Friday, January 4, 2019

Jerome Gambit Article: Followup Followup

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I recently did a followup article to my posts on my Jerome Gambit article, lamenting the lack of information about how an author, or authors, came to label the Jerome Gambit player in Amateur - Blackburne, London, 1884 -  referred to as "Mr M" v Blackburne, in the May 10, 1884, Illustrated London News - as "Millner". A Facebook post led to a return post with a couple of links suggesting a couple of possible "Milner" players, and some bibliographical suggestions.

Alas, my InterLibraryLoan sleuthing has returned little.

The book Amos Burn: A Chess Biography, by Richard Forster (McFarland, 2004) does, indeed, list a "J. Milner" as playing (color not given) the 13th board in a 31 board match between Yorkshire and Lancashire, at Hudderfield, on March 11, 1899. He accomplished a draw against A. C. Haines.

That's it. (In a book of almost 1,000 pages.)

Add that to finding no "Millner" or "Milner" in Henry Joseph Blackburne: A Chess Biography (McFarland, 2015), by Tim Harding, and I pretty much have what my father used to call "a whole lot of nothing".

InterLibraryLoan also brought me Idel Becker's Manual de Xadrez, which Brazilian chess master Hindemburg Melão, Jr. in his article for the online chess site, SuperAjedrez, and, most recently, in the Facebook post, suggested might have the information I sought. Alas, I found only the game "Amador - Blackburne", that is Amateur - Blackburne. It could be that I was consulting the 4th edition, from 1969, which may have been changed since Becker's 1st edition, from 1948.

It could also be that the information was in the other book suggested by Hindemburg Melão, Jr., Ajadrez a la ciega, by Benito Lopes Esnaola - which the InterLibraryLoan was not able to provide for me.

I sense an upcoming visit to the White Collection, in Cleveland, to further research the issue. 

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