Vauxhall Road again

[annemehr at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 87233

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...>
wrote:
> All right - some information on the 'Vauxhall Road' issue.

Annemehr:
First of all, thanks so much for the research you've been doing!  As
one of the first adherents to Carolyn's theory that Riddle/Voldemort
actually has some powerful Muggle backers, I've been reading with
extreme interest. (BTW, I've playfully dubbed her theory
D.I.A.R.I.S.T.: Dual Intrigue: Amagical Rich Influence Slytherin's Tom)

But I'm afraid I have a complication for you.

Shaun:

> Several people have already mentioned the Spurgeon Orphanage 
> which was very close to the area in question<snip>
> 
> So if Tom Riddle had wound up in that orphanage, it's 
> perfectly plausible he could have gone to Vauxhall Road.
> 
> The Spurgeon Orphanage was evacuated on September 1st 1939, 
> and the children were move to Reigate.
> 
> If Tom was born in 1927 (which is the Lexicon date), he 
> would have potentially started at Hogwarts in 1938. I don't 
> think we have any indication on when the diary was purchased 
> - but it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume he might have 
> obtained it around the time he started at Hogwarts, even if 
> he didn't enchant it until a little later.

Annemehr:

We know from canon that the Diary was dated; when the book mentions
"blank pages" it only means "not filled in," not absolutely blank. 
>From CoS ch. 13:

"Harry saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the
cover told him it was fifty years old.  He opened it eagerly. On the
first page he could just make out the name 'T. M. Riddle' in smudged ink."

And even though, just a short way down the same page, it says:

"Harry peeled the wet pages apart.  They were completely blank.  There
wasn't the faintest trace of writing on any of them, not even /Auntie
Mabel's birthday,/ or /dentist, half-past three/"

we find out later the same chapter that there are dates printed inside
also (this quote is from after the dwarf spilled ink all over the
diary in the struggle to give Harry his singing Valentine):

"The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind,
stopping halfway through the month of June.  Mouth hanging open, Harry
saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned
into a miniscule television screen."

So this is definitely a diary for a particular year, with dates inside
and everything.  Diaries like these are always sold in the year
preceding the one they are for, aren't they?  So Riddle would have had
to have bought it in 1942?  I'm assuming the June thirteenth in the
diary was 50 years before the end of Harry's second year, so it was a
1943 diary (going by Lexicon timeline).  Still, I don't think it's
impossible that Riddle would have been in an area of London that was
familiar to him in, say, August '42, even if the orphanage was no
longer there.  He may have stopped there before going to Kings Cross
that year.  Would August 31st be too early to buy a diary for the
following year?  Or could he have pretended to go back to the
orphanage at Christmas, and bought it then?

Shaun:
> 
> Now - the question has been asked why would Tom have wound 
> up at an orphanage in London - some people feel it would 
> make more sense for him to have been in an orphanage nearer 
> where he was born and on the face of it that seems quite 
> reasonable.

Annemehr:

I don't see this as much of a problem.  If there was no orphanage
particularly near Little Hangleton that could have taken the infant
Tom, they could have sent him almost anywhere, depending on who took
on the task and who they knew with connections to an orphanage.  Of
course, if you subscribe to DIARIST, you could well believe that the
Muggles of the theory just wanted to get him away from his father's
family to prevent unwanted questions.  ;-)

Annemehr