I've found some fascinating stuff snuck into old books over the years. To wit:
A serviceman's military records, discharge papers, tickets for transport etc. from the Boer war, in a volume of Pope's letters.
A family tree in a 17th c. Bible, behind a pasted over frontispiece, going back hundreds of years, complete with a baby's handprint from the late 18th century.
War cabinet correspondence with an editor at the Times from WWI inside a BBC archives bound copy of the times from the quarter surrounding the outbreak of the war.
A £5 note - one of the old white fivers the size of a dinner-napkin, inside Dulac's Arabian Nights (one of my favourite purchases - £1 from a charity shop, first edition, gorgeous book).
A land deed for a farm in Wales from the 1680s, although this was in a Victorian desk-tidy, under the lining paper, and half eaten by woodworm.
All in all, about 5% of the books and objects I buy end up coming with some sort of history bonus.
On a larger sort of scale, my mother bought a house in southern France in the late 80's, and while doing renovation discovered a walled up loft containing a hoarde of art up to the early 1960's - we did eventually track down the rightful heir, who in gratitude for our discovery allowed us our pick of anything we wanted within reason. It had long been thought that his grandmother's husband had done a runner with the lot - turns out granny was just bitter and disinheriting his children after he ran off without the art.
Funny old world. Funny old humans.
Edit: just remembered another hoarde of mementos I found: under the floorboards of a Georgian building in Bath while laying network cable in our office. Found a Radio Times poster advertising Dame Nelly Melba on 2LO, the BBC's first station, tiny bottles of Victorian pharmaceuticals (the only one still full was Oleum Lavandin, which smelt as good as new), a wages book from a hairdresser in the 30's, and a whole stack of newspapers from the late 19th - early 20th century. And soot. So much soot.
It would be great if you could post the details that you found in that Bible somewhere so that interested genealogists could pick them up. Most English church records go back to the 1530s or so; anything earlier than that relies on these sorts of private documents.
Oh, I did years ago - chucked it on geni - although iirc it went back to 1580 or so. I also shared scans of the letters with the BBC, as while I'm sure they've got digitised copies of the times from then (hence they were flogging the originals in an auction house in Hampshire), I don't think the inclusion of the correspondence was deliberate - assume someone left them there 80 years ago while working on research for a story. The rest is of fairly limited interest other than as oddities - although the radio times poster graces the wall of the business I founded still, I gather.
Nah. Land titles are all digital now, and while it's theoretically something I could try to argue in court, I've no interest in dispossessing some poor sod of their land.
Thanks. This, and the etymology by Turing_Machine below of indentured servitude, sent me down an interesting journey to the Burning of Parliament in London, 1834. They burned all of the tally sticks of the Exchequer, but the circumstances were such that the Parliament burned down.
1) Unlike the tally stick mentioned by another commenter, this seems easy to forge (find a similar piece of parchment; use a knife to cut it identically; bribe the original scribe to write something new).
2) Given a mismatch in either the text or the cut of the two copies, what happens? Clearly the law can't simply prefer one party by default, or that party has no incentive not to forge a document (even poorly).
Even given an illiterate populace, I'm surprised the modern system of sign/countersign/notarize wasn't used earlier.
Being local to the area in West Yorkshire described in the article, I’d just like to correct the impression given in the article that Gildersome is a quaint ye olde english ‘hamlet... dominated by farmland’. It’s a suburb in the centre of a densely populated urban conurbation right next to one of the busiest motorways in Britain.
Interesting because I got the impression that someone on the Brown side didn't want to part with it because it might be valuable.
Having handed it down several generations, just a deed. Until the story of it became lost and it was accidentally donated with the book.
And then returned to its rightful family.
My imagination concocts all kinds of scenarios where the Appleyards were forced to leave england destitute because they could never prove ownership of the land.
Or perhaps the Browns just thought it was interesting and didn't know its significance.
The article never mentions which family the land was deeded to though.
A serviceman's military records, discharge papers, tickets for transport etc. from the Boer war, in a volume of Pope's letters.
A family tree in a 17th c. Bible, behind a pasted over frontispiece, going back hundreds of years, complete with a baby's handprint from the late 18th century.
War cabinet correspondence with an editor at the Times from WWI inside a BBC archives bound copy of the times from the quarter surrounding the outbreak of the war.
A £5 note - one of the old white fivers the size of a dinner-napkin, inside Dulac's Arabian Nights (one of my favourite purchases - £1 from a charity shop, first edition, gorgeous book).
A land deed for a farm in Wales from the 1680s, although this was in a Victorian desk-tidy, under the lining paper, and half eaten by woodworm.
All in all, about 5% of the books and objects I buy end up coming with some sort of history bonus.
On a larger sort of scale, my mother bought a house in southern France in the late 80's, and while doing renovation discovered a walled up loft containing a hoarde of art up to the early 1960's - we did eventually track down the rightful heir, who in gratitude for our discovery allowed us our pick of anything we wanted within reason. It had long been thought that his grandmother's husband had done a runner with the lot - turns out granny was just bitter and disinheriting his children after he ran off without the art.
Funny old world. Funny old humans.
Edit: just remembered another hoarde of mementos I found: under the floorboards of a Georgian building in Bath while laying network cable in our office. Found a Radio Times poster advertising Dame Nelly Melba on 2LO, the BBC's first station, tiny bottles of Victorian pharmaceuticals (the only one still full was Oleum Lavandin, which smelt as good as new), a wages book from a hairdresser in the 30's, and a whole stack of newspapers from the late 19th - early 20th century. And soot. So much soot.