[meteorite-list] Professor Colin Pillinger lecture - Stones from the sky: A heaven-sent opportunity to talk about science

[MexicoDoug]

"Edward Topham was not a Sir"

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the kind reply; Someone else also said he was a Sir, I'm 
trying to remember.  Maybe there really is more to the story.  But, 
even if he were to have been knighted, wasn't George a bit too mad by 
that time, or are there others who have that power I wonder...

Topham didn't even earn his title of "Major", he was just a captain, 
and upon retirement I think the policy was just to bump Captains up to 
Majors so they got bigger pensions.  The newspaper he founded, as far 
as I can tell, was the very first widely circulated tabloid newspaper 
in the world (coincidently named 'The Globe').  However, he got into 
all kinds of legal troubles just before the meteorite fell and had to 
close it down, since he apparently has offended a well-respected 
recently dead man.  If I recall, he pulled through the episode by the 
skin of his teeth and set some common law presicents in England saying 
a dead man's estate can't sue for libel.

While he may have been respected in certain circles, I think he just 
sponged off Mrs. Wells during fair weather, made a business out of her 
with benefits (after this blew over she became a nun) and then as her 
superstar status began to wane, let her rot in jail and took her 
children away from her for himself.  I'm sure it was a bit more 
complicated than that (she had a brother or brother in law who was a 
scoundrel), but still, IMO he was just a fancy-pants socialite.  I 
really don't mean to offend since we like to give as much respect as we 
can to those great men and women in the history of meteorites, but the 
respect he got was probably more like a straight Perez Hilton of today 
(and many people live for that stuff in the USA!).  So I think it is 
worthwhile mentioning.

When you think about the circumstances of the exhibition of the 
meteorite, it sort of fits together in my opinion, but I'm sure there 
are alternate interpretations out there that make him a hero instead of 
one of the King's yes-men ;-)

Anyways, he was definitely one of the most colorful characters of early 
meteorite enlightenment, and as a publicist actuallydeserves in my 
opinion even more credit than he gets.  Wonder what Prof. Pillinger 
thinks of this?

Kindest wsihes
Doug