Stony Jack and the Lost Jewels of Cheapside: Treasure and Ghosts in the London Clay

In this tantalizing account, BBC documentary producer Shepherd (A History of Delusions) revisits the mystery of the Cheapside Hoard, the largest collection of Tudor and Stuart treasures ever uncovered. The trove of gemstones and gold jewelry was unearthed in June 1912 by Central London workmen, who took their haul to antiquarian George Fabian Lawrence (known as Stony Jack due to his reputation for paying “good money for any old stone”). Lawrence promptly sold much of the Hoard to the newly established London Museum. The mystery of the Hoard’s original owner captivated the British public, who spread stories of a “tall thin man in Elizabethan costume who looked very angry” putting in spectral appearances near the jewels’ display. Shepherd meticulously examines the Hoard’s possible origins and its murky fate—over time, many pieces slipped away. Her account revolves around a profile of Lawrence, revealing him to be a complexly influential agent of the building up of London’s vaunted museum collections. She finds that Lawrence’s willingness to let paperwork go unfinished and to acquire artifacts through underhanded but efficient means made him popular with museum officials as well as royals, who may have surreptitiously acquired some of the Hoard for themselves. Full of fascinating asides, including a tangent on the similar fate of artifacts later recovered from Tutankhamun’s Tomb, this rivets. (July)