E. Spencer

On 4 October 1878 Lieutenant E. Spencer went to Enkomi with three policemen. Colonel George Greaves, the Government Chief Secretary, had ordered the Local Commandant of Police at Larnaca to go there and, if Alessandro Palma di Cesnola was or had recently been digging, to charge him under the Turkish antiquities law and bring the finds to Larnaca. The order followed reports from Achilleus Vondiziano of Ormidia, forwarded by Commissioner Henry G. White¹. Only the initial E. is printed for him.

Spencer fetched a former servant of Cesnola's from Ormidia as guide and found the Enkomi cemetery emptied and mostly backfilled. The workmen told him they worked for Lazaris, and he sent some of them to Larnaca for sworn depositions. In Panagia's house he seized pottery and glass. On the way back he stopped at Ormidia and sealed a room of antiquities in Cesnola's house, where William Hepworth Dixon, a guest, is said to have "interfered with Lieutenant Spencer by words generally". On 11 October he returned, opened the sealed upstairs room, removed six basketsful and found another room downstairs full of pottery¹.

At the trial in the Larnaca court, with White as Assessor and Henry Brackenbury as prosecutor, Spencer described his investigations at Enkomi and Ormidia and said that he had warned Cesnola but not arrested him. Cesnola was fined four liras, which was remitted, and the seized antiquities were confiscated¹. Nothing further is recorded of Spencer.