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Memory man at Merton
http://www.nelsonandhisworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=354
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Author:  Mark Barrett [ Thu Feb 26, 2009 10:40 am ]
Post subject:  Memory man at Merton

This anecdote comes from a newspaper of 1820 and concerns a character known as "Memory Corner Thompson".

The article is too long to transcribe in full but starts as follows:

Quote:
There is a professional man now resident near London who drew from actual memory, in twenty hours, at two sittings, in the presence of two well-known gentlemen, a correct plan of of the parish of St. James, with parts of the parishes of Mary-le-bone, St. Ann, and St. Martin; which plan contained every square, street, lane, alley, market, church, chapel, and all public buildings, with all stable and other yards, with every public-house in the parish, and the corners of all streets, with many minutiae, as pumps, posts, trees, houses that project and inject, bow-windows, Carlton-house, St. James's-palace, with the interior of the markets, without scale or reference to any plan, book, or paper whatever.


Additional prodigious feats of memory are listed and it then continues:

Quote:
He can take an inventory, from memory only, of a gentleman's house, from the attic to the ground floor, and afterwards write out the inventory of the same. This was done at Lord Nelson's Merton.


I wonder if Emma invited "Memory Corner Thompson" to Merton as an amusement at one of her dinner parties??!!

MB

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