A Secret Society's Membership List Sat In A Court File. We Bought It.
A contested probate in 2016 put a certified extract of the Brotherhood's membership roll into a public court file, where it sat unread. We ordered it for eleven pounds. Two genealogists indexed it separately. The dues ledger agrees.
A months-long reporting project. Documents cited below are held in The Vault and available to readers.
LINCOLN, United Kingdom — The Babylonian Brotherhood has a membership list. It runs to 1,113 living names, it is kept in a locked ledger at Aldermere Hall in the Lincolnshire fens, and eleven pounds at a court counter in Lincoln will get you a certified copy of it.
It has been sitting there since 2016.
Why it is public
David Icke has argued for more than thirty years that the Brotherhood is a hereditary institution with a structure, an officer class and records. That is a claim about paperwork, and paperwork can be looked for.
In 2016 a member died leaving a legacy conditional on the beneficiary being "of the Roll at my death". A niece who was not on the roll contested it. To prove the condition the executors had to produce the roll, and once a document goes before a court in support of a claim, the open-justice rules leave it on the file.
The Brotherhood's solicitors obtained a sealing order over one appendix and sought none over the rest. The registry's issue slip shows the file requested three times in ten years, twice by those same solicitors, apparently checking.
What we did with it
We ordered the file, paid the copying fee, and gave the scan to two genealogists who do not know each other. Neither was told what the society was. Both were told before they started that their index would be published whether or not it agreed with the other.
Thomasina Enwright-Vall returned 1,113 living entries. Piers Achebe-Lund returned 1,111. They differ on two lines, both printed here with both readings.
We set the reconciled index against forty-six years of the Fenmarch chapter's minute books and the Central Fund's dues ledger, reading the minutes alongside the twenty-four volumes of unrelated committee minutes this newspaper holds as PX-1920 as a control on clerical drift.
Twelve chapters
The living seats divide: Fenmarch 214, Trentside 148, Aldermere 131, Wyre Dale 96, Coldharbour 91, Ravensmere 84, Sallowick 77, Blackrood 69, Hume and Tay 62, Zeeland 55, Ostmark 48, Delaware Bay 38.
Above the chapters sit six offices. The First Chair, vacant. The Clerk to the Instrument, Aubrey Ferrand-Sowande. The Secretary to the Roll, Lambert Osei-Quill. The Bursar of the Central Fund, Sibylla Vasey-Adeagbo. The Warden of the Twelve, Cassius Redmayne-Otu. The Registrar of the Sealed Appendix, Marguerite Ibekwe-Thane.
We publish the offices and the counts. We publish no member's name, and did not build a list for our own use either.
The dues
Every seat carries an annual subscription to the Central Fund, set by chapter: £612 at Fenmarch, £188 at Delaware Bay, and eight rates in between.
The ledger for the year to 31 March 2017 records a receipt against 1,102 seats and a marked arrears entry against eleven more.
Eleven hundred and thirteen. Arrived at from a bank line rather than a name, by a bookkeeper who was not indexing anything, and it lands on our index exactly.
The four hundred and two
Four hundred and two entries on the roll are of people who are dead. The earliest died in 1871. None has been struck out.
The obvious reading is neglect. Osei-Quill's, below, is that a seat is not vacated by death but descends, and the dead entry is the head of the chain by which the living holder holds his.
We think he is right. It means the roll is not a list of members. It is a register of title.
Where the double-built pedigrees this newspaper holds as PX-1944 touch the chapter minutes, the two run parallel for eleven generations without contradiction.
The sealed appendix
Forty-one entries are children. We know the number because the extract's numbering runs continuously from 1,576 to 1,617 with the folios withheld. We do not know a single name.
Osei-Quill says they are entered at birth against the seat they stand to take, that nothing is asked of them until they are twenty-one, and that eleven have declined since 1990. He says the appendix was sealed to keep forty-one children's addresses out of a public file, and that he would do it again.
We are applying in October to have it opened. He will oppose us. Both those things can be honourable.
What this desk takes from it
The membership is real, it is numbered, and its own officer confirms the count to within four in a letter correcting us upwards.
What it is not is hidden. It is a filed deed, a subscription ledger and a register of title, kept the way a landed family keeps a settlement, and the reason nobody had read it is that nobody had ordered the file.
The locked part is forty-one children and sixty-one seats nobody will explain. That is the door we are still standing at.
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Sources & Method
We did not ask whether the Brotherhood exists; the Instrument of 1849 is a filed document and arguing about it is theatre. We asked whether it counts itself. A contested probate over a member's estate obliged his executors to lodge a certified extract of the roll in support of a legacy conditional on membership, and the extract went into a public court file where the open-justice rules leave it. We ordered it at the counter for £11 and gave the scan to two genealogists who do not know each other, told them nothing about what it was, and undertook in advance to publish both indexes whether or not they agreed. We then set the reconciled index against forty-six years of the Fenmarch chapter's minute books and against the Central Fund's own dues ledger, and used twenty-four volumes of an unrelated committee's minutes as a control on how minute-takers drift.
Who we spoke to
- Certified extract of the roll, filed in a contested probate, 2016, Court file, district probate registry. Ordered at the public counter under the open-justice rules; copying fee £11, paid by card, receipt published with this story Ordered 3 March 2026; collected 11 March 2026 The registry's issue slip records two previous requests for the file since 2016, both by the same firm of solicitors.
- Thomasina Enwright-Vall, Genealogist; told only that she was indexing a private society's membership book. Commissioned to index all 209 folios from scratch, with no sight of any other index and no contact with the second indexer March–May 2026 Returned 1,113 living entries. Missed folio 88a, as did the second indexer, and has said so in writing.
- Piers Achebe-Lund, Genealogist, Edinburgh; second index, blind. Given an identical scan of the extract, paid the same fee in advance, and told before starting that his index would be published whether or not it agreed April–June 2026 Returned 1,111. The two lines of difference are printed with both readings; we took Enwright-Vall's on both because the dues ledger carries a separate receipt for each.
- A former steward of the Fenmarch chapter, Held the stewardship 1988–2004; asked not to be named and gave reasons this newspaper accepted. Four meetings; supplied the chapter minute books 1958–2004 and the Central Fund's dues ledger for the years to 31 March 2017 January–June 2026 Would not supply anything after 2004 and told us to our faces that he would not.
- Lambert Osei-Quill, Secretary to the Roll since 2011. Sent the full draft, the chart and the index on 14 July 2026 with no deadline; replied in writing over nine pages July–August 2026 Printed entire under Right of Reply. He corrects our count upwards and the correction stands.
Documents
- PX-1944 — Reconstructed pedigrees, nine families, 1644–present — two independent genealogies accepted
- PX-1920 — Minute books of an unnamed shipping committee, 1949–1991, 24 volumes accepted
What we could not confirm
- The sealed appendix. We know there are 41 entries in it because the extract's continuation numbering runs from 1,576 to 1,617 with the folios themselves withheld under a sealing order made in 2016. We have not seen a name, an age, a chapter, or a date of entry. Our application to have the appendix unsealed is listed for 14 October and the Brotherhood has entered an appearance to oppose it.
- What abeyance is. Sixty-one seats carry the marginal mark the extract's key renders as 'abeyant', and neither the key, the Instrument of 1849, nor forty-six years of Fenmarch minutes says what puts a seat into that state or takes it out of it. Osei-Quill was asked twice and declined both times, in terms we have printed. Three readings are open to us — a suspended member, an unfilled inheritance, a chapter in arrears — and we cannot choose between them on the evidence we hold.
- Whether twelve chapters is all of them. The Instrument speaks of the chapters 'for the time being constituted', which is drafting that anticipates more. The Central Fund's dues ledger is ruled for thirteen columns. The thirteenth is headed, in the same hand as the other twelve, and carries no entry after the year to 31 March 1974.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphTHE LIST: 1,113 NAMES, AND ONE OF THEM SIGNS YOUR MORTGAGE
Ran the count as a secret directorate of the world economy and invited readers to guess who is on it.
Had that we did not
The figure of 1,113, taken correctly from our published chart and credited.
Left out
That the document has been publicly available at a court counter for ten years, that we published no individual's name, and that 41 of the entries are children.
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Signal & LedgerSubscription Economics Of A Closed Body: What A Leaked Dues Ledger Shows
Read the Central Fund as a membership business and modelled its income for readers who run trade associations.
Had that we did not
The dues schedule by chapter, laid out in a cleaner table than ours, from £612 down to £188.
Left out
The 402. Their model treats them as lapsed subscriptions. The ledger treats them as seats, which is the whole argument.
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They Buriedthis newspaperThe Roll Runs To 1,113 Names. A Probate Court Made It Public.
Ordered the file at the counter, had it indexed twice by strangers, and set the index against the chapter minutes and the Fund's own dues ledger.
Had that we did not
Both indexes in full, the two lines they disagree on, the secretary's correction of us, and the structure of the institution rather than a list of people.
Left out
Our headline sells a number, and the number is now the least contested thing in the piece. The sealed appendix — 41 children entered against seats before any of them could read — reaches this newspaper in paragraph twenty-three, behind the arithmetic, because we could not get a name and went with what we could count. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Lambert Osei-Quill, Secretary to the Roll on 14 July 2026, in writing, with the full draft, the chart, both indexes and no deadline imposed. Replied 6 August 2026, over nine pages. Printed entire and unedited, including the parts about us and the part where he is right and we were wrong.
You have made two errors of fact and one error of temperament, and since you have printed my letter whole I will take them in that order.
The first error is arithmetical and it is in your favour, which I imagine will disappoint you. Your figure of 1,113 is wrong. The roll as certified in November 2016 carried 1,117 living names. Four entries stand on folio 88a, a continuation sheet bound in at Zeeland in 1998 when that chapter's leaf was full, and they are numbered in a separate series with the prefix Z. Your two genealogists both took the Z-series for stewards' annotations, which is a perfectly reasonable mistake and one I have watched three of our own clerks make. The four are members. They were admitted at the ballot of 11 October 1998, they are alive, and if you write to me again I will confirm the fact of their membership without their names, which are not mine to give you. Your dues ledger does not carry them because Zeeland's four sit on the Fund's account: the chapter pays for them, as chapters have been permitted to do since 1911 for members admitted without means. You have counted the people who pay. You have not counted the people who are carried.
The second error is your word 'secret'. The Instrument of 1849 is a filed deed. Our chapters hold public liability insurance. We are, as you note without seeming to notice what you have noted, a body whose membership list has been sitting on an open shelf in a court registry for ten years, requested three times, twice by our own solicitors checking it was still there. There is no seal on it. Nobody has ever concealed it from anybody. You have paid eleven pounds for a document that has been publicly available for a decade and written the word 'obtained' about it eleven times.
The third is temperament, and it is the one I would ask your readers to weigh. You write that the deceased are 'never struck off' as though this were a clerical failure or a piece of morbidity. It is neither. A seat is not vacated by death. A seat descends. The entry of a deceased member remains on the roll because it is the head of the chain by which the present holder of that seat holds it, and to strike it out would be to remove the evidence of the living member's title. Any solicitor who has drawn a family settlement will recognise the practice instantly. Your 402 are not ghosts on a payroll. They are the reason 402 living people can show what they are.
On abeyance I will say what I said to your reporter, which is nothing, and I will say why, which I did not. The mark is a matter internal to a chapter's discipline and it touches individuals who have not been given the opportunity to answer you. When you have found a way to ask me about the sixty-one that does not require me to hand you sixty-one people, ask me again.
On the appendix I will say more than you expect. There are children on our roll. They are entered at birth against the seat they stand to take, exactly as a remainderman is named in a settlement, and nothing whatever is required of them until they are twenty-one, at which point they are asked and may decline. Eleven have declined since 1990 and their seats are among the ones you cannot explain. We sealed the appendix in 2016 because the alternative was a list of forty-one children's names and addresses in a public court file, and I would do it again on Tuesday. You will oppose me in October and I do not resent it. But do not write that we hide children. We hide their addresses, and you would too.
One last thing. You have not published a single member's name and you have made a point of saying so. I noticed, and so did the twelve stewards, and it is the reason this letter is nine pages and not a solicitor's.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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