Part Eleven of "Englishmen on Ice" - Lady Franklin: He's not dead!

To continue the story of Franklin's last (and by now, lost) expedition to find the Northwest Passage, we've reached February 1854. John Franklin's been missing now for getting on for nine years. Expedition after expedition to search for him and his party has been sent out, some financed by Lady Franklin herself.

(to the annoyance of her family, who saw her squandering their inheritance...they actually went as far as sueing her at one point..)

...and the Admiralty have given up. All they've found so far is three graves of sailors who had died early in the expedition...It's not looking good for Franklin...

(These bodies were exhumed on Beechey Island not long ago, by the way, and were found to contain lethal levels of lead...which may well have come from badly soldered cans...but which would have also caused mental illness, among other things. It gets worse and worse, doesn't it?)

But, and this shows that boneheaded behaviour is nothing new in bureaucracy, it was in early 1854 that the Admiralty made the crass inducement to Lady Franklin that if she gave her husband up for dead, she'd get a widow's pension. At which point, she went publically bananas with rage, sending a copy of her letter to the Admiralty to the Times:

"My husband's conviction that where Esquimaux can live, there also can Englishmen, with their superior intellect and larger appliances, has often been quoted...they went forth, my lords, at your bidding, and went to those seas which you gave them liberty to explore...they have deserved, surely I may say they have deserved of their country that she should ascertain their fate...it remains for me only to thank your Lordships for the communication you have been pleased to make me, that the widows of those who are to be considered to have died in the service of their country, after the 31st of March next, will be entitled to pensions, according to the existing regulations. Your lordships will scarcely require me to tell you, after what I have written, that I do not feel it in my power either to claim or to accept a widow's pension."

This public stand gathered her a good deal of popular support. It was an irresistible pitch...the faithful wife, doggedly refusing to give up on heroic husband. She truly became the English Penelope, weaving her tapestry of hope among the twittering of faithless bureaucrats...

Then came news of Franklin from out of the blue...In November that year, a dour Orcadian working for the Hudson Bay Company called Dr John Rae was going to bring home news...not good news...dreadful, degrading, humiliating news...

At which point, Enter Charles Dickens...Stage left...