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Tom Monto

Disastrous 1845 Franklin expedition - Cridge channelled expedition's spirit, was told of tinned meat problems

1845 last expedition (the one Franklin and crew did not return home from)


from Wiki "Sir John Franklin"

Though the provisioner's "patent process" was sound, many tins of meat provided to the Navy at about the time of Franklin's expedition were found to contain putrid meat, and a spiritualist at that time channelled a dead member of the expedition who stated that putrid meat was part of the cause of disaster, as crew members were sent off hunting when the ship could have made some distance through the ice and perhaps won through to its goal.


[there is reason to believe that at least some of the special large cans used for the expedition suffered sterilization failure.


(Story of tin cans in general -- https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21689069lfred


Alfred Cridge, Epitome of Spirit- intercourse (1854)

Alfred (and his wife Annie) were spiritualists.

Alfred is perhaps better known as an advocate of proportional representation (see other Montopedia blogs).

Annie is perhaps better known as author of the first futuristic utopian science-fiction novel written by a woman - the 1870 gender-reversal story Man's Right and how to obtain them


a blogger's reveal of the tinned meat problem --


As well, the haste with which the provisioner had prepared thousands of cans of food led to sloppily-applied beads of solder on the cans' interior edges, allowing lead to leach into the food. The water distillation system too may have used lead piping and lead-soldered joints, which would have produced drinking water with a high lead content. And some blame lead poisoning for poor leadership decisions and crew ill-discipline.


(Battersby, William (2008). "Identification of the Probable Source of the Lead Poisoning Observed in Members of the Franklin Expedition" (PDF). Journal of the Hakluyt Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 January 2020. Retrieved 19 September 2018.)


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