Monthly Meeting Minutes – 8th September 2025

Date of Meeting: 8th September 2025

Location of Meeting:

The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK

 

Attendees:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)

 

Apologies:

There were no apologies this month.

 

Toast:

Paul Thomas Miller (The Entire Canon) gave the following toast:

Sahara King,

You beautiful thing.

Like a spring

That went "PING!"

You went killing.

And you bit the face off some woman in a very boring story.

 

Presentation:

Paul Thomas Miller (The Entire Canon) presented his theory regarding the disappearance of James Phillimore:

James Phillimore

(AKA Ettore Majorana?)

 

I have always found James Phillimore one of the more intriguing characters in The Canon. For those who need reminding, he is briefly mentioned in THOR 1:5:

Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.

Just one sentence. And yet such a fascinating notion.

As THOR was published in 1922, the only extra information we can deduce is that Mr Phillimore disappeared sometime before this. We may also suggest that it is likely that Phillimore vanished sometime before Holmes’s 1903 retirement. But that’s it. That’s all we could know. Until now. Because upon recently reading about the circumstances of Ettore Majorana’s disappearance in Italy, I couldn’t help but draw parallels and I wonder if James and Ettore may be the same person…

Ettore Majorana was an Italian theoretical physicist born in Sicily, 1906. He was considered a genius and he was mostly interested in neutrino masses. At one point he was working with Werner Heisenberg – the famous quantum mechanics pioneer. Such was his influence in this field that Majorana fermions and Majorana particles (which he predicted theoretically) are named after him even though they were only really beginning to be properly understood in 2017. Indeed, scientists are now starting to realise that Majorana’s work may go some way to explaining dark matter and dark energy. Descriptions of his theoretical work are almost always accompanied with the adjective “prescient”. In short, we may consider the man the master of the neutrino.

But on 25^th March 1938 he purchased a ticket for a boat to take him from Palermo to Naples and then vanished.

The disappearance was clearly intentional. In the weeks leading up to this he had emptied his bank account. And on the day he vanished he had sent the following letter to the director of the Naples Physics Institute:

Dear Carrelli,

I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn't a bit of selfishness in it, but I realise what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship, and the sympathy you gave me over the past months.

I ask you to remember me to all those I learned to know and appreciate in your Institute, especially Sciuti: I will keep a fond memory of them all at least until 11 pm tonight, possibly later too.

— E. Majorana

The tale of Mr Ettore Majorana, who, stepping out to buy a ticket, was never more seen in this world has a ring of familiarity to it. It is as sudden, as inexplicable and as couched in mundane activity as the disappearance of James Phillimore 38 years before.

It would be another 73 years before enough evidence came to light to solve these mysteries.

In September 2011 experiments at CERN showed that the velocity of certain neutrinos exceeded the speed of light. This was repeated in improved experiments in November of the same year. According to relativity, if an object can travel faster than the speed of light, it will end up in the past. So, these experiments suggest that neutrinos can travel into the past. Later experiments suggested that the speed of neutrinos was merely equal to the speed of light, but if we ignore this, it is clear that neutrinos are the key to time travel.

Another piece of significant information which came to light in 2011 was the testimony of an unnamed witness who claimed to have met Majorana in Caracas, Venezuela in 1955. And he had a photo to prove it. Majorana had been living there under the name “Mr Bini”. The problem? Bini was at least 10 years older than Majorana should have been.

How is this possible? It seems all too clear to me...

My theory is that he invented some sort of device that harnessed the power of the neutrino and used this to escape the unstable Europe of the late 1930s. With the whole world going all awry again, there was no point just escaping to a different place. Instead, his device allowed him to travel in time. 

As the device was untested, Majorana was aware that it may turn out to be rather dangerous. So, to reduce the impact on civilians if things went wrong, he bought a ticket and got on a boat to Naples. He waited until he was in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea before using it. This way the devastation of any sort of nuclear explosion would be limited to a few boat passengers, rather than a whole city.

But there was no explosion. The device worked and Majorana found himself in 1890s England. I doubt that the move in space was planned - I think he was aiming for 1890s Sicily.  Not that it matters. Whatever his intensions were, England was where he arrived.

Having only just left the growing tensions of 1930s Europe, Majorana was familiar with English xenophobia. And things were no different around the turn of the century. The unflattering descriptions of Italians in SIXN and REDC are evidence enough that even in the Holmesian era, Italians were not popular in England. So, the first thing he did was take on a new personality – Mr James Phillimore, an English gentleman.

Why did Ettore choose the name of James Phillimore? Well, it is notable that James means “holder of the heel” and Ettore means “holding fast”. As for Phillimore – which literally means “foal in the moor” – who can tell? Perhaps this was the first scene he saw upon arrival. Perhaps he could think of nothing more English than horses and moors. Or perhaps his eye happened to fall upon one of the many books by William Phillimore Watts Phillimore which were published around this time.

Remember that Majorana emptied his bank accounts before disappearing. It is my belief that he converted his money into some tradable commodity (e.g. jewels or gold) which he took with him. He would easily be able to convert this into money appropriate for whatever time and place he arrived at. Using this money, he would be able to swiftly set himself up with a new home, laboratory and persona. Then he could effectively sit out both world wars twenty-something years before they even started.

Majorana, under his new name of Phillimore, spent the next ten years conducting further research into neutrinos and improving his time travel device. He liked to work in collaboration with other scientists, so it is probable that he was taking his device to show to one of his past-peers on the fateful day that Phillimore disappeared.

Majorana would, most likely, have been working with J. J. Thompson in Cambridge. Thompson is credited with the discovery of the electron and seems just the sort of fellow who Majorana would seek out in the 1890s. I contend that on the day he disappeared Phillimore/Majorana (or Phillimajorana, if you prefer) was intending to take his time-travel device to Thompson's laboratory where they could work on it together. However, as he started out, it began to rain. To prevent his device from getting water damaged, he tried to return home for an umbrella. Sadly, rainwater had already seeped into the device and, as he passed the threshold of his home, it shorted out, exploded and sent him hurtling forwards in time.

Majorana found himself in Venezuela just after the Second World War had finished. His device was ruined and, as he had not had time to prepare for this journey, he was without funds. He then discovered that Majorana would have not been a popular man anymore – he was considered an evil scientist on the side of the Axis Powers. Fascists had long since gone out of fashion and Nazis were now naughty. And Majorana had been both. So, once again, he had to reinvent himself. This time he became Mr Bini: a nobody, stuck in Caracas, living out his remaining days quietly and simply.

Suddenly, it makes sense that Holmes could not solve the case in 1900. While he was interested in science, the notions of neutrinos, relativity and quantum physics were decades away. Holmes simply lacked the tools with which to frame the Phillimore story. Had he been looking into it today, I reckon he'd have it sorted in no time.

 

Any Other Business:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) wished to wish "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) a happy birthday. Unfortunately it was not "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)'s birthday so "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) could not wish "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) a happy birthday.