[ Post a Response | Welcome To East Coast Diggers Forum ]
Posted by Rich ( CT)
on November 1, 2007, 11:19 am
69.120.7.148
NEWS Post a comment |
Last updated at 10:55 PM on 31/10/07
Fortress documents for sale in England
CHRIS SHANNON
The Cape Breton Post
LOUISBOURG — Historical documents dating back to the British invasion of the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1745 have emerged on a London, England-based collector’s website.
One of 96 court martial documents was posted to the website, www.scotiaphilately.com. It was dated March 18, 1746.
The owner of Scotia Philately, Colin Harding, acquired the documents from a family in Scotland nearly two weeks ago.
The documents had been stored in a British military garrison in Perth, Scotland for many years.
It’s believed the court martial reports made their way there with a British soldier who had lived in Louisbourg during the occupation and then returned to Perth. Descendants of the man have now showed interest in having the documents return to Canada, Harding said.
But if the documents are returned to Cape Breton, it’ll come at a price.
“The only way you can really price these documents is to compare them with anything similar that has ever been on the market in the last few years,” Harding said from London, Wednesday.
“We handled some court martial documents from India from 1798 to 1801, obviously much later and more common than these, and those fetched about 130 British pounds ($255 Cdn.) each.
“So if one prices these scarcer Canadian ones at the same price, you end up at around $25,000 for the 96 documents.”
Harding said it’s always difficult putting a price on history but he said these documents are an “incidental part of Canada’s history” and shouldn’t simply be given to Parks Canada for free.
“It’s a difficult thing to say, but basically if we repatriated every single historical document to where they came, you’d be emptying collections all over the world.”
Harding has been in contact with officials from Parks Canada about possibly acquiring the documents as part of the fortress’s two million-piece collection.
Parks Canada officials in Louisbourg couldn’t be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
After the invasion in 1745, the British occupied the fortress for four years. A treaty signed in 1749 turned the fortress back over to the French.
The documents revealed how crimes, most of them now seen as minor offences, were dealt with in the British justice system of the time.
Harding said in one document a man was handed a sentence of 200 lashings for stealing two cabbages from a garden. The same number of lashings were given to another man convicted of exposing himself to young women
Message Thread:
« Back to thread
