Lamothe-Capdeville referral file

Background

Between March 2016 and November 2019, the archive received forty-one pieces of correspondence that had nothing to do with its holdings. All concerned a proposed photography session for aspiring models, said to take place in or near Lamothe-Capdeville. No sender could name an organiser. No two letters gave the same date for the session. Annex C lists the senders by initials only, at their request.

The matter was assigned a file number (LC-119) after the ninth letter arrived, on the grounds that a pattern, even an unexplained one, requires tracking under the archive's intake procedure. This is consistent with External ordering, applied here not to sort existing material but to justify opening a file for material that arrived unsolicited.

The production company reference

Six of the forty-one letters mention, in passing, a production company said to have organised similar sessions elsewhere. The name given varies: some letters use one form, some another, and two letters use both forms in the same paragraph, treating them as interchangeable. Staff assigned to the file could not confirm that either name corresponded to a registered entity in any jurisdiction checked. The company, whichever name applies, is not otherwise attested in the archive's holdings and does not appear in Deposit 14 or in any Manfred entry.

One letter, dated 2017, states that the company's founder had previously worked with a youth patrol on unrelated activities, and offers this as a character reference. The patrol is not named beyond a single syllable rendered inconsistently across three letters. Staff were unable to locate any patrol register matching the description; a national scouting body contacted in 2018 had no record of a patrol under any of the spellings attempted.

Handling

The file was closed administratively in 2019 after eighteen months without further correspondence. No session was ever confirmed to have taken place. The archive's position, recorded in the closing memorandum, is that the letters describe an event that may or may not have occurred, organised by a company that may or may not exist, referencing a youth group that could not be located under any name tried.

Three of the forty-one letters included photographs of the senders, apparently intended as samples for the proposed session. These were transferred to general holdings under a separate accession number and are not discussed further here, per the archive's policy on unsolicited personal images.

Note on classification

Some staff proposed treating the letters as a form of Pairing habit, on the reasoning that each letter pairs a sender with an event at which nothing is recorded to have occurred. This proposal was not adopted; the closing memorandum notes only that the comparison "was raised and not pursued." The file remains catalogued under correspondence, not under procedure, pending further guidance that has not, as of this writing, arrived.

See also

• Composite sheet — External ordering
• External ordering — External ordering
• Grusson deposit — External ordering
• Mirror unit — External ordering
• The pairing habit — Pairing habit
• Carnet d'écoute de Prosper Vaillant — Pairing habit
• Incident de solin — Pairing habit
• Levernet Rhapsody — External ordering