Strath-Gordon, Alexander E.

Alexander E. Strath-Gordon (1873-1952) was born in Scotland and graduated with the highest honours from the Edinburgh medical School. After a career as a medical officer in the British army he became head of the British passport control service in New York until retirement in 1934. For some time he was head of British intelligence in the United States or in plain language, a spy.

Christopher Volpe, a landscape artist, is the great-grandson of Strath-Gordon and in a recent blog on his website he described his ancestor as “Mystic, Linguist, Lecturer, Doctor, Spy”^(a). In 1904 Strath-Gordon began a medical practice in Seattle, Washington and remained there until 1914. He then served as a medical officer in the British army in France until the end of the war.

Volpe records that in 1906 Strath-Gordon founded the Atlantean Research Society, in East Orange, New Jersey. This date conflicts with the foundation date of 1928 proposed by Frank Joseph^[104]. A book published by Strath-Gordon in 1934 confirms the 1906 date on its cover^(b) and records him as the founder and life president of the Atlantean Research Society. The same cover shows that in 1907 he addressed the Atlantean Research Society in Seattle. I suggest that this contradiction can be explained if we accept that the Society was originally founded by Strath-Gordon in Seattle in 1906 and that in 1928 he established the “eastern division” of New Jersey.

A further interesting fact is that Strath-Gordon met Edgar Cayce on a number of occasions in the 1920’s^(d) prompting speculation that he may have ‘influenced’ some of Cayce’s Atlantis readings, an idea that must appeal to any rationalist.

Strath-Gordon had James Churchward as an associate in the Society, again with the probability that there was a cross-pollination of ideas between them!>Egerton Sykes noted that James Churchward was vice-president of the N.J. branch^(e) .<

A rather bizarre reference to Strath-Gordon is to be found in The New Yorker magazine of March 28^th 1936 in which he is reported^(c) to have predicted the end of the Depression on September 16^th that year, based on a study of measurements in a gallery within the Great Pyramid at Giza!

^(a) https://christophervolpe.blogspot.ie/2010/09/imagining-atlantis.html

^(b) See Archive 3921

^(c) https://www.newyorker.com/archive/1936/03/28/1936_03_28_015_TNY_CARDS_000162802

^(d) https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/alt.legend.atlantis/muQ7l9XDu3E

>^(e)Atlantis, Volume 11, No.6, Sept/Nov 1958 <