It could have been any of the coterie of scientists who examined the remains before the public disclosure: Edwin Ray Lankester, a biologist and former director at the British Museum; James Reid Moir, an amateur archaeologist; Arthur Underwood, a dental surgeon; W. P. Pycraft, an anthropologist; or Edgar Willet, a retired hospital administrator. But many of the others associated in one way or another with Piltdown Man have been subsequently implicated in the forgery. In addition to Teilhard de Chardin, the priest-paleontologist, and Grafton Elliot Smith, the anatomy professor, they include: William Sollas, a geology professor; William Lewis Abbott, a jeweler and amateur archaeologist; Frank Barlow, a senior preparator at the British Museum (Natural History); and Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes author and an acquaintance of Dawson. None of these cases have stood up to close scrutiny, however.
Of course, the conspirator(s) would have needed a motive. For Dawson, it was probably the recognition and glory that would provide him entry into the highly prestigious and venerable Royal Society, which would validate his interest in paleontology. But what about the co-conspirator? What induced the expert behind the scenes to doctor the remains planted in the Piltdown gravel pit?
The motivation could have been anything. It could have been the satisfaction of pulling off a joke (as it may only have been intended to be at the start) or discrediting Woodward (who almost certainly was an innocent victim) or any of the other Piltdown Man proponents, the prestige that would come with identifying the remains once the Piltdown Man thesis was accepted, an urge to upset the accepted beliefs of paleontology, or a desire to advance the evolutionary theory Piltdown Man supported.
The gallery of suspects has been examined exhaustively since the hoax was discovered. Arguments have been made for various persons associated with the hoax, including, notably, that of anthropologist Frank Spencer against Sir Arthur Keith, incorporating an investigation made by the late Australian scholar Ian Langham. Their case is a complicated one involving, among other things, contemporary documentary evidence. In particular, there is an entry from Keith’s diary that identifies him as the author of an anonymous article on the unveiling of the Piltdown remains at the Geological Society in 1912. This article contains specific information on the location of the site, which was not revealed at the meeting. Furthermore, Keith’s diary indicates that the article was written in advance of the meeting, so he must have had (unexplained) prior knowledge of the site and its history. Building on this, the Spencer-Langham case goes on to present an impressive string of other evidence implicating Keith as Dawson’s co-conspirator. The case against Keith has been further strengthened by other circumstantial evidence uncovered by the South African anthropologist Phillip Tobias. His article published in the June 1992 issue of Current Anthropology provides a detailed summary and scholarly discussion of this intriguing case. However, as the discussions accompanying Tobias’s article indicate, the case against Keith, though compelling, has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In light of this, in all probability it is never going to be possible to present an iron-clad case with which everyone will be satisfied.
Clearly, the guilty players have taken their secret to their graves. But the mechanism of their deception, the device, the subterfuge, the object of all the commotion, sits quietly today, unflappable, unshakable.
Now if only that blasted skull could speak!
LOCATION: Natural History Museum, London, England.
LADDIE BOY
DATE: 1926
WHAT IT IS: A life-size replica of President Warren G. Harding’s dog, cast from 19,314 copper pennies collected from newsboys around the United States.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The bronze statue measures 38½ inches long, 13½ inches wide, and 20½inches high with its pedestal.
The twenty-ninth president of the United States, Warren Gamaliel Harding, was devoted to his dog, an Airedale terrier named Laddie Boy, and the dog was quite fond of his master. Harding died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1923, while still president. As his funeral cortege proceeded down the driveway from the Harding home on Mount Vernon Avenue in Marion, Ohio, the dog was seen behind the screen door watching his master being carried away.
The Roosevelt Newsboys’ Association of Greater Boston wanted to honor Warren Harding by commissioning a special statue of his favorite dog, Laddie Boy. The Boston newsboys regarded Harding as a friend because he took an interest in a Brookline memorial to a former local newsboy, Albert Scott, who died heroically in France during World War I, and because of Harding’s background in the newspaper business. Harding and his wife, Florence, had been involved with newspapers for much of their lives. When he was seventeen, Warren began working for a newspaper in his hometown of Marion, Ohio. He eventually became the owner and editor of the Marion Star newspaper. Later, Florence essentially ran the paper and was very successful with it. And while she was running the Star, Florence Harding conceived the idea of having youths deliver newspapers to people’s homes, a service that continues to this day. Indeed the newspaper, which had been purchased for only a few hundred dollars, brought the Hardings $550,000—the bulk of their wealth—when they sold it six weeks before Warren’s death.
To raise money to commission the statue, a poster was distributed around the United States asking for the help of other newsboys. Newsboy Leonard Poretsky of Revere, Massachusetts, wrote the prize essay on the poster:
Fellow Newsboys:
The country mourns the loss of that great, kindly, sincere man—Warren Gamaliel Harding,—and to the newsboys comes the reminder that he was one of the best friends they ever had.
A man who worked in the game—a man who understood and loved the boys,—and a man to whom the newsboys of the country could give no greater honor than to erect a fitting monument to his memory.
President Harding once said that the best article he ever wrote was a tribute to a dog. The plan is for every newsboy in the country to give one penny, which will be melted and modelled into a life-size statue of “Laddie Boy,” the President’s dog. When completed, the statue will be presented to Mrs. Harding so that she may know how much we newsboys loved the Newspaperman-President—a monument which will live in history forever.
Newspaper boys across America collected pennies for this celebratory statue of President Warren G. Harding's Airedale terrier, Laddie Boy.
Circulation managers around the country collected more than nineteen thousand pennies from newsboys and sent them to the Roosevelt Newsboys’ Association, which commissioned sculptress Bashka Paeff to fashion a bronze replica of Laddie Boy. The statue was to be presented to Mrs. Harding, but she died before it was completed. It came into the possession of Mrs. Harding’s bodyguard, Robert Barker, of West Newton, Massachusetts.
The statue was first displayed to the public at the local Jordan Marsh department store, then was moved near the end of 1926 to the foyer of Keith’s Theater in Washington, D.C.
The real Laddie Boy died on January 23, 1929, but thanks to the young news carriers of the United States in the 1920s, his image lives on.
LOCATION: National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.
BABE RUTH’S SIXTIETH-HOME-RUN BAT
DATE: 1927.
WHAT IT IS: The bat with which Babe Ruth hit his sixtieth home run, setting the record for the most home runs hit in one season. (Ruth’s sixtieth home run came in a 154-game schedule; in 1961 Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs in a 162-game calendar. In 1991 Major League Baseball recognized Maris’s sixty-one homers as the home-run record.)
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The bat, a Hillerich and Bradsby Louisville Slugger is 35 inches long and weighs 39 ounces. It is light brown.
On Friday, September 30, 1927, the New York Yankees hosted the Washington Senators in the penultimate game of their season. Although the Bronx Bombers had clinched the American League pennant, the fans turned out in droves for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness one of baseball’s greatest events. George Herman Ruth would try to break his own recor
d of fifty-nine home runs in one season.
An electric excitement surged through the stands as the score remained low and tied. For seven innings, Ruth could not connect for that immortal hit; he drew a walk and hit a pair of singles. The tension grew nearly unbearable in the bottom of the eighth, when Ruth would come to bat for probably the last time in the game.
With one out and the score even at two all, Mark Koenig smacked a triple. Then the Sultan of Swat came to the plate, and the spectators cheered. Ruth knew what the fans wanted, and he wanted it, too. This was the showdown. There was incredible pressure to wallop the ball out of the field, but Babe Ruth had always thrived on pressure.
Tom Zachary, the Senators’ fireball hurler, blazed the first pitch in for a strike. The next pitch came in above the strike zone, a ball. The count was one-and-one. Time was running out for the Babe. Two more strikes, and the game would be over.
Zachary fired his third pitch. It came in low as it reached the barter. Ruth arched back, clenched his bat tightly, and brought it around with his full strength. A cracking sound was heard, and all in the stadium craned their necks to watch as the ball sailed into the sun seats of the right-field bleachers. Having just witnessed baseball history, the fans leaped to their feet and roared with uncontrollable frenzy.
Babe Ruth had bit his sixtieth home run of the season—a feat no one thought possible a short while before—and the Yankees won the game 4 to 2. Ruth’s record was monumental indeed. He alone hit more home runs that season than all but three entire major league baseball teams. The two National League home-run leaders, Cy Williams and Hack Wilson, hit thirty home runs each to combine for the total of Ruth’s record. The following day, October 1, in the Yankees’ final regular game of the season, Ruth was hitless. But it didn’t matter. Along with his Louisville Slugger, he had already achieved the immortality that he and his faithful fans had hoped for.
Babe Ruth hits his sixtieth home run in one season. The most famous baseball player ever clutches his bat as he watches the ball sail on into history.
The New York Yankees purchased bats for their players in 1927, when Babe Ruth hit his immortal sixtieth home run of the season with the bat shown above. It cost about five or six dollars and is probably made of ash.
Little is known of the history of the bat after Ruth hit his sixtieth home run with it, except that he probably gave it to someone who either held on to it or passed it on to another party. In any case, the bat was donated by James M. Kahn of the sports department of the New York Sun newspaper to its present home in 1939. The bat looks ordinary, to be sure, but it was with this slab of wood that the mighty Babe cracked a pitch out of Yankee Stadium at the end of the baseball season in 1927, and in so doing, immortalized himself and made his name forever synonymous with the game.
LOCATION: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, New York.
JOHN DILLINGER’S WOODEN
JAIL-ESCAPE GUN
DATE: 1934.
WHAT IT IS: A “gun” carved out of wood by the notorious gangster John Dillinger, which he used to break out of jail.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The wooden object resembles a Colt .32 automatic. It’s more or less flat, slightly rounded on top, and has a hammer carved on the back of it.
It was a daring escape. The jail was crawling with heavily armed guards. Any prisoner would need an iron nerve to attempt to bust out, but John Dillinger remained unfazed. He held up a piece of wood carved and painted to resemble a gun, threatened to kill with it, and began his bizarre odyssey to freedom.
For robbing and assaulting an elderly grocer in 1924, Dillinger spent almost nine years in prison. After his parole, he began a wild fourteen-month crime spree that was to be interrupted only by a brief stay in jail. He held up supermarkets and drugstores, robbed banks, and even relieved police officers of their weapons—inside police stations. There was no limit to the brazenness of this gangster, and he continually eluded both police and FBI agents—G-men, as they were popularly called back then. In the process he carved out a reputation that would become part of America’s criminal folklore. What more could this Indiana farm boy named John Dillinger do to enhance his notoriety?
Legend grew that Dillinger could return anyone's stare for as long as the person felt comfortable. Dillinger's eyes were variably described as slate grey or yellow slate-grey.
How about escape from jail using a fake gun? Wanted for bank robberies and killing a police officer during the commission of a robbery in East Chicago, Indiana, Dillinger was finally picked up in Tucson, Arizona, and transferred to the Lake County, Indiana, jail on January 30, 1934. Restless and fearless, he soon hatched a plan to get out. Escaping from jail wasn’t all that novel for Dillinger. After all, he’d done it once before in September 1933 when his gang broke him out of the jail in Lima, Ohio, killing a sheriff in the process. This time Dillinger planned his ultimate ruse—escape with a wooden gun. Where Dillinger got the idea for this is not exactly known, but previously, in October 1933, a prisoner at Wisconsin State Prison tried to break out with a carved wooden gun.
John Dillinger's famous wooden gun with which he made a bold jailbreak in March 1934.
Using a wooden gun that was probably smuggled in with the assistance of one or two jail guards,* John Dillinger, on the morning of Saturday, March 3, 1934, began his incredible odyssey to freedom from the Lake County jail at Crown Point. As a turnkey and two trusties opened his cell door, Dillinger sprang up and thrust his “gun” into the turnkey’s stomach. The gun barely had a stub for a handle, but Dillinger disguised this with his grip. Holding his prisoners at “gunpoint,” Dillinger forced them through the corridors and up to the warden’s office, where he seized real firearms, including a submachine gun. To ensure his safe flight, Dillinger went around the jail locking up guards—more than twenty-five in total. Then he walked to a garage where he stole the sheriff’s car and drove across the state border into Illinois.
About two weeks later Dillinger sent his girlfriend to Maywood, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, to give the wooden gun to his sister, Audrey Hancock. Some years later Dillinger’s lawyer, Louis Piquett, along with a so-called investigator who worked with Piquett and who had served time in prison because of him, Arthur O’Leary, and a third man, wrote about the gun and borrowed it from Dillinger’s sister to photograph and display it. Piquett wrote a note to O’Leary saying that when they were through with the wooden gun to make sure it was returned to the sister, but then the gun disappeared.
About forty years later, in the early 1980s, the owner of a house in Dubuque, Iowa, that was previously owned by Arthur O’Leary discovered something unusual in a first-floor closet. Underneath a section of the flooring was a tin box that extended into the basement. From the basement, the tin box looked as if it were part of the furnace ducting. The owner opened the peculiar tin box and found inside a wooden gun along with Louis Piquett’s note to O’Leary to return the gun to Dillinger’s sister. It was given for examination to Dillinger’s sister, who was still alive at the time (residing in Maywood, Indiana), and she confirmed its authenticity and signed an affidavit to that effect.
Dillinger’s jailbreak was an embarrassment to the officials and guards at the Lake County jail at Crown Point. They found wood shavings under the bed in his cell, presumably put there by Dillinger to make it look like he carved the wooden gun himself and acted alone. Following Dillinger’s successful escape, two members of his gang serving time in an Ohio state prison for the killing of the sheriff in Lima carved pistols from soap and attempted to break out. Charles Mackley was shot and killed, Harry Pierpont was shot and later electrocuted.
For John Dillinger it not only took guts to attempt to break out of jail but required a kind of thespian finesse in a life-and-death situation to point a wooden object at armed officers and make believe—and make the officers believe—that the gun was real and potentially deadly. An infamous gangster who robbed, murdered, and stole, John Dillinger used a wooden gun as his firs
t great escape prop. Unfortunately for him, it was his last.
A few months later Anna Sage, a whorehouse madam, tipped off East Chicago police as to John Dillinger’s whereabouts, and the police in turn notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On July 22, 1934, as Dillinger was leaving the Biograph Theater in Chicago with Sage and his girlfriend, a waitress who sometimes worked for Sage, about two dozen G-men surrounded the theater and three gunned him down. Dillinger was thirty-one.
LOCATION: John Dillinger Museum, Nashville, Indiana.
Footnote
*Credence is given the explanation offered by G. Russell Girardin in his 1994 book (with William Helmer) Dillinger: The Untold Story that Dillinger paid to have the gun smuggled in. Legend has it that Dillinger used his shaving razor blade to fashion the top rail of the washboard in his cell into a gun, blackening it with shoe polish and using either the barrel of a fountain pen or the handle of a safety razor as the barrel. He may actually have tried to do this and failed, but probably didn’t use the rail in any modified way for his escape. A fake gun as opposed to a real one was smuggled probably because one or both of the guards was afraid of the repercussions of the latter.
ANNE FRANK’S DIARY
DATE: 1942 to 1944.
WHAT IT IS: The set of journals kept by a young girl while in hiding with her family and others during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
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