A question about the phantom airship scares which has bothered me for a while is, how accurate are the press reports of people seeing something strange in the sky? That is, did people actually see something strange in the sky, or were the press reports made up or otherwise distorted? There is some evidence from other countries that this happened. One case in New Zealand in July 1909 involved a teacher and 23 schoolchildren, who gave their accounts to a journalist and even drew pictures of what they saw. In the late 1960s, three of the now-elderly witnesses were re-interviewed. But although they could remember the fuss at the time, they could not remember having seen anything out of the ordinary. Then there are the American mystery airships of 1896 and 1897, which were sometimes just completely fabricated. For example, the supposed crash of an airship at Aurora, Texas, in April 1897, which was almost certainly a hoax by a town-boosting journalist.

But there are also reasons to think that in the British case, at least, most press reports were accurate enough. Unlike the United States or New Zealand at this time, Britain had many competing national (or at least London) newspapers. I don't think it was usually in a newspaper's interests to just make up a story, because a rival could easily enough check it out (through its own reporters or a local stringer -- both were done) and cry foul. It might then be argued that all the newspapers were in on the lark, that they were all selling too many newspapers to spoil the fun. But newspapers were divided politically too. Liberal-supporting newspapers were generally much more sceptical than Conservative-supporting ones, and were quick to accuse the latter of credulous scaremongering -- but not lying. And the sceptics often reported the same stories bought into the phantom airships, albeit only briefly. This doesn't seem to fit with widespread fabrication (though of course, it could have happened sometimes).

There are other arguments I could make, but won't because I want to finish this post sometime. But they basically are enough that I feel I can trust that the phantom airship scares did actually have a reality outside of the press. Now comes the verify bit. Recently, the National Archives released the 1911 census data two years early. Unfortunately, you have to pay to see the full returns (I guess there aren't too many taxpayers left from 1911 to complain about having to pay again for something they had already paid for a century ago!) That's a pity, but you can still get some useful information for free: name, age, sex, location. As it happens, 1911 is right between the two phantom airships scares in 1909 and 1913. So there must be a good chance that any witnesses were living in the same place in 1911 as they were when they saw the phantom airship. Hopefully, then, I can take names from the press accounts, feed them into the census search engine and find somebody in the right location. This would at least verify that somebody of that name did exist in that place, and presumably did see something strange in the sky (or else they'd complain when their names were used in vain).
...continue reading →