(🧵)I have a mystery. Who wants to help me solve it?
In the archives of the Swedish church in London they mention this person who claimed to be an aristocrat. He was a resident in a hospital on their account.
But this noble house was not part of the Swedish order any more, and I wonder if he was an imposter.
I think the text says
Nieroth A. ? Von
"Litteratör"
Kallar sig "Baron" (nyligen var in? baron Nieroth ? far? ? ej i äktenskap
Exit? journ? [Dates]
Död
TIL that—as of 1954—an original van Gogh painting hanging in the bedroom of a woman working as a telephone operator and sharing a Manhattan apartment with two others would be enough to raise suspicion that she had another source of income but not enough to suggest that she was wealthy.
In my copy of the Swedish register of the nobility (1983) it lists the Nieroth family as one that was never admitted to the Swedish House of Lords, and which only survives overseas. https://mastodon.nu/@Loukas/112580647029314206
Looking in the database of the House of Lords I find this guy. The last widow of this family died in 1898. Could he be the father outside wedlock of our 'baron'? https://minerva.riddarhuset.se/att/nieroth-3/
Here, at any rate, is the death record of Catherine, 'Kate' Sawtell, an artist who was independently wealthy and who the 'baron' stayed with in Bloomsbury. We know it was her, because another record says she owed property in Newport, Monmouthshire, where she died.
Newman street, which is indeed off Oxford Street, is where they lived together. Number 23 is unfortunately a modern building, which usually means it was hit by German bombs. It's next-door neighbour gives us an idea of how the baron and Kate lived.