Going back to Robert Harwoods book on St James' Infirmary and his comment on Lloyd's 'magical thinking': Harwood ..

First I should say I bought the book and it was worth every penny. The stuff on Don Redman (one who claimed composer-ship at some level), Porter Grainger and on the copyright case brought by 'Joe Primrose' are just a few of the fascinating bits of research. Harwood dug out the papers from the case. That's dedication for you. I really enjoyed it and have read it several times.

What Harwood did not do was go back into the 19th century broadsheets. That wasn't his main interest. Harwood, as I read him, simply takes Goldstein/Lloyd's words for it that the version on the Goldstein LP "IS" a 19th century broadsheet version. If you take that claim at face value, you believe that the words St James Hospital are clearly evidenced in the 19th century UK, whereas they are not. You never see the My Father oft time verse. You see the title 'rake'.

It's not until you start seriously looking for this 19th century rake, tracing back through the references, that you realise that none of the people who claim he exists has seen him or provides a reference to him.

I don't think Harwood meant by magical thinking 'a belief you can bring something into existence by wishing that it exists', which is one sense of the term, as opposed to the sense in which it means fallacious attribution of causation. But in a sense Lloyd *was*, I believe, performing a magic trick. So many people had asserted that the Rake existed; they had traced his offspring, they had even been using him on folklore courses, if we believe what Goldstein says on the liner notes.

Lloyd, as I see it simply made everybody's life easier by miraculously producing the missing ancestor, neatly tailored to have some genetic markers from all over the place.

Hoping to take a break from this now, but still thinking about that Cambridge reference. Hmm. Also have to look up oecotypes. Sounds like something out of Jurassic Park. Or hiccups. :)