Humans really love a hobby and it seems the more obscure the hobby, the more obsessed we become. But if you’re looking for the gold medal in obscure and obsessive, you need look no further than Victorian salmon fly-tying.

 

Back in the Victorian era ‘recipes’ for the perfect fly-tying involved the most exotic of materials - fancy threads, unusual bits of fur and, most importantly, exotic and rare feathers.

 

Of course, you’d imagine the point of creating these elaborate flys is to sucker in the biggest possible fish.

 

But salmon don’t give a shit about the colour or the beauty of flies. They eat anything that looks and behaves insectish.

 

But people that got into this hobby, didn’t use them to fish. Don’t be ridiculous. The idea of dropping one of their creations into the water - better yet having it scarfed down by a gross fish - was horrifying. The same goes for today. The overwhelming majority of the 21st-century fly-tyers have no idea how to fish. It’s all about bragging rights and respect or something…

 

And one of the most infamous-and-modern fly-tying obsessed humans goes by the name of Edwin Rist. Rist came across fly-tying when he was 10 years old and became infatuated with tying the old Victorian recipes that called for the most exotic feathers you can imagine. Hanging out on the internet forums, Edwin quickly realized such fancy ingredients don’t come cheap.

 

Luckily young Edwin had another obsession to distract him from elaborate fly-tying pursuits: he was also a prodigy flautist. But to be a truly competitive flute-guy, he needed a bloody excellent flute. And they too are not cheap. So, after getting into the Royal Academy of music he started to think…how could he make some serious cash?

 

It’s here we meet the collections of Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist, illustrator and Charles Darwin competitor. In the mid-1800s Wallace had murdered (sorry) collected a huge variety of critters, including many thousands of birds. Most of his collection went to The Natural History Museum at Tring.

 

This collection is of immense historical significance and contains specimens that are exceedingly rare and irreplaceable. But when Rist found out about this collection he thought, damn that’s a lot of delicious, and lucrative, fly-tying feathers.

 

So to further his flute career, he did the obvious thing: he hatched a plan to rob the museum and sell the feathers on the infamous dark-feather fly-tying under-web.

 

But how did it all play out? Did Edwin do the deed? Did he flog enough feathers to buy his dream flute? And …did he get away with it?

Previous episodes mentioned:

How To Hide A Battleship

Non Fungible Tulips

 

Sources:

 

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (2019) Kirk Wallace Johnson

 

One Obsessed Musician, 299 Birds, and a Very Weird Crime (National Geographic)

 

The Great Feather Heist: The curious case of a young American’s brazen raid on a British museum’s priceless collection (Smithsonian)

 

Why The Feather Heist is the Most Bizarre Heist Story You'll Ever Read (Literature Lust)

 

Bird skins stolen in museum raid (BBC August 2009)

 

On the Hunt for Hundreds of Rare Birds Stolen From a Museum (Audubon)

 

Musician sentenced for rare bird skins theft (BBC April 8, 2011)

 

Natural History Museum thief ordered to pay thousands (BBC July 30, 2011) 

 

Alfred Russel Wallace (Wikipedia)

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