Sektu and Henry Debosnys

Some interesting correspondence in the last few days has brought the case of hanged murderer Henry Debosnys (along with his curious unsolved ciphers and his not-very-credible autobiography) back to mind. It has also reminded me of a number of Debosnys-related things I’ve been meaning to post to Cipher Mysteries for ages…

Sektu on the Portuguese that isn’t

Having originally posted about Debosnys here back in 2015, I’ve long meant to get round to posting links to the Sektu blog. Back in 2017, its author (someone called Brian, who now seems to have gone very quiet) attempted to see how far the clues embedded in Debosnys’ self-serving mixture of misdirections and lies could be pursued.

For example, Brian notes that even though Debosnys claimed to have been born in Portugal, the fragments of (what seems like) Portuguese in his papers aren’t really much like Portuguese:

Comoderondas inacia bêco olondo inoto para
Imbiabo kotaronc molonk niarotan pérana
[…]
inno calledaz
Ontro de palade mosa kaen faleï tonüe dhala pico indor kouniss plaira colrose, inbello monozy impiodo cara. ûntez noüméa, tintems oda formandore, artosa passat Otiva …[remaining text not clear or cut off]

Any suggestions as to what to make of this folderol?

Brian also notes that Debosnys’ Greek poem is basically an incomplete copy of Thomas Moore’s preface to his Odes of Anacreon: and separately wonders whether the ciphered lines might be Debosnys’ version of how he thought the poem should have ended. It’s an interesting suggestion, for sure.

Brian also transcribed part of Debosnys’ cipher (though he seems not to have posted his transcription anywhere), though I’d caution (just as before) that it’s not at all obvious what the best transcription strategy would be for it. He also posted some notes on what he called the “N glyph“, along with various difficulties with it.

Sektu on Debosnys’ real name

Brian made four interesting posts on trying to work out Debosnys’ real name. His first post points out that when Debosnys talks of the “franck terror“, he is almost certainly referring to “franc-tireurs“, who were volunteers (many from other countries and/or from overseas) who joined guerilla groups to fight for France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Yet as with everything else in Debosnys’ account, his claims of importance (he implies he was a leader of a group) are very probably exaggerated (for example, Brian’s second post points out that he was not Louis Delpech): but Debosnys may well have taken part.

In a more promising vein, Brian’s third post in the set goes through the passenger list of the Cimbria (which Debosnys claimed to have sailed on with his wife Judith, but which I had previously not been very impressed by). In his fourth post, he considers that Debosnys and his wife might have in fact been Jacob Pomries (a slatemaker) and his wife Elise (aged 35 and 22 on the Cimbria). But… he doesn’t actually seem hugely convinced, to be fair.

Brian also tried to pursue Debosnys’ tattoo-like handshake drawing, but without huge success. He also noted a possible connection between Debosnys’ curious middle name “Deletnack” and the (not very plausible-looking reverse anagram) M. le vicomte de Letnac, whose memories of Italy was published as a book by J. Cantel of Paris.

Finally, Brian dug up an interesting story about a “Colonel Henry” from the Paris Commune (Debosnys loosely implied that he was “Colonel Henry”). Was he Debosnys? It seems a little unlikely to me, but… who can tell?

Celestine Debosnys

One of Debosnys’ wives was called Celestine: she was born around 1839, and died in Philadelphia on the 5th March 1882 (presumably at Debosnys’ “miserable shanty […] on South 1st Street near Greenwich Point in the Quaker City”, according to the Essex County Republican, Farnsworth p.91), having starved to death. All Ancestry has to say is that she was white, and was buried in the Alms House Cemetery.

Farnsworth gives her name (once) as “Celestine Desmarais”, but I suspect that this is a conflation of “Celestine” and “Judith Desmarais” (a different dead Debosnys wife). (Note that miscamusca tumbled down an Ancestry rabbit hole chasing Canadian Adeline Desmarais’ 1865 marriage to Joseph Jourdain, but I believe that was someone else.)

It seems bizarre to me that we know so little about her, so I went a-looking myself for any Celestines in Philadelphia born close to 1839. However, I found little of interest there, not even French-born Celestine Munch (b. 6 Nov 1838, d. 12 Jan 1915). The 1870 US Census has very few Celestines in Philadelphia born 1838-1840: apart from Celestine Munch, there’s just Celestine Brown age 30 (born Pennsylvania, Sales Lady, daughter of Anthony Brown (born Baden) & Celestine (born France)).

I also looked for any women called Celestine who got married in Canada in December 1872 (as Debosnys claimed to have done), but found the Canadian search tools frustratingly inexact: perhaps Celestine Commier, Celestine Menard, Celestine Lavaris, or Celestine Lafounesse?

I also looked for any women called Celestine living in Wilmington Delaware (“as I’m sure you’re well aware”) in the 1880 Census (Debosnys claimed to have been living there in 1880), but found only Celestine J. Miller, wife of John F. Miller, with daughters Mary (14) and Cecelia (12).

As for looking in the 1880 US Census for any women called Celestine born in Canada, that yielded only Celestine Lazette (wife of Joseph (50), mother of Maggie (18), Libbie (15) and Julius (14)), in Monroe Michigan. And the only Celestine born in France living in Philadelphia was Celestine Munch.

Having said all that, it might be that someone more skilled at navigating the US Census will be able to see if anyone with a similar name was living “on South 1st Street near Greenwich Point” in 1880. You know, just in case Debosnys was lying about just about everything in his whole life. Which I certainly can’t rule out at the moment.

DNA, and why not?

Back in 2015, Byron Deveson suggested that someone should carefully recover Henry Debosnys’ DNA from the pieces in the museum (there’s a skull and, gorily enough, a hangman’s noose) and drop it into GEDmatch etc.

So why is it 2021 and nobody has thought to do this yet? Makes no sense to me.