Faculty Sleuth

NEWSPAPER headlines across the nation in late December read, "College Professor Proves 1871 Arctic Explorer Murdered." The scholar-sleuth is a member of the Dartmouth faculty.

He is not a professional archaeologist, as one might logically assume. He is Chauncey C. Loomis Jr., Associate Professor of English, an inveterate world traveler who is writing a biography of explorer Charles Francis Hall.

An authority on the Victorian novel, he came to Dartmouth in 1960 from Princeton where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Thackeray. He freely admits that a major attraction was Baker Library's Stefansson Collection.

An aura of mystery surrounded the death of Charles Francis Hall, leader of a Smithsonian Institution expedition to discover the North Pole. Even though a naval court of inquiry ruled his death due to natural causes, doubts persisted. Vilhjalmur Stefansson on a routine purchase order had scribbled his belief that Hall's body would be fairly well preserved by the frigid temperatures and Professor Loomis decided to follow up his tip.

Last summer, following arduous research in Baker Library, the Smithsonian Institution and Cambridge University, he led a four-man expedition to the desolate gravesite in North Greenland. The body was disinterred and an autopsy performed. Specimens of hair and fingernails were sent to the Center for Forensic Sciences in Toronto. Neutron activation tests, using radioactive materials, showed that he had received toxic amounts of arsenic during the last two weeks of his life. An earlier autopsy had revealed arsenic in the skull but this was inconclusive as arsenic was often used in hairdressing and medicine.

Hall apparently was the victim of a mutinous voyager 97 years ago. Tension ran high when he ordered his ship into a harbor 500 miles from the North Pole to wait out the winter's treacherous ice floes. Several men wanted to sail further south to warmer, safer waters.

The historic summer trip was the fourth arctic expedition for Professor Loomis whose biography of Hall is entitled Weird and Tragic Shores. His wanderlust, gained primarily through readings as a youth, has also led him on three expeditions to Peru and several to Africa.

His cold weather work is turning out to be "hot copy" in the journalistic world. Life magazine has scheduled an article on Loomis' revelations in the Hall Case. CBS Television recently purchased his motion pictures on a Bering Sea expedition to capture live musk-oxen, the basis of a new arctic textile industry.

Professor Loomis, a member of the Explorers Club, is definitely not the, stereotype of the sheltered, sedentary college English teacher.

"Thinking about stereotypes is delightful in literature, but dangerous in life," said the professor whose real-life exploits rival those of the characters in the Victorian novels he teaches.

Prof. Chauncey C. Loomis Jr. of the English Department (standing) at the arcticgrave of explorer Charles Francis Hall.