unforum

[Law of Five]

Ok, here is a possible connection between Tom Paine, the Old Red Lion and 1970.

http://www.uea.ac.uk/ltq/Calendar/PublicLectures.pdf
THOMAS PAINE LECTURE
The Thomas Paine Society has instituted a biennial lecture which is governed by the following rules:

1 The benefaction given to the University in 1970 by Mr Jesse Collins, a member of the Thomas Paine Society, shall constitute a trust fund called the Thomas Paine Lecture Fund and such investments as may from time to time be made from this benefaction shall be investments of the trust fund.

2 The income from the Thomas Paine Lecture Fund shall be used to provide one lecture every two years on some aspect of Thomas Paine's life, times or thought and for the subsequent publication of the lectures.

The lecture in 2003 was given by Michael Mansfield QC on the 17th of October, with the title 'No Gain without Paine: Coalition Crimes'.

http://comm.uea.ac.uk/events/details.asp?id=1275

http://comm.uea.ac.uk/press/release.asp?id=288

As the lecture is given every 2 years, the 2005 one should be happening in the next couple of weeks...

In another seeming coincidence, the MORALITY BITES night at the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington on Monday October the 17th features the following 4 plays:

TAINTED LOVE by Ian Buckley
'Gil's first wife died accidentally, twenty years ago. Now his son wants to know how. Exactly how'.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN by Eddie Coleman
Greg is having an affair with Joe's wife, and Joe's just found out. To keep her, Joe pushes himself to the limit with terrifying consequences.

THE MUSE by L. A. Green
Where does 'creativity' come from? Is it a person, a 'muse'? Is it in the bottle, the wind, or is it from within? How can you learn to hear it, understand it and control it?

PARTY DRESS by Kath Sayer
The Nazi Party did not only affect the lives of Jewish teenagers and an item of clothing can make a difference.

http://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk

http://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/tlml/production

So, there seems to be a link between the University of East Anglia which was endowed with the Paine Lecture in 1970 and the title 'No Pain(e), No Gain' which has cropped up in 2 significant places. Next question: where is this year's Paine lecture, who is giving it and what is the title?

Law of Five

(much credit to my wife for all this detective work)

[Law of Five]

No luck with initial inquiries on the 2005 Thomas Paine Lecture or the Tom Paine Society.

There's info on the society here http://www.thetforduk.co.uk/paine.htm but the society's site is down: http://www.thomaspaine.org.uk/.

Also checked the University of East Anglia's lecture schedules until Christmas and there's no sign of the 2005 Tom Paine Lecture.

Maybe the Paine Society has gone out of business? And if they don't have the cash to pay the UofEA for the 2-yearly lecture, maybe there's no lecture this time around.

Maybe this is a dead end, but the 'No Pain(e), No Gain' thing has potential... maybe someone can go along to see the play next Monday and see what happens...


Off to Banff today, so later, dudes

Law of Five

[Moongazer]

This seems rather a vague connection, but just in case it's useful, here it is .

An author called Hilary Bailey wrote a book called "Dogman of Islington" in 1970.

I haven't been able to find out what it's about, but it seems to be in the Science Fiction genre, and it is also included in an anthology "Into the Unknown - Eleven Tales of Imagination".

Hilary Bailey edited "New Worlds", a Science Fiction magazine in the 70s, and also wrote a book called "Everything Blowing Up : An Adventure of Una Persson, Heroine of Time And Space" in 1980 .

[ThatDeadDude]

Out of interests sake... I was at Angel station yesterday... didn't see anything of interest on the westbound/northbound platform or anywhere else for that matter. The southbound one did have a giant Scooby Doo poster but the relevancy of that is pretty dubious I'm sure.

Then again, I'm not always too observant...

[Mountain Girl]

Perhaps 1970 doesn't exactly have anything to do with Paine. Perhaps we were merely led to The Old Red Lion via Paine (since that's where he wrote The Rights of Man).

[Law of Five]

But the picture contains Paine, Old Red Lion and 1970. On the first two we are all over it and on the third we are nowhere. 1970 must be linked to the first 2 somehow, or else it's meaningless...

Also... to the left of the figure of Paine, there's a scroll or a folio with something written on it: http://earlyamerica.com/portraits/images/paine.jpg. I can't make it out, but I don't think it's Rights of Man.

Any ideas?

Law of Five

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Not to dampen the enthusiasm around the 1970 thing, But I need to note the possibility that 1970 may simply have been an attempt at obfuscation of 1790, just as constitution was obfuscated using ROT-13.

And, Law.
I know a book cover isn't the best source for your quest for the text from the lithograph, Here's a better picture that does look like "Rights of Man":
http://www.learningstreams.com/Items/PPB-0140390162.htm#

www.nyhistory.org/paine/

[Moongazer]

Has anybody else noticed that the 1970 numbers have now reversed?

On my picture they now read 0791, but mirrored, so does this mean they are an "anagram" for 1790, or something else?

[Moongazer]

If we are now looking at 1790, perhaps Mary Wollstonecarft is pertinent:-

[Abraxas]

So...1970 is 1790? I think that's not nice. There was no indication to jumble up a date...
But if it is: Didn't Thomas Paine write the Rights of Man in 1790? In the Old Red Lion (he used to sit there, I read it somewhere, but can't find the URL at the moment)? After Burke had written his Reflections on the Revolution in France?

[Moongazer]

[angel2k10]

obviuosly lots of stuff happened in 1790 but i found that rhode island ratified the U.S constitusion and became the 13th state (not related to islington but i noticed it cos of the 13)

edit : apologies for spelling, it's late and alcohol was involved

[Shane]

[Law of Five]

Damn! Now Islington is teasing us!!

He's reversed the digits '1970' but none of the rest of the clues, presumably to emphasise that it IS important after all and that we haven't got it yet. (The image appears otherwise unchanged and is still called noburke.jpg. When you flip the horizontal back again, it still says 1970 in the same font, with the characters in the same order)

We haven't got anything strong to go on for 1970, although we have had some imaginative suggestions (gay rights, the endowment of the Tom Paine lecture, etc). And 1970 = 1790 just seems weak. Fair enough, Thomas Paine may have stayed at the Angel Islington after he returned from France in 1790, but he didn't write the Rights of Man until the following year. And good work on the Mary Wollstonecraft connection (in her response to Burke's reaction to the French Revolution ('Reflections on the Revolution in France') and the similarity of her title to Paine's later work ('Vindication of the Rights of Man' and 'The Rights of Man'), but it doesn't obviously advance our cause, unless someone comes up with a Wollstonecraft/Islington link.

Assuming that there is no progress on any of these fronts (will there be a 2005 Thomas Paine Lecture - I might email the University on Monday to check...), we have to come at it a different way. As we are assuming '1970' is a year, I'm starting to wonder if it's something else all together - maybe a time, or an address in Islington. What is the street number of the Co-op bank where the Angel Inn used to be? Gotta come at this sideways - if it's not a date, what can it be?

Re. Paine's image - the original does have the Rights of Man on the left of the picture, but the words on the scroll in out noburke.jpg seem to be indecipherable...

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/reader/0451528891/ref=sib_dp_pt/701-4374235-8657962#reader-link

Oh, and Scooby-Doo is slang for clue...

Before I go, it occurs to me that Burke wrote a work called 'Reflections' and we are now being shown a reflected version of '1970'...

Cheers

Law of Five

[hlpr]