Hewitt's History Files

Geoff came across the unexplained disappearance of Sir Arthur Curtis while researching the life of the adventurer and dreamer Roger Pocock.

He hopes his findings will now clear his namesake (and very very distant relative) of suspected murder.

"In 1898 Pocock led an expedition to the Klondike to take horses there," Geoff explains. "Horses were worth a lot more in the Klondike than they were in British Columbia.

"On this expedition was a man called Sir Arthur Curtis whose home was in Hilsea. There was a mystery why Curtis, who was a man of wealth, decided to leave his wife and family to go on this expedition.

"But the expedition went wrong from the word go, and one morning Curtis stood up and walked out into the Canadian woods never to be seen again.

"There were all sorts of rumours. Pocock got the blame for it and right until the end of his life there were rumours that Pocock had murdered Curtis for his money."

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette May 14