On 1 August 2012 13:05, Andrew West <andrewcwest(a)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!
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk