In this chapter, Douce’s attention to coincidences, chance and accident is discussed in relation to his search for patterns, both in his collections and in his everyday life. Douce’s concern with the role of chance in history and in our knowledge of the past was influenced by witnessing the effects of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic Wars in Continental collections, some destroyed, others damaged and scattered. As London became a global metropolis while remaining a relatively stable market, Douce found himself in the best possible location to see and to acquire a vast range of images and objects to enhance his collections. Once found, the flotsam and jetsam of History ought to be sorted and rearranged to be deciphered and interpreted. The creative potential of the accidental and the fragmentary, linked to contemporary devices like the kaleidoscope and to practices like scrapbooking, fostered associations and connections from which knowledge on the migration of images could be derived. Urban life created multiple opportunities for this knowledge to be shared and circulated informally by means of small gatherings and antiquarian gossip.