This is a very important little post. Ebony Underwood seeks clemency for her father and I for one support her to the hilt. Rather than write about the case myself I offer two links:
1)An article on Huffington Post in which Ms Underwood explains events in detail.
2)A link to the petition on change.org that she has launched.
I urge you all to read the Huffington Post piece and sign and share the petition. Please also share this post.
Welcome the second of three posts I shall be producing about The Railway Detective. The previous post covered four of the books and can be viewed here. As I warned in the introduction to that post, this is laden with spoilers. I hope you will all enjoy this post and be encouraged to share it.
The Iron Horse refers to locomotives, but this story is also deeply concerned with flesh and blood horses, since it involves a crime that occurred during the Derby. Colbeck, operating with his usual flair and persistence, and with the assistance of the inevitable Leeming is able to bring a series of horrible crimes home to Lord Hendry.
A derailment near Balcombe is the initial incident that opens this story. The railway police in the person of Captain Harvey Ridgeon reckon that the accident was caused by driver error. However, unlike Ridgeon was has formed an opinion and bends every new fact to fit that opinion, Colbeck notes that the driver of that particular train was known for caution, that he managed to instruct his fireman to jump off before the disaster struck, and that a section of track had been deliberately loosened. Colbeck also identifies two passengers on that train who had enemies, although it turns out that there was a third passenger on that train whose behaviour had caused one particular individual to want revenge on both him and the train that he regularly used. The book ends with Ridgeon, his errors cruelly exposed, apologising to Colbeck.
A silver coffee pot in the shape of a locomotive, commissioned by a wealthy family in Cardiff goes missing, and the man entrusted with delivering it from London to Cardiff is found murdered. The young man identified as the murder victim is Hugh Kellow, apprentice to the silversmith Leonard Voke, and the original suspect is Voke’s disinherited son Stephen. Colbeck traces Voke junior and soon establishes that he is not the murderer. Having to rethink the entire case, Colbeck arrives at the notion the murder victim was not Kellow, but someone who looked similar and could be used to send the police down a blind alley. A trip to Birmingham’s jewellery quarter ensues, for which Colbeck enlists both the official assistance of Leeming and the unofficial assistance of Madeleine Andrews. The trip to Birmingham yields Kellow and his accomplice Bridget Haggs, a.k.a Effie, a.k.a Mrs Vernon. Additionally, Madeleine Andrews and Robert Colbeck become engaged. This book also introduces us to actor-manager Nigel Buckmaster, subsequently to provide Colbeck with valuable assistance in at least two further cases.
Unlike almost every other book and story in the series there is no element of ‘who done it?’ about this story – it is a case of ‘will they get away with it?’. The action opens with Jeremy Exley being conveyed from Wolverhampton to Birmingham to be imprisoned. A young lady named Irene Adnam, his lover and accomplice, kills one of the two policemen guarding him, assists in the killing of the other and the disposal of the two bodies. The crimes having been committed on the railway, Colbeck is involved from the start. Colbeck has an extra reason to bring this case to a successful conclusion, since it was Exley who was responsible for him becoming a policeman in the first place. Colbeck had been a barrister, and in that role persuaded a young women who witnessed a robbery carried out by Exley to give evidence in court. Exley responded by murdering the young woman in a particularly horrible way.
Eventually, after a chase that leads all the way to America, the villains are run to earth, and Colbeck succeeds in dividing them by telling Irene the story of the earlier murder in full detail.
As well as my title piece I have a couple of important links to share. I have mentioned the Railway Detective, Inspector Robert Colbeck, in various previous posts without going into much detail. Today I am devoting a whole post to him and his exploits, which will be the first of a three such posts. WARNING: THE REST OF THIS POST IS FULL OF SPOILERS.
This book, with the title that becomes a supertitle for the whole series, is the one that introduces Inspector Colbeck, his sidekick Sergeant Leeming, their irascible and dictatorial ex-army boss Superintendent Edward Tallis. The opening crime of the series features train driver Caleb Andrews as one of the victims, and also introduces us therefore to his remarkable daughter Madeleine who becomes one of the key characters in the series.
The initial crime, while serious enough in itself is but a part of much wider scheme hatched by a stalwart opponent of the railway network whose initial hostility to the new development has been inflamed beyond the point of insanity by the death of his wife which he blames on the railways. Another element of the master plan was to sabotage the Great Exhibition by blowing up the locomotives that formed a big part of it.
It is after Colbeck has protected the Great Exhibition and brought the villains to justice that the nickname by which he will be known for evermore “The Railway Detective” is bestowed on him. This book also introduces yet another running theme, the permanent friction between Colbeck and Tallis which regularly flares into open flames.
A murder committed on an excursion train (hence the title) leads to the uncovering of a grotesque miscarriage of justice in which the wrong person was hanged for a murder and the unmasking of the person who saw someone hanged in his place.
Madeleine Andrews provides her first unofficial service to Scotland Yard, Colbeck making use of her communication skills and her sex to gain extra information from a female who he feels has not told him all that she might. Knowing his Superintendent’s view of women, Colbeck is careful to make sure that Tallis does not find out about this.
The details that emerge of the first murder victim, particularly those associated with his role as hangman (hence the trail to the miscarriage of justice), are such as render him as unsympathetic a murder victim as any in detective fiction (with the possible exception of the loathsome Enoch J Drebber in A Study in Scarlet).
Time for my first picture (delayed because my copies of the first three books in this series are in omnibus form)…
The viaduct of the title is the Sankey Viaduct near Liverpool, and the story begins with someone being thrown out of a train and over the side of the viaduct to his death. It so happens that an accomplished artist was present preparing to paint a picture of the train crossing the viaduct, so as well as spoken evidence Colbeck gets a clear picture of the scene.
When it emerges that the victim was a French railway engineer making a clandestine visit to Liverpool, Colbeck’s follow up action takes him to France, where with the regular assistance of Leeming and the unapproved assistance of Brendan Mulryne he thwarts a sabotage scheme intended to prevent the completion of a railway there.
A fanciful sketch by a second fine artist, Madeleine Andrews, fires a synapse in the Colbeck brain that puts him wise to the motive for the crime.
It turns out that the scheme is the brainchild of an embittered old man who fought at the battle of Waterloo, and who was unable to adapt to the notion that the French were no longer deadly enemies. It was a planned extension of the French railway to Cherbourg, a port and the site of an arsenal, that our villain could not stomach.
This one opens with a particularly gruesome suicide (achieved by walking into the path of a train). In the course of investigating the crime Colbeck discovers that the victim was driven to suicide by the murder of his wife. The locals are all certain that the husband was the killer and committed suicide because he was unable to live with his actions, and have closed their minds to other possibilities. Colbeck is able to establish that the husband was not the killer of his wife, and to locate the real killer.
This book also features a battle with a particularly unpleasant specimen of the clergy who is determined to bar the suicide victim from burial alongside his wife, to the extent of defying the law. It turns out that this person has been responsible for sending poison pen letters (dictated to his wife, so it is her handwriting that Colbeck identifies) to the man who killed himself, so Colbeck is able to force him to resign his ministry.
These books contain a wonderful mix of fast paced action, plot twists and a large measure of railway lore. The characters of Colbeck, Leeming, Tallis, and Caleb and Madeleine Andrews, who feature in every book in the series are well developed. While it would be pretty difficult for a combination of detective fiction and railways not to appeal to me, nevertheless, these books are particularly outstanding.
Just the two links today, firstly to the latest on the Justice for Kayleb campaign and secondly to a petition that now has somewhere around three million signatures calling for an end to the piece of barbarity known as the Yulin Dog Meat Festivial
As well as my title piece, which refers to yesterday’s fourth ODI between England and New Zealand I have some links to share and some photographs from today at work. I hope you enjoy it all and will be encouraged to share.
Although in the end this cannot be described as a close game, since England won by seven wickets with almost six overs to spare, the word thriller is nevertheless well merited – it was one of the best games of cricket I have ever been priveleged to see or hear.
A New Zealand total of 349 appeared to present England with a very serious challenge, especially given that the previous biggest successful run chase by an Engalnd team in one day international was 306 to beat Pakistan in Karachi. However, the new (this series) opening pair of Jason Roy and Alex Hales launched a blitzkrieg that yielded 97 off the first ten overs of the reply. After both openers were out in a short space of time Joe Root and Eoin Morgan then shared an all-comers record for a third wicket partnership in an ODI at Trent Bridge of 198 before Morgan holed out just after completing an extraordinary hundred. Then, with the game already well and truly in England’s grasp Ben Stokes came in and provided some late fireworks to put yet more gloss on an already sparkling victory.
This result leaves the series level at two matches all, and given the cricket both sides have produced and the spirit in which the series has been contested I for one would say that the appropriate result for the final match up at Durham would be a tie, as neither side deserves to lose this amazing series.
What makes this series all the more remarkable is of course that only a few months ago English ODI stocks were at all time low, following a performance in the world cup that can only described as atrocious (with all due disrespect to the abysmal 1996 ‘effort’ surely the worst ever world cup for an England team).
Just the two links today…
1)A petition via change.org calling on the Chinese government to put a stop to the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.
2)notesfromthenorth provides a detailed analysis of Britain’s Social Security spending to counter right wing myths.
All of the pictures with which I end this post are of items going under the hammer on Wednesday. A full listing can be viewed at the-saleroom.com…
Although I have been out and about today, and have some good pictures which will feature somewhere, this post is going to be almost entirely given over sharing stuff from other people, as I have some fantastic links and a couple of decent infographics.
There are a number of links in this subsection, which relates to a long running campaign by Mike Sivier of Vox Political. As well as some stuff from Mike himself, I have a link to a piece about the MP for Newcastle, who has weighed in on our side, and a very important blog post from Jayne Linney which I have already shared with my twitter followers. I hope you will visit all the links below:
1)The Petition – please sign and or share.
2)Vox Political first post – on Downing Street and the deleted emails
3)Vox Political 2nd Post – on DWP continuing dishonesty.
4)Newcastle MP weighs in our side.
5)Jayne Linney blog post “Truth Seekers“.
Two excellent pieces in this section, firstly one of the finest explanations of Asperger’s Syndrome (my particular form of autism) that I have so far come across, courtesy of Durham Regional Autism Services. The second link in this section is to an old favourite, Autism Mom, and her latest post on visiting these shores with the Navigator.
Two links here, a Mirror article and a petition:
1)Read the latest article about this case.
2)View, sign and share the petition.
I have three more links to share with you. First, courtesy of Take Part Daily, a story about the method used by inhabitants of one tiny island to tackle illegal fishing in their protected waters. Second, a piece in the Independent about the disgraceful treatment of Raif Badawi. The links section began with Mike Sivier, and we finish by coming full circle, to his piece about Tories deeming it clever to back Corbyn for Labour Leader.
First up in this section is a graphic representation of TTIP…
My other infographic, saved on my computer as “Sprawl-mart” concerns a certain US Supermarket and tax havens where it has shell companies but no stores…
Details of an upcoming event at my local library in pictorial form…
I hope that you have enjoyed this post, and that you will be encouraged to share it. I finish with a selection of today’s pictures…
I do not have a lot of links or infographics to share, but my title piece will be accompanied by plenty of pictures. I hope that you all enjoy this post and will be inspired to sahre it.
Because of all the fuss over the Great Charity Centenary Auction work for James and Sons own June auction was somewaht delayed. However, unlikely as it seemed only a few days ago, the catalogue for this auction will be back from the printers by the end of Thursday, and we should be up online at the-saleroom by not long after that as well.
I was working with the scanner and the camera all day today. An example of scanner work is this collection of militaria (nine lots in total, which I show as the original scan, and then the individual images I extracted from it…
Another set of images that I used the scanner for were these very old coins…
Also, as mentioned, I took photographs of a wide variety of items, some of which are below…
I am treating these together, asthere is only one fo each. The link is to one of Vox Political’s recent offerings. The blog post ends with the feature image, this infographic courtesy of Jon Swindon..
As well as my title piece I have some photos which connect to that and some cracking links to share with you. Read, enjoy and please share…
The combination of two auctions happening in the space of four days and a degree of failure on the organsiation front has made things somewhat hectic of late. However, after a full day imaging for our June auction today, I believe that we will be able to give our online viewers a week to look at the items that will be going under the hammer, which did not look likely at one point. Today’s imaging has been very varied, including some lovely Hornby toys (Hornby for the uninitiated are THE name when it comes to railway themed toys and models). There were also some decent stamp lots and some interesting militaria. To end this section here are some pictorial highlights…
Here as promised are those links, starting with a fistful on the subject of…
My first three links are all related to the same organisation:
3)Atheist Republic’s brief explanation of atheism.
Patheos, so often a source of good material have done it again, this time with a piece about Christian extremist opposition to higher education.
A single link, being given a subsection to itself. This is a petition being run by Avaaz to ensure that the South African government does the right thing and takes the opportunity to arrest and incarcerate former Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir
An unusual juxtaposition, but both my science related pieces are concerned with planets, and there is a very well known piece of music called The Planets, so I considered it acceptable on this occasion. The music related link is to a piece by Charlotte Hoather about Madama Butterfly, in a production of which she will soon be appearing. My two planets themed pieces both come from Cosmos Up:
1)Juxtaposition of Jupiter and Venus
2)A possible preponderance of Neptune sized planets in our galaxy.
Three more links, starting with this from Jayne Linney.
Stop Homophobia have collected some superb responses to hate mail.
Last but most definitely not least is this piece from network autism about gender dysphoria and autism.
As well as my title piece and accompanying photographs I have some cracking links to share with you.
In a classic application of Murphy’s Law today is dull and grey, immediately following several bright sunny work days. Not that unappealing weather meant that there was nothing to photograph – after being dry for some time the fountain in The Walks had water in it and was functioning as it should…
Just beyond that was a “Trivial Pursuit” type arrangement of flower beds, one half of which I captured for posterity…
The squirrels were not in the least deterred by filthy grey skies either…
The ducks and moorhens were enjoying the waters of the upper Millfleet as it flows through the parkland…
The younger generation were also in evidence out on the water…
Arriving at the river bank by way of Hardings Pits I took a shot looking towards the town…
Walking past the anti-flood wall near old Boal Quay I was gratified to spot this blackbird at quite close quarters…
My last shot was taken at the jetty now in its second summer of service, and hosting a single boat today…
I found this shocking story of institutionalized abuse (I can call it nothing else), by way of twitter and I have already made contact with the author and subject of the story, Jennifer Msumba who posted it on her blog Here is an infographic for you…
My second autism related link concerns Kevin Healey of the National Autistic Society and his continuing effort to get twitter to protect him properly. That perennial source of fine material Huffington Post is running an article by him about cyber-bullying. For some time, Kevin has been running a petition via change,org to put pressure on twitter to do the right thing.
The petition calling on Playmobil to produce toys that show disabled people in a positive light has succeeded in persuading them, after gaining more than 50,000 signatures. As well as celebrating, the organisers are using this as a springboard for tackling their next target, Lego. To view, sign and share this new petition please follow this link.
A couple of crackers in this mini-section:
1)Dan Keeling on how the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
2)This gem from kittysjones.
The dailyinspirationblog have come up trumps with this piece about Aristotle.
Patheos, who feature regularly in the links section of this blog, are here again, this time with a report on a particularly egregious piece of legislation which will cause the adoption rate in the state of Michigan to plummet.
My next link to share comes courtesy of thepoorsideoflife and concerns new targets for DWP compliance interviews.
My next and penultimate link is to a piece from handandmouse which combines slamming George Osborne with arguing cogently for Jeremy Corbyn to be on the ballot paper for the Labour leadership election.
To end this section here is a link to a piece in the Lynn News about how the town will be celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.
I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and will be inspired to share it.
Here are a few random pics that I choose to share…
I have a few links to share with you, but most of the post will be taken up with the title piece.
The catalogue for the Great Centenary Charity Auction is now available in printed form. For more detail please consult the official post on www.greatcharity.org, which can be viewed here. Just to whet the appetiite further here is a glimps of the cover…
Having knocked the Great Charity Centenary Auction on the head, today was almost entirely devoted to imaging for James and Sons own June auction. I imaged a wide variety of lots today, and reckoning that pictures speak louder than words, the rest of this section will be images of some the better lots…
Just three links with this post, these two related stories from Patheos:
1) Yet another creationist (Ken Ham in this case) makes a fool of himself.
2) Miley Cyrus shows herself to be capable of being sensible.
Our final link is to a piece in The Mirror about the DWP’s continuing effort to avoid revealing just how many people have died as a result of welfare cuts.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and will be inspired to share it.
This is going be to what I think of as a ‘standard issue’ blog post – my title piece, a couple of infographics that have caught my eye, some interesting links and a few of my own photographs.
With James and Sons’ own June auction and the Great Centenary Charity Auction which is being conducted by James and Sons happening within four days of one another I have a heavy load of imaging to get through. The last of the GCCA stuff was done yesterday, and I then got back to imaging for the regular June auction, on which I had made a start before I was commandeered to image the stuff for the GCCA.
At least today, with the GCCA stuff out of the way, I will be working at my usual location the whole day, and should get a lot done.
Towards the end of yesterday I got a few bits of June imaging done, some of which I shall share now…
I am grouping these links by subject matter, because although there are only a few of them, they cover a wide range of topics…
I have two pieces in this section, both courtesy of Patheos:
1)A piece on the Caitlyn Jenner story
2)Much more important than one, a piece introducing my readers to the Freethought Rescue project
Just the one science link today, to a piece my Marcus Chown about the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Two pieces in this section, one from Tax Research UK about social security payments and, following the brook back to the parent lake, the inspiration for the Tax Research UK piece on flipchartfartfairytales.
Just the one piece, but it is an excellent one, and it is feel-good story to end my links section on an upbeat note, courtesy of ramblingsofaspecialmom – a story about finding the right kind of support.
I hope you have enjoyed this post and will be encouraged to share it.
aspiblog 