Elizabeth Wells Gallup

In subsequent years she published a large body of literature claiming to have uncovered deciphered content in the work of Bacon, Shakespeare and others.

Her first book was The Biliteral Cypher of Sir Francis Bacon Discovered in his Works and Deciphered by Mrs Elizabeth Wells Gallup, published in 1899, and then in multiple other editions into the 20th century.

Her decipherments "discovered" that Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth, heir to the throne, and the author of the works of Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, and Robert Burton.

The Friedmans also reported that outside experts examined the letter fonts used in the printing of Shakespeare's plays and concluded that, with few exceptions, it was not possible to unambiguously separate them into two groups, as the Bacon biliteral cipher requires.

The Friedmans pointed out that Gallup, in attempting to use Bacon's biliteral cipher to decode Shakespeare's works, had been able to take advantage of the variable fonts to give her great freedom in arbitrarily selecting most of the letters of her message, with the result that she found "what it was she was determined to find.