Turing family calls on FBI to return stolen goods to school
THE nephew of Sir Alan Turing has called for the late mathematician’s possessions to be returned to the school from which they were stolen 36 years ago after being unearthed in the US.
The Enigma codebreaker’s Princeton degree, OBE medal and some of his school reports and letters were donated by his mother, Ethel, to Sherborne School in Dorset in the Sixties.
The items were taken in 1984 when a mystery woman left a note of apology saying they would be “well taken care of ” and one day “returned to this spot”.
Remarkably, they have now been found in the home of a woman in Denver, Colorado, during an FBI search.
The suspect had previously changed her name from Julia Schwinghamer to Julia Turing and claimed to be the daughter of the Cambridge graduate.
Federal agents seized the items when University of Colorado officials said they had been approached by the woman saying she wanted to loan Turing’s belongings to the institution.
The property is now held by the US department of homeland security.
Solicitor and author Sir John Dermot Turing, 58, said his uncle’s goods should be returned to the school as the “rightful owner”.
Turing had been a pupil at the boarding school between 1926 and 1931 and a science block was subsequently named after him.
Sir Dermot said: “It was quite remarkable that a school had dedicated their science block to him. His mother felt there ought to be some sort of tribute in return, so she gave various things to the school including his OBE medal and one of his degree certificates. They were just in a box in a biology laboratory in the school and she [the woman who stole them] asked to go and see these things. There would not have been any security around it whereas these days people would approach the situation completely differently.
“I would rather they were kept where researchers can consult them than tucked away in private hands having been acquired in mysterious circumstances.”
Turing died aged 41 on June 7 1954 from cyanide poisoning.