[3] The first published account about Feodor Vassilyev's children appeared in a 1783 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine (Vol.
53 p. 753, London, 1783) and states that the information "however astonishing, may be depended upon, as it came directly from an English merchant in St Petersburg to his relatives in England, who added that the peasant was to be introduced to the Empress".
According to a 1933 article by Julia Bell[6] in Biometrika, a 1790 book of B. F. J. Hermann Statistische Schilderung von Rußland did provide the statements about Feodor Vassilyev's children but "with a caution".
[7] The Lancet article states that the French Academy of Sciences attempted to verify the statements about Vassilyev's children and contacted "M. Khanikoff of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg for advice as to the means they should pursue, but were told by him that all investigation was superfluous, that members of the family still lived in Moscow and that they had been the object of favors from the Government".
[6] Similarly, in her book Quadruplets and Higher Multiple Births (1989), Marie Clay of the University of Auckland notes: "Sadly, this evasion of proper investigation seems, in retrospect, to have dealt a terminal blow to our chances of ever establishing the true detail of this extraordinary case".