LEONCAVALLO RUGGERO: (1857-1919) Italian Composer. A.L.S., Leoncavallo, on one side of a picture postcard depicting a performing bear, Viareggio, 6th March 1916 ('two days before my big celebration'), to Carlo Macchi, in Italian. The composer writes, in full, 'I forgot to ask you in my long letter to please rush me as quickly as possible a libretto and score of Malbrouck which I need urgently.' About VG Malbrouck is an operetta by Leoncavallo that was first performed at the Teatro Nazionale, Rome, on 19th January 1910. It is of interest to note that Leoncavallo adds beneath the date of 6th March - 'two days before my big celebration'. This celebration is without doubt a reference to his birthday, two days later on the 8th March, which is the same date as given by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, most sources quote the composer's birth date as 23rd April, making this a letter of great significance.
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BERRY JAMES: (1852-1913) English Executioner, 1884-91, recognised for his important contribution to the science of hanging with his refinement of the long drop method developed by William Marwood, improvements which were intended to diminish the mental and physical suffering of the prisoner.An extremely rare A.L.S., James Berry, three pages, 8vo, Bradford, 16th April 1889, to Lewis [Strange] Wingfield. Berry thanks his correspondent for sending a book on wool combing as 'it is our staple trade and been brought up amongst it all my life, it is something to read off (sic) the old ancient ways of some 100 years back from the quick process they have now' Berry continues, 'I have just arrived back from Dundee where I have had an Execution of a fine young full develloped (sic) man of good stature. He was the last man that I should judge to carry out such a murder or mutilation case I never was so taken in before with such a cool and collected thought to the last all that saw his end was astonished at his nerve' further adding, 'I have sent you a paper with full particulars for you to read at your leisure hour, also a Cambrian paper with the Execution of Allen the negro at Swansea.' A letter of excellent content relating to the execution of William Bury, a convicted murderer associated with the Jack the Ripper case. With a long neat split to the central fold, and some very minor age wear, about VG Berry, the first British hangman with sufficient literacy skills to be able to write of his experiences, performed 131 hangings during his career including that of William Bury, a man considered a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. Infamously, in 1885, Berry was also the executioner who failed to hang John Babbacombe Lee (1864-1945), the controversially convicted murderer who became a cause célèbre known as 'the man they couldn't hang'. His father had worked as a wool-stapler, explaining the references Berry makes to the trade in the present letter. William Bury (1859-1889) English Murderer hanged by James Berry in Dundee, having been found guilty of the murder of his wife. Bury allegedly confessed to being Jack the Ripper shortly before his execution. Bury's proximity to Whitechapel at the time of the Ripper murders, his violent nature and the murder of his wife all contributed to Bury being suspected of being the anonymous killer. Berry's account of the execution appeared in the Thomson's series on 12th February 1927. In it Berry claims there were two strangers in attendance during the hanging, stating, 'Two quiet-looking men in suits of a London cut, they watched the man die from behind the little crowd at the edge of the scaffold, and then, with their faces strangely marked by excitement, they walked up to me. “Well, Berry, what do you think?”, “Oh, I think it's the man right enough”, “And so do we. There can be no doubt about it. You'll find there will be no Whitechapel crimes after this. You've put an end to Jack the Ripper's games”. The men who assured me were officers from Scotland Yard sent down to take observations…' However, it must also be noted that there are certain contradictions in Berry's account of Bury. In the present letter Berry portrays Bury in surprisingly complimentary terms, which somewhat contradict other published reminiscences, in which he recalls, 'When I first caught sight of Bury, and before I knew that he was suspected of committing the Whitechapel crimes, I confess that a strange feeling took possession of me. He was a peculiar-looking man, and undoubtedly he had the air of the uncanny about him… I saw before me a man slightly over five feet in height, with a haunted look in his eyes. He did not appear an ordinary criminal. His face was keen and intelligent, and he was carrying himself with an erect and steady bearing, but not withstanding, there was a mysterious something about him which repelled me.' This later account published after Berry's death, may have been written with embellishments to boost readership of the series as it does bear inconsistencies when compared to Berry's contemporary account provided in the present letter. Lewis Strange Wingfield (1842-1891) Irish Traveller, Actor, Writer, and Painter. Well known in Bohemian circles Wingfield associated with the likes of Henry Irving, Bram Stoker and William Palgrave. However, he also acquainted himself on a personal level with both James Berry and fellow executioner William Marwood. As alluded to in the present letter, on separate occasions Wingfield would invite Berry and Marwood to dine with him, encouraging them to share tales of their hangings. From contemporary accounts written by those who knew him, Wingfield was known to have a somewhat morbid interest in the study of executions, from tortures in foreign lands to hangings at Newgate. Indeed, his collection of photographs of trials by torture were rumoured to give his dinner guests an appetite whilst waiting for their meal. As host, Wingfield enjoyed assuming the character of the 'Noble Lord High Executioner' before his guests and, at the dining table itself, guests would be confronted by a curious choice of table decoration - a long rope, not a common one, but seemingly made of semi-silk, intertwined with flowers, and here and there bound round by pieces of tape, on each of which was written a name. This, Wingfield would explain, was the rope used by executioner William Marwood with the names, dates and length of drop associated with each of his executions written on the pieces of tape. We are indebted to Stewart P. Evans, author of Executioner, The Chronicles of James Berry, Victorian Hangman (2004), for his valuable assistance in researching the present letter and for allowing us to quote extracts from his book.
TARAFID RULERS OF ‘ATHAR, ABU ‘ALI AL-FARAJ (fl. 381-392h). Dinar, ‘Athar (39)1h. REVERSE: In field: amr bihi’l-amir | al-Faraj | al-Tarafi. WEIGHT: 2.76g. REFERENCE: Album F1070 RRR; ICV 1093. CONDITION: Very fine to good very fine and very rare. Although only the unit of the date is engraved on this coin, dinars of al-Faraj dated 381h additionally bear his kunya, ‘Abu ‘Ali (see SICA 10, 416), and so this piece can be assigned to the year 391h.
ARAB-BYZANTINE, TEMP. ‘ABD AL-MALIK B. MARWAN (65-86h). Solidus, without mint or date (struck circa 72-74h). OBVERSE: No legend. Three standing figures, that in the centre taller than those on either side, as on Byzantine solidi showing Heraclius and his two sons; each crowned and holding in his right hand an orb surmounted by a globe finial (in place of the cross on the Byzantine prototype). REVERSE: In margin: bismillah la ilaha illa Allah wahdahu Muhammad rasul Allah, staff, surmounted by globe finial, fixed vertically on four steps; in field to left and right: B – I. WEIGHT: 4.40g. REFERENCES: Qatar 198, same dies; Barber Institute of Fine Arts, coin AB30, same reverse die; Artuk 5; Lavoix 26; SICA 1, 607; Walker p.18, B.2; Miles, Earliest Arab Gold Coinage type B; Bernardi 5. CONDITION: Scratches both sides (especially on the reverse), otherwise very fine to good very fine, extremely rare and historically important. Ex Baldwin’s Islamic Coin Auction 19, 25 April 2012, lot 7. THE FIRST ISLAMIC GOLD COIN TO BEAR RELIGIOUS LEGENDS WRITTEN IN ARABIC . In the former Sasanian lands, the Muslims seem at first to have allowed the mint-towns they conquered to continue striking Sasanian drachms without changing the legends or design. From the 30s/650s onwards, the coins were subtly modified to include a brief Arabic legend marking them as an Islamic issue, and during the 40s/660s we find the name of an Arab governor or caliph replacing that of the long-dead Sasanian monarch. But in other respects the design changed little for some fifty years until the great reforms of ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan in the late 70s. In the West, however, the situation was rather different. Syria, Jordan and Egypt had been part of the Byzantine currency system, based on gold dinars and copper folles. Unlike the Arab-Sasanian drachms, which all bear the date and mint of issue (a feature also adopted for the post-Reform Islamic silver coinage), Byzantine gold and copper is seldom dated in this way. This means that the chronology of the Arab-Byzantine coinage is less well understood, and scholars continue to disagree over some points, but there are good reasons to accept the broad scheme outlined by Tony Goodwin (Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean, Volume 1, p.106). On this analysis, until the late 30s/650s it appears that the local demand for coinage was met by importing Byzantine copper coins – and that this import was officially sanctioned by the Arabs. In or about 40h, it seems that these imports almost completely stopped, and local cities in Syria, Jordan and Palestine began to issue their own copies of Byzantine folles to fill this gap. From 55h or so, the first copper fulus with Arabic legends start to appear and this represents the inception of what may be termed the Arab-Byzantine coinage. Over the next fifteen or twenty years we find more and more mints beginning to produce these coins, duringwhich period we can also see a move away from local types being issued on local initiative towards ever greater standardization and central control. In or about 70h this culminates in the introduction of a new, uniform type at virtually all mints, with the Standing Caliph image on the obverse and the modified cross-on-steps on the reverse; this was to endure for another decade until it was in turn replaced by post-Reform fulus. By contrast with Arab-Byzantine copper coins, which were clearly produced in very large quantities, it seems that gold coins were never issued in significant numbers. Why was this so? One answer is that the Arab-Byzantine copper fulus were essentially a local coinage, produced on local initiative. This attitude survived the coinage reforms of ‘Abd al-Malik, and so post-Reform fulus may carry any or all of a mint-name, a date, and the name of a local governor or official – although many in fact have none of these and bear purely religious legends. This kind of variety is not found in the silver and gold coinage, which was far more tightly controlled, and indeed the degree of uniformity between coins struck thousands of miles apart is remarkable. So while the caliph was apparently content for governors to strike Arab-Byzantine copper coins to meet local demand, issuing a gold coinage would have been another matter entirely and one which would have required official approval. There are nevertheless indications that the need to replenish the supply of gold coins available within the former Byzantine provinces was being felt during these early decades. A small number of ‘de-Christianized’ Byzantine solidi have survived, all very close copies of seventh century Byzantine prototypes with the bare minimum of modification to remove overtly Christian symbols. Thus the crosses on the emperors’ crowns have been removed, and the cross-on-steps is transformed into a T-shape with the top arm removed, but in other respects the designs and legends are unaltered. There are good reasons to regard these as local issues: Bernardi lists only some fifteen specimens extant (which is less than half the number of ‘year 77’ dinars known today) but these nevertheless copy four different prototypes. This lack of standardization seems to fit better with the idea of a local governor recognizing the shortage of gold coins and so striking solidi which were sufficiently Islamic to be acceptable to the caliph while otherwise attracting as little attention as possible. The coin offered here is a very different proposition from these earlier copies, and is surely to be regarded as part of the first stage of ‘Abd al-Malik’s series of reforms which ultimately led to the adoption of a uniform silver and gold coinage throughout the Islamic world. The obverse is still a close copy of a Byzantine solidus, but it is noteworthy that a type without legend should have been chosen meaning that there is no Latin to be seen. The choice of three standing figures also forms a clear visual contrast with the single figure of the Standing Caliph which featured on virtually all fulus then being struck. The reverse, however, with its Islamic marginal legend written in Arabic around a modified cross-on-steps, is a much bolder statement, unequivocally announcing that the coin has been struck to circulate in a province which is part of an Islamic empire. The coin is still recognisable as the successor to the old Byzantine solidi, but the legends are no longer intended to be familiar to Greek or Latin speakers. Anyone who wished to read the coin had to learn Arabic – which ‘Abd al-Malik had adopted as the official language of the new empire. The coin is undated – the ‘B –I’ on the reverse is a Byzantine indictional year copied from the prototype along with the rest of the reverse design, and no longer represents a meaningful date. But it is generally thought that these first attempts at a gold coinage with Arabic legends were issued between 72-74h, after which dated Standing Caliph gold dinars are known for the years 74-77h, followed in turn by post-Reform dinars issued from 77h onwards. They are best understood as the gold counterpart to an experimental series of Arab-Sasanian type silver drachms which do bear both mints and dates; these are unambiguous in stating that they were issued at Damascus from 72-74h, and it seems difficult to imagine that these gold coins could have been produced elsewhere. Like these silver drachms, it seems that they were never produced in large quantities, and their great rarity today may be explained by the actions of ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan after the introduction of his new, purely epigraphic dinars in 77h: ‘The Caliph issued a command that…all of the formerly-used Byzantine and Arab-Byzantine pieces were to be recalled to the mint for restriking. All those who ignored this order were to be punished by death.’ (from The Coinage of Islam: Collection of William Kazan, Beirut, 1983, p.22).
UMAYYAD, TEMP. ‘ABD AL-MALIK B. MARWAN (65-86h). Dirham, HR (for Harat?) 79h. WEIGHT: 2.67g. REFERENCE: Klat 651, same obverse die. CONDITION: Faint pin-marks in fields, very fine or better and extremely rare. Discussing an example of this extremely rare issue now held in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Curiel conjectured that the mint-name might be ‘Huz,’ a putative singular form of ‘Ahwaz,’ in which case the mint would be located in one part of that city (so Bates, M.L., ‘Mystery Mints of the Umayyads,’ Oriental Numismatic Society Occasional Paper 22, December 1987). Recent opinion, however, favours the view that it is more likely meant to denote ‘Harat’. It has been suggested that the die-engraver, who may very well have not understood Arabic and been familiar with Pahlawi, might have omitted the last two letters of the mint-name (perhaps being confused by the fi which follows it), but another possibility might be that HR was written intentionally as an Arabic version of the Pahlawi mint-signature HR/HRA. The existence of dirhams struck at Harat in 80h which do bear the Pahlawi abbreviation HRA in the obverse field, as well as the Arabic bi-Harat in the obverse margin, may lend support for this view.
A Spode shaped circular blue and white Death of the Bear plate, printed with elephant, horsemen, hounds and bear, the border with wild animals, 21cm diam, impressed mark, c.1860; another, Bridge of Locarno, 24cm diam, impressed mark; a Spode soup dish, printed with the Tomb of Theron, 25cm diam, c.1820; etc (5)
R&B/BLUES US 78s - More shimmyin', shakin' and rockin' with these 10 x seldom seen original US 78s... Titles are Bob Lander With Willie Joe And His Unitar - Cherokee Dance c/w Unitar Rock (Specialty XSP-576 - V to V+ some light marks), Little Johnny Jones and the Chicago Hound Dogs - Sweet LIttle Woman c/w I May Be Wrong (Flair 1010 - E), King Charles and His Orchestra - Bop Cat Stomp (Folk-Star GF-1131 - E), L. C. McKinley - I'm So Satisfied (Vee-Jay VJ 159 - V), Baby Boy Warren - Mattie Mae (Blue Lake 106 - V+) and Lou Mac - Come Back Little Daddy (Blue Lake 108 - V+), Ray Vict & His Bop Rockers - We Gonna Bop Stop Rock (Goldband G-1042), Jack Dupree & Mr. Bear - Walking The Blues (King 4812 - E), Jack McVea And His All Stars - Lonesome Blues (Black & White BW 337 - V+) and Jimmy Beasley And The Rockers - Johnny's House Party (Modern Records 1021 - E).
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