From the BBC:
“Alan
Turing: Stolen items to be returned to UK from US after decades”
Items belonging
to World War Two Bletchley Park code-breaker Alan Turing that were stolen from
the UK decades ago are to be returned from the US. The mathematician's
miniature OBE medal is among 17 items that were taken from Dorset's Sherborne
School by Julia Turing, who is no relation, in 1984. They were found at her
home in Colorado in the US in 2018. A US civil court case launched against her
has been settled out of court and the items are due to be returned. According
to US court papers and Sherborne School, Ms Turing, who legally changed her
name from Julie Schwinghamer in 1988, removed the items without permission from
archives given to the school in 1965 by the Turing family, in memory of the
time he spent there as a pupil. A letter sent to Turing by King George VI,
presenting him with his OBE honour, Turing's Princeton University PhD certificate,
school reports and photographs were among the items that were taken. Ms Turing
attempted to loan them to University of Colorado for display in 2018, claiming
to be a relative of the mathematician. After the alarm was raised, an
investigation was carried out by police and the items were found at her home in
Conifer.
Sherborne
School archivist Rachel Hassall said although the boys' boarding school had not
been party to the settlement agreement with Ms Turing, it had been informed by
Homeland Security Investigations that the items would "in due course"
be returned to the school. "We are sorry that by removing the material
from the school archives Ms Turing has denied generations of pupils and
researchers the opportunity to consult it," she said. However, once the
material was returned to the school she said it would be available to be viewed
in person or via the school archives website. During a court appearance in
Colorado last month, Ms Turing described Turing as "a beautiful man of the
finest order", adding: "He lived brightly in my heart throughout my
entire life beginning at the age of between eight and nine years old." She
continued: "I am giving up my collection to be handed over to England
because I do not want to keep anything from England against their will out of
selfishness... "I wish only the very best for the legacy of Alan Turing,
that his belongings, I have had the privilege to be gifted and kept in my
presence all these years and deeply cherished throughout my life with the very
best of care that I could provide, may now... be handed over to the rest of the
world to see and also admire as I did. That is my wish." Ms Hassall said:
"Alan Turing is one of Sherborne School's most distinguished alumni and
there is no denying that he was a very individual boy, as he proved when, due
to no trains running during the General Strike in May 1926, he cycled, aged 13,
65 miles from Southampton to Sherborne for his first day of term. "In his
last year at the school he was made a school prefect and won all the school
prizes for science and mathematics." Headmaster Dominic Luckett described
Turing as one of the school's "most distinguished alumni". "His
crucial work as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park and his enormous contribution
to the subsequent development of computing have become more widely recognised
in recent years and we as a school are keen to do all we can to preserve and
promote his legacy," he said.
Who was Alan
Turing? Born in Maida Vale, London, in 1912, Turing was not well known
during his lifetime. As well as attending Sherborne School, he gained a
mathematics degree at King's College, Cambridge, and PhD at Princeton
University in New Jersey. In 1936 he published a paper that is now
recognised as the foundation of computer science. Three years later he
began working at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, where he helped develop the
Bombe machine, which was capable of breaking secret German military messages
sent using the Enigma machine. In 1952 he was arrested because he was
gay - homosexual acts were illegal in Britain at the time. Turing died
in 1954, aged 41, in Wilmslow, Cheshire, from suicide by cyanide poisoning -
though this was disputed by his mother who argued he accidentally ingested
cyanide during a chemistry experiment. He was posthumously pardoned in
2013, and in 2017 the government agreed to officially pardon all men who had
criminal records for being homosexual. This pardoning has become known as the
Alan Turing law. Last year, Turing was named the most "iconic"
figure of the 20th Century and he became the face of the new design of the Bank
of England's £50 note.
Turing's nephew
Sir Dermot Turing, who also attended Sherborne School, said there was
"very, very little physical stuff in existence that has anything to do
with Alan Turing". "To find out that items that were squirreled away
in mysterious circumstances, by someone who had no right to them and kept them
out of the public realm, and for them now to be returned is a really positive
and good thing," he said. "They were donated to the school by my grandmother,
it was intended they should form part of the ethos of the place. "The
return of the items will honour what my grandmother wanted." Turing's
research papers and theory work has been held at the National Archives. Apart
from Sherborne School, the only other places believed to hold more personal
belongings are Cambridge University's King's College and Bletchley Park. Homeland
Security Investigations has not yet responded to a BBC request asking when the
items were likely to be returned.
^ This is such
a weird story. Not about Alan Turing or the great work he did and his subsequent
fall from grace for being gay, but for Julie Schwinghamer changing her last
name to Turning, stealing his things and bringing them to the US. I’m glad the
items will be returned to the UK and will be made available to the public. ^
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