Mr Cuthbert Marlinspike

Shot dead in a robbery on the Mile End Road, 4th November 1908, after declining to surrender his wallet until the thief had corrected his error in the demand "Give it to me or you’re dead". As he lay dying he was heard to say: "…the construction is ungrammatical. The conditional is misplaced. It should be — give it to me, or you are a dead man — the verb taking its proper subject. There is no such construction as ‘or you’re dead’. It is barbarism. It is —" The sentence was not completed. The Society notes that the thief was apprehended within the week, and that the arresting officer’s charge sheet was, on Marlinspike’s posthumous instruction, returned for correction. The corrected sheet survives in the archive. Marlinspike died a Fellow in good standing and is annually commemorated on the 4th of November, at which date the Society stands in silence for the duration it would have taken him to complete the correction.