Not these days, no.
The valet brought to life by the writer PG Wodehouse, who first started penning stories about Jeeves and Wooster in 1915,
…
Lord Russell rose to fame in 1940, after he was found murdered by his Swiss valet, and the details of the trial reportedly inspired Wodehouse’s creation of Jeeves.
It was HG Wells with the time machine, wasn’t it?
Yes, but the piece in question is in the property section. And it’s well known that with property, inaccuracy in descriptions is the default setting.
Reading about the case, Russell’s valet was distinctly un-Jeevesian. Jeeves wouldn’t have been nicking the silverware in the first place, and if he’d wanted Bertie dead there would have been a discreet unfortunate accident rather than a cut throat.
I think it was Jeeves’ predecessor who pinched stuff. Wooster sacked him and Jeeves turned up from the agency.
I didn’t realise that the series started quite so early, I thought it began in the early 1920s.
Jeeves Takes Charge appeared in November 1916
I thought that piece an enjoyable ramble. The fact that it ends with a blunder is perhaps to do with the HRT crisis.
P.S. Can trannies get their HRT? Is this a crisis within a crisis?
”I think it was Jeeves’ predecessor who pinched stuff. Wooster sacked him and Jeeves turned up from the agency.”
Yes, and that was written in “flashback”, as it were. So it may well have been post-1940.
“Jeeves Takes Charge appeared in November 1916”
And “Extricating Young Gussie” was 1915. Which is earlier than I thought. That means Reggie Pepper, the proto-Wooster, must have been very early indeed. I thought he was late ‘teens.
It’s a typo – Russell was murdered in 1840
FlatCa
Goodness; but yes indeed.
https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18400615-1629
One rather thought ‘there the Grauniad that specialized in typos…..