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Feb. 28th, 2011 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynLittle bit more research on Great-Grandpa the pulp character. Apparently we've been a bit off in our estimates of his age; Dad thinks we may have found a register of his birth, in Chelsea, in 1891. He died in 1931, so that puts him at 40 at the time... and 31 when he was elected leader of the Boksburg commando 497-3 and 32 defending himself against high treason and all that stuff.
Other stuff we found: a set of documents indicating that he applied for bail when he'd been in prison two months, on the ground of not having money and having family outside that was helpless and undefended... and that he did so on behalf of himself and about eight other imprisoned men who couldn't muster their own applications. Dad says the document looks like either Great-Grandpa had a lawyer telling him what to write, or like Great-Grandpa got hold of somebody's document prepared by a lawyer and copied it, changing the details to suit his situation. Also, there are eight signatures on the document and Great-Grandpa signed at least one other man's name for him. Don't know if it was a forgery or if the man couldn't write himself or what. Given that Great-Grandpa was sentenced to time already served of five months for 'incitement to public violence' when they couldn't convict him of anything hangable, I don't think he got the bail, but the other men might've. Dad also showed me Great-Grandpa's death certificate, which lists pulmonary TB for his cause of death- and then pointed out several surgical procedures that had been performed to try to save him first. And noted that virtually all the other miners in his mine had had silicosis, which was a death sentence, which may have been why they were willing to take the steps they did- they had nothing left to lose and families to provide for. I went to look up some of the info on the certificate and found out that pulmonary silicosis increases your risk of developing TB thirtyfold. Not thirty percent. Thirty times. So in all likelihood that's where that came from.
Which makes it all the more WHERE THE HELL DID THIS MAN FIND TIME TO SLEEP when it turns out Dad has two diplomas/certificates from schools in Chicago for Great-Grandpa. One of them is from Coyne College- I think, I haven't seen the cert myself- and is in electronics. This'd explain the job at the end of his life teaching disabled kids to make radios. The other is from a different school, and I need to see it next time I visit Dad, because the other one is for a bachelor's degree in Law. Like, American law. I realize defending yourself successfully against a hanging crime is going to make you interested in learning the law more properly but damn, man, switching from the British/South African justice system to the American one... just damn. We don't have any evidence that he ever passed the bar, or even that he sat the bar exam, but still.
Dude was totally a Lester Dent character who wandered into meatspace by mistake and decided to stay.
Other stuff we found: a set of documents indicating that he applied for bail when he'd been in prison two months, on the ground of not having money and having family outside that was helpless and undefended... and that he did so on behalf of himself and about eight other imprisoned men who couldn't muster their own applications. Dad says the document looks like either Great-Grandpa had a lawyer telling him what to write, or like Great-Grandpa got hold of somebody's document prepared by a lawyer and copied it, changing the details to suit his situation. Also, there are eight signatures on the document and Great-Grandpa signed at least one other man's name for him. Don't know if it was a forgery or if the man couldn't write himself or what. Given that Great-Grandpa was sentenced to time already served of five months for 'incitement to public violence' when they couldn't convict him of anything hangable, I don't think he got the bail, but the other men might've. Dad also showed me Great-Grandpa's death certificate, which lists pulmonary TB for his cause of death- and then pointed out several surgical procedures that had been performed to try to save him first. And noted that virtually all the other miners in his mine had had silicosis, which was a death sentence, which may have been why they were willing to take the steps they did- they had nothing left to lose and families to provide for. I went to look up some of the info on the certificate and found out that pulmonary silicosis increases your risk of developing TB thirtyfold. Not thirty percent. Thirty times. So in all likelihood that's where that came from.
Which makes it all the more WHERE THE HELL DID THIS MAN FIND TIME TO SLEEP when it turns out Dad has two diplomas/certificates from schools in Chicago for Great-Grandpa. One of them is from Coyne College- I think, I haven't seen the cert myself- and is in electronics. This'd explain the job at the end of his life teaching disabled kids to make radios. The other is from a different school, and I need to see it next time I visit Dad, because the other one is for a bachelor's degree in Law. Like, American law. I realize defending yourself successfully against a hanging crime is going to make you interested in learning the law more properly but damn, man, switching from the British/South African justice system to the American one... just damn. We don't have any evidence that he ever passed the bar, or even that he sat the bar exam, but still.
Dude was totally a Lester Dent character who wandered into meatspace by mistake and decided to stay.
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Date: 2011-03-01 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-01 02:37 am (UTC)