Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:53:26.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The haunting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

In the early winter of 1953, just after the debunking of the Piltdown fossil forgery perpetrated in the early part of this century near Uckfield, Sussex, a blizzard of correspondence descended on the British Museum (Natural History). Among the letters was a fairly ominous one addressed to Kenneth Oakley. Purporting to be a message from one 'Elihu Progwhistle', a professional medium whose seances were being monopolized by a spirit 'identifying itself as the solicitor Charles Dawson', the note angrily denounced the whole investigation. It relayed the ghost's warning that it would take violent extra-legal action against the Piltdown detectives unless they gave up the search.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dawson, C, 191115. Unpublished letters to A. S, Woodward. Archives of Geological Section, British Museum (Natural History). Google Scholar
Dawson, C. & Woodward, A. S. 1913. On the discovery of a palaeolithic skull and mandible in the flint-bearing gravels overlying the Wealden (Hastings Beds) at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex), Q. Jl. Geol. Soc. Lond” LXIX, 11751.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. 1980. The Piltdown conspiracy, Natural History, 89, No. 8 (August), 828.Google Scholar
1981. Piltdown in letters, Natural History} 90, No. 6 (June).Google Scholar
Leakey, L. S. B. 1974. By the evidence (London & New York).Google Scholar
Lukas, M. & Lukas, E. 1977. Teilhard, a biography (New York & London).Google Scholar
Matthews, L. H. 1981. Piltdown Man: the missing links, New Scientist, April–June.Google Scholar
‘Progwhistle, , Elihu’,, . 1953. Unpublished letters, Archives British Museum (Natural History).Google Scholar
Teilhard De Chardin, P. 1965. 19081913. Letters to his parents published in Lettres d’ Hastings et de Paris Google Scholar
Teilhard De Chardin, P. 19121915. Unpublished letters to Charles Dawson, Archives of BM (NH).Google Scholar
Teilhard De Chardin, P. 19121920. Unpublished letters to A. Woodward, Archives of BM (NH).Google Scholar
Teilhard De Chardin, P. 19121913. Unpublished letters to Felix Pelletier, Archives of the Society of Jesus, Chantilly, France.Google Scholar
Teilhard De Chardin, P. 19531954. Letters to Kenneth Oakley.Google Scholar
Teilhard De Chardin, P. 1920. Le cas de l’Homme de Piltdown, Revue des Questions Scientifiques, LXXII, 14955.Google Scholar
Vere, F. 1955. The Piltdown fantasy (London).Google Scholar
Weiner, J. S. 1955. The Piltdown forgery (Oxford).Google Scholar
Woodward, A. S, 1948. The earliest Englishman (London).Google Scholar