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William son of Robert son of Walter (fitz Robert fitz Walter)

Rowed number 3 for the Jesus College 1934 Lent Crew.

Tradesman between 1841 and 1842.

Bertram Fletcher Robinson (22 August 1870 – 21 January 1907) was an English sportsman, journalist, editor, author and Liberal Unionist Party activist. During his life-time, he wrote at least three hundred items, including a series of short stories that feature a detective called 'Addington Peace'. Following his untimely death at the age of just 36 years, speculation grew that Robinson was the victim of a curse bestowed upon him by an Egyptian antiquity at the British Museum, which he had researched whilst working as a journalist for a British newspaper. However, Robinson is perhaps best remembered for his literary collaborations with his friends and fellow Crimes Club members, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and Max Pemberton.

Early life
Family
Bertram Fletcher Robinson (Aka 'Bobbles' or 'Bertie') was born on 22 August 1870 at 80 Rose Lane, Mossley Hill in Liverpool. During 1882, he relocated with his family to Park Hill House at Ipplepen in Devon.

Robinson's father, Joseph Fletcher Robinson (1827–1903) was the founder of a general merchant business in Liverpool (c. 1867), which is now called Meade-King, Robinson & Company Limited (also known as, 'MKR'). Previously, around 1850, Joseph had travelled to South America where he was befriended by Giuseppe Garibaldi and fought alongside him, and the Uruguayans, against the Argentine dictator, Juan Manuel de Rosas in the Guerra Grande.

Robinson's uncle, Sir John Richard Robinson (1828–1903), was the long-time editor-in-chief of the Daily News and also a prominent committee member of the Liberal Reform Club. His friends included James Payn, William Black, Sir Wemyss Reid, George Augustus Sala and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

On 3 June 1902, 31‑year‑old Robinson married 22-year-old Gladys Hill Morris[13] at St. Barnabas Church, Kensington, London. Gladys was an actress and a daughter of the noted Victorian era artist Philip Richard Morris ARA (1833–1902). The Robinsons had no children of their own but they were godparents to Geraldine Winn Everett, the daughter of Sir Percy Everett. 'Winn', as she was affectionately referred to by both family and friends, later worked as a GP in Essex.

Education
Between 1882 and 1890, Robinson was schooled at a Proprietary college in Newton Abbot, which was directed by the headmaster, George Townsend Warner. Robinson was educated alongside Percy Harrison Fawcett who later became a famous explorer of South America. Later, their mutual friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, would use Fawcett's Amazonian field reports as the inspiration for his popular novel, The Lost World.

Between 1890 and 1894, Robinson attended Jesus College, Cambridge, which was directed by the Master, Dr. Henry Arthur Morgan. He studied both History and Law and was awarded a Second Class History Tripos Bachelor of Arts degree (1893), Part I of the Law Tripos Bachelor of Arts degree (1894) and a Master of Arts degree (1898).

During his time as an undergraduate, Robinson won three Rugby Football Blues and, according to his obituary in the Daily Express (22 January 1907), he would have played rugby union for England but for an 'accident'. Robinson also represented his college in cricket and rowing, and was a member of the Jesus College crew, which won the Thames Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta on 7 July 1892. On 12 February 1894, The Times reported that Robinson was trialled for the position of fourth oar with the Cambridge 'Trial Eight' ahead of the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race (The Boat Race 1894).

On 17 June 1896, it was reported within the Council of Legal Education section of The Times newspaper that Robinson had passed the Bar examination. He accepted the resulting call to join the Inner Temple, which made him a qualified Barrister but he never practised this profession.

Writing and editorial career
Versatility and output
Robinson held editorial positions with The Newtonian (1887–1889), the Granta (1893–1895), Daily Express (July 1900 – May 1904), Vanity Fair (May 1904 – October 1906), The World (journal) (October 1906 – January 1907) and The Gentleman's Magazine (January 1907). He also edited eight books about various sports and pastimes for The Isthmian Library (1897–1901).

Between 1893 and 1907, writing under the pen name of B. Fletcher Robinson, Robinson authored or coauthored at least 44 articles (for 15 different periodicals), 55 short stories, four lyrics, 128 bylined newspaper reports, 24 poems and eight books. He also made contributions to the plots of two Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle (1900-1903) and produced nine satirical playlets, four of which were collaborations with P. G. Wodehouse (1903-1907).

Early work (1893-1903)
Between 1893 and 1895, Robinson had one playlet and 12 poems published in the Granta. This periodical was targeted at Cambridge undergraduates but it also reported on matters relating to Trinity College (Dublin) and Oxford University. Granta was founded in 1889 by R. C. Lehmann (who later became a major contributor to Punch and replaced Robinson's uncle as the editor of the Daily News) and it commented on student politics, news and bandinage.

In December 1896, the position of editor at Cassell's Family Magazine passed from the Reverend Henry George Bonavia Hunt to the popular novelist, Max Pemberton. Pemberton had recently edited Robinson's first book titled Rugby Football for The Isthmian Library before relinquishing to him the position of editor. Between March 1897 and April 1900, Robinson wrote 25 items for the Cassell's periodical, which included a series of five articles about the major cities of Europe titled Capitals at Play (January–May 1898), a series of six articles about night-shift workers titled London Night by Night (June–November 1899) and six articles about the British military titled Famous Regiments (December 1899 – May 1900).

In January 1899, Robinson had a non-fictional article titled The Duke's Hounds. A Chat about the Badminton published in Cassell's Magazine (pp. 206–210). This article describes the membership and history of the Gloucestershire Hunt and it is illustrated throughout with photographs.[29] Both Robinson and his father, were members of the South Devon Hunt and Dart Vale Harriers until 1895.

In July 1899, the first of Robinson's 55 short stories titled Black Magic: The Story of the Spanish Don was published in the renamed Cassell's Magazine. This story is illustrated by F. H. Townsend and it is told in the first-person narrative by an old Sailor to an educated gentleman in a pub overlooking a Cornish harbour. The narrator recalls meeting a strange Spanish-speaking passenger (the ‘Don’), aboard a trading brig, during a voyage to Africa around 1856. It transpires that the Don has recently murdered his friend for gold. The Don becomes convinced that the murdered man has possessed a shark, which is following the ship and is intent on exacting revenge against him. References to nautical terms, kerosene and palm-oil, suggest that Robinson may have adapted this story from tales told to him by his father.

In March 1900, Robinson had an item titled A True Story (Wherein all golfers may learn something to their advantage), published in Pearson's Magazine. This periodical was owned by the British newspaper magnate and publisher, Cyril Arthur Pearson. It appears that Pearson admired Robinson's ongoing series of articles about the British military in Cassell's Magazine because during the Spring of 1900, he recruited Robinson to work as his chief war correspondent for his new daily newspaper, the Daily Express. Launched on 24 April 1900, this tabloid was the first British daily newspaper to put news on the front page. Robinson's first assignment was to travel to South Africa to report on the Second Boer War and between 4 May and 30 June 1900, he had 13 related dispatches published in the Daily Express. Once again, Pearson appeared impressed because he recalled Robinson to London and promoted him to the position of ‘Day Editor’ of the Daily Express.

Robinson's handwritten inscription in a first book edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), which he presented to his friend's wife
In July 1900, Robinson and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, 'cemented' their friendship while they were aboard a passenger ship that was travelling to Southampton from Cape Town. The following year, Robinson told Doyle legends of ghostly hounds, recounted the supernatural tale of Squire Richard Cabell III and showed him around grimly atmospheric Dartmoor. The pair had previously agreed to co-author a Devon-based story but in the end, their collaboration led only to Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was first published in book form by George Newnes Ltd on 25 March 1902.[38][39][40] Robinson himself was content to concede that his part in this collaboration was restricted to that of an ‘assistant plot producer’. Befittingly, Doyle wrote the following acknowledgement note, which featured within the first of nine monthly instalments of this story, when it commenced serialisation in The Strand Magazine from August 1901:

This story owes its inception to my friend, Mr. Fletcher Robinson, who has helped
me both in the general plot and in the local details. — A.C.D.

Book cover of The Trail of the Dead (1904)
Between December 1902 and August 1903, The Windsor Magazine published seven short stories of adventure fiction by Robinson and Malcolm Fraser, under the collective title of The Trail of the Dead: The Strange Experience of Dr. Robert Harland. In February 1904, six of these stories were republished in a book titled The Trail of the Dead (Ward, Lock & Co.), which is illustrated by Adolf Thiede. During 1998, the seventh story, titled 'Fog Bound', was republished as 'Fogbound' in a compendium of short stories, which was edited by Jack Adrian and titled Twelve Tales of Murder. In April 2009, all seven tales were included and republished in a book titled Aside Arthur Conan Doyle: Twenty Original Tales by Bertram Fletcher Robinson, which was compiled by Paul Spiring.

During 1903, Robinson also contributed an idea to the plot of a second Sherlock Holmes short story, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. This is one of the very few Holmes stories in which a fingerprint provides a good clue to the nature of the problem. The pivotal wax thumbprint reproduction idea was devised by Robinson, and Doyle paid him a fee of £50 (equivalent to £6,800 in 2023) for the use of it. The story was first published in Collier's (US) on 31 October 1903 and in The Strand Magazine (UK) in November 1903, and it also features as the second tale in the 1905 collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories titled The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

During May 1903, Robinson had a short story titled The Battle of Fingle's Bridge published in Pearson's Magazine (Vol. XV, pp. 530–536). This is a fairy tale, told by a small boy who falls asleep on a moor and witnesses a battle between the people of the ferns and rushes and the people of the gorse and heather. All these people are only six inches tall and are dressed in medieval garb and armour and have miniature horses and weapons. The boy, aided by a fairy, becomes involved in the battle and finally awakens to find signs of the battle on the moor. There is a Fingle Bridge, over the River Teign, which is a famous tourist beauty spot near Drewsteignton, on the North-Eastern borders of Dartmoor. This story was illustrated by Nathan Dean.

On 14 September 1903, the British Liberal Unionist Party politician, Joseph Chamberlain resigned his position within the cabinet of the Conservative-led coalition government of Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour. Robinson responded to this news by writing the lyrics to a popular song titled "The John Bull’s Store", which was published as sheet music by Elkin & Company Limited (London).[50] Robinson's song extols the virtues of Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform League (or 'TRL') and it is set to music that was composed by Robert Eden and first arranged by Herman Finck. "The John Bull’s Store" was performed publicly in London's West End theatre by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and recordings were made by various artists including the male baritone vocalists David Brazell[53] and Leo Stormont. Following this endeavour, Robinson and Eden collaborated on a second popular song titled "The Little Loafer", which decries free trade and espouses imperial preference. This collaboration was also published as sheet music by Elkin & Company Limited during January 1904.

During the final quarter of 1903, under Robinson's editorship, the Daily Express newspaper published a series of 48 poems, which were collectively titled The Parrot. Under the slogan, 'Your food will cost you more' these satirical poems lambast the tax law policies of Arthur Balfour's Government and they commend the cause of the TRL, which at this time was chaired by Robinson's employer, Cyril Arthur Pearson. All but one of this series of poems was published on the newspaper's front page alongside the daily headlines. None carried a by-line, but it appears that P. G. Wodehouse contributed 19 of these poems, and Robinson the remainder. Just two years later, the Liberal Party led by Henry Campbell-Bannerman, achieved a landslide victory in the 1906 British General Election and Balfour lost his own parliamentary seat in Manchester East.

Later work (1904-1907)

Book cover of The Chronicles of Addington Peace (1905)
Between December 1903 and January 1907, Robinson (‘Bobbles’) and P. G. Wodehouse (‘Plum’), co-wrote four playlets,[61] which were published in three different periodicals. Each playlet is written in the style of a pantomime and they lampoon notable opponents of the TRL and imperial preference within the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. During July 2009, these playlets were compiled and republished in facsimile form by Paul Spiring in a book titled Bobbles & Plum. This book also features a foreword by Hilary Bruce, the Chairman of The PG Wodehouse Society (UK), an introduction by the acclaimed Wodehouse scholars, Lieutenant-Colonel Norman T.P. Murphy and Tony Ring and annotations by W.S. Gilbert scholar, Andrew Crowther.

Between August 1904 and January 1905, Robinson had the first in a series of six new detective short-stories published in The Lady's Home Magazine. In June 1905, these six stories together with two new ones were collected and published in a book, which is illustrated by Thomas Heath Robinson (no relation) and titled The Chronicles of Addington Peace (Harper & Brothers). The main protagonist 'Detective Inspector Addington Peace' works for Scotland Yard within their Criminal Investigation Department and he is partnered by a Dr. Watson-like biographer, neighbour and artist called 'James Phillips'. Upon their first encounter, Phillips describes Peace as follows:

… a tiny slip of a fellow, of about five and thirty years of age. A stubble of brown hair, a hard, clean-shaven mouth, and a confident chin are my first impression.

During September 1904, Robinson had a non-fictional article entitled The Fortress of the First Britons. A Description of the Fortress of Grimspound, on Dartmoor published in Pearson's Magazine (Vol. XVIII, pp. 273–280). This article is illustrated throughout with both drawings and photographs and it was republished during 2008 by Brian Pugh and Paul Spiring in their biography about Robinson, which is titled Bertram Fletcher Robinson: A Footnote to the Hound of the Baskervilles.

In January 1905, Robinson had a short story titled The Power of the Press published in the American literary magazine, The Smart Set. This monthly periodical was founded during 1903 in New York by William d'Alton Mann and it provided a large readership to emergent authors. This story is set in Wolfstein in Germany and it centres on a failed plot, which is conceived by the Chief-of-Police, to falsely incriminate a journalist of being an Anarchist.

In July 1905, Robinson was invited to make a contribution to a regular section titled My Best Story in The Novel Magazine. This periodical was owned by his former employer, Cyril Arthur Pearson and it was edited by his close friend, Percy Everett. In the preamble to his featured story, The Debt of Heinrich Hermann, Robinson wrote:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a type of the strong, clear-headed, generous Englishman [sic], a very contrast to all that appertains to decadence. Yet there are many horrors in ‘Sherlock Holmes’. It was from assisting him in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ that I obtained my first lesson in the art of story construction. Imagination without that art is poor enough.

This quote is the last recorded comment made by Robinson about his collaboration with Doyle over The Hound of the Baskervilles. Writing in The Sherlock Holmes Journal during 2009, Paul Spiring asserts that it is '...important for several reasons. Firstly, it reveals that Robinson continued to hold Doyle in high esteem some four years after the story was published. Secondly, it reveals that it was Doyle that devised...the narrative.’ Nevertheless, Doyle paid Robinson a 1⁄3 Royalty payment for his contributions to the story, which amounted to over £500 (equivalent to £68,600 in 2023)[45] by the end of 1901.

Contents page for Great Short Stories Volume 1: Detective Stories (1906)
During 1906, P. F. Collier & Son of New York published the first in a series of three anthologies entitled Great Short Stories, Volume 1 (1): Detective Stories, which was edited by William Patten. This book features 12 stories written by Broughton Brandenburg (one), Arthur Conan Doyle (two), Anna Katharine Green (one), Edgar Allan Poe (three) and Robert Louis Stevenson (four). The twelfth and final story is The Vanished Millionaire by Robinson and it is preceded by the following introduction:

Fletcher Robinson is a London Journalist, the editor of "Vanity Fair," and author of a dozen detective stories in which are recorded the startling adventures of Mr. Addington Peace of Scotland Yard. He collaborated with Conan Doyle in "The Hound of the Baskervilles." When some of these stories appeared in the American magazines, for an unexplained reason (presumably editorial) the name of the hero was changed to Inspector Hartley.

On 7 June 1906, Robinson had a short story titled The Mystery of Mr. Nicholas Boushaw published in Vanity Fair (pp. 725–726). This ninth and final Addington Peace story is much shorter than the preceding eight stories and the narrator is not specifically involved in the case in the same way that Phillips is in the other stories. In this story, Peace logically deduces that the body of a missing man has been hidden in a recently dug grave within a cemetery. Robinson records in a footnote to this story, that a real-life murderer had concealed the body of his victim in this way and that the body went undiscovered for 11 years. The story is set within a fictional village called ‘Crone’ in Dorset. The description of Crone bears a closer resemblance to Newton Abbot than to anywhere in Dorset. There is also an interesting reference to a nearby location called 'Heatree' in the story. There is no village or town called Heatree in Dorset, or anywhere else in England, but there is a 'Heatree House' on the edge of Dartmoor near the infamous Jay's Grave.

In January 1907, during the same month as his death, Robinson's 55th and final short story titled How Mr. Denis O'Halloran Transgressed His Code was published in Appleton's Magazine. This story is set in England at about the time of the Battle of Culloden and the exploits of Bonnie Prince Charlie and it centres upon a tragic domestic dispute between one 'Colonel Francis Yorke' and his stepmother. The story is illustrated by the noted American artist and illustrator, Arthur E. Becher.

Death

Robinson was employed by Lord Northcliffe until shortly before his death
Bertram Fletcher Robinson died aged 36 years on 21 January 1907, at 44 Eaton Terrace, Belgravia, London. The official cause of his death is recorded as 'enteric fever (3 weeks) and peritonitis (24 hours)'. His friend, Sir Max Pemberton reported that Robinson had become ill after drinking contaminated water during a visit to the Paris Motor Show in December 1906. However, other contemporaries with a bent for the occult attributed Robinson's death to a curse associated with an Egyptian artefact called the Unlucky Mummy, which he had investigated in 1904, and which would later be linked to the sinking of RMS Titanic.

Obituaries were published in various British magazines including Vanity Fair, The Athenaeum, The Illustrated London News and The Gentleman's Magazine. Further obituaries appeared in dozens of national and regional newspapers including The World, The Times, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Weekly Dispatch, The Daily News, The Sphere, The Morning Post, The Globe, Evening Standard, Western Morning News and The Sporting Times. The English poet and journalist, Jessie Pope also wrote the following elegy to Robinson, which was published in the Daily Express on 26 January 1907:

Good Bye, kind heart; our benisons preceding,
Shall shield your passing to the other side.
The praise of your friends shall do your pleading
In love and gratitude and tender pride.
To you gay humorist and polished writer,
We will not speak of tears or startled pain.
You made our London merrier and brighter,
God bless you, then, until we meet again!

Vicar of All Saints

Rent Collector

Artist who produced drawings of the old Jesus College Boathouse and diagrams of Bumps results.