The scales balance.
I’ve been pretty lucky in hunting down information about Forteans, including minor ones, like Norman Macbeth. But now I’m unlucky, and it is in the attempt to find information about a major Fortean, Tom Elsender, of Newcastle, England. Almost everything I have been able to find on him comes from Doubt or the correspondence of a few Forteans who knew him.
According to Ed. H. Simpson, a friend and fellow Fortean, Thomas Elsender was born in 1903. England’s 1911 census has a Thomas Elsender of the correct age living in Newcastle, England, so either he was born there or moved there when he was young. I do not know what he did for work. He had at least one brother and, at least at the time of his death, was unmarried. He had a strong interest in astrology and meteorology, and spent time trying to correlate meteorological phenomena with astrological predictions. If he ever published anything, I have not found it in the usual sources. Elsender was tall, with handwriting that Tiffany Thayer sometimes had trouble deciphering.
Thayer told readers of Doubt:
“It is hardly necessary to comment on the quality of the data Tom supplied so consistently, for most of you have read his large contributions to almost every issue of DOUBT. What you will not have known is that the Forteana actually printed was less than a tenth part of all he sent us. He was a serious student of astrology and weather, and was forever seeking correlations in those phenomena. He had a wry, dry sense of humor which made his correspondence a delight, hardly to be replaced in kind.”
And he told Eric Frank Russell, “Elsender had a niche of his own with us. His mystical leanings supplied a vast quantity of data that could not be used.”
His name first appeared in The Fortean Society Magazine’s issue number 6—“Circus Day is Over”—January 1942, which may mean either that Thayer mis-remembered how early Elsender joined the Society, or that the initial material he contributed was too mystical for Thayer. In that issue, he is credited as donating “A New and Comprehensive System of Philology” (1764). His home was given as Newcastle and his name “Elsonder.” Among other subjects—and what Thayer quoted in the magazine—the book considered the Earth’s dimensions and the length of a degree.
Whether Elsender joined the Society around 1942 or much earlier, by the time his first credit appeared, he was deeply involved in its running. Eric Frank Russell served with the Royal Air Force for four-and-a-half years of World War II, and was unable to continue overseeing the Society’s British operations. His wife took over some of the work; and Elsender did, too. Russell remembered, “While I was away he corresponded understandingly and sympathetically with my wife, did his best to help her out with the Fortean matters she’d been left to handle as best she could. I shall always be grateful to him for that.”
Between 1942 and 1956, he was credited in thirty-three issues of the magazine, most of those more than once. His contributions ran the gamut from newspaper clippings about killer dogs to a book showing Stonehenge was a Druidical temple by an author—Reverend James Rust—whom Fort had cited on black rains in Scotland. In the 12th issue (Spring-Summer 1945), Elsender’s contributions were combined with Russell’s and others in the column “There Will Always Be An—,” with Thayer saying, “anything hereunder which offends the Crown was written by, and is the opinion of the editor.” Thayer was sometimes paranoid, and trumpeted his own bravery, but it was also true that the FBI was periodically checking in on the Fortean Society, and especially its correspondence with England. The column was a potpourri of naturalistic anomalies—comets, the changing color of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot—and political criticisms about over-regulation, ignorant juries, and usurious banks.
In April 1950 (number 28), Elsender won first prize in Thayer’s mock-contest for best contributions—tied with Russell and Henry Hoernlein. Elsender sent in three pieces that tickled Thayer: the sighting of a buzzard flying over Big Ben (and, Thayer hints, a moribund Winston Churchill); a terrible blizzard in Canada, that, Thayer implies, followed Russian testing of atomic weapons; and a uranium mine fire that killed either four people or 2,500.
By October 1954, Thayer was compiling excerpts of Elsender’s contributions under the heading “Elsender’s Best.” Only a few of the most diligent Forteans—and ones Thayer particularly favored—ever got their own section of the paper, first among them Russell. So Thayer was particularly fond of the Englishman—which showed when Elsender suddenly died. “The utterly stunning news of his death,” Thayer wrote in an announcement to readers of Doubt, left him “reeling and not at all sure of being coherent.”
Thayer could only slip in a small announcement of Elsender’s death in issue 52 (May 1956). A full report had to wait almost a year—until February 1957, when issue 53 came out. According to Simpson, Elsender was skeptical of doctors, and, during his last illness, when he finally consulted one, he was immediately hospitalized—where he died of pneumonia. He was fifty three.
Elsender’s influence continued to be felt, however: even two years after Elsender had passed, Thayer continued to publish his clippings and give him credit.
I’ve been pretty lucky in hunting down information about Forteans, including minor ones, like Norman Macbeth. But now I’m unlucky, and it is in the attempt to find information about a major Fortean, Tom Elsender, of Newcastle, England. Almost everything I have been able to find on him comes from Doubt or the correspondence of a few Forteans who knew him.
According to Ed. H. Simpson, a friend and fellow Fortean, Thomas Elsender was born in 1903. England’s 1911 census has a Thomas Elsender of the correct age living in Newcastle, England, so either he was born there or moved there when he was young. I do not know what he did for work. He had at least one brother and, at least at the time of his death, was unmarried. He had a strong interest in astrology and meteorology, and spent time trying to correlate meteorological phenomena with astrological predictions. If he ever published anything, I have not found it in the usual sources. Elsender was tall, with handwriting that Tiffany Thayer sometimes had trouble deciphering.
Thayer told readers of Doubt:
“It is hardly necessary to comment on the quality of the data Tom supplied so consistently, for most of you have read his large contributions to almost every issue of DOUBT. What you will not have known is that the Forteana actually printed was less than a tenth part of all he sent us. He was a serious student of astrology and weather, and was forever seeking correlations in those phenomena. He had a wry, dry sense of humor which made his correspondence a delight, hardly to be replaced in kind.”
And he told Eric Frank Russell, “Elsender had a niche of his own with us. His mystical leanings supplied a vast quantity of data that could not be used.”
His name first appeared in The Fortean Society Magazine’s issue number 6—“Circus Day is Over”—January 1942, which may mean either that Thayer mis-remembered how early Elsender joined the Society, or that the initial material he contributed was too mystical for Thayer. In that issue, he is credited as donating “A New and Comprehensive System of Philology” (1764). His home was given as Newcastle and his name “Elsonder.” Among other subjects—and what Thayer quoted in the magazine—the book considered the Earth’s dimensions and the length of a degree.
Whether Elsender joined the Society around 1942 or much earlier, by the time his first credit appeared, he was deeply involved in its running. Eric Frank Russell served with the Royal Air Force for four-and-a-half years of World War II, and was unable to continue overseeing the Society’s British operations. His wife took over some of the work; and Elsender did, too. Russell remembered, “While I was away he corresponded understandingly and sympathetically with my wife, did his best to help her out with the Fortean matters she’d been left to handle as best she could. I shall always be grateful to him for that.”
Between 1942 and 1956, he was credited in thirty-three issues of the magazine, most of those more than once. His contributions ran the gamut from newspaper clippings about killer dogs to a book showing Stonehenge was a Druidical temple by an author—Reverend James Rust—whom Fort had cited on black rains in Scotland. In the 12th issue (Spring-Summer 1945), Elsender’s contributions were combined with Russell’s and others in the column “There Will Always Be An—,” with Thayer saying, “anything hereunder which offends the Crown was written by, and is the opinion of the editor.” Thayer was sometimes paranoid, and trumpeted his own bravery, but it was also true that the FBI was periodically checking in on the Fortean Society, and especially its correspondence with England. The column was a potpourri of naturalistic anomalies—comets, the changing color of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot—and political criticisms about over-regulation, ignorant juries, and usurious banks.
In April 1950 (number 28), Elsender won first prize in Thayer’s mock-contest for best contributions—tied with Russell and Henry Hoernlein. Elsender sent in three pieces that tickled Thayer: the sighting of a buzzard flying over Big Ben (and, Thayer hints, a moribund Winston Churchill); a terrible blizzard in Canada, that, Thayer implies, followed Russian testing of atomic weapons; and a uranium mine fire that killed either four people or 2,500.
By October 1954, Thayer was compiling excerpts of Elsender’s contributions under the heading “Elsender’s Best.” Only a few of the most diligent Forteans—and ones Thayer particularly favored—ever got their own section of the paper, first among them Russell. So Thayer was particularly fond of the Englishman—which showed when Elsender suddenly died. “The utterly stunning news of his death,” Thayer wrote in an announcement to readers of Doubt, left him “reeling and not at all sure of being coherent.”
Thayer could only slip in a small announcement of Elsender’s death in issue 52 (May 1956). A full report had to wait almost a year—until February 1957, when issue 53 came out. According to Simpson, Elsender was skeptical of doctors, and, during his last illness, when he finally consulted one, he was immediately hospitalized—where he died of pneumonia. He was fifty three.
Elsender’s influence continued to be felt, however: even two years after Elsender had passed, Thayer continued to publish his clippings and give him credit.
