The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted in Tadworth using a halfpenny stamp on Tuesday the 9th. May 1911. The card was sent to:
Miss Penfold,
'Summercourt',
The Drive.
Coulsdon.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Ciss,
Just a card to say I got
your P.C. quite alright,
and I can do as you have
said, so I will come down
as soon as I can, and hope
you are well.
Love from Jack.
Will come over the common
instead of bridge."
A Deadly Theatre Fire in Edinburgh
So what else happened on the day that Jack posted the card to Ciss?
Well, on the 9th. May 1911, a fire broke out at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh during a performance of the variety and magic show of Sigmund Neuberger, who billed himself as "The Great Lafayette."
The audience of 1,500 was evacuated, but eleven members of the troupe, including Lafayette himself, died in the blaze.
Early in 1911, Lafayette had begun a tour of Great Britain. The pampered object of the Great Lafayette's affection was his dog Beauty, a mongrel given to him as a puppy by fellow conjurer and admirer Harry Houdini.
Beauty had her own suite of rooms, ate five-course meals, and wore a diamond-studded collar. However Beauty died four days before the opening of the show at the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh.
After initial resistance from Edinburgh City Council, Neuberger arranged for the dog to be buried in Piershill Cemetery. The Council agreed to provide a plot on the condition that Lafayette himself would be buried there upon his own death.
Four days later, in a freak accident, Lafayette was performing his signature illusion "The Lion's Bride", when a lantern set fire to the set, which went up in flames within minutes.
The audience, thinking that this was all part of the illusion, did not evacuate until the theatre manager signalled for the orchestra to play God Save the King.
Many of the company, however, were trapped on stage when the safety curtain was lowered and jammed, leaving only a small gap at the bottom, through which a strong draught of air fanned the flames into an inferno.
Lafayette himself had ensured that the side-doors to the stage had been secured, to exclude unwanted interlopers and prevent the lion's escape.
Lafayette escaped, but returned in a vain attempt to rescue his horse. He became trapped in the burning building and perished. along with ten of his fellow players from the company. The theatre burned to the ground.
The body of Lafayette was apparently soon found and sent to Glasgow for cremation. Two days after the fire, however, workers clearing the understage area found another body identically dressed as Lafayette.
It transpired that the body at the crematorium was that of the illusionist's body double.
On the 14th. May the urn containing the Great Lafayette's ashes was taken through Edinburgh, witnessed by a crowd estimated to number over 250,000, before being laid to rest with his beloved (and by then, stuffed) Beauty, at Piershill Cemetery.
Early Steps Towards Television
Also on that day, Professor Boris Rosing of the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology, assisted by his student Vladimir Zworykin, demonstrated the transmission of a scanned image -- "four luminous bands" on to a cathode ray tube.
Zworykin built upon Rosing's discoveries in the early development of television.
The Death of Elsie Paroubek
Also on the 9th. May 1911, the body of Elsie Paroubek was found in a Lockport, Illinois drainage canal. Elsie had been the subject of an exhaustive three-state manhunt by Chicago police over the four weeks since her disappearance in April 1911.
Elsie's photograph was published on the front page of the Chicago Daily News, and became an inspiration to amateur artist-author Henry Darger, who made her a central figure in his immense fantasy novel The Story of the Vivian Girls.