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The Piltdown Forgery: a Re-Statement of the Case Against Hinton

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The Piltdown Forgery: a Re-Statement of the Case Against Hinton Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKZOJZoological Journal of the Linnean Society0024-4082The Lin- nean Society of London, 2003? 2003 139? 315335 Original Article B. G. GARDINER PILTDOWN FORGERY: CASE AGAINST HINTON Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2003, 139, 315–335. With 12 figures The Piltdown forgery: a re-statement of the case against Hinton BRIAN G. GARDINER FLS* Kings College London, Strand, London WC2 RLS, UK Received January 2003; accepted for publication February 2003 A review of the evidence supports the conclusion reached by Gardiner and Currant in 1996 that the hoaxer was Mar- tin Hinton, who worked in the Geology and Zoology Departments of the Natural History Museum throughout the Piltdown affair. This was based primarily on the discovery in 1978 of a cabin trunk in the loft space immediately above what had been the office of the Keeper of Zoology - which post Hinton occupied between 1936 and 1945. This contained material similarly stained to that discovered at Piltdown, while several of the pieces had also been whit- tled in an identical fashion to the last find at Piltdown – the notorious ‘cricket bat’. Additional proof came from Hin- ton’s executor who discovered eight human teeth varyingly stained in a tobacco tin of Hinton’s. These revealed that the forger used two methods for staining his material, one of which involved decalcification, a process which con- verted apatite into gypsum, the other of which did not. The material in the trunk was stained using the first method, the teeth obtained from his executor, the second. The analyses of the contents of the trunk (carried out in 1995-6) and of the tobacco tin (1997-8) are reported for the first time. © 2003 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2003, 139, 315-335. ADDITIONAL KEYWORDS: apatite - attic - fraud - gypsum. INTRODUCTION (Toombs, 1952). When they finished sieving all the extracted gravel they bricked up a small area 2 ft by I first became interested in the Piltdown affair in the 1 ft and inserted a sheet of glass for the purpose of autumn of 1953 during my second year at Imperial making the section of the gravel in situ accessible to College London. Walking past a bookshop in South the general public (at the request of the Nature Con- Kensington, I saw, prominently displayed, an issue of servancy Council). What stuck in my mind all those Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) con- years ago was Rixon telling me that apart from the taining the paper ‘The solution of the Piltdown prob- reddened flints and occasional quartz and quartzite lem’ by Weiner, Oakley & Le Gros Clark (1953). I pebbles the gravels were totally barren – not an eolith, bought it and read it from cover to cover. The next palaeolith or fossil to be found. summer I had the good fortune to be awarded a vaca- In 1962 my wife began work at the Museum as Oak- tion studentship in the Department of Palaeontology ley’s assistant. He told her how in 1949 he had pre- at the Natural History Museum where I received sented an exhibit to the Geological Society where he training in the preparation of fossil fishes from Harry revealed for the first time his fluorine analyses of the Toombs. Over coffee in the laboratory the Piltdown Piltdown material (Oakley, 1949). Before the demon- hoax was still the main topic of conversation. Arthur stration got underway he was approached by Dr Dina Rixon informed me that three summers previously he, Portway Dobson, the wife of Martin Hinton (Keeper of together with Toombs and Kenneth Oakley, had dug a Zoology at the Museum, 1936-45) who told him to witness section (a trench 32 ft long and 4 ft wide) leave well alone and not to meddle with Piltdown, add- through the hedge behind the original Piltdown pit ing that her husband considered the methodology of fluorine analysis would not yield meaningful results. Thus I became aware that Oakley firmly believed that *E-mail: [email protected] the perpetrator of the hoax was Hinton. This view was © 2003 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2003, 139, 315–335 315 316 B. G. GARDINER shared by Dr Errol White who later became Keeper of given to Simpson in the autumn of 1951, I had the Palaeontology. However, it seemed that no-one else at opportunity to go through much of the departmental the time shared their view, least of all Jo Weiner who, correspondence. Ironically, one of the first letters I together with Le Gros Clark, had helped uncover the came across was from Simpson, writing to Charles S. hoax. In a bestseller entitled The Piltdown Forgery Binderman on 21 September 1984, in answer to an (1955) Weiner leaves the reader with the unequivocal enquiry about Arthur Smith Woodward. In the final impression that it was Charles Dawson (a solicitor and paragraph he wrote: amateur palaeontologist who announced the ‘find’ in ‘However, I must still add a more curt reply to one of 1912) who was the real perpetrator. your questions. I hope your book about the Piltdown hoax does not blame either Sir Arthur Smith Wood- ward or Père Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As regards THE SEARCH FOR SUSPECTS the latter, Steve Gould’s piece in Natural History for Since The Piltdown Forgery there have been dozens of August, 1980 simply is not true or at best is not logical papers and books written on the hoax and numerous or acceptable. Teilhard, whom I knew very well, hap- suspects have been proposed. pened to be at the A.M.N.H. when the discovery that Millar’s (1972) The Piltdown Men exonerated Daw- Piltdown Man was a hoax was made known. Teilhard son and implicated Grafton Elliot Smith (Professor of told me that he had never before known and that it Anatomy at Manchester 1909–19) (see Appendix 1 for had never occurred to him as possible that ‘Eoanthro- biographical details of many of the major actors pus’ was a hoax. Father Teilhard, S. J. was often mis- involved in the story). In 1978 Beverly Halstead taken but to my knowledge he never lied outright. (Nature 276: 11–13) proposed William Sollas (Profes- Who dunnit? Most likely Dawson alone. For one more sor of Geology at Oxford 1897–1936) as the culprit. bit of evidence, he had perpetrated a previous hoax.’ The following year (Nature 277: 596) he changed his mind, indicating that it might have been Hinton, who TEILHARD DE CHARDIN’S VISIT TO may have intended it simply as an elaborate practical PILTDOWN joke (Hinton’s predilection for these was well known). Stephen J. Gould considered that Teilhard de Chardin At this point I retired to the Natural History Museum was the most likely culprit (Gould, 1980); the subse- library to read Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s published quent year, Harrison Matthews considered it more letters from the Hastings and Paris periods (Teilhard likely to have been Teilhard and Hinton together de Chardin, 1965, 1967). I have since subsequently (Matthews, 1981). In 1983 John Winslow and Alfred studied much unpublished material including letters Meyer proposed an elaborate solution to the hoax now in the possession of David Pescod given to him by involving Conan Doyle, who was living at Crowbor- Karl Schmitz-Moorman in 1982. This included infor- ough, 7 miles from Piltdown, at the time (Winslow & mation contained in copybooks preserved by the Jesu- Meyer, 1983). its in which the strictly structured life of the theology The list of suspects soon expanded to include Sam- students at Ore Place was recorded. Once a month uel Allinson Woodhead, Public Analyst for East and they were obliged to go on a one-day excursion; nobody West Sussex, to whom Dawson brought the skull (Cos- was allowed to go alone and they had to be accompa- tello, 1985), and Arthur Keith, an anatomist and phys- nied by at least two other young Jesuits. It was on one ical anthropologist, implicated by Frank Spencer in a such excursion, while looking for fossils at Fairlight detailed account of the hoax entitled The Piltdown Cliffs near Hastings, that Teilhard (letter to his par- Papers (Spencer, 1990). ents dated 31 May 1909) first met Dawson. Dawson In 1987 I was writing for the Linnean Society’s subsequently visited Teilhard (Figs 1, 2) and another newsletter, The Linnean, and became involved in a Jesuit, Felix Pelletier, at Ore Place on 4 December. minor ceremony at the Natural History Museum In April 1912 Dawson took the first finds of Eoan- which involved the presentation of the tablecloth of thropus to show Teilhard. In a letter to Pelletier in Jer- Lady Smith Woodward (wife of Sir Arthur Smith sey (18 May), Teilhard explained how Dawson had Woodward, a former Keeper of Geology at the brought the skull of Homo lewensis, together with flint Museum, who was among the first to declare the ‘find’ tools and elephant and Hippopotamus teeth, adding genuine) to the then Keeper of Palaeontology, Dr ‘the skull is certainly very curious, of deep chocolate Robin Cocks (The Linnean 3 (3): 24–26). The tablecloth colour and especially of a stupefying thickness: unfor- contained the signatures of many distinguished visi- tunately the characteristic parts such as orbits, jaws, tors to the Woodward household between 1894 and etc. are missing. I would like to work there for an hour 1944, including those of Teilhard de Chardin, Dawson, or two; perhaps that can be arranged.’ Arthur Keith and George Gaylord Simpson. In In a letter to his parents (26 April) explaining how researching the tablecloth, which had originally been Dawson had come to visit him, he concluded: ‘he did © 2003 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2003, 139, 315–335 PILTDOWN FORGERY: CASE AGAINST HINTON 317 Figure 2.
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