Thunderstruck

  “He promised me”: Ibid., 97.

  “La calma della mia”: Marconi, My Father, 46.

  “an Italian had come up”: Hong, Wireless, 38.

  “On the last day”: Ibid., 38.

  “There is nothing new”: Lodge to Preece, October 16, 1896. IEE, SC Mss. 22/213.

  “I think it desirable”: Marconi to Preece, December 5, 1896. IEE, NA 13/2/02.

  The Strand Magazine: Weightman, Signor Marconi’s, 9; Isted, I, 53.

  the ambassador “even apologized”: Marconi to Giuseppe Marconi, January 9, 1897. “Letters,” 100.

  “the public has been educated”: Hong, Wireless, 39.

  ANARCHISTS AND SEMEN

  “I may say”: Trial, 36.

  Just east lay Bloomsbury: For more detail about the neighborhood and the Bloomsbury and Fitzroy Street groups, see Stansky, December, and David, Fitzrovians, respectively.

  “The door opened”: Stansky, December 1910, 10.

  For years the basement: David, Fitzrovians, 95.

  Nearby at No. 30: David, Fitzrovians, 95; Deghy and Waterhouse, Café Royal, 54.

  Harrison recalled: Cullen, Crippen, 42.

  A photograph from about this time: Goodman, Crippen File, 16.

  “a few feeble lines”: Cullen, Crippen, 42.

  A program from this period: Goodman, Crippen File, 25.

  “the Brooklyn Matzos Ball”: Cullen, Crippen, 44.

  “smoking concerts”: Trial, 36.

  “She was always finding fault”: Ibid., 88.

  “that this man visited her”: Ibid., 36.

  THE GERMAN SPY

  He long had resented: André Maurois wrote of Wilhelm: “He was sensitive and ardent, and for artists might have turned out to be a desirable friend. But at the head of an Empire he was terrifying. His speeches, even his telegrams, were tirades of melodrama; his mother wished she could put a padlock on his mouth whenever he spoke in public.” (Maurois, Edwardian Era, 83)

  Kapp described him: Kapp to Preece, March 19, 1897. IEE, SC Mss. 022. Folder 100-276.

  “As far as the Government”: Marconi to Giuseppe Marconi, January 20, 1897. “Letters,” 101–2.

  Two Americans: Ibid., 102.

  In April, however: Marconi to Preece, April 10, 1897. IEE, NA 13/2/08. Also, see Aitken, Syntony, 218, 222–23.

  On April 9, 1897: Graham to Preece, April 9, 1897. IEE, NA 13/2/07.

  “I am in difficulty”: Marconi to Preece, April 10, 1897. IEE, NA 13/2/08.

  Afterward he wrote: Marconi to Giuseppe Marconi, August 8, 1897. “Letters,” 102.

  “Marconi at the end of 1897”: Preece’s Recollections, July 26, 1937, 5. IEE, NA 13/2/24.

  On Friday, May 7: Kemp Diary, May 7, 1897.

  “So be it”: Kemp Diary, May 13, 1897.

  “I can’t love him”: Slaby to Preece, June 23, 1898. IEE, SC Mss. 22/180.

  “It is cold here”: Kemp Diary, May 18, 1897.

  “I had not been able”: Hancock, Wireless, 4.

  “I came as a stranger”: Slaby to Preece, May 15, 1897. IEE, SC Mss. 22/180.

  In Berlin, Slaby immediately: See Slaby to Preece, June 27, 1897. IEE, SC Mss. 22/179.

  He had to withdraw: Hong, Wireless, 13.

  “The papers seem”: Lodge to Preece, May 29, 1897. IEE, SC Mss. 22/210.

  “It appears that”: Weightman, Signor Marconi’s, 31–32.

  “It would be important”: Fitzgerald to Lodge, June 21, 1897. UCL, Lodge Collection, MS Add 89/35 iii.

  “I have distinctly told him”: Preece to Secretary, G.P.O., July 15, 1897. IEE, Post Office Records, English Minute No. 336170/98.

  “I have now constructed”: Slaby to Preece, June 27, 1897. IEE, SC Mss. 22/179.

  “We are happy men”: Slaby to Preece, June 23, 1898. IEE, SC Mss. 22/180.

  BRUCE MILLER

  “I merely shook hands”: Trial, 22.

  “I cannot say”: Miller Statement, 4. NA-DPP 1/13.

  “When I first met her”: Ibid., 4.

  “sometimes in the afternoons”: Ibid., 5.

  “brown eyes”: Trial, 20.

  Only partly true: Deghy and Waterhouse, Café Royal, 22.

  “Anything we do”: Miller Statement, 5. NA-DPP 1/13.

  “often enough to be sociable”: Trial, 20.

  “with his Kodak”: Miller Statement, 5. NA-DPP 1/13.

  “with love and kisses”: Trial, 37.

  ENEMIES

  “In fact Dr. Lodge”: The Electrician 39, no. 21 (September 17, 1897), 686–87.

  “What we want to know”: The Electrician 39, no. 25 (October 15, 1897), 832.

  “I hope this new attitude”: Marconi to Preece, September 9, 1897. IEE, NA 13/2/13.

  “but no practical results”: Baker, Preece, 275.

  “ignorant excitement”: Ibid., 279.

  “I want to show you”: Preece to Lodge, November 18, 1899. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/86.

  “Preece’s attempt”: Lodge to Thompson, January 21, 1900. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/104 ii.

  the still-pervasive skepticism: One example: In a letter to Lodge, physicist Oliver Heaviside wrote, “I much question the usefulness of anything of Marconi’s kind in practice, save in exceptional circumstances. The heliograph will carry much farther by day, + a search light by night. No doubt a special field can be found for it. But wires are the thing, in general.” Heaviside to Lodge, June 23, 1897. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/50.

  “Wireless is all very well”: Marconi, My Father, 45.

  “The chief objection”: Kelvin to Lodge, May 5, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/107.

  “I think it would be”: Kelvin to Lodge, June 11, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/107.

  “In accepting”: Kelvin to Lodge, June 12, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/107.

  “Today was only the beginning”: Muirhead to Lodge, June 4, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/77.

  “This struck me”: Jameson Davis to Lodge, July 29, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/70.

  ROYAL YACHT OSBORNE: Marconi to Lodge, August 2, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/70.

  Anyone who could read: Marconi, My Father, 65–67; Weightman, Signor Marconi’s, 41–42.

  “go back and around”: Marconi, My Father, 66; Wander, “Radio’s First Home,” 52.

  “Alas, Your Majesty”: Ibid., 66.

  “H. R. H. the Prince”: Ibid., 67.

  “Could you come”: Weightman, Signor Marconi’s, 42.

  “I am glad to say”: Marconi to Lodge, August 2, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/70.

  “a lady’s house”: Kemp Diary, August 24, 1898.

  “I wired to London”: Ibid., August 22, 1898.

  “I sincerely hope”: Marconi to Lodge, November 2, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/70.

  “I much regret”: Marconi to Lodge, October 11, 1898. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/70.

  At nine A.M.: Kemp’s account of the ordeal appears in his diary entries for December 17, 1898, through January 4, 1899. Kemp Diary.

  In April: Baker, History, 42; Faulkner, Watchers, 6–7.

  One night, during: Marconi, My Father, 71–72; Vyvyan, Marconi and Wireless, 20.

  “WERE YOU HER LOVER, SIR?”

  “Were you writing to her”: This exchange appears in Trial, 20–21.

  FLEMING

  “Glad to send”: Marconi to Fleming, March 28, 1899. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/66.

  “the region of uncertain”: Hong, Wireless, 56–57.

  “My attention has been”: Lodge to Fleming, April 11, 1899. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/66

  an “indictment against”: Hong, Wireless, 57.

  “I made no attack”: Fleming to Lodge, April 14, 1899. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/66.

  define “my position”: Fleming to Jameson Davis, May 2, 1899. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/47.

  “I have a strong conviction”: Ibid.

  THE LADIES’ GUILD COMMENCES

  “It was always agreed”: Trial, 89.

  “w
ith a free hand”: Ibid., 97.

  One evening Miller: Miller Statement, 2. NA-DPP 1/13.

  “I never interfered”: Trial, 37.

  “Of course, I hoped”: Ibid., 89.

  “She got an engagement”: Ibid., 36.

  “She would probably”: Ibid., 36.

  “There was hardly”: Macqueen-Pope, Goodbye Piccadilly, 300–1.

  “When her hair was down”: Trial, 77.

  “She wasn’t a top-rank artist”: Rose, Red Plush, 29.

  “To fail at even an East End”: Machray, Night Side, 118.

  A photographer captured: Goodman, Crippen File, 15.

  “Oh Belle does it hurt”: Clara Martinetti Statement. Brief for the Prosecution. NA-DPP, 1/13.

  “A GIGANTIC EXPERIMENT”

  Why bother at all: For an excellent discussion of this, see Aitken, Syntony, 240–41. Aitken argues that the cable companies could have confronted any competitor with deep cuts in price. The business was lucrative, the companies profitable. They also had the capacity to handle far more business. In a price war, he argues, the cable trust would have proven a dangerous competitor.

  He recognized: Interview, Francesco Paresce, Marconi’s grandson, Munich, April 11, 2005. “He had no limits,” Paresce told me. “I think he felt from day one that radio waves would be able to link any two points on the earth.” That Marconi would propose so grand an experiment was due largely to his personality and to his appraisal of his company’s prospects. “In order to win the race he could not continue as he had done before, with little steps,” Paresce said. “Commercially he was realizing it wasn’t working, the system really wasn’t working.”

  Paths that might have seemed more prudent did exist, Paresce said. “You would have thought he would have pushed much harder simply to communicate with a ship farther and farther away.” But to settle for this and not test his vision would have run against the grain of Marconi’s character. “I think it was something that was really him,” Paresce said. “He was a very stubborn man, he was a very driven man, and he was self-educated.” But Marconi also understood on some deep level that what science held to be immutable law might easily with time prove to be false. “He learned very early on not to take too seriously the science of the moment,” Paresce said. Marconi perhaps believed “there were enough unknowns about the problem that there was something that would come to his rescue.”

  However outlandish Marconi’s idea might have seemed, it did have a practical dimension. “He was an extremely able media manipulator,” Paresce said. “I’m almost certain that the basic reason he did it is he had to give a big impetus to his commercial operation. By making a big splash he could attract more attention to his effort, and attract the best people to help solve its problems.”

  “I have not the slightest doubt”: Hong, Wireless, 60.

  “When you meet Marconi”: Quoted in Marconi, My Father, 76.

  A frightened guest: Ibid., 76.

  “peculiar semi-abstract air”: Ibid., 76.

  “a bit absent-minded”: Quoted in Weightman, Signor Marconi’s, 59.

  He found it: Marconi, My Father, 76–77. For more details on the America’s Cup episode, see pp. 77–80. See also, Weightman, Signor Marconi’s, 60–61 and Baker, History, 48–49.

  “The shock from the sending coil”: Quoted in Marconi, My Father, 80; Faulkner, Watchers, 7.

  “I noticed”: Marconi, My Father, 168.

  “Well try using the other foot”: Isted, I, 55.

  The St. Paul suited him: The St. Paul had a twin, the St. Louis, which in 1907 carried a four-year-old boy named Leslie Townes Hope, later Bob Hope, from England to a new life in America. Of his emigration he later said, “I left England at the age of four when I found out I couldn’t be king.” Fox, Transatlantic, 391; Hope’s quip comes from BobHope.com/bob.htm.

  “The Needles resembled”: Quoted in Marconi, My Father, 82–83.

  “As all know”: Hancock, Wireless, 20.

  Josephine Bowen Holman: To gather details about Holman and her roots, I conducted research in the Indiana State Library, and there consulted the following sources: Indianapolis News, December 20, December 21, 1901; January 21, January 22, 1902; June 5, 1972; Indianapolis Star, December 20, 1909, May 24, 1948; August 4, 1979; Indianapolis Star Magazine, March 8, 1970; Indianapolis Times, July 23, 1937. Also, Lewis, “Woodruff Place,” pp. 3–8; McDonald, Indianapolis, 29–31; McKenzie, Blue Book; and Woodruff Place Centennial, 2, 4.

  “absolute certitude”: For material on Tesla and his Century article, see: Cheney and Uth, Tesla, 87, 90, 99–100; Hong, Wireless, 72; the article is quoted at length in Sewall, Wireless, 51–52.

  As welcome as: Aitken, Syntony, 232–35.

  “But greater wonders followed”: London Times, October 4, 1900.

  “After you left”: Marconi, My Father, 93.

  “I am thinking”: Ibid., 93.

  “extreme demands on my time”: Fleming to Flood Page, November 23, 1900. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/47.

  “I am desired to say”: Flood Page to Fleming, December 1, 1900. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/47.

  “As regards any special recognition”: Fleming to Flood Page, December 3, 1900. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/47.

  In December Nevil Maskelyne: Bartram, I, 50.

  And there was Lodge: Lodge’s discussions with Muirhead are cited in a letter from George Fitzgerald to Lodge, June 14, 1899. UCL, Lodge Collection, 89/35 iv.

  He accepted the position: Jolly, Lodge, 132.

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  “The most noticeable thing”: Hicks, Not Guilty, 68.

  In 1898: Massie, Dreadnought, 180; Clarke, Voices, 133.

  “At first there will be”: Ibid., 134.

  “I wonder if”: Weintraub, Edward, 387.

  PART III: SECRETS

  MISS LE NEVE

  Drouet produced: Cullen, Crippen, 48.

  “For dolls or other girlish toys”: Le Neve, Ethel Le Neve, 6.

  “Very soon afterwards”: Ibid., 8.

  “For some reason”: Ibid., 8.

  “I quickly discovered”: Ibid., 8.

  On one occasion: Ibid., 8.

  “With her departure”: Ibid., 9.

  “Her coming was”: Ibid., 9.

  An even stormier visit: Ibid., 9.

  Crippen brought with him: Cullen, Crippen, 61. Cullen contends Crippen also brought with him Drouet’s mailing lists.

  “This places within”: Goodman, Crippen File, 12.

  In time Aural Remedies: Ibid., 13.

  Crippen said, “although”: Trial, 37.

  “Give me your hand”: Further Statement of Maud Burroughs, September 16, 1910. NA-DPP 1/13.

  “we had a whole day together”: Ellis, Black Flame, 318.

  “the only person in the world”: Le Neve, Ethel Le Neve, 10.

  “by sheer accident”: Ibid., 12.

  “THE THUNDER FACTORY”

  “They thought”: Marconi, My Father, 100.

  “There was nothing”: Thoreau, Cape Cod, 59.

  “Plenty of water”: “Report for G. Marconi on his recent visit to America.” Cape Cod National Seashore.

  One bit of historical resonance: Kittredge, Cape Cod, 94.

  Cook assured Marconi: Marconi, My Father, 100.

  “The barren aspect”: Thoreau, Cape Cod, 45–46.

  Clouds often filled: For weather details throughout this chapter see Monthly Weather Review, 49, 53, 77, 80, 85, 99, 123, 144, 182, 206, 224, 246, 272, 277, 291, 295, 318–22, 348, 380, 385, 403, 428, 433, 450, 470, 490, 493–94, 516, 536, 543, 569, 572, 596, 606, 610.

  “It was clear to me”: Vyvyan, Marconi and Wireless, 28.

  “period of exceptionally severe storms”: Monthly Weather Review, 99.

  “In view of the isolation”: Bradfield to Executive Committee, March 30, 1906. Cape Cod National Seashore.

  “a vast morgue”: Thoreau, Cape Cod, 182.

  “There is naked Nature”: Ibid., 182.

&nb
sp; A photograph: “Marconi Site.” Wellfleet Historical Society.

  “To lose him to anyone”: Marconi, My Father, 80.

  “I wish I had got this letter”: Ibid., 82.

  He formed: Aitken, Syntony, 143; Hong, Wireless, 46.

  And Marconi endured: Aitken, Syntony, 246–47, fn 67 on 293.

  On May 21, 1901: Daily Graphic, May 28, 1901, in UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/66; Faulkner, Watchers, 11; Hancock, Wireless, 29–30.

  Only years later: Faulkner, Watchers, 11.

  “If you opened the door”: Cape Codder, June 18, 1970, in Cape Cod National Seashore, File 4.7-2.

  “In August”: Vyvyan, Marconi and Wireless, 28.

  “We used to call it”: Crowley to Fleming, January 11, 1938. UCL, Fleming Collection, 122/3.

  “We had an electric phenomenon”: Kemp Diary, August 9, 1901.

  “The weather is still boisterous”: Ibid., August 14, 1901.

  “Caution. Very Dangerous.”: See photograph, Kemp Diary, opposite p. 154.

  “the thunder factory”: Weightman, Signor Marconi, 170.

  The most important clause: Aitken, Syntony, 235–36; Bartram, I, 51.

  CLAUSTROPHOBIA

  On September 21: Trial, 9.

  Trees lined the crescent: The following description of Hilldrop Crescent and its surrounding neighborhood is derived primarily from the online archives of the Bolles and Booth collections, with additional detail from Baedeker, and a statement by Chief Inspector Walter Dew, in Brief for the Prosecution, 77, NA-DPP 1/13, in which he describes the layout of No. 39. I gleaned other details from two police photographs of the house and its garden, in NA-MEPO 3/198.

  In 1902 the prison: Execution had been a neighborhood theme for more than a century. In the 1700s an inn stood in Camden Town by the name of Mother Red Cap, a common stop for omnibuses but also the end of the line for many condemned prisoners, who were hung in public across the street. The Morning Post of 1776 reported that “Orders have been given from the Secretary of State’s Office that the criminals, capitally convicted at the Old Bailey, shall in future be executed at the cross road near the Mother Red Cap—the half-way house to Hampstead….” One of the last things the condemned saw was the sign at the Mother Red Cap representing a woman thought to be Mother Damnable, identified in a bit of 1819 verse as a woman “so curst, a dog would not dwell with her.” Bolles: Henry B. Whealey, London Past and Present, John Murray, 1891.