Collectors

There's no need to surrender. But watch that you aren't killed by your own traps. No one wants to starve; to be starved of anything.

Frederick Clegg

Frederick

As a pastime, watching butterflies and moths is known as butterflying and mothing. The latter has given rise to the term "mother" for someone who engages in this activity.

Frederick wants to own Miranda and in a way he does; she is trapped. He knew he would do whatever it took to have her, even if it was against her will. Miranda is helpless and after initial fear feels pity and softness for her keeper; when she realises there is no escape, this softness hardens. 

"He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion.  A thick round wall of glass."  

Miranda meaning: 'to be admired'.

Miranda surrendered.


Homer and Langley

Homer and Langley were brothers. They lived in a big Harlem house.

Homer went blind. Langley collected every newspaper in New York City, every day; that way he knew that when Homer regained his sight he would be able to catch up on the news. 

Langley

Homer and Langley kept many things, in fact, they kept every thing. One item to be found in the basement of their brownstone was their late father's canoe:


"He used to carry it to the Harlem River on his head and paddle down to [Bellevue] every morning and back every evening." Langley Collyer


The brothers were fearful of meddling outsiders and created booby traps amongst their hoard to protect themselves. 

In 1947 police were called to the house. A man had been reported dead on scene. Two hours after they first entered the house police found Homer's emaciated body. A manhunt covering nine states began, but Langley was nowhere to be seen.


18 days later Langley's body was discovered. 
He lay just 10 feet from where Homer had been found.

Sweet Langley had crawled through a tunnel of newspapers to bring food to his blind brother; in the process he'd set off one of his own traps. The tunnel collapsed and Langley was crushed. 

Homer waited for his brother, unable to find his own way through the complex warren of stuff.

But his brother never arrived. Beautiful Homer starved to death waiting, blind and alone.


Homer and Langley died, eventually. But they never surrendered.

"Police and workmen removed 130 tons of garbage from the Collyer brownstone. 

Items removed from the house included baby carriages, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs. Collyer's hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child's chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, the chassis of the old Model T with which Langley had been tinkering, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, 14 pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old. Near the spot where Homer died, police also found 34 bank account passbooks, with a total of $3,007.18 (about $40,000 in 2008 dollars)."