The committee comprised representatives of organisations affiliated to, or eligible for affiliation to the Labour Party. They discussed the relief of civil distress, food prices, housing and pensions.
Born 1902; educated privately; social worker in South and East London, 1924-1929; student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1926-1929; Lecturer, LSE, 1929-1939 and 1944-1957; Principal Officer for Employment and Training, National Association of Girls' Clubs, 1939-1944; Director of British Council Social Welfare Courses, 1942-1944; Member, McNair Committee, 1943; Member, Departmental Committee on Social Workers in the Mental health Services, 1948; Member, Committee of Enquiry into the Law and Practice Relating to Charitable Trusts; Chairman, Ministry of Health Working Party on Social Workers in the Health and Welfare Services, 1959; Adviser, National Institute for Social Work Training, 1961-1967; President, International Association of Schools of Social Work, 1961-1968; Member, Committee on the Probation Service, 1962; DBE, 1964; member of various committees for penal reform, child care, youth service, care of old people, family welfare, social studies and international social work; René Sand Award, International Council on Social Welfare, 1976; Chairman, Hammersmith Juvenile Court; died 1981. Publications: The education and training of social workers (Carnegie UK Trust, 1947); Social work in Britain (Carnegie UK Trust, 1951); Social work and social change (London, 1964); Social work in Britain, 1950-1975: a follow-up study (Allen and Unwin, London, 1978); The newest profession: a short history of social work (Community Care, Sutton, 1981).
Colonial Research covers the papers relating to various councils and committees concerned with colonial research. The Colonial Social Science Research Council was established by the British Government at the end of World War Two to undertake research into the economic development of the colonies. The records held at the LSE appear to represent private sets of the Council's papers collected by its leading members, specifically Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders and Sir Arnold Plant. The Council was superceded by the Overseas Development Committee and various other councils and committees, represented by each section of the collection. Official Colonial Office records deposited at The National Archives may contain the Council's central archive.
This research explored the effects of changing legal regulation between 1983 and 1992 on relations of power within local government. The methodology of the project involved case studies in four local authorities with in-depth interviews being undertaken with local officials, councillors and other relevant individuals. The project resulted in a book, Governing out of order: space, law and the politics of belonging by Davina Cooper.
Leonard Henry Courtney, 1832 - 1918, was born in Penzance and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar in 1858 and became a Bencher in 1889. He left law to became Professor of Political Economy at University College, London in 1872, a post that he held until 1875. He also entered politics, becoming the Liberal Party MP for Liskeard from 1875 to 1885, and then MP for the Bodmin Division of Cornwall until 1900. He was made Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department 1880 - 1881, and for the Colonial Office 1881 - 1882. In 1884 he resigned the office of Financial Secretary to the Treasury. His last post was as Chairman of Committees and Deputy Speaker, which he held 1886 - 1892. Leonard Courtney was also a contributor to The Times and The Nineteenth Century. He married Catherine (née Potter, sister of Beatrice Webb) in 1883.
The Constitutional Reform Centre was founded in 1984 to investigate the reform of the British constitution and government. The work of the CRC is controlled by an advisory board, and includes holding conferences and commissioning investigations into areas of constitutional reform. These have included the role of planning enquiries, the development of a written constitution, the civil service, and the intervention of the European Commission. The Centre has also organised a series of seminars under the aegis of the Rt Hon Leslie George Scarman, Baron Scarman of Quatt. A working party has investigated company political donations and benefits to business of good government. Publications include the Constitutional Reform Quarterly Review and CRC Politics Briefings. The CRC has worked with other organisations, notably the National Committee for Electoral Reform, and the Campaign for Fair Votes.
Anthony Crosland was educated at Highgate School and Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated in PPE in 1946, following war service in Italy, and was a lecturer and fellow of Trinity College from 1947-1950. He was Labour MP for South Gloucester 1950-1955 and for Grimsby 1959-1977. He was Minister of State for Economic Affairs 1964-1965, Secretary of State for Education and Science 1965-1967, for Local Government and Regional Planning 1969-1970, and for the Environment 1974-1976, and Foreign Secretary 1976-1977. He was also secretary of the Independent Commission into the Co-operative Movement, 1956-1958, and a member of the Consumer's Council, 1958-1963. He married Susan Catling in 1964.
John Edward Hugh Neale Dalton, 1887-1962, was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He won the Winchester Reading Prize at Cambridge in 1909 and the Hutchinson Research studentship at LSE 1911-1913. He became a Barrister-at-law in 1914, and it was also in this year that he married Ruth Fox. During World War I, Dalton served in the RASC and the Royal Artillery in France and Italy, and was attached to the Ministry of Labour for special investigations in 1919. After the war he returned to a career in economics. He became a lecturer at LSE in 1919, Sir Ernest Cassel Reader in Commerce at the University of London, 1920-1925, and a Reader in Economics at the University of London, 1925-1936. He entered politics in 1924, becoming the Labour MP for Peckham 1924-1929, and Bishop Auckland 1929-1931 and 1935-1959. He became Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs 1929-1931, Chairman of Labour Party National Executive Committee 1936-1937, Minister of Economic Warfare 1940-1942, President of the Board of Trade 1942-1945, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1945-1947, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1948-1950 and Minister of Town and Country Planning 1950-1951. He was created Baron Dalton of Forest and Frith in 1960.
An ESRC funded project drawing together two key contemporary political debates: on the one hand, the democratic implications of the expansion in non-elective government in recent years, and on the other the media's growing centrality in the political system. Apart from providing unique data on the hitherto neglected relationship between these areas, the project aimed to contribute to current debates regarding democratic accountability, information flows, news management and state-media relations. The research programme combines several empirical strands various facets of the relationship between the appointive, Quasi-non governmental organisations ('Quangos') and the British news media.
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson was born in 1862 in a Christian Socialist family. He studied at Charterhouse and King's College, Cambridge, and tried lecturing and medicine before turning to literature full time. In 1887 he became a Fellow at King's College where he remained for the rest of his life. Dickinson lectured at the London School of Economics for 15 years and with Lord Dickinson and Lord Bryce he planned the ideas behind of the League of Nations, resulting in his book The International Anarchy. He died on 3 August 1932.
The Economic History Society was inaugurated at a general meeting held at the London School of Economics on 14 July 1926. R H Tawney took the chair and, after the resolution to form the Society had been carried unanimously, the meeting discussed the constitution and aims of the Society and proceeded to elect its first officers, with Sir William Ashley as the first President. The publication of the Economic History Review was also discussed and R H Tawney and Mr Lipson were appointed as joint editors. The aims of the Society are:
- To promote the study of economic history.
- To issue the Economic History Review.
- to publish and sponsor other publications in the fields of economic and social history.
- To establish closer relations between students and teachers of economic and social history.
- To hold an annual conference and to hold or participate in any other conference or meeting as may be deemed expedient in accordance with the objects of the Society.
6.To co-operate with other organisations having kindred purposes.
The promotion of economic history has mainly been effected through the publication of the Economic History Review and the holding of annual conferences. The Society has also liased with academic funding councils about support for economic history teaching and research and has sought to encourage schools to promote the teaching of economic history.
Woolly Al Walks the Kitty Back was produced by Brian Lapping Associates for BBC Timewatch. It was broadcast in 1992.
William Farr, 1807-1883, was born in Kenley, Shropshire. At the age of two, he was effectively adopted by a local squire, Joseph Pryce, who paid for Farr's education. From 1826 to 1828, Farr worked as a dresser in the infirmary at Shrewsbury and studied medicine with a doctor there. On Pryce's death in 1828, Farr received a legacy that enabled him to pursue his studies in Paris and Switzerland. In 1831, Farr returned to Shrewsbury to work as an unqualified locum before studying at University College London, becoming a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. In 1833, he established an apothecary's practice in Bloomsbury, London, and proceeded to publish a number of articles in The Lancet on such topics as hygiene, quack medicine, life assurance and cholera. Farr had first demonstrated an interest in medical statistics during his studies abroad, and in 1832 he published his "Vital Statistics" in Macculloch's Account of the British Empire, thus starting a new interest in statistics. From 1838 to 1879, he worked in the Registrar General's Office compiling abstracts. In 1855, he served on the Committee for Scientific Enquiry into the cholera epidemic of 1854, and produced statistical evidence that cholera was spread by polluted water, though he and his colleagues continued to adhere to the theory that epidemic disease was spread by miasma. Farr also served as commissioner for the 1871 census. He retired from public service in 1879.
Born 1923; educated George Watson's, Edinburgh, King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth, Daniel Stewart's, Edinburgh, High School, Stirling, and Glasgow University; spent three seasons with Shakespeare Memorial Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1948-[1951]; spent three years with the BBC Repertory Company; became famous for playing the part of Jet Morgan in the BBC radio drama Journey into Space; appeared in 37 films and many TV and radio performances; Council Member, British Actors' Equity, 1966-1969; Labour MP, Smethwick, 1966-74, and Warley East, 1974-97; Parliamentary Private Secretary to John Thomson Stonehouse as Minister of State for Aviation, 1967, Minister of Technology, 1967-68, and Postmaster General, 1968-69; Opposition spokesman for the Arts, 1970-73, and 1979-82; Founder, and Chairman, British Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, 1974-97; Co-Chairman, All-Party Parliamentary Heritage Group, 1974-97; Member, House of Commons Works of Art Committee, 1970-97; Member, British Delegation to Council of Europe and Western European Union, 1975-80, and 1987-97; Executive Committee, GB China Centre, 1976-97; Executive Committee, Inter-Parliamentary Union, (British Section), 1983-97; Executive Committee, Franco-British Council, 1978-88; retired 1997; died 2000.
The Federal Union was founded in 1938 to advance the cause of federal government among democratic states in order to achieve international peace, economic stability and civil rights, by means of research, debate and political activity. The Federal Union flourished throughout the war years and established a series of active local and regional organisations. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Union was involved in political debates on topics such as the United Nations charter, international monetary reform and disarmament. It also concerned itself with post war reconstruction and, through this, the cause of European integration and the British entry into the European Economic Community. Federal Union continues to campaign for federalism for the UK, Europe and the world and argues that democracy and the rule of law should apply between states as well as within them. In 1945, on the initiative of Sir William Beveridge, the Federal Educational & Research Trust, an educational charity, was established. The purpose of the Trust was to encourage the study of international relations and co-operation and further research into federal principles and institutions by conducting enquiries, seminars, conferences and reports. Now known as the Federal Trust for Education and Research it continues to operate as a think tank studying the interaction between regional, national, European and global levels of government. Federal Trust has always had a particular interest in the European Union and Britain's place in it. In more recent years, it has supplemented its European work with studies on devolution and regional government in the United Kingdom and reports on global governance.
The Committee on One Parent Families (Finer Committee) was established by Richard (Howard Stafford) Crossman, Secretary of State for Social Services, on 6 November 1969, to consider the problems of one parent families and what help could be given them. The Chair was the Hon Sir Morris Finer (1917-1974). The Report of the Committee (Cmnd 5629) was presented to Barbara Anne Castle, Secretary of State for Social Services, in July 1974. The Committee gathered material through the research projects of universities, government departments and charities, as well as the Department of Health and Social Services and its own research assistants. It also collected evidence from organisations and individuals, a request for which was published in the national press of November 1969. Professor Richard Morris Titmuss, Professor of Social Administration at LSE, was a member of the Committee until his death in 1973.
The general election was held in May 2005 and was won by the Labour Party with a reduced majority. Requests for donations were sent out to candidates of all parties throughout the country and major deposits were received from all parts of the United Kingdom. Parties represented include: Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, UK Independence Party, Socialist Alliance, Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party and a range of parties from Northern Ireland. The collection also includes a wide range of addresses and material from smaller parties and Independent candidates.
Morris Ginsberg, 1889-1970, was born into one of the smaller Lithuanian Jewish communities of the Russian empire. His first language was Yiddish and as a Talmudic scholar he was educated in classical Hebrew. However he quickly mastered English when he migrated to England to work in the business of relatives in Manchester whilst preparing for entry to London University. He entered University College London in 1910 to read for a degree in philosophy and obtained his MA in 1915. He was a temporary lecturer at LSE from 1915-1916, and Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at UCL in 1921. He became an assistant in the Sociology Department at LSE in 1921 and a Lecturer in 1924. He became Martin White Professor of Sociology in 1929, succeeding Hobhouse, and held this chair until 1954. As Professor Emeritus he taught in the School until 1968.
Ellis Charles Raymond Hadfield, 1909-1996, was born in Pietersburg, South Africa, and educated at Blundell's School, Devon, where he began his first researches into canal history. After studying economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Hadfield became a bookseller. He joined the Oxford University Press in 1936 and rose to become Director of Publications, Central Office of Information, 1946-1948, and Controller (Overseas), 1948-1962. David and Charles publishers was formed in 1960, and Hadfield was Director of this company from 1960-1964. Hadfield is best known for his extensive publications which chart the history of British canals and waterways. His most notable publications are The Canal Age, David and Charles (1968), and British Canals - An Illustrated History, David and Charles (1984). In 1945 he became the first Vice Chairman of the Inland Waterways Association, and he was a member of the British Waterways Board from 1962 to 1966.
Thomas Bewley Haran was born in Wishaw, Scotland. He was a retired bank official, whose career spanned 43 years, the majority in the City of London. He died on 15 July 2000.
Robert Beach was a member of the Gay Liberation Front which held its first meeting on 13 October 1970 at the London School of Economics. It was the beginning of a three year period of great activity, with demonstrations, debates, street theatre, and the establishment of a new gay press. Although GLF began in London, local groups rapidly grew up.
John Chesterman was closely involved in the formation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1970, and the production of the Gay International News, which preceded Gay News. The GLF began life in a basement room at the London School of Economics on 13 October 1970. Though without a formal structure, the movement grew rapidly for the next few years and undertook a great number of consciousness-raising activities, such as demonstrations, debates and the establishment of a new gay press.
Sir Alwyne Ogden was born on June 29th 1889, the son of a Railway Auditor. He was educated at Dulwich College and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Failing to enter the Indian Civil Service he chose to go to China and was appointed as a Student Interpreter at the British Legation in Peking on December 3rd, 1912. His work involved roaming through Henan Province from August 1916 to the following February, buying cattle for the British Army, serving as Acting Consul at Changsha in 1916 during an anti-foreign riot, and working with the recruitment of the Chinese Labour Corps in Shandong Province from October 1917 to July 1918. Afterwards he served in Peking and Tientsin from 1918-1920, where he met Jessie Vera Bridge, the daughter of a local missionary, Albert Henry Bridge. The couple was eventually married in Tientsin in 1922.
In 1922 he visited the Tibetan frontier on special assignment, before being caught up in a siege in Chengdu upon his arrival to serve as Vice Consul. He became Acting Consul General there from December 23rd, 1922 until the following May. In June 1925 he was appointed Acting Vice Consul at Hankow, and in February 1926 he became Consul at Jiujiang. He served there during the traumatic and violent period when the British concession was overrun and abandoned in January 1927 at the height of the Northern Expedition of the Guomindang. His actions in this period of crisis earned him an OBE in June 1927.
After a period of home leave he served in Tientsin from September 1928 as an Acting Vice Consul, and from January 31st as a full Vice-Consul. He served there, often as Acting Consul General until his next home-leave when he was briefly employed by the Department of Overseas Trade to draw up a booklet entitled China: Notes on some aspects of life in China for the information of business visitors (1934). His next appointment was at Shanghai in 1933. From December 1933 he became Acting Consul at Chefoo, and full Consul from February 1934 until April 1936. After a stint in Kunming he was in charge of the Consulate in Shanghai from March 1937 for two years. During this period he organised the evacuation of all British women and children from the city during the Sino-Japanese hostilities. From February 1940 to April 1941 he was put in charge of the Consulate in Nanjing, then under Japanese occupation. In 1941 he was transferred to Tientsin as Acting Consul General. At the outbreak of the Pacific War he was placed under house arrest with his family before being repatriated in July 1942. Thereafter he was Consul General in Kunming and then Shanghai, where he landed on September 7th 1945. He was responsible for the administration of the internment camps there, which held some 7,000 Britons, until they were closed. For this he was awarded the CMG in 1946. His experiences thereafter in Shanghai, as a member of the newly amalgamated Foreign Service, were not particularly happy and he left the service in 1948, six months after becoming a KBE.
In retirement he played an active role in organisations supporting Chiang Kai-šhek's regime after it fled to Taiwan at the close of the Chinese civil war in 1949. He was also an early advocate and publicist of Tibet's plight after 1950. He wrote reviews of works on contemporary China and its history, and many drafts of an autobiography that was never completed. He maintained an interest in British business relations with China through the China Association, and cultural relations through the China Society. He died in 1981.
The Club de Dakar was founded on 2-3 December 1974 as a French initiative to improve industrial relations between western industries and Francophone African countries. It was instigated by Mohammed T. Diawara (later President of the Club), Minister for Planning, Ivory Coast. Following conferences in Birmingham in 1978, a British branch was established and interests were expanded to include Anglophone African countries. It seems that the Club de Dakar ceased its activities in c1988.
Hannah Stanton was born on 30 November 1913. She was educated privately at Summerleigh, Teddington, and went on to read English at London University, and to take a diploma in Social Science at the School of Economics. She worked for some time as a Hospital Almoner in Liverpool and London. From 1947 to 1948 she worked with the Friends Relief Service with refugees in post war Europe. In 1954, she began a Theology degree at Oxford.
Following the completion of her degree in August 1956, she visited her brother Tom who worked for the Community of the Resurrection in South Africa. She became involved in the Tumelong Mission in Lady Selborne, a black township near Pretoria, and in December 1956 took over as Warden. Whilst working at the Mission, she endeavoured to undertake her spiritual and material work for the people of Lady Selbourne despite the forces of apartheid. However, following the increased violence and activities of the police culminating in the Sharpeville Massacre of 21 March 1960, she found herself under surveillance. On 30 March 1960 she was arrested and held without charge, and without access to a lawyer until 21 May 1960, when she was deported. During this time she was held at Pretoria Central Gaol. She shared a cell with Helen Joseph. In 1962 she worked as Warden for the Mary Stuart Women's Hall at Makere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Following her return to England she wrote Go Well, Stay Well: South Africa, August 1956 to May 1960, describing her experiences in South Africa. Once she had returned home to Hampton Hill, she became involved in various campaigns including support for the Anti-Apartheid Movement. She also served as Secretary and Assistant Treasurer of the United Kingdom and Ireland Group of the World Conference on Religions and Peace. Hannah Stanton died on 9 December 1993.
James Philip Mills was born in 1890 and educated at Winchester School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1913 he joined the Indian Civil Service and served in North-East India until 1947. He was Sub-divisional officer at Mokokchung in the Naga Hills of Assam from 1917-1924 and Deputy Commissioner, based at Kohima, during the 1930s. In 1930 he married Pamela Vesey-Fitzgerald.
In 1930 he was appointed the Honorary Director of Ethnography for Assam. His first monograph, The Lhota Nagas, was published by the Government of Assam in 1922, followed by The Ao Nagas in 1926 and The Rengma Nagas in 1937. In 1942 he was awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for anthropological fieldwork among the Nagas. In 1943 he was appointed as Advisor to the Governor for Tribal Areas and States, with overall responsibility for tribal matters in North-East India. This appointment enabled him to travel among and study for the first time tribal people living north of the Brahmaputra towards the Tibetan frontier, and to give permission to his good friend Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, and also Ursula Graham-Bower, to enter this closed area and carry out their pioneering studies.
Mills was elected to the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1948 and served as its President from 1951-1953. In 1948 he became Reader in Language and Culture with special reference to South-East Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Here he worked with Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf from the inception of the Department of Cultural Anthropology in 1950 until ill health forced his retirement in 1954.
Frederick William Hugh Migeod was born on 9 August 1872 in Chislehurst, Kent. Educated at Folkestone, he joined the Royal Navy Pay Department in 1889. In 1900 he began service with the Colonial Civil Service and was stationed in the Gold Coast until 1919. He then began a series of expeditions to Lake Chad, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone, and twice crossed equatorial Africa. From 1925-1927 and again in 1929 and 1931 he led a British Museum East Africa expedition to excavate dinosaur bones. Following his return to England he became a local councillor and Alderman in Worthing and was Chairman of the British Union for Abolition of Vivisection. He married Madeleine Marguerite Adrienne Charlotte Banks in 1925. He died on 8 July 1952.
Frederick Migeod's publications include The Languages of West Africa (1913), A Grammar of the Hausa Language (1914), Across Equatorial Africa (1923), Through Nigeria and Lake Chad (1924) and Through British Cameroons (1925).
Pitt , Thomas Stanley Lane , Fox- , 1897-1989 , RN Commander , Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society
Thomas Stanley Lane Fox-Pitt was born on 27 November 1897. From the age of 12 he attended the Royal Navy College, Osborne, and two years later the Royal Naval College, Dartford. When war was declared in 1914 he was mobilised for active service. He retired from the navy after the war and joined the Colonial Administrative Service in Northern Rhodesia in 1927. He was stationed at Balovale, then part of Barotseland, as a cadet in 1928 and appointed District Officer in 1930. In the same year he married Marjory Hope Barton.
From 1923 to 1939 he served on the Copperbelt, first as a District Officer at Ndola and then at Mpika. He was particularly concerned at the conditions of the mineworkers and represented their complaints to the Colonial Government. During the Second World War, Fox-Pitt served in the Royal Navy with a convoy escort in the North Atlantic. Afterwards he returned to the Copperbelt, this time to Kitwe. He spent two evenings a week teaching English in an African night school. In the face of great opposition from the Colonial Government he encouraged the emergent trade unions and helped them to forge links with the European miners' trade unions. As a result he was transferred from the Copperbelt to become acting Provincial Commissioner in Barotseland in 1948, and a year later to Fort Jameson in the Eastern Province. Again he became involved in a dispute over African labour, concerning the sale of flu-cured tobacco. In 1951 he was put on the retired list. He remained in Northern Rhodesia, living on a smallholding in Kitwe and working with African organisations in opposition to the growing possibility of a Central African Federation.
One of the most fervent opponents of federation was a Lithuanian, Simon Ber Zukas, who had returned to Northern Rhodesia at the beginning of 1951 but was deported the following year for 'conducting himself so as to be a danger to peace and good order in the territory'. He and Fox-Pitt worked very closely together for the same cause after Fox-Pitt's return to England in December 1952. Fox-Pitt's term as Secretary of 'Racial Unity' (1952-1953) spanned the advent and birth of the Central African Federation which received the Queen's Assent on 1 August 1953. In 1953 he became Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, co-operating closely with other anti-federation movements such as the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the nationalist Congress parties in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. It was decided after the return of Harold Macmillan's Conservative Government in November 1959, which supported federation, that the work of the campaign would have to go underground. From 1960, Fox-Pitt's energies were channelled largely into the London Committee of Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP). As a consequence he found himself embroiled in a libel case with Sir Roy Welensky. The magazine produced by the Committee had, in Fox-Pitt's absence, made an unsubstantiated claim that Welensky was involved in the death of the Secretary General of the United Nations. UNIP was fined 1000 dollars.
The Central African Federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963. Fox-Pitt attended the Zambia Independence celebrations in 1964 at which he received the Order of the Freedom of Zambia. For the next two years he served in the Local Government Department of the Independent Zambian Government and on a commission concerning civil service salaries. In 1966 he retired to England. He died in 1989.
Derek Alec Rawcliffe was born on 8 July 1921. He gained a BA from the University of Leeds. Following his training at Mirfield, he was made a Deacon in 1944. In 1945 he became a priest and was appointed to St. George's, Worcester. In 1947 he was posted to work in Melanesia as Assistant Master, and then Head Master at All Hallows School, Pawa, Solomon Islands (1949). From 1956-1958 he was Head Master at St. Mary's School, Maravovo, Solomon Islands. In 1959 he was appointed Archdeacon of Southern Melanesia. He was made first Bishop of New Hebrides in January 1974, leaving this post in 1980 to become Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway. From 1991 to 1996 he was Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Ripon. He was awarded an OBE in 1971.
Barbara Whittingham Jones (married name Oppenheim) was a British journalist who spent some time living in Malaya. She became known for her forceful article 'Malaya Betrayed', which appeared in World Review, May 1946, during the Malayan Union controversy. The article caused a sensation throughout Malaya. In September 1947, she also became the first British correspondent to visit Patani, to observe the political oppression of the 700,000 Malays in this part of the Kingdom of Siam. She continued her work as a correspondent for various publications, covering political events in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. These publications included Eastern World, Straits Times, Straits Budget, letters to The Times, and radio broadcasts with Macassar Radio. Her husband was Henry Rolf Oppenheim (1902-1987).
Edward Charles MacIntosh Bowra was born in 1841. He was educated at the City of London College before entering the Civil Service and gaining a position in the London Customs House. However, in July 1860 he gave this up to join the British Legion of Garibaldi's Red Shirts in Italy, where his exploits included fighting a duel over the honour of the British contingent. Returning to England he worked briefly for the 1861 census whilst trying unsuccessfully to join the Chinese Consular service. In 1862 he became Private Secretary to Sir William Verner, MP for Armagh, and the following year was appointed clerk in the Chinese Maritime Customs, journeying out to China on the same boat as J. D. Campbell. After an initial spell in Tientsin he was sent to Shanghai in August 1863. From 1864 he served as a student interpreter in Peking, and in September 1865 he was appointed interpreter in Canton. When the Chinese Secretary of Customs, Pin Chun, was sent on a European tour Bowra was appointed to organise the trip. In March 1866 they set off for Europe visiting London, Paris, the Hague, Copenhagen, Stockholm, St. Petersburg and Berlin. Whilst in England Bowra became re-acquainted with a family friend, Thirza Woodward, whom he married on 15 August. On his return to China he was sent to Ningo and his children Ethel and Cecil were born there. Following a transfer to Canton in 1870 he worked on a history of the province which was published in the China Review. He was promoted to Deputy Commissioner in 1872 and was made responsible for the collection and transportation of objects to be exhibited at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, following which the Austrian Emperor gave him the Order of the Iron Crown. His youngest son, also called Edward, was born in May 1874 whilst the Bowras were still on leave in England. On 15 October Bowra died at the age of thirty-two after complaining of ill health for a number of months.
Cecil Arthur Verner Bowra, eldest son of Edward Charles MacIntosh Bowra, was born on 22 August 1869. His father's early death caused the family some financial hardship but Cecil was educated at Park House School, Gravesend and then at St. Paul's. Although he matriculated from London University his mother, now married to George Mackie, insisted he should leave school at sixteen. He thus applied to the Chinese Maritime Customs with the recommendation of Sir Robert Hart. In 1886 he arrived in China, firstly living in Peking as a language student and then moving to Tientsin. He then worked in Chefoo (1888-1890), Canton (1890) and Amoy (1891). On home leave he met Ethel Fleay and they were married in 1896, returning to Chefoo where two years later Bowra was appointed to Second Assistant. In 1899 he was made Assistant-in-Charge at Newchwang, Southern Manchuria, where he had to maintain relations between the large Russian presence and his Chinese employers. As the Boxer Rebellion took hold in 1900 Cecil Bowra was made Commander of the Combined Defence Force; however, it was the Russian forces who took control when Newchwang was attacked, and in 1903 he was replaced by a Russian Commissioner. Following further periods of employment in Soochow and Amoy and a period of home leave, Bowra became Senior Commissioner in Manchuria, and Advisor to the Viceroy in 1908. With the appointment of Sir Francis Aglen as Inspector-General Bowra was made Chief Secretary in Peking (1910-1923). The post meant that he became Acting Inspector-General when Aglen was on leave in 1911 and 1917. Bowra retired in 1923 having received such honours as the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government, the Norwegian Order of St. Olaf and the Chinese awards of the Red Button and the Second Class of the Striped Tiger. He died in 1947.
Peter Malcolm Holt was born on 28 November 1918. He was educated at Lord William's Grammar School and later at Oxford University, where he obtained Master of Arts and D. Litt degrees. He joined the Sudan Civil Service, Ministry of Education in 1941, where he served until 1953. He was appointed Government Archivist from 1954-1955. In 1955 he returned to the United Kingdom and joined the School of Oriental and African Studies. In 1964 he was made Professor of Arabic History. From 1975-1982 he was Professor of History of the Near and Middle East at the University of London. In 1980 the Republic of Sudan awarded him the Gold Medal of Science, Letters and Art.
His publications include The Mahdist State in the Sudan 1881-1898 (1958); The Modern History of Sudan (1961); Historians of the Middle East (co-ed. with B. Lewis, 1962); Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (1968); The Cambridge History of Islam (co-ed. with A. K. S. Lambton & B. Lewis, 1970); and Studies in the History of the Near East (1973).
The Religious Tract Society (RTS) was founded in 1799 to print and distribute religious tracts among those who with, in the words of the Proceedings of the first twenty years, 'little leisure and less inclination to peruse entire volumes might thus be furnished with agreeable and useful employment and eventually be led to an acquaintance with the state of their own hearts and a knowledge of Salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ'. The founders of the Society were drawn from the same group of evangelicals who had earlier set up the London Missionary Society and were later to found the British and Foreign Bible Society, in the realization that more might be achieved through co-operation between denominations than by individual denominational efforts. From its earliest years the Society concerned itself not only with the distribution of tracts in Britain but with similar work in continental Europe, in the British colonies, and in the many countries of the world where British missionary societies were active. By 1848 the RTS was operating, directly or indirectly, in China, Singapore, Borneo, Thailand, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand, the South Pacific islands, Africa, Madagascar, the West Indies, the United States, Canada, most European countries, and the countries of the Near and Middle East.
Towards the end of 1857 representatives of four British missionary societies working in India - the Baptist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society - put forward proposals for a new society, to be named the Christian Vernacular Education Society for India. The proposers did not, according to its First Annual Report, intend the new society to compete with 'existing educational establishments which employ the English language and literature and which are chiefly attractive to the higher classes of Hindu youth ... but rather to reach the village populations, and the masses of the lower orders in towns throughout the country, exclusively through the vernacular of each district'. The new society was formally instituted in May 1858 as a memorial to the Indian Mutiny. John Murdoch was appointed 'Representative and Travelling Secretary in India'. In 1891 the name of the Society was changed to the Christian Literature Society for India and in 1923 the words 'and Africa' were added when the Society extended its work to that continent.
The Christian Literature Society for China had a complex genesis. It originated as a School and Text Book Committee of the China Missionary Conference in 1877, developing into the Chinese Book and Tract Society in Glasgow in 1884 and forming the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge (SDCGK) among the Chinese in 1887. It was supported by the Christian Literature Society for China, organised in 1892 to succeed the Chinese Book and Tract Society. In 1906 the SDCGK changed its name to the Christian Literature Society for China.
The United Society for Christian Literature (USCL) was formed in 1935 when the Religious Tract Society and the Christian Literature Society for India and Africa merged. The RTS China kept its old title in China, with USCL as a sub-title. In 1941 the London Committee and in 1942 the Scottish Committee organising support for the Christian Literature Society for China were incorporated.
For further information see William Jones, The Jubilee Memorial of the Religious Tract Society (London, 1850); S G Green, The Story of the Religious Tract Society (London, 1899); G Hewitt, Let the People Read (London, 1949), the last of which surveys the work of all three societies.
The Christian Literature Society for China had a complex genesis. It originated as a School and Text Book Committee of the China Missionary Conference in 1877, developing into the Chinese Book and Tract Society in Glasgow in 1884 and forming the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge (SDCGK) among the Chinese in 1887. It was supported by the Christian Literature Society for China, organised in 1892 to succeed the Chinese Book and Tract Society. In 1906 the SDCGK changed its name to the Christian Literature Society for China. In 1942 the Scottish Committee organising support for the Christian Literature Society for China was incorporated into the United Society for Christian Literature. For further information see G Hewitt, Let the People Read (London, 1949).
Arthur Cowper Raynard was born in Kent in 1845; studied at University College London, co-founding a mathematical society with George De Morgan (son of Augustus De Morgan), before entering Pembroke College, Cambridge, from which he graduated MA in 1868. Ranyard was called the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1871 and thereafter practised law, but his income was sufficient to allow him to spend much of his time studying astronomy. He became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1863 and spent many years serving on its council. Ranyard died in 1894.
Algernon Charles Swinburne was born in Grosvenor Place, London on 5 April 1837. Swinburne attended Eton in 1849 before entering Balliol College, Oxford in 1856. He left Oxford without graduating in 1860. He contributed to periodicals including the Spectator and Fortnightly Review. The first poem to be published under his name was Atalanta in Calydon (1865), which was received with critical acclaim. He also wrote the political work Songs before Sunrise and continued to write until a few years before his death. He died of influenza on 10 April 1909.
Augustus de Morgan was born at Madura, India in 1806; educated at various English schools. In February 1823 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1827. In 1828 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at University College London. De Morgan resigned his post in 1831, on account of a disagreement with the University Council who claimed the right of dismissing a professor without assigning reasons. He resumed his chair in 1836 on assurance that the regulations had been altered so as to preserve the independence of professors, remaining Professor of Mathematics at UCL until he resigned in November 1866; he died in 1871.
Benjamin Hall was born in London in 1802 of Welsh parents and educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford. He served as Whig MP for Monmouth for several years in the 1830s before being elected Liberal MP for Marylebone in 1837. He became a baronet in 1838 and entered the House of Lords as Baron Llanover in 1859. He also spent periods serving as as president of the General Board of Health, as Chief Commissioner of works, and as Lord Lieutenant of Monmouthshire. Hall's wife Augusta (née Waddington) was a leading figure in the movement to revive the Welsh language, literature and culture. The Great Bell of Westminster is believed to have been given its nickname 'Big Ben' in his honour. Hall died in 1867.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Anne Isabella Ritchie was born in 1837, the elder daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1861), a well-known Victorian novelist. Anne (Anny) was a prolific novelist, essayist and writer of memoirs. By 1875, The Works of Miss Thackeray had been published in eight volumes (Smith, Elder and Company), extended to 15 volumes by 1866. Most of her critical essays appeared in The Cornhill Magazine. Her first contribution appeared in the magazine's first year, 1860, and most of her fiction appeared serially in the magazine including, The Village on the Cliff, Old Kensington, Miss Angel and Mrs Dymond. Anne Thackeray married her cousin, Richmond Thackeray Willoughby Ritchie, in 1877; their son's wife Margaret Paulina Ritchie was the daughter of Charles and Mary Booth. Richie died in 1919.
Anne Isabella Ritchie was born in 1837, the elder daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1861), a well-known Victorian novelist. Anne (Anny) was a prolific novelist, essayist and writer of memoirs. By 1875, The Works of Miss Thackeray had been published in eight volumes (Smith, Elder and Company), extended to 15 volumes by 1866. Most of her critical essays appeared in The Cornhill Magazine. Her first contribution appeared in the magazine's first year, 1860, and most of her fiction appeared serially in the magazine including, The Village on the Cliff, Old Kensington, Miss Angel and Mrs Dymond. Anne Thackeray married her cousin, Richmond Thackeray Willoughby Ritchie, in 1877; their son's wife Margaret Paulina Ritchie was the daughter of Charles and Mary Booth. Richie died in 1919.
Brenda Elizabeth Spender was born in Bray, Berkshire. She was the literary editor of Country Life magazine between 1925 and 1946. Spender also wrote the 'On'y Tony' series of books for children.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Alfred John Fairbank was born in Grimsby , Lincolnshire, in 1895 and brought up in Gillingham, Kent. He joined the civil service aged 15, initially working as a writer at Chatham dockyard, where a colleague introduced him to calligraphy. Whilst working at the Admiralty in London in th 1920s, Fairbank was able to study handwriting formally, becoming an acknowledged expert in both the study and practice of calligraphy and the author of several books on the subject, as well as a founder-member of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators. He was awarded the CBE in 1951 and died in 1982.
Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield is a librarian in the Special Collections and Western Manuscripts department at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
John Sinclair was born in Thurso, Caithness in 1754. He was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Oxford. He qualified as a lawyer in both Scotland and England but never practised law. In 1780 he entered the House of Commons as MP for Caithness, subsequently serving as MP for several English and Scottish constituencies between 1784 and 1811. Sir John wrote several works on economics and agriculture and became the first
President of the Board of Agriculture in 1793. His Statistical Account of Scotland popularized the use of the word 'statistics' in English.
John Sinclair was born in Thurso, Caithness, and educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Oxford. He qualified as a lawyer in both Scotland and England but never practised law. In 1780 he entered the House of Commons as MP for Caithness, subsequently serving as MP for several English and Scottish constituencies between 1784 and 1811. Sir John wrote several works on ecnomics and agriculture and became the first president of the Board of Agriculture in 1793. His Statistical Account of Scotland popularized the use of the word 'statistics' in English.
Samuel Smiles was born in Haddington, East Lothian in 1812. He studied medicine in Edinburgh. He also became a journalist, lecturer and campaigner for political reform, writing radical articles for regional newsapers, most often in Leeds. In later years he worked for railway companies and the National Provident Institution, and also became a noted biographer. Smiles's radical views mellowed into liberalism and his writings turned towards advocating self-improvement. His book Self Help, with illustrations of character and conduct (1859) became a bestseller and was translated into more than ten languages.
Adam Smith was born in Fifeshire and studied at the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford. During 1751-1763 he was a Professor of at Glasgow, teaching logic and moral philosophy, and subsquently worked a private tutor and independent scholar before becoming Commissioner of Customs for Scotland in 1788. His friends and associates included the philosopher David Hume, the scientist Joseph Black and the geologist James Hutton. Smith's academic work helped to create the discipline of economics in its modern form and provided an intellectual rationale for capitalism and free-market economics. His best known works are The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776).
Gilbert Wakefield was born in Nottingham and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. He became a fellow of the college in 1776, concentrating on Biblical studies. He was ordained in the Church of England, but gave up his curacy after a few years because of his disagreements with aspects of Anglican teaching, including the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and subsequently taught in several Unitarian schools. His speeches and writings gave him a reputation as a political and religious controversialist: he was opposed to slavery and to many of the policies of the Pitt government, but supported the French Revolution. Wakefield was imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol after writing an anti-government pamphlet in 1798; he died a few months after his release in 1801.