Uncle Daniel's Bible Class Book

The Edgars, brothers John and Morton, are well-known to collectors of Watch Tower history. They were responsible for the volumes of Great Pyramid Passages, as well as a series of small booklets that were widely circulated. One of them, Where are the Dead (not to be confused with the Watch Tower Society’s official publication of that name) was instrumental in Fred Franz becoming a Bible Student. He later served as a Watch Tower Society president.

One book bearing the Edgars’ names that is available for internet download is called Uncle Daniel's Bible Class Book, and dates from 1890.

The book was published by Bone and Hulley, a company that later handled the pyramid books. A close up of the title page clearly shows the Edgars as authors.

And yet, this is not actually true.

Research has shown that this book was originally published back in 1850. Then it was simply called The Bible Class Book. The author and compiler was Charles Baker.  Below is the title page of the second edition which dates from 1860.

The book covers the whole of the OT with articles, maps, and notes, using the Ussher chronology.

Charles Baker (1803-1874) was a prolific author. His Wikipedia entry lists around seventy-five works on a variety of subjects, including the Bible. Although he wrote on the NT as well, there does not appear to be a companion volume to The Bible Class Book, which concentrates on the OT. One of his nephews became the Archbishop of Canterbury. His main focus in life was producing school textbooks for the teaching of children who were deaf and dumb.

When he died The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent for May 30, 1874, gave a brief obituary:

Yet 20 years after the last publication of Baker’s work, the Edgar brothers claimed it as their own.

How could this happen? Modern sensibilities might question the ethics of giving no acknowledgement to Baker, but it was all perfectly legal. The British Copyright Act of 1842 granted copyright to an author for his lifetime and then for seven years after his death. As noted above, Baker conveniently died in 1874, so by 1890 his work was in the public domain and the Edgars – or anyone else for that matter - could do what they liked with it.

The British 1842 Copyright Act was eventually replaced by one of 1911, which extended copyright to a more realistic fifty years after an author’s death.

Since the Edgars weren’t going to give Baker any credit, they took out his introduction, which he had revised for the second edition. In its place they inserted a Watch Tower advertisement.

This Watch Tower material only took up one page whereas Baker’s introduction in both editions took up two, so the Edgar volume simply has an extra blank page following the Watch Tower advertisement. One assumes this is so that the remainder of the plates would not need their pagination adjusted.

We are on firmer ground with the Edgars’ pyramid volumes and the series of small booklets which were original and reflected the Bible Student theology of that time. But as far as “Uncle Daniel’s” work, all was not as it appeared. It may still be viewed as collectable, but perhaps not as much as might be hoped.