Read Online Agatha Christie's True Crime Inspirations by Mike Holgate - Free Book Online
Authors: Mike Holgate
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two days later. At the inquest, sixteen-yearold attendant Irene Summner was praised by the coroner for her bravery. Describing the accident she said:
When Mr Davidson tried to get out of the way Freddie reared up on his haunches to get him with his front paws. I got into the cage and tried to beat the lion off, but it dragged Mr Davidson to a corner near the other locked gate and we could not move him until Freddie dropped him.
15
ERNEST SHACKLETON AND ROBERT FALCON SCOTT
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
Ordeal by Innocence … was inspired by a number of real-life heroes.
The Agatha Christie Collection No. 39, Ordeal by Innocence
In Ordeal by Innocence (1958), geophysicist Dr Arthur Calgary returns from an Antarctic expedition too late to prevent a miscarriage of justice. It transpires that he is the only man who could have verified an alibi and saved the life of a man who died from pneumonia in prison after being wrongfully jailed for the murder of his adoptive mother.
Agatha Christie’s fictional polar explorer was inspired by two courageous men with Devon connections – Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. In August 1907, shortly before Agatha’s seventeenth birthday, the supply ship Terra Nova steamed into Torquay on its last port of call before setting off on the first leg of an expedition to attempt to reach the South Pole. The leader, Lieutenant Ernest Shackleton RN (1874-1922), stayed behind in the resort for a further three months at his brother’s home, The Knoll, before travelling on a liner to join his ship in New Zealand. The party returned to Torquay two years later having narrowly failed to reach their goal by less than 100 miles. The consolation was a knighthood, conferred by King George V on Ernest Shackleton. Bad weather and low rations had forced Shackleton to turn back within sight of his objective, but in view of the tragedy that was soon to befall a fellow polar explorer, he made a suitably ‘chilling’ remark: ‘better a live donkey than a dead lion’.
Devonport-born naval captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) bettered Shackleton’s achievement during an ill-fated journey to the South Pole completed in 1912. After successfully reaching his destination, he was disappointed to discover that Roald Amundsen and his party had become the first men to reach the pole only one month earlier. The Norwegian had switched his attention to the South Pole when American Robert Peary became the first man to reach the North Pole in 1909. Dejected and faced with severe storms and blizzards on the way back, Scott and his four companions perished from hunger and exposure only eleven miles from the safety of a food and fuel depot. Scott was the last member of the party to die and patriotically wrote in his diary: ‘Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardiest endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale…’
When Amundsen and Scott conquered the South Pole, Shackleton decided to attempt the first crossing of the Antarctic, a daunting 2,000 mile trip from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. The expedition, involving twenty-eight men, became a spectacular failure when their ship Endurance became trapped and crushed by ice. Hopelessly marooned, Shackleton ordered his men onto the ice and after four months drifting on their ‘iceberg’ they landed at Elephant Island in April 1916. Shackleton then realised that their only hope of survival was to reach the whaling stations on South Georgia Island, 800 miles away. In one of the greatest small boat journeys ever made, he and five companions completed the crossing in seventeen days. To summon help from the whaling stations on the far side of the island, Shackleton and two of his men climbed the unsurveyed Alladyce Range in ten days and commandeered a Chilean steamer to rescue the three remaining members of the party on Elephant
When Mr Davidson tried to get out of the way Freddie reared up on his haunches to get him with his front paws. I got into the cage and tried to beat the lion off, but it dragged Mr Davidson to a corner near the other locked gate and we could not move him until Freddie dropped him.
15
ERNEST SHACKLETON AND ROBERT FALCON SCOTT
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
Ordeal by Innocence … was inspired by a number of real-life heroes.
The Agatha Christie Collection No. 39, Ordeal by Innocence
In Ordeal by Innocence (1958), geophysicist Dr Arthur Calgary returns from an Antarctic expedition too late to prevent a miscarriage of justice. It transpires that he is the only man who could have verified an alibi and saved the life of a man who died from pneumonia in prison after being wrongfully jailed for the murder of his adoptive mother.
Agatha Christie’s fictional polar explorer was inspired by two courageous men with Devon connections – Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. In August 1907, shortly before Agatha’s seventeenth birthday, the supply ship Terra Nova steamed into Torquay on its last port of call before setting off on the first leg of an expedition to attempt to reach the South Pole. The leader, Lieutenant Ernest Shackleton RN (1874-1922), stayed behind in the resort for a further three months at his brother’s home, The Knoll, before travelling on a liner to join his ship in New Zealand. The party returned to Torquay two years later having narrowly failed to reach their goal by less than 100 miles. The consolation was a knighthood, conferred by King George V on Ernest Shackleton. Bad weather and low rations had forced Shackleton to turn back within sight of his objective, but in view of the tragedy that was soon to befall a fellow polar explorer, he made a suitably ‘chilling’ remark: ‘better a live donkey than a dead lion’.
Devonport-born naval captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) bettered Shackleton’s achievement during an ill-fated journey to the South Pole completed in 1912. After successfully reaching his destination, he was disappointed to discover that Roald Amundsen and his party had become the first men to reach the pole only one month earlier. The Norwegian had switched his attention to the South Pole when American Robert Peary became the first man to reach the North Pole in 1909. Dejected and faced with severe storms and blizzards on the way back, Scott and his four companions perished from hunger and exposure only eleven miles from the safety of a food and fuel depot. Scott was the last member of the party to die and patriotically wrote in his diary: ‘Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardiest endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale…’
When Amundsen and Scott conquered the South Pole, Shackleton decided to attempt the first crossing of the Antarctic, a daunting 2,000 mile trip from the Weddell to the Ross Sea. The expedition, involving twenty-eight men, became a spectacular failure when their ship Endurance became trapped and crushed by ice. Hopelessly marooned, Shackleton ordered his men onto the ice and after four months drifting on their ‘iceberg’ they landed at Elephant Island in April 1916. Shackleton then realised that their only hope of survival was to reach the whaling stations on South Georgia Island, 800 miles away. In one of the greatest small boat journeys ever made, he and five companions completed the crossing in seventeen days. To summon help from the whaling stations on the far side of the island, Shackleton and two of his men climbed the unsurveyed Alladyce Range in ten days and commandeered a Chilean steamer to rescue the three remaining members of the party on Elephant
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