Elizebeth Friedman - Retirement

Retirement

Longtime Shakespeare enthusiasts, Mrs. Friedman and her husband, after retirement from government service, collaborated on a manuscript entitled "The Cryptologist Looks At Shakespeare", eventually published as The Shakespearian ciphers examined. It won awards from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the American Shakespeare Theater and Academy. In this book, the Friedmans dismissed Baconians such as Mrs. Gallup and Ignatius Donnelly with such technical proficiency and finesse that the book won far more acclaim than others addressing the same topic.

The work that Gallup had done earlier for Col Fabyan at Riverbank operated on two assumptions. One was that Bacon invented a biliteral cipher and that the cipher used in the original printed Shakespeare folios employed "an odd variety of typefaces." The Friedmans, however, "in a classic demonstration of their life's work," buried a hidden Baconian cipher on a page in their publication. It was an italicized phrase which, using the different type faces, expressed their final assessment of the controversy: "I did not write the plays. F. Bacon." Their book is regarded as the definitive work, if probably not the final word, on the subject.

Following her husband's death in 1969, Mrs. Friedman devoted much of retirement life to compiling a library and bibliography of his work. This "most extensive private collection of cryptographic material in the world" would finally be lodged in the George C. Marshall Research Library in Lexington, Virginia.

"Our office doesn't make 'em, we only break 'em," uttered Elizebeth Smith Friedman to a representative of a code-building company who came to sell his wares. And "break 'em" she did many times over for many years against many targets. Her successes led to the conviction of many violators of the Volstead Act during Prohibition years.

Mrs. Friedman died on October 31, 1980 in Plainfield, New Jersey, at the age of 88.