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- Sheffield Iris, Tuesday, 11 January 1842
On Friday morning, at Windsor, aged 85, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bassett, who had filled the appointment of Governor of the Military Knights of Windsor during a period of about twenty years.
Birmingham Daily Gazette, Friday, 5 February 1932
Mystery of Safe
Letters of Kings and a Queen
4/- at Auction
The mystery of a safe, which contained documents signed by Kings and a Queen, bought at an auction for 4s. and resold for 10s., has not yet been cleared up.
Mr. Isaac Downes, a furniture dealer, of Rounds-lane, Daisy Bank, Coseley, bought the safe for 10s. from a man who had just previously paid 4s. for it at a Wolverhampton auction room.
The safe is a small cast-iron box, and painted on it in white letters is the name ?R. Bassett.? The place-name is Coalbrookdale.
On the door of the safe is a piece of brass, on each edge of which there is a dot with a ring around it.
At first neither keyhole nor key could be found. Mr. Downes called in his wife?s uncle, who, taking up a file, struck one of the markings on the box and lo! ? a piece of the brass plate flew open, revealing a keyhole.
Mr. Downes summoned a locksmith named Anslow and a key was made.
On 22 January the safe door was opened. Forty-four documents were found inside.
The value of these has not yet been assessed. They may be worth hundreds, perhaps thousands.
Some bear the signature of William IV, George III, George IV, Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington, Earl Grey, Earl Mulgrave, and Lord Newcastle.
There are Spanish State documents, a number of letters addressed to Thomas Bassett, Military Knight, Windsor, and a tree of the Bassett family tracing their line back to A.D. 1100.
The tracing of the safe back through auction rooms and second-hand dealers? shops is now in progress. There is a story of the safe having been stolen many years ago.
Further, it is understood that members of the Bassett family are laying claim to the documents although Mr. Downes states that he had received no communication from then.
Mr. Downes cannot understand, if the safe was stolen, why it was not opened. Nor can he understand why the dealers through whose hands it has passed have not opened it.
?Dealers have been barking their shins and blacking their boots on it for years,? said Mr. Downes, ?while I have been buying things for years in the hope of striking a fortune. Instead it seems to have brought me a lot of trouble.?
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Bassett Family Association Database
Abt 1756 - 1842 (86 years)