This remarkable record, if record it is, was found on 4th August 2024, over 110 years after it was apparently written, during a routine clearance of the archives of the psychiatric wing of a West London hospital. It was made in pencil, in two tightly inscribed (though entirely legibly) blank foolscap notebooks, produced for the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. The notebooks were part of the contents of a box file marked “Miscellaneous Patients’ Documents, 1915-1924”.

 

     No major editing of the text was needed for this book, except for the correction of wildly misspelt French words.

 

     Slipped in between the pages of one of the notebooks was a used ticket for a cross-channel ferry, dated 27th July 1914. No other related papers have been found. Nor was there an index or other record concerning these or any of the papers stored with them (the others appear to be unrelated). The admission and discharge books from the hospital for the period under investigation are incomplete.

 

     For the present, what has been written is being regarded seriously, and not as a modern forgery. Detailed investigations are continuing. One aspect of this research concerns careful checks against available external records of the people named and events recorded. As far as can be ascertained at present, there is close correspondence between the two.

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     Some of the people named, like Queen Victoria, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Jaurès are well known in history. However, some of the events recorded for them are not noted elsewhere. These are a particular focus of interest in the current research.

The background events of July 1914 are widely known from history. What may be termed the ‘foreground events’ noted in this record are unknown.

 

     Most of the people named who are not known to history do appear in public records. For example, John Jakes is recorded as missing in action in Flanders during 1917; Archibald Montmorency Perkin almost died of war injuries in 1919. He recovered well enough to have two children with a woman named Elena Zítko, a refugee from what is now the Czech Republic, although in 1925 he had a relapse and died; Roger Arthur and Theresa Elizabeth Hartson, along with their adopted daughter, Mazod Betham, were among the many casualties, at the end of 1918, of the influenza epidemic. Even many minor figures, like some of the residents of Greenford, Middlesex (still a semi-rural village in 1914), and the shopkeeper Marcel Tresor appear in a number of United Kingdom or French census and taxation records.

 

     One puzzling feature is that there is no certain record of Thomas Percival Green after he volunteered for military service in August 1914. None of Green’s descendants, as named in the text, can be traced. There are a number of possible reasons as to why this should be the case. Looking further into these is an important part of the current investigation