F.A. Mitchell-Hedges

True Explorer

Frederick Albert "F.A" Mitchell-Hedges lived an adventurous life akin to "Indiana Jones" - and he has passed the torch to Bill Homann, the current guardian of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull.

Perhaps "F.A." is most famous for the crystal skull that bears his name, but he was also a well-known explorer and archeologist for the British Museum, and published several books about his adventures.

While questions may still abound regarding the creation and origin of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull, it is truly a wondrous marvel to behold. One thing remains unchallenged: the powerful and profound experiences that people encounter from its energy.

Considered by many to be an intrepid pioneer of his era, there are several accounts of his life:

Born October 22, 1882 -  died in June of 1959 at age 76

(Quoted from https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26953742/f._a.-mitchell-hedges )

Explorer, Archaeologist. He was an English adventurer, regarded by many to be the real "Indiana Jones". He traveled the world in expeditions claiming he discovered the cradle of civilization in Nicaragua and that the Bay Islands of Honduras were remnants of the lost City of Atlantis. Thousands of ancient artifacts that he collected at his own expense are now residing in various museums world wide. He is best noted for having discovered what is termed "The Crystal Skull of Doom" at the Maya ruins of Lubaantun, in 1927. The Crystal Skull has since then been a mystery, surrounded with controversies about it's myths, mystic powers, origin and age. In May 2008, Paramount Pictures released "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", an adventure film based on the search to find the legendary Crystal Skull.

Making it Into Who's Who

This is the 1928 entry in Who's Who for F. A. Mitchell-Hedges. It can be found on page 2094 of this volume and is printed here in its entirety. (Source)

"Mitchell-Hedges, Frederick Albert: Explorer and author; b.22 Oct.1882; s. of John Hedges, of Stewkley, Bucks; m. 1906, Lillian Agnes Clarke; one s. Educ.: Berkhampstead; University College, London. F.R.G.S. 1921; F.L.S. 1921; F.Z.S. 1923; F.R.A.I. 1923; life devoted to exploration and deep sea research work, chiefly in Central American Republics, Caribbean Sea, and Pacific Ocean; holds numerous world's records for capture of giant fish, and has added largely to the knowledge of the ichthyological science; penetrated unknown portion of hinterland of Panama, 1922-23, discovering new race of people; presented large collection of hitherto totally unrecorded specimens to British Museum, Museums of Oxford and Cambridge, etc.; penetrated interior of British Honduras with Dr. T.W. F. Gann, discovering ruins of vast Maya city of Lubaantun, 1924; returned on a fresh expedition into the interior of British Honduras in 1925, and commenced work of clearing and excavating the Maya city resulting in the discovery of an aboriginal stone building covering nearly 8 acres, also a stone-built amphitheater, the first ever found on the American continent and returned with specimens taken from the Indian mounds, which are not at the British Museum. Publications: Battles with Giant Fish; Journalistic work and scientific articles. Recreations: Big-game fishing, exploring, yachting, big-game hunting, entomology. Address: Sandbanks, Parkston, Dorset."

 

See F. A. Mitchell-Hedges in Action courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yYysY2lHkA

 

Adventurer and Explorer

(Derived from https://www.badassoftheweek.com/mitchellhedges )

Frederick Albert "F.A." Mitchell-Hedges, sometimes known as "Mike Hedges", has been identified as a real-life Indiana Jones, but with a deep British accent, and often depicted smoking a pipe. He earned fame for exploring Central America and the Carribean, discovering lost cities, uncovering ancient artifacts and battling giant land creatures and aquatic monsters.

Born in 1882 in Buckinghamshire, the young Mitchell-Hedges was somewhat of a rebel in an uptight British household. Disliking school and not wanting to pursue the family stock-brokering business, “Mike” frequently caused trouble, and spent his time reading any adventure novels he could get his hands on. 

After one particularly rowdy night, when Mike and his friends were arrested for starting a bar fight after cheekily throwing ice cubes down the low-cut blouse of an apparently buxom woman, the 18 year-old Mitchell-Hedges was shipped off to Canada.

Following a stint in New York where he reportedly was involved in a scandalous business enterprise, Mitchell-Hedges bounced around various odd jobs in places ranging from Texas to New Orleans before landing in Mexico, where he was promptly captured by Pancho Villa.  Reportedly,  Villa grabbed Mitchell-Hedges and threatened to execute him on the spot, but F.A. burst out singing “God Save the King” to prove that he was in fact British and not American.  The story goes that this valiant outburst earned him a spot riding around with the Mexican outlaw, robbing train cars and raiding towns.

In 1914, Pancho Villa allowed Mitchell-Hedges to return to London so that he could enlist in the Army and serve his country in World War I. Unfortunately, the British Army declared Hedges unfit for service due to two bullets lodged in his thigh from the Pancho Villa raids - so he returned to New York. Not long after he arrived in the city, a close friend from Canada passed away, leaving behind an orphaned daughter, Anna, whom he adopted. Anna Mitchell-Hedges came to live with him and would accompany him on future expeditions. 

When Mitchell-Hedges subsequently returned to London, he had a chance encounter at Waterloo Train Station with the mesmerizing Lady Richmond Brown. They had been friends long before, and when they met again, Brown revealed that she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and only had a year or so to live. This prompted F.A. Mitchell-Hedges to become an explorer - funded by Lady Richmond Brown, they both set out on globe-trotting adventures.

F.A. Mitchell-Hedges spent the next several years having extraordinary adventures, discovering uncharted civilizations, and uncovering buried treasure across Central America and the Caribbean.  He explored ancient ruins and tombs, found sacred artifacts from long-forgotten empires, conquered giant beasts, and traveled among the indigenous populations located deep in the jungles of Belize and Honduras.  He frequently reported his daring tales to newspapers back in London, and the rare artifacts he unearthed were immediately shipped off to the British Museum, where they are still on display to this day. 

He told fascinating tales of adventure, which often involved him saving Lady Brown, his adopted daughter Anna, or his beautiful young secretary Jane Harvey from imminent peril.  He was involved in hand-to-hand combat with jaguars, giant scorpions, poisonous snakes, and bloodthirsty bears, and one time he even claimed to have taken out a vicious oversized carnivorous iguana with a hunting knife.  He discovered the Mayan Ruins at Lubaantun, documented the “bizarre” rituals of a tribe of cannibals, and recovered priceless pieces of great archaeological significance.

He was also a master fisherman. While in the Caribbean, he would sail out in a small wooden canoe and use a rod-and-reel to haul in massive stingrays, marlins and swordfish.  In his well-illustrated book, "Battles with Giant Fish", Mitchell-Hedges claims to have reeled in a 31-foot sawfish and says that he once caught a 700-pound man-eating killer shark off the coast of Jamaica.  While living on the island of Roatan, he accidentally dug up three chests of buried pirate treasure, filled to the top with gold doubloons.

Having become fabulously wealthy and incredibly well-known for his amazing exploits, Mitchell-Hedges bounced around the world, living in places such as Hollywood, London, New York, and Paris.  In the 1930s he had a Sunday night radio show in New York where he would tell amazing stories about his adventures in Central America.

F.A. Mitchell-Hedges died in Sheldon (UK) in 1959 at age 76, but his ashes were scattered in the seas. His name and legend lives on in the famous crystal skull that his daughter, Anna, reportedly found in the archeological site of Lubaantun.

 

More about the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull with present guardian Bill Homann who was gifted the skull by Anna Mitchell-Hedges.

 

F.A. Mitchell-Hedges
TIME LINE

Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges (1882-1959)

(Curated from http://www.rayhowgego.co.uk/frederick_albert_mitchell-hedges.htm )

Below is a timeline of F.A. Mitchell-Hedges life, as researched by Raymond John Howgego. According to him:

Virtually everything in this document has been confirmed from census and other official records, birth and marriage certificates, ships’ passenger lists and other reliable sources. Contentious issues and dates are indicated by (?)
Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges is indicated by 'F'.
Additions, corrections and amendments to this biography are welcomed but must be accompanied by scrupulous documentary evidence. (Please contact: ray@howgego.co.uk)

The material reproduced on this page has been seen and agreed by all contactable descendants of the Hedges / Mitchell-Hedges family.

Researchers specifically interested in the crystal skull are directed to comments given under the years 1917, 1926, 1943 and 1952.

1882: F (known as ‘Mike’, ‘Midge’, ‘Mitch’ or ‘MH’) was born in Barnsbury, Islington, on 22 October 1882. He was the eldest child of John Hedges (born 1847 in Aston Abbotts, Bucks; a dealer in gold, silver, diamonds and jewellery; died 1934) and his wife Julia Alice, née Goldstein (born 1852 in Islington; daughter of the Polish silversmith Martin Goldstein [census record for 1891]). His parents had married in 1872 at the church of St Mary, Upper Street, Islington. F had two brothers, George Mitchell Hedges (born c.1887) and Alfred Vander Hedges (1893-1957), and a sister Dorothy B. Hedges (born c.1888).

F would take the name Mitchell (some time before 1906) from his paternal grandmother, Louisa Mitchell. Louisa, a native of Somerset, married George Hedges (Frederick’s grandfather) in 1846. From his early 20s F would sign himself Mitchell-Hedges.

1891: F residing with family at 74 Bishops Road, Paddington. [census record for 1891]

18??-1898: F educated at Berkhampstead School, Cheltenham (?-1896) and University College School, London (1896-98).

1899: Unsuited to the strict régime of public school education, F left school at sixteen and, at the instigation of his father, joined a copper-prospecting expedition to northern Norway under the direction of George Brooke Mee, an associate of his father.

1899: November 1899: F returned to London and obtained through his father employment as a clerk in the Stock Exchange [confirmed by census record].

1901: F residing at 74 Bishops Road, Paddington. Working as a clerk in the Stock Exchange. [census record for 1901.]

1901/1902: F sails from Liverpool to Montreal, then proceeds to New York to seek his fortune on Wall Street.

1906: After ‘five years in Manhattan’ F returns to London, ‘£4000 richer’ than when he left.

1906: F. residing at 42 Kensington Park Gardens, Notting Hill Gate. Operating a stockbroking business in partnership with others [marriage certificate].

1906: Married 24 November 1906 to Lilian Agnes Clarke (known as ‘Dolly’, born c.1879 in Woolwich, Kent; living in Pimlico; daughter of Alexander Clarke, deceased, and his wife Charlotte Clarke (born c.1860)). Marriage certificate records F’s name as Mitchell-Hedges.

1906: F accompanies his father to France to purchase antique silver. Meets the Le Guillon family.

1910: F is living with his wife at Denbigh House, 25 Chepstow Villas, Bayswater. This was the former home of the wealthy solicitor Edward Foligno Lee, who died there in September 1909. [Address recorded in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, 1910, which F had joined in 1906].

1911: F is living with his wife and wife's mother at Southview, Sandbanks, near Parkstone, Dorset.

1912: 26 July 1912: F, trading as Pembery, Robinson & Co. faces bankruptcy charges. Discharge suspended for three years. [Announcement: The Times, 18 August 1912]

1912 (?): F returns to USA. Works as a cowhand in Texas and waiter in New Orleans (?)

1913: F migrates into Mexico. Captured by Pancho Villa (?) Wounded in the leg during bandit raids (?)

1914: F is back in London by February 1914.

1914: 17 October 1914. An illegitimate son, Frederick Joseph Stanners Mitchell-Hedges, is born to F and his mistress, Miss Mary Florence Stanners. The birth took place at the home of the mother, 77 Wymering Mansions, London, and was registered in the District of Paddington on 24 November 1914. [Birth certificate seen]. 

1914: F offers service in WW1 (?) Exempted because of leg wounds (?)

1915-1916: F returned to New York, then back to England. Living at ‘The Limes’, Stoke Mandeville [phone book].

1917: 6 January 1917: F arrived in New York from Liverpool aboard the SS New York. Gives home address (that of his father) as West Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

1917: January-March: Encounters Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky.

1917: F looks up the Le Guillon family, which had emigrated to Port Colborne, Ontario, in 1906. The father had returned to France in 1914 to fight on the Western Front, only to be gassed in 1916. The mother had died in childbirth shortly before F’s visit. F adopts Anne-Marie (‘Anna’ or ‘Sammy’) Le Guillon (born 1 January 1907), the sixth of ten children, who was being looked after by an uncle. F takes Anna back to New York.

1919: F returns to England and declines an invitation from the Intelligence Service to visit Russia, although having befriended Leon Trotsky (?). F returns to Mexico and Central America where he spends two years (?) travelling in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and San Salvador. Caught up in a revolution in Honduras. F is accompanied briefly by Anna (?) but then sends her off to boarding school [where?]. The reasons for F’s tour of Central America are uncertain, but shipping records give his occupation as ‘merchant.’

1920: 24 December 1920: F arrives in Southampton from New York in the SS Adriatic. Gives occupation as ‘merchant’ and home address as Sandbanks Park, Parkstone, Dorset [that of his wife Lilian and her mother].

1921: F decides to return to Central America to catch record-breaking fish. Meets at Waterloo Station an ‘old friend’, the self-styled explorer and angler Lady Lilian Mabel Alice Richmond Brown (née Roussel). R B largely finances future excursions.

1922: January 1922: F elected a fellow of the Linnean Society.

1922: F & Lady Richmond Brown visit the Kuna people on the Rio Chucunaque in Panama. R B writes an absurd & patronising account of the Kuna in her Unknown Tribes Uncharted Seas (1924). Some Kuna artefacts were given by F and R B to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1924.

F fishes (at a date prior to 1923) for giant fish with old friends General Sadlier-Jackson, D.S.O. and Bill Markham. Continues fishing on later visits.

1923: 31 March 1923: Lady Richmond Brown (alone) arrives in Liverpool from Panama aboard the Ortega.

1923: June 1923: Richmond Brown elected a fellow of the Linnean Society.

1923: Richmond Brown elected a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

c.1923: F purchases Trenance Farm at Mawgan Porth, Cornwall, possibly as a 'holiday home'.

1923: F publishes Battles with Giant Fish.

1923: F and Richmond Brown return to Honduras in the SS Coronado, this time to search for lost Mayan cities. They are accompanied by the artist and yachtsman Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929).

1924: 25 May 1924: F and Lady Richmond Brown arrive in Bristol from Tela, Honduras, in the SS Patuca. F. gives occupation as ‘explorer’ and home address as Sandbanks Park. Lady R B gives address as White Rock, Brockenhurst, Hampshire.

1924: 27 September 1924: F and Richmond Brown in receipt of a conveyance (mortgage) of £4000 from Ellis Hovell Minns of Pembroke College, Cambridge, gent., and Gerald Fred. Nalder of Truro, gent. [National Archives. Cornwall Record Office].

1924: F, now a minor celebrity, hires a secretary Jane Harvey Houlson (1899-1953)

With R B and Houlson, F returns to British Honduras. They fall in with the archaeologist Thomas William Francis Gann (1868-1938), the recently retired district medical officer who had previously excavated in the region. Under Gann’s guidance they visit Lubaantun on the Rio Grande in the south of the country. The work stimulates three official British Museum expeditions in 1926, 1927 and 1928 under the direction of the celebrated British Museum archaeologist, curator and writer Thomas Athol Joyce (born London 1878; died 1942) [see also below].

1924: Richmond Brown publishes Unknown Tribes, Uncharted Seas. [in intro. she gives her address as White Rock, Brockenhurst, Hants]

1925: 20 September 1925: Gladys Harvey Houlson (secretary) & Lady Richmond Brown (explorer) arrive in Bristol from Tela, Honduras aboard the Casanare. F writes an article for the Illustrated London News claiming to have discovered the Lubaantun site.

1925: F and Richmond Brown return to British Honduras for a full-scale expedition to Lubaantun sponsored by the Daily Mail. Commenced work of clearing and excavating the Maya city resulting in the discovery of an aboriginal stone building covering nearly 8 acres, and a stone-built amphitheatre, the first ever found on the American continent.

1926: 3 October 1926: F and Lady Richmond Brown arrive in Plymouth from Cristobal aboard the Rugia.

1927: January 1927. F suffers a mysterious attack 'by six voting Liberals' at Ripley, followed by 'the loss of six shrunken heads'. [The Times, 11 Nov. 1930; The Argus (Melbourne), 14 Nov. 1930].

1927: 8 May 1927: Thomas Athol Joyce arrives in Bristol from Central America aboard the Patuca. [1^st British Museum Expedition.]

1929: 9 June 1929: Thomas Athol Joyce arrives in Bristol from Cristobal, Panama, aboard the Carare. [3^rd British Museum Expedition].

1930: 3 August 1930: Lady Richmond Brown (alone) arrives in Bristol from Canal Zone aboard the Ariguani. Address: Burgate Court, Fordingbridge, Hants.

1931: Richmond Brown divorces her husband with F named as co-respondent. Extensive financial resettlements [National Archives. Cornwall Record Office]. From now on, F travels almost exclusively with his secretary Houlson.

1931: F publishes Land of wonder and fear and The White Tiger.

1932: 22 August 1932: F arrived in New York from Cristobal, Canal Zone, in the SS Calamares. Gives occupation as ‘author & explorer’. Last permanent address New York. UK address (that of Lilian) now West Cliff on Sea, Cornwall. Also on board is Gladys Houlson, secretary, daughter of Lois Houlson, address Parkstone, Dorset.

1932: 1 November 1932: Agreement to settle ownership. Lady Lilian Mabel Alice Richmond Brown with Fred. Albert Mitchell Hedges of Penzance and New York. Property called Holywell property. [National Archives: Cornwall Record Office].

1932: F and Houlson return to Central America for yet another visit.

1933: 13 September 1933: F and Houlson arrived in New York from Cristobal (left Aug 15) via Kingston, Jamaica in the SS Calamares. F gives occupation ‘author & explorer’. Last permanent address New York.

1933: 18 December 1933: Legal charge, and mortgage for £1300. Dame Lilian Mabel Alice Richmond Brown of Hants., and Fred Albert Mitchell Hedges of Penzance and New York, to Sydney Henning Belfrage of London, Geo. Reg. Ward of London, esq., and Percy Thos. Hills of Kent, gent., mortgagees. Property as above. [National Archives. Cornwall Record Office].

1933: F returns once again to Central America, apparently with Houlson and Anna Le Guillon.

1934: 17 May 1934: F arrived in Philadelphia from Puerto Castilla, Honduras in the SS Tela. No other passengers. Last permanent address 38, West 59^th Street, New York.

F sails immediately for England, possibly in connection with the death of his father.

1934: 28 September 1934: Anne-Marie Le Guillon (gives birthplace as Marlbark, Ontario; gives contact address as Mrs Herve, Port Colborne) and Gladys Harvey Houlson arrive in New York from Puerto Castilla, Honduras, in the SS Darien.

1934: 16 August 1934: F arrived in USA from Southampton aboard Empress of Britain.

1934: F’s father died, cutting F off from his will. F forced to sell many of his artefacts and make a living from public speaking.

1935: 5 January 1935: Release of share and interest. Fred. Albert Mitchell Hedges to Lady Lilian Mabel Alice Richmond Brown. Property as above / Reconveyance. Mrs. Bullimore to Lady Lilian Mabel Alice Richmond Brown. Property as above. [National Archives. Cornwall Record Office].

1937: F publishes Battling with sea monsters.

1938: F begins a lucrative trade in antique silver (like his father before him), which supports him comfortably for the rest of his life.

1938: F undertook various semi-official missions to the USA to encourage those with influence to back the war in Europe (?) [there is no documentary evidence for this.].  F. married a second time ‘after securing a divorce in Mexico’ to a gold-digger named Dorothy Copp.

1939-46: F lived at ‘Uplands’, Fordingbridge, Hampshire, with Anna, then (1942-46) at Burgate Manor, Fordingbridge. Allegedly entertained General Hague and General Alexander, Churchill, General Montgomery and General de Gaulle [no confirmation available.]

1943: 15 October 1943: F purchased the crystal skull for £400 at a Sotheby’s auction. The skull had previously fallen into the hands of the London art dealer Sydney Burney, and photographs of it had been published in the journal Man as early as July 1936. The earliest record of the skull is in 1934.

1946: F and Anna moved to Canterton Manor, Brook, near Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

1948: F and Anna invited by Field Marshal Jan Smuts to South Africa. Stayed at St Lucia. F bought the hotel and several surrounding shops and houses at St Lucia (for Anna). Also makes several generous bequests from his silver collection to the South African people.

1949: 27 May 1949: F. and Anne Le Guillon arrived Southampton from Durban on the Stirling Castle. Address: Canterton Manor, Brook, Nr Lyndhurst, Hants.

1949: Second visit of F and Anne to South Africa. F sells the properties at St Lucia but has difficulty transferring the proceeds out of the country.

1950: 28 April 1950: F and Anne Le Guillon arrived Southampton from Durban on the Stirling Castle. Address as above.

1951: It was around this time that F claimed to have recovered the miraculous Virgin of Kazan, a bejewelled 16th-century icon which the Russians credited with helping to defeat Napoleon in 1812.

1951: Third visit of F and Anne to South Africa? F announces his intention to excavate at Kilwa, on the coast of Angelia, 'to discover the remains of a culture dating back to before the Persian civilization'

1951: July-August 1951. F and Anne 'excavate' at Kilwa, and explore inward from the coast at 'Sanji ya Manjomo', finding extensive ruins of a previously unknown city. Details of F's expeditions around Kilwa are confusing. It appears that he was at some time participating in an excavation headed by the celebrated historian and archaeologist Anthony Gervase Mathew. This expedition was accompanied by John Perry Moffett (the Commissioner for Social Development in Tanganyika ) and by Frederick Joseph Stanners Mitchell-Hedges (F's son), who was serving as a military officer in Tanganyika and functioned as photographer. It appears that F and Anne then diverted to carry out their own excavations on the island of Songo Mnara where F became seriously ill on account of losing or swallowing his stock of medication. A chapter-length description of an encounter with M-H and Anna is found in John Robertson’s privately published autobiography, Dare to Dream, 2013, pp. 77-81. The Van Riet Lowe Collection at the University of the Witwatersrand includes a collection of small artefacts (mainly beads) found by Mitchell Hedges in 1951 on the beach below the castle at Kilwa Kisiwani.

1952: 14 February 1952: Lilian Agnes Mitchell-Hedges (alone) arrived in London from Durban on the Stirling Castle. Lilian gives her address as ‘The Watchers’, Polperro, Cornwall. This address is also given for Lilian in the 1948, 1950 & 1951 phone books.

1953: F purchased a substantial estate in Berkshire, Farley Castle, Farley Hill, near Reading, where he lived with his wife Lilian and his adopted daughter Anna.

1954: F publishes his autobiography, Danger my Ally.

1958: F and Anna move to Shaldon House, Shaldon, near Teignmouth, Devon. (phone book).

1959: 12 June 1959: F died of a stroke. Cremated at Torquay Crematorium, 15 June. Ashes scattered at sea off Shaldon by his devoted Anna. [Announcement in The Times, 16 June 1959.] Probate gives value of estate at £2319-3-1.

[Probate record: Lewes, Sussex, 21 September 1959. Ledger year 1959, vol. 7, page 381.]

Anna is looked after by F’s secretary Cynthia Cowles (died 1990), then in 1967 returned to Canada. Anna bought a motel in Kitchener, Ontario, then returned to England for several years to live with relatives, then returned to Kitchener. In 1996 she visited Belize with Bill Homann, a karate teacher who inherited the crystal skull. Anna died in April 2007.

Bibliography

Documentary Sources:

General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London: General Register Office.

Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inward Passenger Lists. National Archives. Kew, Surrey, England.

USA Inward Passenger Lists & Inward Border Crossings. Online database, Provo, UT.

Cornwall Record Office. National Archives. [Records of mortgages, financial settlements, etc. Mitchell Hedges & Lady Richmond Brown].

Probate Record. Lewes, Sussex.

Primary printed sources:

Note: No attempt has been made to list Mitchell Hedges’s numerous articles in newspapers and journals.

Frederick Mitchell Hedges:

Battles with giant fish (London 1923; London 1925 [with additions]; Portuguese trans. as Combates com Monstros Marinhos, Lisbon 1939).

Episodes from "Battles with Giant Fish" (London 1927).

Land of wonder and fear (London 1931; New York 1931).

The White Tiger (London 1931; Wroughton 1943).

Battling with sea monsters (London 1937; as Battles with monsters of the sea, Indianapolis 1937).

Danger my ally (London [printed The Hague] 1954; Boston 1955).

‘Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges’, Who’s Who, London 1928 [self-authored].

Lady Richmond Brown, Unknown tribes uncharted seas (London 1924).

Jane [i.e. Gladys] Harvey Houlson, Blue Blaze. Danger and delight in strange islands of Honduras (London 1934; Indianapolis 1934).

Selected secondary sources:

T.C. Bridges & H. Hessell Tiltman, Heroes of Modern Adventure (London, 1927, pp. 19-31).

Richard Garvin, The Crystal Skull: The Story of the Mystery, Myth and Magic of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull Discovered in a Lost Mayan City during a Search for Atlantis (New York 1973).

Matthiew Harper, ‘Treasure hunters of the Bay Islands’, Bay Islands Voice [Belize], 2, 4, 2004.

Sibley S. Morrill, Ambrose Bierce, F. A. Mitchell-Hedges, and the crystal skull (San Francisco 1972).

Other relevant publications, not specific to Mitchell Hedges:

Thomas William Francis Gann:

The Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan and Northern British Honduras (Washington 1918).

In an Unknown Land (London 1924).

Mystery Cities. Exploration and adventure in Lubaantun (London 1925).

Ancient Cities and Modern Tribes: exploration and adventure in Maya lands (London 1926).

Maya Cities. A record of exploration and adventure in Middle America (London 1927).

Discoveries and Adventures in Central America (London 1928).

Thomas Athol Joyce, Report on the Investigations at Lubaantun, British Honduras, in 1926 (London 1926).

Thomas Athol Joyce, Report on the British Museum Expedition to British Honduras, 1927 (London 1927).

Thomas Athol Joyce & Thomas Gann, Report on the British Museum Expedition to British Honduras, 1928 (London 1928).