On 1 August 2012 13:05, Andrew West andrewcwest@gmail.com wrote:
Currently on sale for £5,000, and the blog's author pleads: "There must surely be an individual or institution who would be willing and able to properly document the contents of Cotton's unique record of Newgate's executions and put the results into the public domain." Wikisource would be the perfect channel for putting the contents of the journal into the public domain, if only we could get scans of the whole book.
Note, incidentally, that there must be some interesting overlap between this and Old Bailey Online, which will document many of the trials that preceded the hangings.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18120513-5-person102 - for example, is also covered in Cotton.
What's the possibility of WMUK buying the book for £5,000, scanning it to Commons, then selling the book privately or to a dealer to recover most of the money spent?
I suspect that we would be unlikely to get more than half that were we to sell it direct to a dealer, and goodness only knows if we were to sell it privately. It's a bit of a gamble with donor funds!