Alan Turing and the Ratio Club

Last week Alan Turing (1912-1954) was in the news when the government rejected an e-petition to grant him a posthumous pardon for his conviction for 'gross indecency' in 1952, as a result of which he was subjected to debilitating experimental hormonal 'treatment' and eventually committed suicide by cyanide.

Given Turing's fields of interest, mathematics and computational science, it might not be expected that there would be anything about him among the archival collections in the Wellcome Library: but in fact in the autumn of 1949 the neurophysiologist John A V Bates, whose papers we hold, invited him to join an interdisciplinary dining club, known as the Ratio Club, consisting half of biologists (mainly neurophysiologists) and half of engineers and mathematicians, all with a common interest in developments in cybernetics (Bates to Turing, 22 Sep 1949, GC/179/B.2).

Turing declared himself 'honoured' at the invitation, although, since he was based in Manchester and the club met in London, he was 'unlikely to be able to attend many meetings' (Turing to Bates, 9 Oct 1949, GC/179/B.3).

The Club files include a draft of Bates' letter to Turing's mother on hearing the news of his death:

Alan used to come to our meetings when he could. Whenever he spoke he added something original, and he did it with much humour and authority. We have altogether the happiest memories of his visits, and we are very upset that we shall not see him again.

I have been asked at the meeting this evening, to write and tell you of our feeling of great personal loss, and of our profound sympathy with yourself and the rest of his family in bearing the burden of this tragedy. (Bates to Mrs Turing, draft, 17 Jun 1954, GC/179/B.17)

There is a handwritten letter of response from Mrs Turing, expressing her belief that her son's death was due to 'misadventure' (E Sara Turing to Bates, 7 Jul 1954, GC/179/B.17), as well as a copy of the printed circular that she sent round, arguing that he had got the cyanide on his fingers whilst performing an experiment and transferred this accidentally to the apple he then ate (printed circular, Jun 1954, GC/179/B.24). She wrote subsequently to Bates asking if he, and any other friends and colleagues, could contribute any letters, information or anecdotes for the biography of Alan she was writing (E Sara Turing to Bates, 12 Nov 1956, GC/179/B.24).

Rock 'n' Roll Suicide?

“Don’t wanna stay alive when you’re 25” wrote the young David Bowie (now 62). The history of popular music is littered with tales of self-destruction - Del Shannon, Johnny Thunders, Joe Meek, Keith Moon and even Sister Luc-Gabrielle (the Singing Nun) to name just a tiny fraction. Music and intense emotions seem to go together like ill-matched lovers, often leaving haunting melodic memories for us all.

Among the more obscure treasures in the library are intriguing tales of Country Music and suicide (think: divorce, drink and guns as themes) and the story of Gloomy Sunday. This is a Hungarian tune banned by the BBC in 1937 because of its reputed link with at least 18 deaths. It features a ghost attending his own funeral. The programme mentions, among others, the demise of Billy MacKenzie, singer with the Associates, who recorded the number prior to his tragic end in 1997.

Fans of Joy Division may like to note the library has a copy of Control the 2007 biopic of Ian Curtis whose battles with depression and epilepsy contributed to his suicide at the age of 23 when the band was at its height.

On a lighter note, you can also enjoy Richard Doll’s musical selection on Desert island discs.

Death of a novelist

Eighty-five years ago today, on August 3rd 1924, the novelist Joseph Conrad died of a heart attack at his home in Kent.

Conrad’s narratives are slippery constructions, with lavish use of fractured timescales, unreliable narrators and indirect speech. Their indirection and refusal to commit to unambiguous statements is appropriate for their shape-shifting author: born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Russian Poland, he left Poland first for France and then for England, the Polish aristocrat remaking himself as a sailor and spending long years in the merchant marine before turning to fiction.

Conrad’s life was marked by illness from an early age as well as exile: his parents, Polish nationalists who were sent to Siberia with their infant son following a failed insurrection, were both dead from tuberculosis before Conrad was ten. His own life was characterised by periods of mental collapse: a suicide attempt at nineteen is still the centre of biographical debate, and later, in his fifties, he underwent a major breakdown after the completion of his novel Under Western Eyes in 1911. Novels such as Lord Jim analyse human behaviour when stressed to the limit and beyond. Physically, he was dogged by pain, suffering severely from gout for many years.


Some years after his death, in 1936, the German doctor Paul Wohlfarth wrote to two of his associates – his personal assistant Richard Curle and his French translator Gérard Jean-Aubry – to ask their opinion of how Conrad’s health had affected his writing. Both respond at some length to Wohlfarth’s query, and each is sure that Conrad’s medical history had a definite effect upon his fiction. Wohlfarth later donated these papers to the Wellcome Library: they can be consulted as MS.8512. Until recently they have been unknown to Conrad scholars but it is hoped that now they have been catalogued and made visible they will be published as part of a supplement to his collected correspondence.

The lower illustration is taken from The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace. Conrad travelled extensively in the Far East and Wallace's description of the area was one of his favorite books: his fiction is often set East of Suez, most notably Lord Jim.