to India at fifteen. Nothing seems to be known of the missionary with whom she travelled, apart from the fact that she lived in his house in India. We do not know whether he was married.
A further mystery revolves around her financial crisis after her husband’s death. Thomas Leon Owens (he welded the two names together, presumably when he acquired his commission) had no private funds, according to Anna. Nevertheless, when he died suddenly, she should have had a reasonable pension and the value of his commission (which he would have bought and which would have cost no small sum). Yet she took to teaching to keep herself and children. One would have thought that she might have kept herself and her family in reasonable comfort on her husband’s pension.
Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen
As I have noted above, while modern researches have revealed far more about Anna Leonowens than she ever did herself, there are still some areas of mystery left. If the present manuscript is authentic, then one of the largest must be the question of events in Russia. It is definitely true that she was commissioned by an American magazine to travel the length of Russia and write articles for them. Her articles were a great success and she was, as stated in the text, offered an editorship by the publishers, but rejected it. Since her articles had been so successful, and since she had published two books arising from her experiences in Siam, it might be thought that she would produce a book on her Russian journey, but she never did so, despite being probably the first western woman to cross Russia. What is certain is that she never left any hint of the events described in Chapter Seventeen.
The reference to ‘Bluebeard’ in Chapter Eighteen refers to Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France and mass murderer. De Rais (1406-1440) was a French nobleman of enormous wealth, whose prowess on the
battlefields of the Hundred Years’ War made him Marshal of France (head of her army) in his twenties.
With the appearance of the visionary Joan of Arc, de Rais became her most solid supporter, riding and fighting at her side. He was not part of the treacherous conspiracy of French noblemen who sold Joan to the English to be burned as a witch. On the day of her execution, de Rais was fighting desperately to break through the English line and rescue her.
With the death of Joan and the triumph of his political enemies, de Rais retired to his castles. There he frittered away his great wealth in alchemical experiments. He also embarked upon a career of
perversion and murder, kidnapping children from nearby villages, torturing, raping, sodomizing and murdering them. His political enemies and creditors eventually secured his castles, notably Machecoul in Brittany, where the evidence of his crimes came to light and he was eventually tried by an ecclesiastical court and condemned to die. Nobody has ever been able to determine with any accuracy how many children died at his hands.
He is believed by some people to be the origin of the European and British folktales about a mass murderer called Bluebeard.
Nineteen
The gasogene was a device (French in origin, I believe) which supplied fizzy mixtures for spiritous drinks, an early forerunner of the soda syphon. We know from Watson’s authenticated writings that there was one in the sitting room at Baker Street.
Twenty-One
Captain Parkes was quite right in stating that the British Army forbade duelling. In addition, it was a criminal offence. A colonel had been killed in a duel in 1843 and the Army declared that duelling, proposing a duel, taking part or assisting, or even failing to prevent a duel, were serious offences.
Under civilian law, duelling was, of course, a crime, and participants and seconds could be charged with murder if either party died. Neither the military regulations nor the civil law prevented army officers from working off their ill will in duels. In 1846, what was, I believe, the last criminal prosecution for murder in a duel arose. Lieutenant Hawkey of the Marine Corps took offence at the attentions paid to Mrs Hawkey by Captain Seton of the 11th Dragoons. Seton refused the initial challenge from Hawkey, but accepted after Hawkey kicked him in the backside in public. They fought near Gosport, Seton missing on the first shot and Hawkey’s pistol missing fire. The seconds could have suggested that honour was satisfied, but did not do so. After a reload, Seton missed again and Hawkey shot him through the belly. As Seton lay dying, Hawkey and Pym (his second) fled to France. Seton died and a coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder. Pym surrendered and was tried as an accessory at Winchester Assizes, where the jury took three minutes to acquit him. Hawkey, apparently encouraged by this, surrendered himself and was tried at the next Winchester Assizes where the jury acquitted him immediately. A cheering crowd applauded the judge as he left the court.
This unclear example did not discourage officers (and others) from duelling. In 1878 the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, challenged Lord Randolph Churchill to a duel. Lord Randolph replied in an insulting letter that such a duel was impossible, whereupon the Prince exercised his ill will by having Lord Randolph and all his family barred from Court.
The term ‘garrotters’ may mislead. It is the Victorian equivalent of ’muggers’ and came into use in the mid- nineteenth century as a term for street bandits who robbed their prey by flinging something about the neck and strangling them into submission (or death). In cities where the obviously wealthy lived close to the desperately poor, the practice soon became widespread. A refinement of New York
technique involved a dead rat stuffed with lead shot and tied to a length of twine. The operator, a child, would stand at the mouth of some gruesome alley and wait for a likely prospect. The intended victim would see a street child, swinging a revolting homemade toy about its head, and pass on, only to be brought up short when the whirling, weighted rat wrapped firmly about his neck and he was pulled down.
Dublin boasted a unique garrotter known as ‘Billy-in-the-Bowl’. Born with seriously crippled legs, Billy made his way about the city seated in a kind of wooden bowl, which he propelled along by thrusting his hands against the pavement. Sometimes he would be seen sprawling out of his bowl, as though it had tipped over and he could not right it. The kindly and unwary would stoop to assist him, only to find themselves fiercely grappled by Billy’s arms, made strong by pushing himself about. In a moment they would be robbed of cash or watch or both and Billy would scuttle away aboard his bowl, leaving another victim gasping on the pavement. His nickname passed into Dublin usage as a term for clasping anyone in your arms, hence the lines in the folksong ‘The Twang Man’s Revenge’ - ‘He took her down by Sandymount, to watch the waters roll, and he stole the heart of the twang man’s mot playing Billy-in-the-Bowl.’
Twenty-Five
The period of Watson’s narrative is long before the coming of daily deliveries of bottled milk. In well-served areas (as Burriwell obviously was) there would be two deliveries, in the morning and the early evening, partly because the lack of refrigeration and processing techniques made the keeping of milk difficult. A cart carrying churns of milk would call, and the housewife or a servant would take a jug or a tin milk can to the cart and have it filled with whatever quantity she required.
Twenty-Six
Watson’s authenticated records reveal that, in early 1897, Holmes had overtaxed his great strength and was recommended by Watson and by Dr Moore Agar to take a holiday, at the threat of losing his intellectual powers. He travelled to Cornwall, where he pursued his researches into what he conceived to be the ancient Chaldean roots of the Cornish language, until the matter which Watson chronicled as The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot occurred.
Since this is a rare occasion when Holmes’ client can be definitely identified, it may interest readers to know what became of some of the characters in the story. Holmes himself was, of course, completely uninterested in the later history of his clients, who existed entirely to provide him with intellectual puzzles.
Anna Leonowens returned to Canada, where she died early in the Great War, her funeral being an enormous one. There is an art gallery named after her and she remains a heroine of Canadian feminists.
Her book, The English Governess and the Siamese Court, was rediscovered in the 1940s, and Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam was published. When singing star Gertrude Lawrence saw the film of Landon’s book, she wanted to play Anna in a musical version and nagged at Rodgers and Hammerstein to write her one. When they did, it was a huge success on stage and was Lawrence’s last part. It became an enormously successful film with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner. In 1998 Jodie Foster played Anna in Anna and the King, a film which purported to tell the true story and didn’t. All the films and Anna’s book and Landon’s book are banned in modern Thailand (formerly Siam).
King Rama V of Siam, Anna’s former pupil Chulalongkorn, reigned until 23rd October 1910, when he died. His
