OLD PEDIGREES

Hokitika Guardian, 23 November 1933, Page 8

OLD PEDIGREES

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REPLY TO LORD REGLAN

MELBOURNE, Nov. 20.

Lord Raglan’s recent “exposure” of aristocratic lineage among some prominent families of England, and now his contempt for certain heroes of history, including an “atrocious ruffian named Wiliam Wallace,” have not greatly imnressed Professor W. A. Osborne, Deaii of the Faculty of Medicine at Melbourne University, who recently commented uoou the English peer’s newest adventures in “debunking.”

Professor Osborne pointed- out that the “debunking” of false aristoratio lineage had already been prosecuted to a merciless end. He countered Lord Raglan’s attack on the heroes of history by quoting the opinion of an historian friend who had established that popular beliefs were generally accurate. “In his attack on pedigree-fakers or mongers, Lord Raglan seems, use a Hibernianisin, to be pouring water on a drowned rat,” Professor Osborne said “The pretensions exposed. The date Professor J. H. Round- subjected theclaims of some English families to a most merciless historical analysis and created much fluttering of the dovecotes. Family after family who claimed to have come over with the Conqueror was shown to have risen from some honest brewer. Anyway, the men who came with William were rather a rough lot and would probably have shouted with derision at the claim to aristocratic refinement.

“Pedigree hunting lias assumed extraordinery proportions in the Unitea States, where there is some very honest work, although also a good deal designed to take in the credulous. Certainly the Pilgrim Mothers must have been very prolific if all the families who claim to be descended are genuine in their claims.”