When William Odell Tolman (1910-1980) was a very young missionary from Oakley, Idaho, serving in the Scottish District of the British Mission, he made the acquaintance of a man who introduced himself as Leslie Israel Pinder, a Jewish man who had become very interested in the Book of Mormon when he had heard or read the first few chapters of I Nephi. He shared with Elder Tolman a copy of a newspaper, the Jewish Times, which, he said (the paper was printed in Yiddish, so Elder Tolman could not read it), contained a very interesting article written by Joseph Herman Hertz (1872-1946), the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire. Dr. Hertz discussed ancient Jewish recordkeeping practices, and mentioned that at the time of King Zedekiah, the chief recordkeeper was a man named Laban.

Elder Tolman, understandably, was greatly interested in the article which Pinder translated for him orally, and he gladly accepted the copy of the newspaper. He carefully clipped the column that Pinder had read to him, noted that the paper had been published on 1 November 1930, and took the clipping home with him when he returned to Idaho in time to celebrate Christmas with his family that year.

Elder Tolman may have showed the clipping to friends or family, reporting what he had been told about it, but it was more than a year later, in the early summer of 1932, before he did anything more with it. He sent the clipping to Elder James E. Talmage in Salt Lake City who, just as Elder Tolman had been, was instantly intrigued by the possibilities. Unlike Elder Tolman, though, Elder Talmage immediately set about trying to learn more.

The first thing he wanted was a complete copy of the November 1, 1930 issue of the Jewish Times – Elder Tolman had not appreciated the scholarly importance of the clipping’s context – neither the name of the newspaper nor its date, apparently, were preserved as part of the clipping – but Elder Talmage knew that such information would be important to validating the data it contained.

Elder Talmage wrote to James Hearknett Wallis (1861-1940), then serving in the British Mission. You know something of Brother Wallis, if you’ve ever sung the hymn “Come, Ye Children of the Lord” – he is the author of the hymn text. His family had joined the Church in London in 1877. He had emigrated to Utah in 1881, and later returned to England as a young missionary, helping to write and publish the Millennial Star. Returning again to the United States, Brother Wallis had continued his involvement in newspaper work – eventually writing for or editing or publishing some 22 newspapers in Utah and Idaho. Serving as a stake patriarch in Vernal in 1931, he was called to the British Mission to give blessings there – the first patriarch to bless the British Saints since the 1840s. Public sources generally say he gave about 1300 blessings on that mission – I have a letter in front me of me now where, late in 1932, he mentions having given “in the neighborhood of 1400 blessings,” with no end in sight to the number of Saints calling on him for their blessings. Later, he would spend another six months giving blessings, practically non-stop, to Saints in eastern Canada.

You’d think giving that many blessings, together with traveling to conferences where he met the Saints, and the work involved in recording those blessings, would be enough for a man who had just turned 70. Evidently it didn’t keep him busy enough, though, so with the blessing of Elder John A. Widtsoe, then serving as president of the European Mission, Elder Wallis began what most would consider enough for a full-time mission: He established a “publicity bureau” based in London, where he used his long newspaper experience to become acquainted with the British press, cultivating their good will, writing articles and getting them placed in newspapers, answering press questions … and, in his so-called spare time, searching for information on that mysterious newspaper clipping Elder Tolman had taken home in 1930.

Because it was Elder Wallis to whom Elder Talmage turned. “We are very desirous,” he wrote, of securing a copy of the JEWISH TIMES of November 1, 1930. This is a journal published somewhere in London and printed in Hebrew characters.” He asked Elder Wallis to obtain a copy or reprint of the column, “which is described to us as an article by ‘Rabbi Dr. Hertz – Ancient Jewish History.’”

That’s all he had to go on … but “go” he did.

Late in July, with the help of “Elder McCarthy” (I haven’t been able to more fully identify him), Elder Wallis had obtained copies of the issues of the Jewish Times of October 31 and November 2, 1930 – but not of November 1, 1930. No issue had been printed that day – November 1 was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and they never printed the paper on Saturday. Still, he sent both issues to Elder Talmage.

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Next he contacted Durrant’s Press Cuttings Co., the newspaper clipping service he employed to provide him with cuttings of articles mentioning the Mormons in any part of the British Isles. Would they please search the files of the Jewish Times looking for the article – by then he had provided them with a photographic copy – in whatever issue of the paper it had been published? Durrant’s was not enthusiastic about the assignment – such research was not really within their general line of business, and the Jewish Times was printed in Whitechapel, at some distance from Fleet Street where most of the other London newspapers were based. They’d try, they said, to find somebody who could maybe perhaps sometime if possible search the files. No promises.

Up to this point, Elder Wallis had known only that Elder Talmage wanted that newspaper and wanted it badly – but he didn’t know why. Now Elder Talmage explained more fully. “You see what verification of this report would mean to us. An authentic mention of Laban as such officer would be more valuable as throwing a side-light upon the genuineness of the Book of Mormon than the archeological discoveries of which we make too much.”

That really kicked Elder Wallis into high gear. “I shall not cease my efforts so long as there is any hope of success.”

Elder Wallis went himself to the offices of the Jewish Times and explained what he was looking for. The manager was not in, but the staff took an interest in what seemed to them to be an odd request. Elder Wallis showed them the precious original clipping, which Elder Talmage had entrusted to the mails and to Elder Wallis. Through clues in an advertisement on the back of the clipping, a staff member thought he could locate the article. Elder Wallis told him that perhaps Elder Tolman had been mistaken and clipped the wrong column, and the newsman promised to find the clipping if it was there, and search the entire issue for anything that seemed relevant. It took him about 30 minutes; he returned to say that he had located the source of the clipping as the issue of October 31, 1930, but that there was nothing in the entire issue that answered Pinder’s description. The newsman knew who Dr. Hertz was, and knew that the paper sometimes published book reviews written by the rabbi, but to his knowledge Dr. Hertz had never written anything especially for the Jewish Times.

The next day, Elder Wallis went to the offices of Dr. Hertz himself. The rabbi was out of town at the moment, but his secretary was very obliging. They chatted for an hour, with Elder Wallis telling him that he was interested in “the way the Jews kept their records, histories, genealogies, etc.; custodians, records, historians and their successors; and if possible periods they occupied these positions.” The secretary offered to make an appointment for Elder Wallis to meet Dr. Hertz personally upon his return.

Leaving Dr. Hertz’s office, Elder Wallis went next to the British Museum, where he searched the catalog for material published by Dr. Hertz. He skimmed through it all – at least, all that was written in English – without finding anything relevant. “There is a mass of Jewish Literature in the Museum,” he reported to Elder Talmage, “and I am going to spend all the time I can there, running down this matter for you. If it is there, I will find it.”

Meanwhile, back in Utah, Elder Talmage had pursued the matter through other avenues. He had considered writing to Dr. Hertz, but instead asked Sidney B. Sperry of BYU to write, as one specialist to another. Dr. Sperry obliged … and in due course received this reply:

“Dear Sir:

“The Chief Rabbi is in receipt of yours of the 19th ult., and wishes me to Inform you that he is unaware of having written an article in which any reference was made to a certain Laban, keeper of records in Jerusalem in the days of Zedekiah. As far as he remembers, no article from his pen has ever appeared in the columns of the Jewish Times.

“Yours faithfully,

J.H. Taylor

And that was that. It seemed obvious that this answer was definitive: “Mr. Pinder – the friend of our missionary, Elder Tolman – was mistaken or deceived, or that Tolman misunderstood him.”

Still, Elder Talmage was reluctant to abandon the chase. “There is yet the possibility that some reference was made to Laban in a review appearing in the columns, perhaps as a short and even isolated paragraph. We shall have both issues of the Jewish Times which are at hand searched, paragraph by paragraph. In the meantime I doubt not you will continue your inquiries so far as you have the least promise of finding something on the subject.”

Elder Wallis continued his searches on into October, reading all he could in the British Museum, seeking an interview with Dr. Hertz, who had still not returned from traveling on the Continent.

In the meantime, Elder Tolman, in Idaho, had received a letter from a friend – F.M. Graham (whom I have been unable to fully identify, yet), serving as the branch president in Glasgow. President Graham had located an address for Leslie Pinder, the man who had started the whole chase, and Elder Wallis decided to go to Glasgow and talk to him directly.

At the end of November, five months after beginning the search, Elder Wallis reported his findings:

I have just returned from Glasgow, and while there had an interview with Leslie Ord Pinder. I was not long in concluding that the man is a fraud of the “first water,” and my first impression was confirmed at the end of our interview. At least to my satisfaction. He said that he was mistaken in telling Elder Tolman that the article was published in the “Jewish Times,” and that it was the “Jewish News,” in which he had read it. Also, that it was not Rabbi Hertz who was the author of the article, but a Rabbi Yappee. I asked him where this Rabbi lived so that I could have a personal interview with him, and he told me that his home was in Australia. I then asked him for his address, and he said he preferred to write him himself. I said I would like to write him also about some other material in addition to that involved in our correspondence, but to no avail. He would not give me any address. he said that he would not delay in writing to the Rabbi, and then would communicate with me in London.

I told him of my experience in visiting the publisher of the “Jewish Times,” and securing the two copies I sent you, and expressed my regret at not securing the clipping which he stated was taken from the “Jewish News.” He told me that President Graham of Airdrie was in possession of this clipping and also his translation of the article. At the close of the conference, Sunday night, I secured President Graham’s promise to mail me the clipping and translation immediately after he got to his home in Airdrie. He faithfully kept his promise and I am enclosing both papers for you. …

Among the other remarks that Pinder made during the course of our conversation was one which was very significant. He saw of course that we were intensely interested in securing the information about Laban and the plates, if such evidence could be secured, because of its valuable confirmation of the divinity of the “Book of Mormon” it would give us. He said, “Of course if you cannot get this evidence the “Book of Mormon” falls to the ground.” Grasping at once the motive behind such a statement, I told him very emphatically that the absence of any such fact would not injure our cause in the least; that the record was translated by the gift and power of God and would stand all criticism and opposition as it had done for over a hundred years.

Surely that would end the search?

Not quite. Before mailing the materials he had received from President Graham, Elder Wallis took them to a Jewish friend, a bookseller, and asked if he could read them. The man struggled to translate the Yiddish to English – but while he was trying, “a very learned Jew” entered the bookshop and offered his held. On one side was an advertisement. On the other was an installment of “Life, Love, and Beauty,” a serial romance that had been running in the paper for some time. And although Pinder had carefully torn the top of the article to remove its title, he had carelessly left other identifying information – instead of being any clipping that Pinder could have read to Elder Tolman in 1930, it was an article from the Jewish Post published just a few days earlier, in November 1932.

Elder Talmage responded:

The opening sentence [of Elder Wallis’s letter] was at once disappointing and satisfying, paradoxical though that may sound. I was glad to find that you had met face to face Leslie Ord Pinder and had arrived at a definite conclusion concerning the man and his unreliability as an informant – so that we may waste no more time and effort over him – but of course was disappointed in finding that what seemed to be a clue to the long departed Laban had been found to be false.

While they would abandon this particular trail, Elder Talmage was inspired by the idea that a continuing search of Jewish records might in fact one day turn up evidence corroborating some detail in the opening chapters of the Book of Mormon.

While we may never know for certain what motivated Pinder to lie as he did – we can speculate – we do know a little more about him than Elder Wallis or Elder Talmage did.

Pinder – whose real name was Leslie Ord Pinder, not Leslie Israel Pinder, a name he evidently gave to Elder Tolman as a way of building his credibility as a Jew – may not even have been Jewish at all. He appeared to pass himself off as a Muslim when he published a poem in the Islamic Review a few years after deceiving Elder Tolman:

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By the Will of Allah
By Leslie Ord Pinder

When the Evening shadows fall
And the voice of the Imam begins to call
Exerting the Faithful to chant and pray
At the close of another day;
Wherein by the Will of Allah the Great
Islam has been content to wait
Then in the Mosque chant and pray
On this the eve of a festive day.

The Faithful patiently watch and wait
At the door of their tents or by the city gate
Where they gather in a happy throng
While their hearts sing a joyful song
And all is silent, peaceful, and Still
As if waiting Allah’s Will.

Then appears the Crescent Moon
Casting her pale magic gloom
High above in the heavens bright
As Islam’s sign of this holy night
While countless voices chant and sing
To Allah the Merciful, the Supreme Being
In Whom we trust hope and Pray
That His Eternal Peace will light our way.

The tents of Islam stand in Peace,
By the Will of Allah may we never cease
To praise and honour Thy holy name
Is the theme of Islam’s sacred strain
The answer to the Imam’s call
That is heard beyond the City Wall
While to the Mosque all bend their Way
In Peace and love to chant and pray.

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Of course he may have been no more Muslim than Jewish, impersonating both or either as the mood struck him.

What he was, though, was the son of a circus family that had traveled both Great Britain and the Continent for more than two hundred years. Family disagreements led to the breakup of Pinder’s Circus in 1905, and “our” Leslie had remained as a trapeze artist – I kid you not – with a fragment of the circus, calling themselves “Captain George Pinder, His Elephants and Ponies.” At some point he lost an eye due to an accident in the ring and when his other eye began to fail he learned to read Braille and to hand-punch Braille publications. When a journalist interviewed him in Glasgow sometime in the early 1950s, “he was passing his days hand-punching Braille literature for any race or denomination so that they could read for themselves. He drew no financial benefit but a great deal of satisfaction from the gratitude that came to him from all over the world. Moslems knew him as Abdul Gaque and wrote of him with reverence.”

Maybe “there’s a sucker born every minute,” as Pinder’s fellow showman P.T. Barnum is supposed to have said. If so, conmen are born at the same rate.

-oOo-

Portraits, top to bottom:

William Odell Tolman
Joseph Herman Hertz
James E. Talmage
James H. Wallis
Sidney B. Sperry

No picture yet of President F.M. Graham of Airdrie – nor of Leslie Ord Pinder.