Anti-Semitic manuscript fails to sell, BBC, June 6, 2001 "An anti-Semitic manuscript suppressed for more than a century and put up for sale by the group representing Jews in the UK has failed to sell at auction. There were fears the controversial manuscript, which claims Jews engaged in human sacrifice, could be used by neo-Nazis to provoke anti-Semitic hatred. The Board of Deputies of British Jews wanted to sell the manuscript - Human Sacrifice among the Sephardine or Eastern Jews - which it once said should never be seen in public. The paper was written by the Victorian explorer and diplomat Sir Richard Burton, who also translated the Kama Sutra, and has never been published. It went up for auction at Christie's in London on Wednesday but failed to reach its reserve price despited being expected to fetch up to £200,000 ... The board admitted prior to the auction that it needed money to move to new offices. The manuscript has been locked away for nearly 100 years Lord Janner, a former president of both the Board of Deputies and of the Holocaust Educational Trust, had attacked the board's decision to put the manuscript up for sale ... The manuscript was written after Burton had worked as a diplomat in Damascus. It focused on the 1840 disappearance of a Capuchin friar and the arrest of 13 Jews who were accused of ritual murder but later acquitted. But the manuscript was thought so inflammatory and damaging to the author's reputation that it was never published. In her will Burton's widow Isabel asked for it and other papers to be destroyed to protect her husband's name. The manuscript survived and came into the hands of the board in 1909 when it was hidden away."