BIB_ID
195986
Accession number
MA 13799
Creator
Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889.
Display Date
1865 November 30.
Credit line
Bequest; Gordon N. Ray; 1987.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.2 x 11.5 cm
Notes
Written on blue paper.
Letter concerns an incident which reportedly took place in November of 1865 aboard a ship named "The Armadale" while docked at Liverpool, in which three shipkeepers were successively found dead in the deck-house of the vessel, evidently overcome by poisonous fumes later determined to have originated from the ship's stove; at that time, Collins had published 13 of his monthly installments of his novel Armadale, the plot of which coincidentally features an attempted murder by the use of poison gas.
Letter concerns an incident which reportedly took place in November of 1865 aboard a ship named "The Armadale" while docked at Liverpool, in which three shipkeepers were successively found dead in the deck-house of the vessel, evidently overcome by poisonous fumes later determined to have originated from the ship's stove; at that time, Collins had published 13 of his monthly installments of his novel Armadale, the plot of which coincidentally features an attempted murder by the use of poison gas.
Provenance
Gordon N. Ray.
Summary
Thanking him for newspaper accounts of "the strange series of deaths on board the 'Armadale'"; and remarking that, "My coincidences were prosaic and probable by comparison with such a coincidence as was presented to us in the newspaper."
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