Limited Edition Signed and Numbered Giclee Print

Edition of 50

Size Framed: 345mm x 395mm

Additional notes:

The Dowager Duchess FitzGibbon-Fyne with a ‘nephew’. receiving ‘The Order of The Grebe’ at the Lincolnshire Cupboard Society, by Samuel Heracles Gascoigne-Simpson c.1879.

The little known Lincolnshire Cupboard Society was said to have had members that included a bishop, two members of parliament and a stuffed ostrich. Gascoigne-Simpson was believed to have been a member of this secret society, where, following the confiscation of the club’s diary during a Lincolnshire constabulary investigation into the practice of molly laundering in 1890, it was revealed that at society meetings, members were required to adopt the demeanour and dress of another - not present...

Historians have speculated that this may refer to the practice of ‘cross dressing’, however no evidence has so far come to light that proves this to be the case.

Prior to its loss during an air raid in 1941, the diary was on display (alongside a stuffed ostrich) at Lincoln Museum. As a small boy, I would visit the museum every Saturday morning whilst my mother did the weekly shop. Wandering enthralled amongst the rows of suits of armour and displays of pikes and swords, I was somewhat puzzled by the incongruous presence of a rather moth-eaten stuffed ostrich, complete with wheels where its feet should have been. Had this large flightless bird evolved in such a manner to enable it’s speedy escape from predators? Little did I know at the time, that my great grandfather Samuel Heracles Gascoigne-Simpson, the Victorian eccentric and photographic pioneer, may well have sat next to this very bird whilst enjoying a sumptuous dinner as a member of The Lincolnshire Cupboard Society. Some pages of the afore mentioned diary did survive the attentions of the Luftwaffe, and disclose that on banqueting nights, the ostrich was wheeled out from its cupboard and placed at table in order to ensure an uneven number of people were always seated for dinner.

Another entry of particular interest, is from March 1879, and references the Dowager FitzGibbon-Fynes and her nephew Mary Redland performing a particularly captivating two-part fan dance before the Prince of Denmark. Whether this refers to the public house that stood until 1966 on Grantham High Road, or the actual Prince himself is unconfirmed.