Monthly Meeting Minutes - 4th February 2022

Date of Meeting: 4th February 2022

 

Location of Meeting:

The Sherloft, My House, Portsmouth, UK

 

Attendees:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller)

 

Apologies:

None

  

Motions:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) informed the meeting that Rich Krisciunas from the America had asked if he could attend the meeting. He had taken time off work specially and was waiting in a laptop on the stairs to be admitted to the meeting. Mr. Krisciunas, the meeting was told, had prepared a toast he would like to perform if admitted.

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) reminded "The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) that only members were allowed to attend Shingle of Southsea meetings and that Rich Krisciunas  was not a member.

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) suggested that, given the special circumstances, a vote should be taken to see if Rich could be admitted as a guest of honour.

The vote was taken and it was decided that Rich Krisciunas would not be admitted to the meeting.

(Footage was captured of Mr Krisciunas nearly attending the meeting and can be found under Any Other Business below.)

The meeting then proceeded as usual.

Toast:

No one prepared a toast.

 

Presentation:

"The Entire Canon" (Paul Thomas Miller) presented the following paper about The Bruce-Partington Plans:

The Bruce-Partington Plans

A Break Through on the Problems of the Corpse on the Carriage

The post-mortem, fare-dodging journey taken by Cadogen West in The Bruce-Partington Plans is a problematic one. His corpse, we are told, was lowered onto an Underground train which passed by the rear window of Oberstein’s home on an uncovered section of track. From here it went on a journey along the underground system and eventually fell off somewhere near Aldgate Station.

There is much argument among Holmesians as to the location of Oberstein’s home and the point where the body fell off the carriage roof. While I’m not going to enter into that here, I can say that all the proposals so far suffer from similar problems. At most of the points where Oberstein’s house might be located, the tracks he had access to would mean a considerable journey was taken by the corpse before it fell off at Aldgate. Even the shortest possible journey involved all sorts of points and tight corners which should have shaken Cadogen West loose, leaving the corpse somewhere much closer to the spot where it boarded the train.

Holmes is quite clear in the text that it should not have taken very much to dislodge the body. In BRUC 1:609 he says “If you examine the roofs you will find that they are slightly rounded, and there is no railing round them”. I’ve looked at old pictures of Metropolitan and District Line carriages, this is quite correct. It is unlikely then, that the corpse was caught on a railing. In fact, the rounded roofs should have meant that the body would slip off very easily.

However, Holmes missed out a crucial detail about these roofs – gas bags. As J. Alan Rannie observed in his article “The Railway Journeys of Mr. Sherlock Holmes” (published in The Railway Magazine, May 1935), the lighting in the Underground carriages at this time was supplied by gas lamps. This case is supposed to have taken place in 1895. Until 1900, the train’s gas lamps were fed from gas-bags located on the roofs of the carriages. The bags were made of India-rubber and sat in troughs three feet wide and two foot high in the middle of the roof. A weighted board was laid across this to keep pressure on the bag as it emptied. The board would sink as the bag deflated. If Cadogen West had become entangled with the handles on the board somehow, this might easily have held him in place until it sank to a depth which released him, at which point his body would fall from the train.

Given that we do not know how high the board was when he became ensnared with it, Cadogen West’s journey is now feasible for just about every version that has been proposed. But the question now becomes: which bit of his body became caught on the board? It is hard to imagine a floppy corpse hand grasping onto the handle, or a limb managing to get wedged beneath it. With the trough being so wide, only a small part of the body could have been trapped, otherwise the whole cadaver would have settled into the trough and stayed there. We must suppose that he was laying mostly out of the trough with just a small part of his body attached to the board. But how? To answer this, we need to consider the manner of his death.

Cadogen West was, according to Colonel Valentine Walter’s statement, struck a fatal blow on the head. This is consistent with the newspaper report of his injuries: “The head was badly crushed…”. We are not told, however, whereabouts on the head he was struck. If the blow fell from behind, it is likely that the cerebellum was affected by the downwards pressure of the rest of the brain being squished in. A curious side-effect of this type of injury is that it can cause a phenomenon known as “angel lust”. More usually witnessed in hanged men, this looks like a post-mortem erection. Technically, this is a type of priapism – a penis which can remain erect for several hours without stimulation – rather than a genuine erection. Specifically it is a nonischemic priapism. These are often caused by spinal cord injuries in the living, but have been recorded in hanged men since at least the 18th century and it is generally theorised that this is caused by pressure on the cerebellum.

Certainly then, a fatal blow on the rear of the skull might be consistent with Cadogen West developing a post-mortem erection which could last for many hours. As Oberstein lowered the corpse onto the roof of the carriage outside his window, it settled face down onto one of the gas-bag troughs. This would assist the development of the priapism as the blood would drain to the front of the body, where his already rigid dingle was. By now, the corpse had been attacked, dragged around Oberstein’s home and scraped over a window ledge. The clothing was already beginning to suffer damage. Add to this Cadogen West’s excessively tumescencent priapism and it is not surprising that it broke free of his trousers and became firmly lodged beneath the handle of the gas-bag board. This anchored him to the roof of the carriage as the train rattled over many points and sped round tight corners. Eventually though, somewhere near Aldgate Station, the board had sunk so low in the trough that with a gallant “badoing” his member freed itself and the corpse began to slide off the roof ready to be found at six on Tuesday morning.

Any other business:

Here is some footage of Rich Krisciunas nearly attending the meeting: