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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 5h

this story starts with a guy doing research fraud and getting court-martialled for it (he got 18 months and a transfer to the front)

the more I pull on this thread the weirder it got. his first fraud was claiming to be a clergyman, aged 17; at one point he was sued by the head of the Flat Earthers.

Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

I got very curious about this. You can trace Shearer's unit (21 CCS) and you can see what looks like the echo of his little blaze of fame: in Sept 1916 you get visits from various grandees including ... the editor of the BMJ, who presumably came to see for himself.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 5h

He was not in fact shot by firing squad (though it did not work out great for him regardless)

I can't quite work out where that bit of the story came in, but there seem to have been some magazine articles about it in the 60s that may have been where the story mutated.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

The 1906 embezzlement seems to have been vastly more banal and at no point did anyone claim a qualification - he just stole £10 from his employer. The dates line up - he serves his few months, gets some money together (perhaps from family), buys a ticket, and sails off to Canada the next spring.

Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

The Reading case was wild: he turned up in a nice quiet Berkshire village and claimed to be a jobbing curate looking for a job. He got it, went around collecting money, and disappeared with the takings.

His father, sounding tired, explained he had always wanted to be a priest.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

If that identification is correct - I think it was, there were only two James Shearers in the county, and the other one looked eminently respectable - then it reveals he had form. Four months for false pretences at Reading, 1904, and four at Bournemouth for embezzlement, 1906.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

Later that year he (*possibly*, the identification is not quite clear) ended up in court in a lawsuit brought by the chair of the Flat Earth Society - really - who claimed he had defrauded her. At this point I am happy to believe it, but the court dismissed the claim after a brief cross-examination.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

In 1912, he was in the bankruptcy courts in which this stay had become a degree from Georgetown (1906), alongside a very ambitious theory of accreditation - "His degree entitled him to practice among a religious order with whom he was being educated"

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

The same year, however, he listed himself in a directory as "MD Canada, Osteopath". An appearance of the "American degree" we heard about!

There is a 1907 record of him passing through NYC en route to Toronto - one wonders how long he spent there if he was back to marry in 1908.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 6h

Just before the war he was living in a suburb of Bournemouth with his wife (married 1908) and daughter (born 1910). When she was baptised he gave his occupation as "medical practictioner"; by the time the census rolled around the next year he was a "bible colporteur" (salesman). (!?)

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 7h

A bit more on Shearer: the story is sadder than I thought, he did not in fact die of the after-effects of gassing, he died from either suicide or an accidental overdose of barbiturates.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 10h

Thankyou! I was quite pleasantly surprised by how neatly all the records fitted together.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

And finally the court-martial. A couple of weeks after this, Clements was transferred from running the hospital to be a divisional staff officer - one wonders if it was connected, and whether it was a promotion, a demotion, or just to sweep all the embarrassment under the carpet.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

But maybe the bit about his being promoted was true - he and his patron Col Clements were transferred to another unit in October, and then in November, "Captain Shearer" seems to have had a nervous breakdown and been arrested. Presumably this is the moment it fell apart.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

The detail of it being 21 CCS came from this article in the 'Evening News' in 1956, sources unclear. The unit checked out, but I suspect from about half-way on it's enjoyable fiction (his court-martial does not say anything about a zeppelin or 'death ray' claim, etc)

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

I didn't try to track that one down (not sure how well they are indexed and didn't want to trawl the volume)

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

pubmed has it, I think pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

And as a lance-corporal in the Gloucestershire Regiment, he was gassed in April 1918, invalided home, discharged with a disability pension in January 1919, and died in March of lingering wounds.

A sad ending to a strange story.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

His records survive (under another number), and it seems like he was found guilty at court-martial and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. In the end I think he served about six months of that sentence before transferring.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

But when the unit was first formed, he did get mentioned - our colonel spotted him, took a shine to him, and bumped him straight up to acting sergeant. And look - an identity number.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

Shearer is not mentioned - of course not, officers only get named here. Tragically in the first week of October the CO gets replaced (promoted to run a hospital) and his successor is much more terse in the diary so we don't see any more.

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Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

I got very curious about this. You can trace Shearer's unit (21 CCS) and you can see what looks like the echo of his little blaze of fame: in Sept 1916 you get visits from various grandees including ... the editor of the BMJ, who presumably came to see for himself.

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Reposted by Andrew

Nick Brown @steamtraen.eu · 1d

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

In 1916 the BMJ published an article about the work done by James Shearer, an American physician working in the British Army as a sergeant (because he had no British qualification). He had described a
"delineator" which was better than x rays for portraying gunshot wounds. This caused a sensation and a lot of interest — but on investigation the work was found to have been invented. The BMJ published a retraction, but Shearer was tried by court martial and sentenced to death by firing squad.

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Reposted by Andrew

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 1d

You will absolutely never guess what the context is for this rather ominous passage

www.thenational.scot/news/2553640...

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Reposted by Andrew

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 1d

We fecht to lowse oursels, we coup and skar
and joater menseless in the foazie grun,
feart to bide still, and fusionless to rin,
we plouter on, forfeuchan, through the haar…

—Robert Garioch, “The Bog”
in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)
#Scotstober #poem #poetry
asls.org.uk/publications...

Robert Garioch
The Bog

The lyft is lourd abuin the hechs and howes,
peat-bog and mist hae left nae space atween;
the puddock cours doun frae the wecht abuin,
here is nae leevin-space for men or yowes.

We fecht to lowse oursels, we coup and skar
and joater menseless in the foazie grun,
feart to bide still, and fusionless to rin,
we plouter on, forfeuchan, through the haar.

We rax doun, seeking rock, wi feet grown nesh
frae clatchin in thae never-ending clarts,
ettlin to traipse on stanes, to thole their scarts,
and win to some green haugh, kind to the flesh.

Tho weill we ken it's aye the same auld place,
we fuil oursels to pech and plouter on
frae this black oily puddle-hole to thon,
that gies the meisor of our hirple-pace.

Our thochts are aye on skinklan burns, dour rocks,
clean waters we cuid loup frae stane to stane,
bricht in the sun or weet wi dounricht rain,
dazzlit wi licht and stoun'd by solid shocks.

But maist we think of gangin ither airts,
whaur we micht hae faur distances in sicht,
think lang to traivel til a warld of bricht
pure colour in outlandish foreign pairts.

Sae we jalouse some howff juist owre the brae,
some hevin abuin the sterns, juist out of sicht,
whaur we cuid gae the morn, gin we micht
loup owre the muin, as did the famous quey.

Wanting some yirdlie hevin for Almains,
the Fuhrer maks a furore in our lugs;
we bield in ivory touers or Luftwaffe-skugs,
while bummlan boomers threaten broken banes.

Thae men that fetch us boombs frae yont the seas,
heich in their Heinkels, ken the same despair;
they maun skite flat-out on the slidder air,
forever doomed, like us, to future ease.

Nou the impassioned banshees, in F-moll,
screich out wi siren voices, anger-riven,
Beethoven's chord of Opus 57,
the same that skeiched us in the Usher Hall.

The causey street we staund on shaks and shogs,
freestane fore-storey housses flee in air;
real super-realism everywhere
maks grand pianos mate wi clarty bogs.

The bog—I ken the feel o't weill eneuch,
tak its conditions, staund and dinnae fecht
to lowse my feet, and find it tholes my wecht
ablow the haar, gin but my heid be leugh.

And here are colours braw as onie shroud:
broun and dark broun, black and mair black, an aa
the fud or hint-end of the watergaw,
whaur I hae fand my forpit-met of gowd.

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Reposted by Andrew

Pants, Manchester @fantasticlife.bsky.social · 1d

Yet another new [1] bot account from everyone's favourite library [2]. @madenlaid.bsky.social posts whenever a made statutory instrument is laid before Parliament.

A made then laid statutory instrument being one that is made - signed into law by the minister - *before* being laid before Parliament.

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