Frank Gann Redwood (1896-?) was born in Gillingham, Kent. During World War One he served first in the Royal Naval Air Service and then in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, being with the Danube Flotilla in 1919. He was transferred to the British High Commission in Hungary in 1920 and continued in the Foreign Service there until 1941 when he was evacuated via the Soviet Union. He returned to Hungary in 1945 with the Inter-Allied Control Commission, leaving in 1948.
Born 1914; served with RAF technical branch (engineers); commissioned as Flight Lieutenant, 1947; Squadron Leader, 1954; Wing Commander, 1963; retired, 1969; died 1981.
Dr Milne-Redhead entered medical education after a period in banking and working at rubber-planting in Malaya. After graduating from Edinburgh in 1937 he held various house appointments and then saw war service in the North of England. An account of his work with ambulance trains during the Second World War has been placed in the Imperial War Museum. When the war was over he returned to Scotland and entered general practice at Mainsriddle in 1947, where he served the scattered community for 27 years. He had a keen interest in local wildlife, contributed to the Botanical Society's botanical map of the British Isles, and was a member of the Wildlife Trust of Scotland.
Community Health Councils were established in England and Wales in 1974 "to represent the interests in the health service of the public in its district" (National Health Service Reorganisation Act, 1973). Often referred to as 'the patient’s voice in the NHS', each Community Health Council (CHC) served the public and patients in its local area by representing their interests to National Health Service (NHS) authorities and by monitoring the provision of health services to their communities.
CHCs were independent statutory bodies with certain legal powers. CHCs were entitled to receive information about local health services, to be consulted about changes to health service provision, and to carry out monitoring visits to NHS facilities. They also had the power to refer decisions about proposed closures of NHS facilities to the Secretary of State for Health. For this reason, CHCs were sometimes known as the ‘watchdogs’ of the NHS. The co-ordinated monitoring of waiting times in Accident and Emergency departments led to ‘Casualty Watch’ which gained national press coverage. Locally, many CHCs represented patients’ views by campaigning for improved quality of care and better access to NHS services, and by responding to local issues such as proposed hospital closures.
Each CHC had around 20 voluntary members from the local area. Half were appointed the local authority, a third were elected from voluntary bodies and the remainder were appointed by the Secretary of State for Health. Members met every month to six weeks and meetings were usually open to the general public. Guest speakers or guest attendees were often invited, particularly when a specific topic or issue was under discussion.
All CHCs employed a small number of paid office staff and some had shop-front offices, often on the high street, where members of the public could go for advice and information about local NHS services. CHCs published leaflets and guidance on a wide variety of topics from ‘how to find a GP’ to ‘how to make a complaint’.
Within the guiding principles and statutory duties of the legislation, CHCs developed organically in response to the needs of the communities they served and for this reason considerable variation can be found in the records of different CHCs.
Redbridge Community Health Council began life as East Roding Community Health Council in July 1974. Membership comprised 12 members appointed by the Regional Health Authority and 12 members appointed by the London Borough of Redbridge. Of the 12 appointed by the local borough, 4 were borough councillors. Of the 12 appointed by the Regional Health Authority, 8 were nominated by voluntary organisations and 4 were appointed directly by the North East Thames Regional Health Authority. By 1975 the CHC had "a staff of two and a well-equipped office". East Roding CHC changed its name to Redbridge CHC in March 1979.
Community Health Councils in England were abolished in 2003 as part of the ‘NHS Plan (2000)’.
Red Shift Theatre Company was founded as a profit-share company in south-east London in 1982 by Jonathan Holloway, who became the Company's Artistic Director, and the theatre designer Charlotte Humpston. They assumed a collaborative Director-Designer partnership rather than a Writer-Director partnership.
Jonathan Holloway had studied dance at the Laban Centre and Noh Theatre at the International Centre for Theatre Creations, Paris. During the 1970s he worked as an actor, stage manager, sound technician, freelance writer, director, film-maker and lighting designer. He established the Red Shift Theatre Company because he believed it was not possible to do the type of work he wanted in established theatre. Instead of focusing on the text of the play, Holloway wanted to produce shows where the notion of text was broader than simply what is printed on the page.
Initially Holloway had difficulty in finding work since there was a strong feeling in the 1970s that there was an established career pattern for directors, whereby they started out as assistants in regional theatre and gradually worked their way up the ladder. Jonathan Holloway had spent time at the Royal Court in 1977-78, but left conventional theatre to work as a community artist for two years before establishing the East End Theatre Group with Dave Fox in 1979. Since he didn't have a conventional directing background he needed to forge a working context for himself.
The Red Shift Theatre Company combined traditional narrative and character-based drama with art-house performance, using design, image and spectacle. Holloway made considerable use of text and visual siginification to provide a broad story-telling vocab, whilst great emphasis was placed on 'cinematic' use of music and design to lift Red Shift productions above most UK small-scale company productions.
Red Shift attempted to make English and European classics accessible and relevant to the concerns of modern audiences by producing radical new versions. New plays were also performed and the Company received acclaim for its ability to create imaginative and inspiring work.. Within a year of its inception Red Shift had its own venue at the Edinburgh Festival. In 1986 Jonathan Holloway's stage version of Dostoyevsky's 'The Double' secured the Company's first Arts Council grant, and in 1989 Germaine Greer presented BBC2's Late Show special on the Company's 'Timon of Athens'.
As a not-for-profit organisation and registered charity undertaking small and middle-scale touring around Britain and across the world the Company sought to bring theatre to broad audiences via use of modest performance spaces in rural communities and inner-city venues not frequented by mainstream theatre-goers. Approximately 175 performances each year were given by the Company to over 25,000 people. Red Shift also invested in the future of British theatre by running workshops for writers and by commissioning new plays.
Awards:
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1987-89 - Edinburgh Fringe Firsts
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1990 - Charrington London Fringe Award for Best Music
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1990 - Robert Breckmen Award for Best Poster
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1993 - London Fringe Award nomination for Best Director
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1993 - London Fringe Award for Best Music
Government funding:
- The Arts Council of Great Britain awarded the company three-year funding from January 1991. This was renewed from 1994-95 until 1996-97.
Media appearances:
- Appeared on the 'Late Show' (BBC2), 'Edinburgh Nights' (BBC2), 'Kaleidoscope' (BBC Radio 4)
Touring:
- The Company has performed in Egypt, Santiago de Chile and Hong Kong.
Red Pepper is a magazine (founded in 1984) and, later, a website of left politics and culture, drawing on socialist, feminist, green and libertarian politics, and seeking to be a space for debate on the left, a resource for movements for social justice, and a home for open-minded anti-capitalists.
The Red Coat School, Stepney, has had various names including Stepney Parish Day Schools, Stepney Church School and the Charity School in the Hamlet of Mile End Old Town. It was established in 1714 by voluntary subscription for the clothing and education of a limited number of boys born within Mile End Old Town. The school-house was built on Stepney Green (though the boys were separately housed in Mile End Road for some time). In 1944 the school merged with the secondary department of the Cass School to become the Sir John Cass's Foundation and Red Coat School in Stepney Way.
Stated by the booksellers to have been written by Carmelo Recupero of Catania. No other information given on him.
The Rectifiers' Club was formed in the late 1780s. It met at the City of London Tavern to discuss matters relating to the trade of distilling (gin, cordials and other British spirits excluding whisky). The members of the Club included many prominent London distillers.
The first parish church of Paddington stood on Paddington Green and was probably dedicated to Saint Katherine. This was demolished in 1678 and replaced by a church dedicated to Saint James. This in turn was demolished and replaced by Saint Mary's, which was constructed between 1788 and 1791. It became the parish church. In 1845 it was superseded by the newly constructed and larger church of Saint James, Sussex Gardens (P87/JS). Most of the older parish records were transferred in 1845 from Saint Mary's to Saint James.
Saint Mary's became a district chapelry. Actress Sarah Siddons (born 1755) was buried here in June 1831. Other notable graves are those of B R Haydon, the painter of gigantic historical canvases who committed suicide (1846), artist William Collins RA (1847), Sarah Disraeli, the statesman's favourite sister; and Harriet, the unhappy first wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who drowned herself in the Serpentine after he had deserted her (1816).
The Records of Legal Education Project (RLEP), funded by the Leverhulme Trust, ran from October 1994 to May 1998. It was based at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS), and its brief was to: investigate records of legal education housed in selected institutions, primarily in the Greater London area, and report on their availability, accessibility and significance; create a Guide to Records of Legal Education and Law Schools to enable researchers to trace the location of documents of relevance; publish and disseminate its findings to assist researchers in law, the humanities and the social sciences; exceptionally, collect, maintain and make available for research records of legal education where the creating/controlling agency was unable to make any alternative archival provision. This material was placed in a Records of Legal Education Archives located in the IALS Library. Research was concentrated on institutions and records in the Greater London area, since this is a) where the highest proportion of legal education material was to be found; b) where the project was physically located. The project's resources were too limited to go further afield. The project was co-ordinated by Clare Cowling, an Archivist employed on a part-time basis, under the direction of an Advisory Committee comprising Jules Winterton, the IALS Librarian, Avrom Sherr, Woolf Professor of Legal Education at IALS, David Sugarman, Professor of Law at the University of Lancaster and William Twining, Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London until 1998. The Project was based in the IALS Library and was granted use of its facilities.
The Records of Legal Education Archives (RLEA) was established to provide a home for legal education records, for which there was no alternative place of custody. It was created as part of the Records of Legal Education Project, a research study undertaken in 1996, conducted with the support of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS). The RLEA consists of a collection of papers of individuals and organisations prominent in the field of legal education, and is held at IALS.
Not given.
Unknown.
The company was established in 1896. Later, it changed its name to Great Western and General Insurance Company and also became a subsidiary of Sun Insurance Office. Sun Insurance merged with Alliance Assurance Company to form Sun Alliance Insurance in 1959.
Reader Brothers was a firm of builders established in the 1890's by Tom and Richard Reader. They began work drafting designs in the front room of a terrace house in Hackney, renting lock-ups in the area. The firm expanded in the years leading up to the First World War building fashionable houses for the middle class. By the 1920's the firm was renting premises in a defunct Hackney corset factory. These premises seem to have been acquired as the firm re-built them to their own design in 1928.
The 1930's brought renewed prosperity to the firm. Between 1932 and 1939 they built and sold some 'two thousand houses' at Chingford, Winchmore Hill, Loughton, Cricklewood and Edgware, as well as undertaking housing schemes for the borough of Poplar and additional wings to Saint Andrews Hospital. Building began again after the Second World War along with work repairing bomb damaged properties. New designs were created in the late forties and fifties and extension work became more common. The work of the firm gradually moved eastwards, into what was once Essex, as land around London became more built-up. The firm was finally wound up in 1972/3.
Born in 1920; educated at Taunton School and Jesus College, Cambridge University; served World War Two, 1939-1945, in India and Burma with the Royal Signal Corps; research assistant to Charles Wilson during the writing of Wilson's history of Unilever, 1947-1954; worked for Unilever, 1950-1964, in advertising, market research and public relations; began career as a historical writer; left Unilever in 1964 to write a history of ICI, which was published in 1970 and 1795; wrote a series of business histories; Texaco Visiting Fellow, Business History Unit, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1979-1985; died 1990. Publications: Birds Eye: the early years (Walton on Thames, 1963); Imperial Chemical Industries: a history (Oxford University Press, London, 1970, 1975); Architect of air power: the life of the first Viscount Weir of Eastwood (Collins, London, 1968); Life in Victorian England (Batsford, London, 1964); Professional men: the rise of the professional classes in nineteenth-century Europe (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1966); Hard roads and highways: S.P.D. Ltd, 1918-1968 (Batsford, London, 1969); Unilever plantations (Unilever Ltd, London, 1961); The Weir Group: a centenary history (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1971).
Born in 1575, Sir Thomas Reade became High Sheriff of the counties of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire. He died in 1650.
Margaret Helen Read, 1889-1991, was educated at Roedean and Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1919, she travelled to India, where she was involved in social work in hill villages and developed an interest in social anthropology. After her return to England in 1924, she embarked upon a career lecturing in international affairs in both Britain and America, and entered the London School of Economics to study anthropology in 1930. She studied under Malinowski and was influenced by his theories of functional anthropology. She embarked on ethnographic fieldwork in east central Africa and was appointed as assistant lecturer at LSE in 1937. In 1940 she left the LSE to join the staff at the Colonial Department of the Institute of Education where her main interest was the effect of Western education in Africa. In 1949, Read was appointed as the first Professor of Education "with special reference to colonial areas" at the Institute of Education. Here she played an important role in shaping post war attitudes in Whitehall towards colonial education policy. She retired in 1955 and was appointed to the University of Nigeria at Ibadan as a Visiting Professor of Education. She became a consultant to the World Health Organisation in 1956, and chairman of the World Health Organisation committee of experts on the training of medical and auxiliary staffs.
The firm of Read, Hurst-Brown and Company, stockbrokers, was formerly known as Read and Brigstock, which first appears in the Stock Exchange annual List of Members in 1894/5. Read and Brigstock traded from various addresses over the years, and latterly at 7 Birchin Lane, before changing its name to Read, Hurst-Brown and Company, still of 7 Birchin Lane, in 1950/1. Read, Hurst-Brown and Company continued at 7 Birchin Lane until 1976, when it merged with another stockbroking firm, Rowe and Pitman. In 1986 Rowe and Pitman was taken over by the merchant bank SG Warburg, and ceased to exist as a separate firm.
Margaret Read (1889-1991) was an pioneer in applying social anthropology and ethnography to the education and health problems of developing countries. Having studied at Newnham College Cambridge, from 1919 to 1924 she undertook missionary social work in Indian hill villages. From 1924-1930 she lectured on international affairs in Britain and the United States. During the 1930s she studied anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE), did ethnographic field research in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and lectured at LSE. In 1940 Margaret Read was awarded a Chair at the Institute of Education, University of London and became Head of the Department of Education in Tropical Areas, a post which she held until her retirement in 1955. Read was influential in shaping the British Government's attitude to post-war colonial education and was a close personal friend of Sir Christopher Cox at the Colonial Office. After her retirement, she undertook consultancy work, notably for the World Health Organisation and held a number of visiting professorships in Nigeria and the United States.
John Read was born in Hendon, Middlesex on 31 March 1908. He left school at 16 to work as a clerk in the Derbyshire County Council Education Department. Studying in the evenings, he took the University of London external B.Sc. in Physics and Applied Mathematics in 1929 and then won a scholarship to Nottingham University College where he took a B.Sc. in Special Physics in 1931. Read then won a teaching fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and worked for his Ph.D. on the attenuation coefficients of scattered radiation from a range of elements. He returned to the UK in 1934, joining the Radium Beam Research Unit as Assistant Physicist working with L.H. Gray at Mount Vernon Hospital in London. Gray and Read were awarded a grant from the British Empire Cancer Campaign to build a neutron generator for study of the biological action of neutrons. In the words of John Haggith's obituary of Read in Scope vol 3 (1994), 'The next five years were remarkable. It took them two years of toil and brilliant improvisation to build the neutron generator and then just three years to put neutron and alpha dosimetry on a sound footing and obtain the RBEs [Relative Biological Effectiveness] for neutrons, alpha particles, X- and gamma-rays'.
In 1939 Read moved to the British Institute of Radiology. In 1941 he was seconded to British Thomson-Houston Co. in Rugby for war work, after which in 1943 he took up the post of Hospital Physicist at the London Hospital. In the same year he played a leading role in the establishment of the Hospital Physicists Association. In 1946 he was made Head of the British Empire Cancer Campaign's Biophysics Research Group at the Mount Vernon Hospital and the Radium Institute, from 1948 serving as Combined Head of the Research Group and Physics Department. In 1950 the British Empire Cancer Campaign established a laboratory for research into radiation biology in Christchurch, New Zealand (moving to Dunedin in 1952). Read was appointed Director of the Radiation Biology Group. He remained in New Zealand for the rest of his life, making occasional return visits to Britain. As head of the Radiation Biology Group, with limited resources, Read pursued research into how ionising radiations destroy tumours and how this action could be influenced by other factors. He retired in 1974. Read was awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Anderson-Berry Gold Medal in 1953 and gave the Douglas Lea Memorial Lecture in 1957. He died in Dunedin on 10 October 1993.
James Read graduated in Law from the University of London in 1953 and qualified as a barrister in 1954. He has been Assistant Lecturer in law at University College London (1956-1958), Lecturer in African Law, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) (1958-1965), Senior Lecturer in Law, the University College, Dar-es-Salaam (1963-1966), Reader in African Law, SOAS (1964-1975) and Professor of Comparative Public Law with special reference to Africa at SOAS from 1974. Professor Read was Joint Honorary Secretary of the United Kingdom National Committee of Comparative Law (1969-1973), Honorary Secretary of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (SPTL) (1972-1975) and Chairman of the Commonwealth Legal Education Association (1977-1983). He was also a member of the Advisory Committee on Legal Education from its inception in 1971 until 1975, representing the SPTL.
Grantly Dick Read is primarily famous for his work as a propagandist for 'natural childbirth'. This is the belief that in all but a small minority of cases labour is a normal physiological event, which in the case of properly instructed women can be carried out with a minimum of obstetric intervention. It includes the methods by which women can be trained to conduct labour as a conscious participant rather than a drugged patient. Dick Read's teachings were a matter of some controversy among the medical profession, as he was not a qualified obstetrician and even after his teachings had become widespread and his methods employed, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists refused to admit him to membership. However he gained considerable support from among women themselves.
Claire Rayner was born in January 1931 in London, and died in October 2010. She trained as a nurse at the Royal Northern Hospital, London winning the gold medal for outstanding achievement when she became an SRN in 1954. She also studied midwifery at Guy's Hopsital, worked at Royal Free Hospital and as a Paediatric Sister at the Whittington Hospital.
She is probably best known as an "Agony Aunt", and has written over 90 books both fiction and non-fiction cover topics such as home-nursing, sex-education, baby and child care. Her fiction has covered scenarios from medical ethics, to crime, to the Holocaust.
The Ray Society was founded in 1844 by a group of British Naturalists which included Thomas Bell, George Johnston and Richard Owen, and it commemorates the great English naturalist John Ray (1627-1705).
The purpose of the society as then stated, was 'the promotion of Natural History by the printing of original works in Zoology and Botany; of new editions of works of established merit; of rare tracts and manuscripts; and of translations and reprints of foreign works; which are generally inaccessible.' The main object of the society remains the publication of learned books on natural history, with special emphasis on the British fauna and flora.
In its earlier days, the society was heavily reliant upon foreign, and in particular German research and material, which was regarded as the leading authority in the fields of Zoology and Botany. In an age when the advancement of science was very much in vogue, the society became an instant success, and within a year it had enrolled some 650 members. It reached a peak of 868 in 1847.
The officers of the society consist of a President, six Vice-Presidents, four Honorary Vice-Presidents, with a Treasurer, Foreign Secretary, Secretary and Assistant Secretary. Council meets twice a year.
The documents relate to property in Paddington owned by a Frederick Mayner: 48 Cambridge Street [now Kendal Street] and 29 Torrington Mews.
Sidney Herbert Ray was born in 1858. He became a schoolmaster in 1882. His interest in Oceanic languages began in about 1887 and he became a Fellow of the Anthropological Institute in 1888. He visited Torres Strait, New Guinea and Borneo 1898-1899 with the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition. In 1907 he received an Honorary M.A. from Cambridge. He became Vice-President of the Anthropological Institute in 1919 and Rivers Medallist at the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1928. He was occasional lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies from 1920s-1936. He died in 1939.
His publications include A Comparative Vocabulary of the Dialects of British New Guinea (1895); Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (1907-1935); Languages of Borneo (1913); People and Language of Lifu (1918); Languages of Northern Papua (1919); Languages of Western Papua (1919); Comparative Study of the Melanesian Island Languages (1926); Languages of Central Papua (1929); Grammar of the Kiwai Language (1933); and Languages of South-Eastern Papua (1938).
George Ray of Milton near Sittingbourne, was apprenticed to Mr Beckingsall of Sarum (Salisbury), before entering Guy's Hospital in 1815. He was granted his certificate in 1816 and also became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. His last entry in the College membership lists is in 1853. During his career he was Medical Officer for Milton Union, and Union House.
Sir William Rawstorne (died 1684), citizen and grocer, was alderman of Lime Street ward 1678-84 and sheriff 1677-8. His son William Rawstorne, citizen and grocer, was nominated sheriff in 1735 but not elected. He was also of New Hall, Preston, Lancashire.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Staff College, Camberley, was inaugurated in 1862 to provide Staff training to British Army officers and remained in existence until 1997 when single-Service Staff training was ended. Staff training for the British Army is now conducted by the Joint Services Command and Staff College.
Staff College, Camberley, was inaugurated in 1862 to provide Staff training to British Army officers, and remained in existence until 1997 when single-Service Staff training was ended. Staff Training for the British Army is now conducted by the Joint Services Command and Staff College.
Born, 1810; entered for the East India Company's service and set out for India, 1827; engaged in reorganising the Persian army, 1833-1839; undertook tours in Susiana and Persian Kurdistan; awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), 1839; returned to India and was appointed assistant to Sir W. Macnaughton in Afghanistan; political agent for lower Afghanistan, 1842; political agent of the East India Company in Turkish Arabia, 1843; consul in Baghdad, 1844; Fellow of the RGS 1844-1895; RGS Council Member from 1850; Vice-President of the RGS, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1874, and 1875; Conservative MP for Reigate, 1858; MP for Frome, 1865-1868; member of the newly created Council of India, 1858; minister to Persia; died, 1895.
Mary Ann Rawle (1878-1964) was born in Lancashire in 1878 and from the age of ten worked in a cotton mill. In 1900 she married Francis Rawle, an iron turner, with whom she had two children. She became active in local industrial politics and was a member of her local branch of the Independent Labour Party at Ashton-Under-Lyne. Six years later she was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and was one of the group of 400 women textile workers who went as a deputation to the Prime Minister on 19 May 1906. During this event, she came into contact with Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie and Jessie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, and accompanied the group who was allowed into the Foreign Office on that occasion. In the autumn of that same year, she assisted Hannah Mitchell when she was appointed a part-time organiser for the WSPU in Oldham. In Mar 1907 she attended the second Women's Parliament (dressed in shawl and clogs) and was arrested in London and sentenced to two weeks in Holloway Prison. In 1907, however, she left the WSPU for the Women's Freedom League and became the secretary of its Ashton-Under-Lyne branch. She moved to Grantham in 1910 and presided at a branch meeting of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies there in 1913. She would later stand as a Labour candidate in the Grantham municipal elections and was chair of her branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild for 17 years. In 1945 she was chair of the Grantham branch of the Old Age Pensions Association. She died in 1964.
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.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Born, 1881; educated: Stirling high school; joined the Imperial Yeomanry at the outbreak of the South African War, 1899; joined Central African trading company, the African Lakes Corporation, 1902; posted Blantyre, Nyasaland and later Lilongwe; joined customs service of the West African colony of the Gold Coast, 1906; studied anthropology at Exeter College, Oxford: diploma, 1914, BSc, 1925, and DSc, 1929; assistant district commissioner in Ejura, in the northern region of Asante, 1913; captain in the Gold Coast regiment, 1914; saw action during the invasion of the German colony of Togoland; called to the bar in 1918; assistant colonial secretary and clerk to the legislative assembly, Accra, 1919; special commissioner and the first 'government anthropologist', Asante, 1920; retired from the colonial service, 1928; died, 1938.
Publications:
Folklore, Stories and Songs in Chinyanja (1907)
Hausa Folklore
Elementary Mole Grammar (1918)
Ashanti Proverbs (1916)
Ashanti (1923)
Religion and Art in Ashanti (1927)
Ashanti Law and Constitution (1929)
Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales (1930)
Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland (1932)
The Rationalist Peace Society was founded in 1910 by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner and J.M.Robertson MP. The Society established itself during the period of increasing controversy about war preceding the First World War. The aim was to "protest against ideas and methods which are utterly opposed to reason and the interests of social progress." As the war progressed it was divided by the issue of conscientious objection and conscription - and as members began to feel the war was justified it dwindled until fading away after the war.
The Rationalist Association, known as the Rationalist Press Association until 2002, was founded in 1885 by radical publisher Charles Albert Watts from his print works, CA Watts and Company Limited at Johnsons Court, London. Watts was part of a group of freethinkers who felt that the British secularist movement had become too political in nature, and had started to abandon its intellectual tenor. Watts was also looking for a way to circumvent the mainstream booksellers and publishers who often refused to handle secularist material. Watts first established the Propagandist Press Committee in 1890, appointing George Jacob Holyoake as President. Shortly afterwards the committee changed its name to the Rationalist Press Committee, and by 1899 the Rationalist Press Association had been formed. The Association began issuing reprints of serious scientific works by Julian Huxley, Ernst Haeckel and others, as well as establishing the CA Watts and Co Thinker's Library book series (under the leadership of Fredrick Watts), published from 1929 to 1951. The link between the Rationalist Press Association and CA Watts and Company Limited remained strong and in 1930 the Association agreed to place all their printing and publishing business with the Company for a period of 21 years. The close relationships continued and in 1953 it was agreed that the publishing policy of CA Watts and Co would be decided by the Rationalist Press Association Board. Additionally, a single Editor General would be responsible for obtaining books for publication by both CA Watts and Co and the Rationalist Press Association, and the Association was granted the rights to appoint five directors to the Board of CA Watts and Co. The minutes record that, ''In brief, free initiative should be given to Watts [and] Co to run the publishing side of the business, as well as that of booksellers and printers, and to build up income to assist the Rationalist Press Association in its propaganda work.'' Pemberton Publishing Company was a subsidiary of the Rationalist Press Association, being fully owned by the Association. Pemberton had a specific interest in producing radio and television programming, trading under the name Human Horizons. From 1962, Pemberton handled all the publishing affairs of the Rationalist Press Association. The Rationalist Benevolent Fund was a registered charity, established by the Rationalist Press Association in 1928 for the relief of distressed rationalists. The Trustees of the Fund were also Directors of the Rationalist Press Association. Similarly, the Rationalist Trust was established as a charitable body affiliated to the Rationalist Press Association. It operated until 2004, after which it was removed from the Charities Register and incorporated into the Rationalist Association. The New Humanist is the magazine of the Rationalist Press Association and is published on a bi-monthly basis.
See the biography for Rathbone; Eleanor Florence (1872-1946); social reformer
Eleanor Florence Rathbone (1872-1946) was born in 1872, the daughter of the Liberal MP for Liverpool William S Rathbone and his second wife Emily Lyle. The young woman was educated first at Kensington High School, London and then Somerville College, Oxford. After graduating, she returned to Liverpool as a worker for the local Central Relief Centre where she was able to examine social and industrial conditions in the area. This ultimately resulted in the publication of a report on the results of a special inquiry into the conditions of labour at the Liverpool Docks in 1903. When women became eligible to stand for election she became the first woman to be elected to Liverpool City Council and represented the Granby Ward as an independent councillor from 1909-1934. During that time she wrote an number of articles and papers on social questions including 'How The Casual Labourer Lives; A Report of The Liverpool Joint Research Committee on the Domestic Condition and Expenditure of Families of Certain Liverpool Labourers' (1909). She also published 'Women's Need of the Vote; a Practical Illustration' in 1911 and a series of articles for 'Common Cause' including 'The Problem of Women's Wages' (1911) and 'Widows under the Poor Law (1913) which argued for state funded pensions for widows. As these showed, her work on social issues was constantly bound up with the question of women's social and political status. In 1898 she had become the secretary of the Liverpool Society for Women's Suffrage and later chair of the West Lancashire, West Cheshire and North West Wales Federation. Additionally, she became a member of the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies from 1900. However, in 1913, the NUWSS launched the Election Fighting Fund policy, which promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal, the effect was to effectively support the Labour Party. Rathbone was opposed to this measure and resigned from the executive committee in 1914. However, she did support the war work done by the group between 1914 and 1918, taking over the Liverpool branch of the Soldiers and Sailors Family Association, acting as an administrative arm of the War Office and dealing with the payment of separation allowances to wives. Influenced by this, she helped form the Family Endowment Committee in 1918, which campaigned for women to be paid an allowance to alleviate their economic dependence on husbands. When the NUWSS broadened its aims after the grant of the vote to women over thirty and changed its name to the National Union of Societies of Equal Citizenship, Rathbone was elected the new organisation's first president (1919-1929). However, at this time there was no consensus within the movement regarding the appropriate response to new 'protective' legislation, which limited only women's working hours with the aim of 'protecting' them against industrial exploitation. An ideological split occurred at this time between those in NUSEC who, on the one hand, supported Rathbone and ideas such as an 'Endowment of Motherhood' which was intended to give women their financial independence and those, on the other, who adopted a more strictly equalist position. A number of members broke away to form equalist organisations such as the Open Door Council and the Six Point Group. However, Rathbone remained at the head of NUSEC and her views, outlined in works such as 'Utopia Calling: A Plea for Family Allowances' (1920) and shown in her work for the Children's Minimum (later Nutrition) Council, would go on to have an impact on the eventual form of the welfare state set up after the Second World War. In 1922 she stood for election as an independent candidate for East Toxteth division Liverpool but was defeated. Instead it was as an independent candidate for the Combined English Universities' seat that Rathbone was finally elected to parliament in 1929, a post she held until her death in 1946. In the House of Commons, she remained active in working for equal treatment for women in public and private life. She strongly opposed changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act that appeared to disadvantage women as well as campaigning against the Nationality of Married Women Act. Additionally, she was almost alone in the Commons in that decade in denouncing the potential danger from Germany and the Nazi Party after 1933. Rathbone was also deeply involved in the campaign for Indian women's suffrage throughout her parliamentary career; this included an interest in their legal and social status, their education and especially efforts to make illegal the practice of child marriage. Rathbone obtained an MA and LLD (Doctor of Laws) at Liverpool as well as an Honorary MA at Durham and an Honorary DCL (Doctor of Civil Law) at Oxford, she was also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Rathbone remained an MP until her sudden death on 2 Jan 1946.
The Ratcliff Gas Light and Coke Company was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1823-24 (George IV cap. 98), which was later consolidated and amended in 1855 (18-19 Victoria, cap. 12). ). The Company merged with the East London Gas Light Company (1831-1835). It was later amalgamated with the Commercial Gas Company, 1875 (38-39 Victoria, cap. 200.)
The Ratcliff Gas Light and Coke Company was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1823-24 (George IV cap. 98), which was later consolidated and amended in 1855 (18-19 Victoria, cap. 12). ). The Company merged with the East London Gas Light Company (1831-1835). It was later amalgamated with the Commercial Gas Company, 1875 (38-39 Victoria, cap. 200).
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Ratanui Rubber Limited was registered in 1934 to reconstitute Ratanui Rubber Estates Limited (registered in 1909) and to manage estates in Telok Anson, Perak, Malaya. Harrisons and Crosfield Limited (CLC/B/112) replaced Bright and Galbraith as secretaries and agents of the company in 1952. Harrisons and Crosfield Limited sold its stock in the company in 1958 and ceased to act as secretaries and agents.
Rastrick is in West Yorkshire.
John Urpeth Rastrick was born at Morpeth in Northumberland on 26 January 1780, the son of John Rastrick, an engineer to whom he became articled in 1795. In about 1801, he was working at the Ketley Iron Works in Shropshire and, in or after 1805, he joined in partnership with John Hazledine (soon succeeded by Robert Hazledine) of Bridgenorth, Shropshire. During this time, Rastrick assisted in the construction of the locomotive 'Catch me who Can' for Richard Trevithick in 1808, and in 1814, he took out a patent for a steam engine and soon started experimenting with steam traction on railways. His first major work was the cast iron road bridge over the Wye at Chepstow (1815-1816). In 1817 Rastrick left that partnership, to join with James Foster, in about 1819, at the iron works which then became known as Foster, Rastrick and Co., at Stourbridge, Worcestershire. His association with railway engineering began in 1822 when he became an engineer for the Stratford and Moreton Railway. Rastrick became an active supporter of railway proposals put before Parliament, an adviser to railway companies, and a designer and builder of locomotives - the 'Agenoria' and 'Stourbridge Lion' for example. He acted as surveyor or engineer to parts of a large number of lines, among them the Liverpool & Manchester (1829 onwards), the Manchester and Cheshire Junction (1835 onwards), and the series of lines later known as the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (1836 onwards). About 1847, he retired from engineering work, although he continued to occupy himself with railway business, and was active in a number of arbitrations concerning railway disputes. He retired to Sayes Court, Chertsey, Surrey and died on 1 November 1856.
John Urpeth Rastrick was born at Morpeth in Northumberland on 26 January 1780, the son of John Rastrick, an engineer to whom he became articled in 1795. In about 1801, he was working at the Ketley Iron Works in Shropshire and, in or after 1805, he joined in partnership with John Hazledine (soon succeeded by Robert Hazledine) of Bridgenorth, Shropshire. During this time, Rastrick assisted in the construction of the locomotive 'Catch me who Can' for Richard Trevithick in 1808, and in 1814, he took out a patent for a steam engine and soon started experimenting with steam traction on railways. His first major work was the cast iron road bridge over the Wye at Chepstow (1815-1816). In 1817 Rastrick left that partnership, to join with James Foster, in about 1819, at the iron works which then became known as Foster, Rastrick and Co., at Stourbridge, Worcestershire. His association with railway engineering began in 1822 when he became an engineer for the Stratford and Moreton Railway. Rastrick became an active supporter of railway proposals put before Parliament, an adviser to railway companies, and a designer and builder of locomotives - the 'Agenoria' and 'Stourbridge Lion' for example. He acted as surveyor or engineer to parts of a large number of lines, among them the Liverpool and Manchester (1829 onwards), the Manchester and Cheshire Junction (1835 onwards), and the series of lines later known as the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (1836 onwards). About 1847, he retired from engineering work, although he continued to occupy himself with railway business, and was active in a number of arbitrations concerning railway disputes. He retired to Sayes Court, Chertsey, Surrey and died on 1 November 1856.