disposition of these human-mechanical augmentations.

On Christmas Eve, 1881, investigator Archibald Teddington delivered to Hawkins a human skull that had been discovered by a mudlark* along the banks of the Thames.  It was the first tangible evidence of a clock-head that Hawkins was able to acquire.  That skull, with its embedded mechanical constructs, was ultimately secured inside a small chest within the Hawkins Strongbox.  It is presented here as Collection Item 5.

The skull was examined extensively by Berkley Vanderzee.  It had three distinct augmentations: one large piece embedded in the forehead, a smaller piece drilled into the right side, and a final piece inside the right eye socket.  The forehead piece confirmed the one physical trait nearly all clock-head witnesses agreed upon.  It also matched the drawing produced by a prostitute in 1880 and forwarded to Hawkins by Henry Mayhew (Item 25).  But most alarming to Vanderzee was what he found within the skull's front right ventricle: an active æther cell.  This essentially confirmed Hawkins' long simmering suspicions that Dr. Enoch Cyncad was the mysterious and sinister force behind the clock-head monstrosities.

Berkley Vanderzee with the clock-head skull at the Scientia Club.  1881. 

It would appear that the discovery of the skull most certainly lead to the formation of the Society of the Mechanical Sun less than three weeks later on 9 January, 1882.  The skull itself can be seen in a photograph dated 27 December, 1881.  The photo was apparently taken inside the Scientia Club in London.  Berkely Vanderzee is pictured standing at a small table examining the skull.

*mudlark - "Groups of children spread over the banks were waiting till the river, exposed to its bed of sand, left bare on its banks tongues of damp mud, sullen promontories, which at regular distances ran at low water down into the stream. When the tide was perfectly low, these bands of boys, among whom I noticed girls, a few men, and many old women, scattered on both sides of the Thames over the exposed mud and among the vessels the tide had left high and dry. I there saw them waded up to their knees in the viscous mud covering the sand: they were mud-larks. It may be asked what these swarms of finders expect to find on these sterile spots : they collect in baskets pieces of coal, wood, nails, and, by extreme good luck, a few coppers. They are seen along the whole distance from Vauxhall to Woolwich: some of the children are not above six years of age: nearly all the old women have decrepid features, rendered even more hideous by their wretched rags; the boys all look rather wild and savage; their clothing generally consists of an old straw hat, a coloured shirfr, and trousers tucked up to the knees, though some of them do not possess what can be called a garment, but only rags scarce covering them."

From The English at Home Volume 2 by  Alphonse Esquiros.  1861.

Item 1: The Geoffrey Hawkins Mechanical Sun Timepiece

It is perhaps the most important item to be found within the Hawkins Strongbox thus far.  In a material sense, it is an extraordinary example of æther-based mechanical craftsmanship.  Historically, it is a significant and tangible representation of the origin of the Society of the Mechanical Sun, the secret Victorian-era organization so directly and dramatically connected to the Hawkins Strongbox and its contents.  It is the Geoffrey Hawkins Mechanical Sun Timepiece and it has been appropriately designated as Collection Item 1.

The purpose of the Society of the Mechanical Sun has long been shrouded in mystery and secrecy, and rumors have abounded as to its mission and motivations. It was primarily populated by scientists, inventors and mechanical engineers.  Whenever the group was threatened by public awareness, its members would attempt to portray it as a simple social club.  Geoffrey Hawkins once responded to a reporter's inquiries by calling it a "--collection of self-absorbed intellectuals and academics too often debating matters most mundane and tedious."  But Hawkins and his associates were notable for cleverly misrepresenting their remarkable and often fantastic private adventures, and consistently portraying these affairs " . . . as fanciful fictions better suited to the penny dreadfuls than events of any historical significance."

Many prominent Victorians were rumored to have been members.  Speculation focused on figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Bell, Max Planck and Heinrich Hertz, just to name a few. Wilkie Collins reportedly told close friends that he had declined a membership invitation.  Jules Verne was frequently mentioned as being one of the group's founding members.  Yet neither history, nor any of the contents of the Hawkins Strongbox so far cataloged, have yet to confirm Mechanical Sun membership of anyone other than the four individuals we are about to identify.

On the evening of 9 January, 1882, Geoffrey Hawkins, Timothy Deakin, Berkley Vanderzee and Falynne Hyperion met in a private dining room at the Scientia Club in London.  Over the course of a few hours, they created the Society of the Mechanical Sun and initiated themselves as its charter members. Strongbox items so far documented indicate that the group's initial mission focused on containing the use of ætherdynamic technology, especially as it related to the plans and machinations of Dr. Enoch Cyncad.

A few weeks later, Berkley Vanderzee presented each of the members, including himself, with a custom-designed æther-powered pocket watch, denoting their status within the Society.  Vanderzee personally constructed the four timepieces and also designed the Mechanical Sun emblem that adorned the cover of each one.  (Objects employing the same design can be found in Items 47 and 48.)  An inscription on the inside cover of each read "The Society of the Mechanical Sun; January 9, 1882."  The watch face was personalized to each individual and also included Mechanical Sun and Vanderzee identifications. The design required no winding as its internal mechanisms were powered by a small but powerful æther cell.

Geoffrey Hawkins' Mechanical Sun timepiece was found within the Hawkins Strongbox, carefully preserved inside a metal case with a cushioned interior.  A small note was also found within the case.

The text of the note:

At 5:56 on the morning of July 17, 1955, Vanderzee's timepiece is finally still.  It was powered by the last remaining active æther cell on the planet.

 The Mechanical Sun timepieces belonging to Berkley Vanderzee, Timothy Deakin and Falynne Hyperion remain unaccounted for.

Item 25: Henry Mayhew Letter with Enclosure

  Item 25: Henry Mayhew Letter with Envelope. 1880

During the mid-19th century, Henry Mayhew was a well known writer, journalist and advocate for social reform.  He wrote numerous plays and was also a co-founder of Punch magazine, the enduring British publication famous for its satire and literary humor.  But history remembers Mayhew most for the investigations of London's lower classes that he conducted throughout 1849 and 1850.  He reported his findings in a series of articles for the Morning Observer; these surveys were ultimately collected in a book entitled London Labour and the London Poor.  His work was groundbreaking and significant and had an especially notable influence on the novels and stories of Charles Dickens.

Despite the fame and reputation these endeavors brought to Mayhew, he fell into obscurity in his later years.  The events of his life from1865 until his death in 1887 have long been a mystery, but Collection Item 25 reveals that for at least part of that time he was in contact with Geoffrey Hawkins.  Item 25 is a letter Mayhew wrote to Hawkins on 22 May, 1880.  It was accompanied in the envelope by a what is believed to be the very first documentation of a clock-head.


The text of the letter:

22 May 1880

My Dear Hawkins,

I regret again that I have found no evidence of this mysterious Cyncad of whom you queried me earlier this year.

Though I remain the social recluse you stumbled upon a decade ago, I am no stranger to the streets of this city and I often walk the avenues and alleys that I so notoriously explored more than a score of years ago.

Word of these clock-heads continues to spread.  The police are quick to characterize these reports as the fabrications of of drunken miscreants, and the members of the press seem to have no interest in pursuing the story, apparently judging it unworthy of even uncultured sensationalism.

By chance and good fortune I was recently presented with a drawing of one of these clock-heads.  It is rumored to have been hastily rendered by a prostitute residing within the Old Nichol Street rookery who had been accosted by one of the creatures.  You will find that rendering enclosed herein.  I will leave it to your judgment as to whether any of this bears relevance to your ongoing investigations.

I remain your humble servant in these matters,

H. Mayhew

Item 25-A: Drawing of a Clock-Head. 1880.

The drawing that Mayhew references bears the following inscription, apparently written by Mayhew himself:

given to me 17 May 1880

by A. Steenburgen

artist name unknown

resided in old nichol

Hawkins was actively pursuing the notorious Dr. Cyncad at this time and at some point had enlisted Henry Mayhew in his efforts.  When Archer Bowens forwarded these materials, he noted that it is likely that this was the first time Hawkins and his associates determined a possible link between Cyncad and the clock-heads.

Item 31: Deakin Bro's Trade Card with Missive

Item 31: Deakin Bro's Trade Card.  1882.

Numerous items contained within the Hawkins Strongbox bear association with Timothy Deakin and the Deakin Bro's Photography Studio.  The brothers Deakin were Robert, born in 1851; Timothy, born 1855; and the youngest John (though most often referred to as Jack), who arrived in 1860.  Parents Landry and Edyln Deakin also had two daughters, Glynnis born in 1853 and Kendra in 1857.  Tragically, both girls drowned in a boating accident during the summer of 1867.

Item 31, a trade card for the Deakin Bro's Studio, would be otherwise quite mundane if not for the enigmatic message penned across its reverse side.  The card is somewhat unusual in that it only featured printing on one side, but this did afford Timothy Deakin the space to write what appears to be a hastily composed note to Geoffrey Hawkins.

The text of the message:

Geoffrey,

I beg your forgiveness for the format and nature of this rushed missive. Word of Jack has been delivered to me this very afternoon and I fear that if I do not act swiftly I will forgo this opportunity that fate has so generously granted.

I have little doubt that this trail will take me to Cyncad, and thus should I fall into peril I wanted to leave you with some record of my impending course of action. 

I have until now spared Robert and Mother the details of this unfortunate affair.  They know only that Jack has been on extended holiday.  I trust that you will provide an explanation to them, both suitable and comforting should I not return.

                                                                                            T.

                                                                                           17 Sept. 1882

Archer Bowens, Documents Archivist for the Victorian Mechanical Museum provided these comments on Item 31:

"The Deakin Bro's trade card is part of a group of items we have classified as Lot 7 -September 1882.  It includes the trade card, a newspaper clipping, a number of sketches, and a lengthy narration written by Timothy Deakin.  These items all relate to events surrounding the disappearance of Timothy's younger brother Jack during the late summer of 1882.  I am currently transcribing the pages written by Timothy and hope to have that text available for exhibition sometime in the near future."