The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
I ENJOYED Chris Shearer’s travel article California Dreaming and its mention of the “Birdman of Alcatraz”. I know the “birdman” was a prisoner there but I believe he did his work on birds at another prison. Can you tell me the name of that prison?
Ian Gardner, Sauchie, Clackmannanshire YOU’RE quite right. Robert Stroud was a psychopathic murderer who spent 54 years in jail, dying at the age of 73 in 1963. He became fascinated by birds while at Leavenworth Prison in 1920 after finding three injured sparrows in a nest in the prison yard. He then occupied his time, much of which he spent in solitary confinement, building bird cages and adding to his collection.
He is estimated to have raised almost 300 canaries in his cells and his experience led to his writing two books, Diseases Of Canaries and Stroud’s Digest On The Diseases Of Birds in 1933 and 1943. He was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942 for using his bird-keeping equipment to distil alcohol in his cell. At Alcatraz he was initially deprived of his birds, though they were later returned.
His remarkable tale was the basis of the 1962 film Birdman Of Alcatraz starring Burt Lancaster as Stroud, which Stroud himself was never permitted to see.
MY father served with the Leicester “Tigers” Regiment during the Second World War. Does its name have any connection with Leicester Rugby Club, also called “Tigers”?
Mrs V Gardner, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire THIS is not completely clear. The regiment served in India from 1804 to 1823 and in 1825 was awarded the badge of a “royal tiger” to serve as a memory of that period.
Leicester Rugby Club say their own nickname came from an 1885 report in a local newspaper stating that “the Tiger stripes were keeping well together”. It is not clear whether the name came from the brown and yellow kit then worn by the side or a connection with the local regiment.
IS “Welsh” a Welsh word?
DW Portlock, Winchester, Hampshire THE Welsh for “Welsh” is “Cymraeg” and the word “Cymry” has been used by the Welsh to describe their people since the seventh century. The word “Welsh” came into Old English from the Old High German word “walh” which meant a foreigner or a speaker of a nonGermanic language. The ancient Britons used it to refer to Cornwall or various other areas of the west or sometimes of the north.
It was not until the 13th century when Henry III acknowledged Llywelyn ap Gruffudd as Prince of Wales that the word “Welsh” came into common usage to mean the people and language of the land we still call Wales.
HAVING just seen party leaders casting their votes in the general election, I am wondering who they vote for. Surely they don’t vote for themselves?
Steven Tagg, Folkestone, Kent Lotus grill smokeless barbecue with turbo fan, £217. 01706 230077/amazon.co.uk All this smart grill needs is a handful of charcoal and it’s ready to go in three minutes. With a double outer shell it never gets too hot and it’s easy to remove the grate. by IT’S a secret ballot so I cannot be certain but I am pretty sure most of them do vote for themselves.
Most MPs have residences in their own constituency so are perfectly entitled to register to vote there.
I’d be very surprised if they didn’t vote for themselves. After all, if they don’t think they’re the best person to vote for how can they expect other people to do so?
The only party leader I have some doubts about in that respect is Alan “Howling Laud” Hope, leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. He stood against Theresa May in Maidenhead, Berkshire, but lives in Yateley, Hampshire, so may not be registered to vote where he stood.
WHY was poet Ben Jonson buried in an upright position in Westminster Abbey? Are there any other famous people buried in a similar way?
THERE are two stories about this, both relating to Ben Jonson’s poverty in his old age. One is that he begged King Charles I for “eighteen inches of square ground in Westminster Abbey”, the other is that he told the Dean of Westminster he was too poor for a proper burial in the Abbey and “two feet by two feet will do for all I want”.
As for other people buried the same way, there have been several societies in history that buried their warriors standing up. More recently, upright burial has been advocated as a means of saving space in cemeteries and since 2010 a company called Upright Burials has been burying people upright.
Several Americans are recorded to have been buried standing up. Cowboy Jimmy Dale had been confined to a wheelchair and was buried standing up with his boots on in 1992 because he had hated being unable to stand for six years.
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