YORKSHIRE EVENING POST 1921 to 1955

[Jennifer McM]

Fascinating insight into life afloat YORKSHIRE EVENING POST (from) 1921 to 1955 - http://static.premiersite.co.uk/23415/docs/6777168_1.pdf

 

An example below

 

Quote

YORKSHIRE EVENING POST 1921 to 1955 1 8 January 1921 MERCURY IN A LOAF TO FIND A BODY AN OLD TIME SUPERSTITION CROPS UP AGAIN A loaf of bread containing mercury is stated to have been the means of finding the body of John Bryne (65), an employee of Messrs Brunner, Mond and Co, who had been missing for six days, and was supposed to have been drowned in the canal or brooks at Wheelock, Sandbach. The police had dragged the canal and brooks for six days without success, and the method of the loaf and mercury was suggested by an old boatman named Tolly. The loaf was floated on the canal and afterwards removed to the adjacent brook. It swirled on the surface and stopped directly over the body, which was then recovered by dragging. “I was an eye witness of this strange occurrence”, writes a correspondent, “and can vouch for the loaf withstanding the strong current of the brook, floating directly over the body”. It is supposed that Bryne fell into the swollen brook after attending to the engines of the pumping station on Saturday night. The belief that a loaf filled with mercury will find a dead body is common among superstitious folk, and not in England only. It figures in one of Mark Twain's stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Other unlikely means are also adopted in the country when waters are being searched for a corpse. The commonest is to take a piece of shingle – a wooden tile used before slates came into vogue – and having inserted a lighted candle in the centre, set it adrift in the water. It is believed to halt immediately above the body. In some districts, a cake of unleavened bread is substituted for shingle. An eminent Manchester scientist, questioned about the mercury loaded loaf, said he considered the idea ridiculous. If it had been done in the Sandbach case, it was merely a fluke.

 

[Bee]

Wonder if that works for cordless screwdrivers that some fool dropped into the canal. 

[Derek R.]

Just don't slice the loaf . . . .