RESULTS: No one successfully plumbed the depths of the quiz question this week.
ANSWER: Peregrine Phillips was from Bristol. He invented the process to distill H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) commercially at low cost. He was, therefore, considered the 19th century “Father of H2SO4” which was called commonly “vitriol.” From there, you can quickly get to Kitty Winter, the pain of Baron Gruner, and ILLUS. Vitriol is also mentioned in BLUE. The real Baron Gruner died in 1860, well before the story, but he apparently was borrowed by Watson for authenticity.
Okay. You don’t care for genealogy. Here is a deductive mystery for this week:
This Bristol Peregrine was indirectly the cause of pain to a European nobleman who died in 1860. Identify the nobleman, the Peregrine, the link, and the story or book in which the reference occurs.
Please submit solutions to this very difficult quiz question to Buttons by noon Wednesday, March 4.
Good luck!
Buttons: could you please gove us more details about the Baron Gruner dead in 1860? Can’t seem to find him anywhere.
I had spotted Peregrine Phillips, but I had no idea which nobleman to connect him to. On the other side, I had a candidate for the role of the nobleman in James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie, who was Governor General of India and instigated the Second Anglo-Sikh War, his Canonical connection being the battle of Chillianwala or Chilian Wallah, where Mahomet Singh and Abdullah Khan had fought against the English. But (unsurprisingly, and obviously) I could find no connection between these two…
Thank you, “Reggie.” We have only that which we have to work with. Tracy lists Baron Gruner as “d.1860.” The name is not listed with an asterisk and, therefore, is not fictional; as such, we must assume the Baron was an actual nobleman who died in 1860.
Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. It would be interesting to know which source(s) Tracy used… maybe a matter for possibile future speculation.