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Notes
See Frank Spencer, Piltdown Papers 1908-1955: the Correspondence and Other Documents Relating to the Piltdown Forgery (London: Oxford University Press, 1990); Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (London: Oxford University Press, 1990).
The books were at that time given to me (though not on account of any known association) and remain in my possession.
Dawson's letters from Uckfield in the early years of this century are headed 'Town Hall Chambers'. By the time of the British Museum investigations his firm had moved to the 'Old Grammar School' in nearby Church Street (premises which were not commercially available until after 1930). Some materials connected with Dawson, such as the books discussed, may have escaped wartime recycling simply because they were dispersed earlier, perhaps during the change of premises.
'The proliferation of suspects has been due to a limited knowledge of the primary archival materials and a corresponding lack of detailed information on the activities of the individuals who were either directly or indirectly involved.' (Piltdown Papers, p. xi)
In their respective capacities as Clerk and Assistant Clerk to the Council, Dawson and his partner G. E. Hart appear together in a photograph of 'Uckfield Urban District Council, 1896-7' reproduced in Barbara Fuller and Betty Turner, Bygone Uckfield (Chichester: Phillimore, 1988), plate 85.
One might, however, note for their interest the annotations on pp. 356 and 515, viz, a pencilled line and a question-mark by the hermit's warning to King Richard to be 'mindful of the destruction of Sodom'; and two lines in the margin of the catechism of the philosopher Secundus emphasizing the reply to the question 'What is woman?'—'The confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continual anxiety, a never-ceasing strife, the ship-wreck of an unchaste man, a human slave.'
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