American comics may largely be about men and women in colourful clothing hitting each other because they can't have sex1 (I don’t remember who coined that description, but I've always loved it), but British comics... Well, they're an entirely different thing. Throughout the pages of British comics, right from the medium's earliest days in the *cough* *cough* century, there has been a tradition of presenting facts to readers. I've noted elsewhere that, even now, I'm still slowly adding names of everyone mentioned, so that one might locate any reference to a person throughout all of comics history easily. My work hasn't been accomplished without a great degree of very tiresome, confusing, and pointlessly difficult research.
As I continue to delve deeper into weirder and under-researched holes in the historical record, I find many dead ends, names which are conflated, confused, and sometimes simply wrong, yet, in these accounts, oddly specific things are presented as truth. It is remarkable that half of what I have been searching is recorded at all - and some of this is only partially available, or in available only in fragmented pieces scattered across multiple sites. I haven't quite hit a point where I want to take a long walk and not think about any of this, but I'm getting close. On suggestions from my hopelessly optimistic and all-too-eager AI advocate friends, I have even dragged Copilot into these searches, but that has proven worse than useless in all but one instance.
That singular correct answer, by the way, concerned an American subject, so...
Captain T. Yates-Benyon gets a few newspaper articles about his race with BIC's liner Manora, yet thereafter disappears completely from the historical record - or what I have access to, at least - shortly after this attempt. I adore the fact that it is recorded he drove a Hillman Minx Tourer, and while there is a (possibly spurious) connection to some car badges (which were going to be discarded), obtaining anything substantial on him - dates of his birth and death - is beginning to frustrate me. I've burned through every resource I can think of, and I'm not even certain, given his globe-trotting predisposition, that he died on British soil. Should he have died in Europe, say, or in the Middle East, then I hold little hope of his story receiving a satisfactory ending.
"Charlie Hart won a six-day race against a horse at the Crystal Palace race track." This is the full text I possess on this event, and I am desperate to know more based on this telling. Copilot insisted that this man's name was Frank Hart, although I couldn't find anything even remotely connecting that individual to a race against a horse. There was a book published some ways back - late eighties? early nineties? - about Crystal Palace's varied events and history, but I have no idea if this specific event would have been covered within that tome, and (as everything is still in storage) it isn't an easy title to go looking for.
Manchester United's 1909 mascot, Billy the Goat, stated confidently to have died after the final through overeating, sadly turned out to have died from over-consumption of champagne. I do admire such strenuous efforts taken to clean up this little bit of history for younger readers, regardless. I was rather pleased with myself at finding a fact piece which actually led somewhere, so my week hasn't been entirely frustrating - a pity that it had to be about a dead goat. There was also something - I've misplaced my notes on which team, and during which era - about a ceremonial handing over of a fish before matches between teams. Football can be very weird at times.
At least it isn't a fact about a player borrowing an umbrella to continue playing in heavy rain...2
Tom Morris, the swimmer born in 1897, is a complete mystery. I have nothing on his date of birth, and no record at all - which I can locate - on his death. Tommy Godwin, a cyclist, is just as complex a case as Mr. Morris, made needlessly difficult by the fact that there are two individuals in the sport with the same name. Thomas Edward Godwin, the first to bear this name, was apparently born on the fifth of June, 1912, but there's nothing on his date of death beyond it occurring in 1975. I know that there are a few cycling magazines from the thirties and forties which covered all manner of events and individuals of note, so have added a note to check out those, but nobody should expect his details to be uncovered any time soon.
Tom Sayers (1826-1865) likely didn't train with a bear, and (according to Brittanica, who I have no reason to doubt) Jimmy Wilde had 131 fights in his career, not "864 in 12 years". I have absolutely no idea how such a number could have been arrived at, and can't find record of anyone who has undertaken such a punishing schedule. Is that even possible?
This is interesting: "One famous English wrestler won 32 prize hats during his career, nearly 140 years ago." From an (roughly) eighty year old comic, I make that 210 years, so... early nineteenth century. There's certainly enough documentation from this time that such a feat would have, in some corner, probably been recorded, but I'm not sure where, or in how much detail. When such precise numbers are relayed I tend to get my hopes up, as it is often possible to disregard everything else and concentrate on finding a match to these details - from what I've been able to parse, in horribly-scanned newspapers, there's nothing that comes close to matching "32 prize hats" anywhere.
D.C. Thomson's facts tend, on the whole, to be far better than what I have been covering of late, and I am desperate to eventually return to compiling theirs in a single document. I know that, from time to time, they would send researchers to the British Library, so I am hoping, in having them collected in one document, that I may match said accounts to those published in a specific title. I'm not sure if their examples were from general encyclopaedias, or if specialist publications were consulted, so working out the origination of that company's text material might take a little more work than some other tasks.
I did manage to successfully identify a formerly unknown individual in the last few days, rather surprising myself. The following image, from Champion Annual 1968 is accompanied by a description which states: "A real old-time cowboy. This is a picture of a cow-hand of the 1870s."
This is Robert Hamilton Williams, and the photograph is taken from his book With the Border Ruffians; Memories of the Far West, 1852-1868. It can be found on page 230, if you are interested.
I've probably expended hundreds of thousands of words, over the years, raging at the inclusion of images without any indication as to who is being depicted, and this perfectly illustrates how easy it would have been to provide proper credit. It's one thing to have an isolated image, on card, free of any association, but to knowingly appropriate the photograph of an author, from his book, without the barest indication that it originated from a publication, is completely inexcusable. I know that this information likely isn't going to be added to comics.org, and hardly anyone will care that he has a name, but I'm satisfied knowing that I have done whatever little I can to redress the balance.
The small victories will suffice.
Citation needed. Obviously. Frank Miller is the likeliest bet, but I’m not searching through old magazines to find the precise line.
Charlie Athersmith. I hate that I know this.