Mathilde Lefebvre letter
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The Mathilde Lefebvre letter (French: lettre de Mathilde Lefebvre) is a hoax document found in a bottle, purportedly written by Mathilde Lefebvre, a young girl from Liévin, France who died in the sinking of the Titanic, but in fact was forged by an anonymous forger.
In the spring of 2021, the French newspaper La Voix du Nord published an article entitled "Qui était Franck Lefebvre, l’Haillicourtois qui a perdu une partie de sa famille dans le naufrage du Titanic ?" (in French, Who was Franck Lefebvre, the Hailourtois who lost part of his family in the sinking of the Titanic ?) mentioning this document. After that, there were media reports about the letter. After several specialists had expressed doubts about the authenticity of the letter, it was revealed that it was a hoax.
Background
The Lefebvre family
Franck Lefebvre, a coal miner from Liévin in Pas-de-Calais, decided to move to the United States with his family. He left France in 1910 and moved to Mystic, Iowa. Once enough money was raised, he paid his wife and children, who remained in France for a trip aboard the Titanic so that they could join him. None of the Lefebvre family aboard the Titanic survived.[1][2]
Previous hoaxes
The Titanic was not the only sunken ship from whom message bottles were purportedly found. In February 1893, the Naronic, a concrete freighter belonging to the White Star Line, disappeared during a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean while trying to reach New York from Liverpool. For several months, several ships were diverted from the company to try to find the Naronic, but without success. Only empty Naronic lifeboats were found. There is currently no explanation of what happened.[3]
In March of the same year, six bottles containing messages attributed to the Naronic were found. Two were discovered on the east coast of the United States and reported a sinking on February 19. One of them referred to a collision with an iceberg during a snowstorm. Although the letters were signed, none of the names were on the official list of mariners on board. Everything indicates that they were written by people who were not aware of this information, based on media reports. Also, the messages found in the United Kingdom reffered to icebergs or explosions, and the names in the messages simply did not exist. One of the messages referred to a false address.[3]
Start of the Mathilde Lefebvre case
Discovery of the letter
In 2017, a New Brunswicker contacted Antoine Resche, president of the French Titanic Association, to announce him that he had found a bottle containing a letter in the Bay of Fundy.[4][5] It was a message dated April 1912 signed by Mathilde Lefebvre, who was travelling with her mother and her siblings in third class on the Titanic; all perished in the tragedy. Here is the text: "Je jette cette bouteille à la mer au milieu de l'Atlantique. nous devons arriver à New York dans quelques jours. Si quelqu'un la trouve, prévenez la famille Lefebvre à Liévin." (In English: I am throwing this bottle into the sea in the middle of the Atlantic. We are due to arrive in New York in a few days. If anyone finds it, tell the Lefebvre family in Lievin.)[6][7]
To verify the authenticity of the letter, Antoine Resche asked the person who discovered the letter to date the bottle, the ink and the paper.
Publication in La Voix Du Nord
The case stalled until 2021, when a journalist from La Voix du Nord published an article entitled Qui était Franck Lefebvre, l’Haillicourtois qui a perdu une partie de sa famille dans le naufrage du Titanic ? ("Who was Franck Lefebvre, the Haillicourt man who lost part of his family in the sinking of the Titanic?").[8] From then on, the information was repeated in various news outlets, including France Bleu[9] and L'indépendant.[10]
First doubts
Very quickly, several specialists expressed doubts about the authenticity of the letter. Several points intrigue researchers, both in terms of the conditioning of the message and the message itself.
Handwriting
According to Franck Gavard-Perret, professor of geography history, the handwriting attributed to Mathilde Lefebvre isn't like that known to people from the working classes of the time, especially when compared with the correspondence of the Great War.[3] Psychomotrician Coraline Hausenblas conducted a study of writing and concluded that "identity theft was carried out in order to carry out a hoax around a historical subject attracting the attention and sympathy of the public."[11]
The text
The text does not contain a great deal of personal information, making it difficult to determine its authenticity. In the letter, Mathilde asks that anyone who finds her notify the Lefebvre family to Liévin. But Mathilde, her mother and her siblings were the last members of her family to leave Liévin to join the father of a family already settled in the United States. Why would she want a finder to contact the Lefebvre family in Liévin, when they no longer had any close family there? Why, if she wanted to be contacted herself that her message had been found, didn’t she ask to send the letter to her destination, Mystic, Iowa? The thing can be explained very easily: if the document is a forgery, it is much easier to find on the internet the city of origin of the Lefebvre rather than their destination, and a forger did not necessarily have this information.[3]
The bottle
The bottle used to convey the message is a small glass bottle, intended for liquors or perfumes. It is known that third class passengers often travelled with little luggage: such an empty bottle would therefore have had little room in the Lefebvre's luggage, which had to be limited to the essentials. Such bottles would certainly not have been available in the third class dining room, which did not offer self-service liquors. A lone mother traveling with children who did not speak English would also have had a difficult time obtaining them from the crew.[3] Although researchers have stated that the bottle is "consistent with the early 20th century. You can find vintage bottles in an apothecary's shop, but that doesn't ensure that it was discarded in 1912."[4]
Wax
The bottle was supposed to have been in the water for over a century. In order for the message not to be affected by moisture, a very generous amount of wax would have had to be applied to the neck. It is difficult to explain how Mathilde could have obtained so much wax on board.[3]
The place where the bottle was found
The bottle was found stranded in the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick.[6] According to ocean current specialists, if such a drift from the site of the sinking was not impossible, it remains highly improbable.[3]
Aftermath
In the end, it was admitted in the press[by whom?] that Mathilde Lefebvre's letter was a hoax.[12] The only consequence was to give visibility to a family involved in the Titanic disaster that until then had been little known.[13][14]
References
- ^ "Jetée du Titanic, retrouvée au Canada ? Cette bouteille à la mer qui fascine les chercheurs". leparisien.fr (in French). 2021-05-15. Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/titantic-passenger-uqar-message-bottle-1.6019434
- ^ a b c d e f g "La bouteille du Titanic : anatomie d'un canular historique". Veni Vidi Sensi (in French). 2022-06-21. Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ a b "La lettre lancée du Titanic est-elle authentique ? Ou s'agit-il d'un vaste canular ?". actu.fr (in French). Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ "Truth Of Mysterious Titanic Letter May Never Be Known, Researchers Say". Newsweek. 2021-05-13. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
- ^ a b "REAL OR HOAX?: Quebec scholars probe mystery letter allegedly from Titanic passenger". Newsweek.
- ^ Sidhartha Banerjee (May 15, 2021). "REAL OR HOAX?: Quebec scholars probe mystery letter allegedly from Titanic passenger". Toronto Sun. The Canadian Press.
- ^ "Qui était Franck Lefebvre, l'Haillicourtois qui a perdu une partie de sa famille dans le naufrage du Titanic?". La Voix du Nord (in French). 2021-04-13. Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ "Une bouteille à la mer envoyée par une Française la veille du naufrage du Titanic retrouvée, 105 ans après". ici, par France Bleu et France 3 (in French). 2021-05-11. Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ "[VIDEO] Une bouteille jetée à la mer depuis le Titanic retrouvée plus de 100 ans après le naufrage". L'independant (in French). 28 April 2021. Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ Hausenblas, Coraline. "Lettre attribuée à Mathilde Lefebvre, passagère du Titanic. Analyse d'un canular" (PDF). coralinehausenblas.com (in French). Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ Fourny, Marc (2022-05-03). "La bouteille à la mer du « Titanic » était un canular". Le Point. Retrieved 2022-07-17.
- ^ Lotterie, Manon; Resche, Antoine (2021). "Nouvelles découvertes sur la famille Lefebvre par Manon LOTTERIE et Antoine RESCHE". Association Française du Titanic.
- ^ B, Luc (2021-05-02). "Documents d'archives Inédits..." Histoire de Marie Daumont et ses enfants (in French). Retrieved 2022-07-17.