The Enid Blyton Society

Even though this mystery only seems to have fraudulent links with Enid, I'm finding it quite fascinating. Please keep us updated with the revamp, Frenchy.

I'd still like to know how someone managed such a good forgery without today's technology to copy the header etc. Quite a feat. I also don't see why someone would have kept the receipt so long in the drawer unless they really did believe it had belonged to Enid Blyton - particularly since the fact it supposedly belonged to Enid wasn't a feature of the more recent sale.

Well the eldery gent who's estate was being cleared may have been the buyer who thought it had belonged to Enid Blyton. Possibly the receipt would have been kept with the caravan and forgotten as the years passed. It's a fascinating story!

Daisy, the estate WAS that of Mr Baker, I collected the caravan from his home in Harrow, where he had lived for 50+yrs. Their was also his Morris Minor parked along side the folding caravan, in the double garage but between the excecutor noting the property items for sale and the 10 days before I collected the caravan, someone broke into the grounds and stole the Morris, I assume they would have stolen the caravan as well, but found it only had one wheel and put them off.
There certainly was no indication of a famous connection to the van and it was simply advertised, by the executor to the will, on Ebay as a 1960s folding caravan....I bought it because of its strange style to add to my vintage caravan collection.

Rob, the forging of the headed paper is surely a mystery, great measures would have been gone too, to produce such a thing in the period we think this is from.
The paper is certainly very old and it intriges me as to why careful scrutiny of the writing and the ink, reveals it is all the same pen.

I am going to try and unearth information on the late Mr Baker and see if this sheds any light on the mystery.

Should I enlist the help of the Famous Five to help me????

If I was you I would try and get a final and second opinion from a handwriting expert re the handwriting of Enid's letter.If they confirm what Tony suspects you will have done your very best to see if the letter is authentic or not.

Just my opinion of course,as the mention of the word 'cute' is one I can't recall in any of Enid's works.Can anyone else?

'cute' was the one word that stood out for me...but maybe she did occasionally use it, just not in her books! I would love it to have belonged to Enid Blyton...or maybe to reveal a deep dark secret of some kind connected to Enid! Who knows? It would certainly be worth finding more out about Mr Barker. A great plot is waiting to be unravelled methinks!

Remember that in May 1964 Enid was still only 66 and her handwriting hadn't changed at all as she was physically okay still. It is certainly a mystery and I also wondered just how good any photcopying would have been in those days, but I am assuming as Frenchy hasn't said otherwise that the writing paper was lined on the back and if this was the case it wouldn't have been her writing paper as on most of her letters she wrote on both sides. One thing I haven't asked is whether the address is simply printed in red or whether it is embossed.

Here is the first page of a letter written by Enid to her nephew Carey in March 1964.

Thanks Tony - I have tried to put the two letters side by side for comparison here:

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I've been trying to compare the two letters, and have the following observations.

I don't know if the caravan letter is slightly smaller, but the whole heading looks smaller than in the one to Carey.

Generally the caravan letter looks as if it could have been written by Enid, but on a poor surface and in a hurry, which could explain a certain 'shakiness' to the writing. However the biggest discrepancy I noticed was the word 'I'. In the caravan it's mostly written crossed at the top and bottom, but in Carey's letter it's a single stroke. If it were the other way around, I would put it down to her simply putting a stroke as it was quicker, thus supporting the 'in a hurry' theory, but it doesn't make sense the other way around.

I wonder if a member of Enid's staff (either domestic, or possibly from a pubisher?) got hold of some of her writing paper and tried to make a few quid by putting Enid's name to the caravan?

They definitely don't look the same. Enid's genuine writing is noticeably more rounded and less spiky, for a start. What's more, she writes her capital I's "sans serif" while the writer of the caravan receipt gives each I a horizontal stroke at the top and bottom:





Don't think it takes a professional handwriting expert to see it's not the same writer.

Hi Tony, yes the paper is lined on the back. The address is not embossed but a print.
The one thing I am sure about is the paper is definately from the 50s/60s after showing a friends friend, who has been in the graphics industry all his life.
My opinion is, this is from the 60s but I am so confused as to why it was fabricated, obviously at a cost if it was, and then just stored away and never used to deceive any future buyer, which is the only reason it surely would have been made up for. After all, you wouldn't deceive yourself!!!

I must point out Tony that early dementia/Alzheimer's has been proven to affect the ability to write as one of the first outward signs of the disease, the physical act of writing is likely to become a challenge and as the illness worsens the impaired cognition will make a sufferer struggle with spelling and grammer.
I appreciate Enid was only 66 in 1964 but she had sadly started to suffer from health issues since 1957 and shown dementia signs since 1960.
I am very much in the middle of an Alzheimer's sufferer at the moment, my mother in law is sadly in the worse stages of the desease and declined steadily over the past 4 years. I recall in the first year, when she was very much in denial, she wrote a birthday card to Tony, her husband for 35 yrs, she wrote Happy Birthday Tony "Curtis"....funny when their surname is Wright.

Even though this caravan has been dated by the Folding Caravan experts as a mid 50s built, it has been suggested that it could be as late as 1962, especially if aged NOS parts were used on the new build. This makes it hard to consider a time frame, in years, as to how long Enid could have owned it, if of course she ever owned it.
This of course adds up to any ownership of maybe 9 years, or even as little as 2 years.
I must admit, I find it very hard to visualise Enid towing a caravan and as Imogen suggests, it just wasn't their thing, but maybe it was purchased on a whim, tucked away and sold on just a couple of years down the line, but I'm sure Imogen would have remembered it if she'd visited her mother frequently.


I have carried out extensive goggle searches today on Mr Baker, with his address...nothing! I have now sent a message to the firm that dealt with Mr Baker's estate, aimed at the lady I dealt with back in February this year, asking if they would give me any insight to the Baker family, sure they won't be allowed to release any info though.

All in all, with this element of doubt, I am left with a slight problem.
I need to get this caravan up to a displayable condition as I've been invited to show it at a very prestigous vehicle show in Manchester in September
Do I just make good the aged interior, which is not anywhere near as comfortable as it looks, or do I restyle the interior to a much more comfortable theme so we can enjoy its useage.

If I opt for option 2, I will consider full reversal should the need be and of course, I will retain all the original fittings and seating etc.

I hate this doubt and I'm beginning to wish I hadn't found this receipt at all.
Thank you everyone.

I do understand your problems, Frenchy, and I think trying to solve this mystery is going to be very difficult after what is now a 50 year gap. I was always convinced that Enid did not write that, but wondered if one of her staff had written it for her, but this changes now for two reasons. Firstly Imogen was 100% certain immediately that there was never a caravan of any sort at Green Hedges and secondly that is not Enid's writing paper. I just picked a letter at random, but I have numerous examples of her handwriting here - that is just one page of about 50 letters that I have got to Carey Blyton and I have a whole book of hers that she wrote in 1964. You will see from the letter that I have posted that her writing paper was very thin as you can clearly see the writing on the reverse page. I have seen dozens of letters written by Enid Blyton and however short they were she always indented the first paragraph. She often wrote more letters in a day than I have done in the last 20 years!!

She must have written the word 'sincerely' many times every day and she would never have spelt in wrongly as is the case here. I have seen a perfectly coherent letter that she wrote in 1968 just a few months before she died, and I have had contact with a nurse who looks after Altzheimer's patients who said that nobody in an advanced stage could have done this and she was quite convinced that although Enid suffered from a severe form of dementia caused by a hardening of the arteries that she did not have Altzheimer's but that is another matter.

I would love to know where Mr Baker collected the caravan from and how he paid, I would have thought in those days it would have been when he collected it, but of course we will never know.

I am convinced that something, somewhere is wrong, but I suspect that this was done before Mr Baker collected the caravan. I am not even totally convinced about the signature now as almost always the middle stroke from the 'E' went straight into the 'n'. I may scan the second page of that letter and you will see what I mean.

It really IS intriguing! I think it makes more sense for the date and the signature to be fakes also...but it's still strange that the paper itself appears to be a copy, as it's different quality to that which Enid usually used.

I wondered if it was maybe some servant of Enid's who was selling something wrongly in her name - or maybe even a neighbour. As I've mentioned before, the person posing as Enid writes conveniently that they won't be able to meet the buyer when they come and collect the caravan...very convenient, and of course that suggests that Enid wasn't involved in the sale at all - BUT presumably it would be picked up by Mr Baker from the address on the receipt (Enid's address) unless for some reason it was arranged that it be collected from elsewhere.

In the letter 'Enid' seems to be suggesting Mr Baker will pick it up from Green Hedges...which makes the plot even thicker! How did the seller get away with exchanging a caravan in the driveway of Green hedges without anyone noticing?!

What a fascinating thread! Frenchy, the caravan is wonderful.