Category Archives: Nottingham

by jfwknifton | September 15, 2015 · 8:18 am

The Incredible Story of Frank Mahin, Volume II, 1908-1920

I have previously written two articles about Frank Mahin. The first recounted how he had carved his name on a stone fireplace in the High School:

The second article had a title very similar to this one, but it was entitiled The Incredible Story of Frank Mahin, Volume I, 1887-1909

And now, Dear Reader, my tale continues:

Frank Cadle Mahin was so keen on a military career, that after only two years, he left Harvard University and his boring Law studies. He joined the Regular Army in 1910 as a private soldier, after service with the New York National Guard. Two years later he received his first commission. On April 21st 1912, Mahin and thirty eight others took an examination and were all made Second Lieutenants:

At this time, Frank is listed as being at Fort William Henry Harrison in Montana.
On September 25th 1913, Frank was married to Margaret Mauree Pickering, his previous, second, marriage to Sasie Avice Seon having, presumably, come to an end in some way. Again, unfortunately, the precise details are lacking.

Margaret Mauree was born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA in 1890, the daughter of Abner Pickering and Celestia Florence Kuykendall. In married life she was to call herself Mauree Pickering Mahin so that her father’s name was never forgotten. Her father, and Frank’s father-in-law, was Abner Pickering, who came from a very strong military background, as is shown by the wedding announcement in a local newspaper:

In her book, “Life in the American Army from the Frontier Days to Army Distaff Hall”, Mauree describes the magic moment when she first met her future husband:

“We sat down, and the place next to me was left vacant for him. When he did
arrive, everyone forgot that we had not met, so after a minute of awkward
silence he took the vacant seat saying: “I guess no one is going to introduce us, I am Lieutenant Mahin, and I am sure you are Miss Pickering.”

With that one look into his clear steady eyes, I was convinced that there was such a thing as “Love at First Sight” and that I was not going to let the blonde or anyone else have him.”

Frank and Mauree were to have four children, including twins named Margaret Celestia and Anna Yetive, both born on June 2nd 1915 in the Philippines which at the time was an American colony, seized from the Spanish after the Spanish-American War. Frank’s three daughters were all to marry, as was his son, Frank junior, bom in Connecticut on January 2nd 1923. His third daughter, Elizabeth, lived from 1921-1981 and Frank junior, like his father, was a distinguished military man until he died in Dallas, Texas, on January 28th 1972.

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In November and December 1914 Frank and the regiment received extremely unexpected orders. They were to go to Naco in Arizona where Pancho Villa. the legendary Mexican bandit, and the inventor of the moustache, was up to his tricks, causing trouble:

The American garrison was tasked with keeping Villa’s men from crossing the Mexican border into the USA. Orders from Washington stipulated though, that, in the interest of preserving friendly international relations, no shots were to be fired, even if the bandits fired at them, a rather difficult policy to carry out!

That was December 1914. Europe had already been at war since August, and more than a million young men were already dead. Frank Cadle Mahin, as you will see in another article, was to play his part in this sickening slaughter.
In early 1915, Frank was sent to the Philippines, then still an American colony. Here he was to have an unexpected chance to practice the German he had learned at the High School. Let’s not forget that in 1905, he had won the Mayor’s Prize for Modern Languages:

“On to Guam our next port of call, and there the war was brought directly to our minds, for anchored in the harbour was one of the converted German warships, riding at anchor. She had been forced in there by lack of coal and, of course, was interned for the duration of the war! Our Quartermaster had occasion to visit this ship with some supplies, and since he spoke no German, he asked Frank to go with him and interpret for him. Judging by the time they were gone, it must have been an interesting and pleasant afternoon. One thing I do know, the Germans may have run out of coal, but not out of good German beer!”

The first Mahin to be seriously affected by the Great War was Frank Senior. At this time, he, and his wife, Abbie, were, of course, both citizens of a neutral United States. In September 1915 they made the ferry crossing from Holland, where, by now, Frank Senior was the American consul in Amsterdam. They were on their way to visit their daughter, Anna and her doctor husband Alec in Nottingham, England:

“The journey is made by daylight during the war so we sailed from Flushing at 6.00 am. on July 31st on the Dutch liner Koiningin Wilhelmina. The day was lovely and the sea calm, and all was calm and restful till ten minutes before ten, when, a sharp explosion beneath us was heard, and great volumes of water blew up over the sides of the ship. Passengers on the forward deck, under which the explosion occurred, were drenched with water and covered with black particles, which came from the mine which, as we all
realized, the ship had struck:

As the explosion was under the stoke-hold three poor stokers were killed, and one fatally wounded. We put on overcoats, hats, and lifebelts and went on deck. In about ten minutes all of the lifeboats had been loaded and left the ship. The boats rowed toward the lightship, about three miles distant. As we left the ship, the forward part was slowly sinking. But in half an hour the boat sagged in the middle. That part sank out of sight, and the bow and stern rose straight in the air. From the stern floated the Dutch flag, thus the two ends stood for some minutes. Then they came together as one: the flag floating from the top of it. Slowly that column disappeared under the water at fifteen minutes before eleven o’clock, fifty-five minutes after the mine was struck.

Scattered about were our lifeboats rowing towards the lightship, which was a mile or two away. Beyond it, cruising swiftly in circles, was the British war vessel which afterwards took us to England. Behind us was the sinking ship, whose last moments were like the despairing struggle of some living thing; and we thought of the poor dead men who were going down with the ship, as might have been the fate of all of us.
At the same time we heard the roar of cannon in the direction of Belgium, adding more death and destruction to this awful war. All the boats reached the lightships safely by noon, and everyone was safe. About six that evening a British torpedo boat destroyer took us to Harwich, England, where we arrived at 8:30 that night. We spent the night at Harwich, and at midnight we heard the sound of bombs exploding, Zeppelins being in the vicinity.

Frank junior had been swiftly promoted following his good work against Pancho Villa and his band of Mexican bandits. He became a Major just in time for the USA’s entry into the Great War, and served in combat in France in 1918. He was wounded at St. Mihiel, the first time that American troops were in really significant action, as they launched an offensive against retreating German forces. Frank was to win a Purple Heart, showing great bravery under enemy fire:

Frank then went on to fight in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Argonne Forest. He had at least one amazing escape:

“I think I am more than lucky to be here at all. I have had narrow escapes before, since
I came over to France, but had more in this day and a half in the Argonne than all the rest put together. For instance, Hancock, my liaison officer, and I were lying in a shell hole with machine gun bullets cutting the top edges off and knocking the dirt all over us. Then a 105mm artillery shell hit right at the edge of the hole and slid down under us, raising the ground up, like a mole furrows, on the side of the shell hole.

Of course it was sliding for the tiniest part of a second but we heard it, felt it, and knew what it was, and then it burst! Good night! In that fraction of a second, I thought “God bless my girls, “ but we weren’t hurt! It was a gas shell, thank God, with just enough explosives to crack the case and throw the dirt around. We had our masks on anyway, so it did not harm us, but Hancock looked like a ghost, and fool that I am, I laughed at him and took my mouthpiece out and yelled, “ Going up!” and even he had to smile then! Had that shell been a High Explosive they would never have found even our identification tags. If it had been even an ordinary gas shell, half gas and half High Explosive, it would’ve blown both of us to pieces.”

In the 1920s, when he returned to the United States, Frank, still fresh faced and eager, was to relate to his twin daughters exactly what his life under fire had been like:

“The trouble is gas, we were in it almost continuously for three hours, and I tried to keep my mask on, but you just can’t run a battalion in battle with a gas mask on. It was a wet, misty morning when we went “over the top” and they just poured gas shells over, tear gas, sneezing gas, then phosgene and mustard after they had gotten our noses and eyes inflamed.

The country was the worst possible country to fight over, for it was just ridge after ridge with fire coming at us from every direction. Believe me, it was some scrap. Saint Mihiel was a cinch compared to this Argonne Forest offensive.

From the Field Hospital, they sent me by truck to Evacuation Hospital No 7. I stayed there a day and a half, and then to Base Hospital No 27, a Pittsburgh outfit at Angers near the mouth of the River Loire. The hospital is in a big old three-storey convent building, and is awfully comfortable, and the ‘chow’ is fine.

Nausea, acute diarrhea, for several days, and an awful headache, all from the gas, and, of course, burning lungs. I now feel pretty good but the d— stuff has affected my heart. They say this does not last more than a week if one stays perfectly quiet, but for several more weeks I will have to be very careful not to exert myself violently.”

His wife Mauree, however, adds a little more realism to the tale, pointing out just how seriously affected her husband was:

“I can assure you, girls, that that heart condition lasted several years instead of several weeks. Even after his return, and for many months, he would be sitting talking, and without warning would fall right out of the chair, and I never knew when we picked him up whether he would be dead or alive.”

Nowadays we have little or no idea of what it must have been like in the trenches during a gas attack:

We are given some idea, however, when the family take a trip to a more peaceful Europe in 1920. It is Frank’s wife, Mauree, who tells the tale:

“On this trip we followed the movements of the 11th Infantry up to the time of Dad’s gassing and evacuation. At Madeleine Farms, where his battalion command post was during one of the offensives, we were able to go down into the very dugout he had used! It had two entrances, and both were completely overgrown with vines. As Dad and I started down the rickety old rotted-out steps, Dad recognised the odor of gas still down there, and he whispered to me not to tarry long but just to take a quick look and go out of the other entrance. The dampness was terrible, water dripping off of the low ceiling, we were able to see the boards hung against the side where they slept when there was a minute to spare, and we actually walked on the duckboard.

As quickly as we went through, Dad was greatly affected by that little gas, and had a very hard attack of coughing ; and just as we got into the car Grandma had a heart attack, and this was two whole years after the war , thus you can see, just how potent that gas really was!

Here are the Madeleine Farms, then and now, as it were:

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In my next article about Frank, I will tell the tale of how he continues his military career and eventually achieves a very high rank in the American army.

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Filed under France, History, Nottingham, The High School

Tagged as Abner Pickering, Amsterdam, Argonne, Arizona. Pancho Villa, Connecticut, Dallas, gas, Great War, Holland, Margaret Mauree Pickering, Meuse-Argonne, Modern Languages, Naco, Pancho Villa, Philippines, Spanish-American War, St. Mihiel, Texas

by jfwknifton | September 6, 2015 · 8:35 am

The Incredible Story of Frank Mahin, Volume I, 1887-1909

As well as John Francis Haseldine, another High School footballer has carved his initials on the stone mantelpiece of the ground floor fireplace between the General Office and the entrance to the Assembly Hall. This footballing vandal is “F.C.Mahin”.

Frank Cadle Mahin is one of the most interesting of the school’s pupils. He was born on May 27th 1887, in Clinton, Iowa, the son of Frank W. Mahin, who was a retired United States Consular Officer at the time. Frank W. had graduated from Harvard University in 1877. Frank C.’s mother was Abbie Anna Cadle, who was born in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1857 to Cornelius Cadle and Ruth Lamprey.
This was Abbie’s second marriage. She had previously been married to Frank Mann with whom she had one child. With her second husband, Frank W., she had two more children, Frank C., and a daughter, Anna, who was born in 1880.

Anna was to meet a young English doctor during the family’s stay in Nottingham, and she remained with him after her parents eventually left England for Amsterdam in Holland. I have been unable to trace Anna’s husband’s surname, although he was to become Frank’s Uncle Alec. As an Englishman, Alec was to fight in the Great War well before Frank and his fellow Americans became involved in the hostilities. Alec was certainly in combat as early as 1915, and I believe that he survived the conflict. The year of Anna’s death has not been recorded. Her mother, Abbie, died in 1941 at the age of 84.

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Frank Cadle Mahin entered the High School on September 15th 1902, at the age of fifteen. The Mahin family lived at 7, Sherwood Rise, on the opposite side of the Forest Recreation Ground from the High School. His father was by now the United States Consul in Nottingham. Look for the orange arrow:

Despite a comparatively short stay at the High School, Frank Junior seems to have been an accomplished sportsman, and appeared for the First XI at football in a fixture against Loughborough Grammar School on Wednesday, October 25th 1904 at Mapperley Park. The High School began very slowly and had quite a fright before they eventually ran out victors by 4-1. The team was M.J.Hogan, J.P.K.Groves, R.Cooper, R.E.Trease, R.G.Cairns, F.C.Mahin, H.E.Mills, S.D.M.Horner, R.B.Wray, L.W.Peters and P.G.Richards.
Frank played a second match on the afternoon of Saturday, December 3rd 1904. Again, it was at Mapperley Park against Notts. Magdala F.C. 2nd XI. The game finished in a 1-3 away win as:

“a weakened team, who ought really to have won, but did not play as well as they might have, against opponents who themselves were rather poor.”

This time the team was M.J.Hogan, R.B.Wray, R.Cooper, R.E.Trease, R.G.Cairns, F.C.Mahin, H.E.Mills, J.Henson, L.W.Peters, C.R.Attenborough and P.G.Richards.
Frank’s only away game was against Worksop College at Worksop. The entire team doubtless travelled by steam train from Nottingham’s Victoria Station on the afternoon of Saturday, March 11th 1905:

According to the school magazine:

“The High School fielded a weakened team, but played well, and did not deserve to lose by such a wide margin as he 0-5 final result would suggest.”

The team was M.J.Hogan, J.P.K.Groves, W.E.Williams , F.C.Mahin, R.B.Wray, R.E.Trease, H.E.Mills, C.S.Robinson, S.D.M.Horner, L.W.Peters and P.G.Richards.

This photograph shows the First Team in the 1904-1905 season. It was taken at Mapperley Park Sports Ground, opposite the old Carrington Lido on Mansfield Road. Serjeant Holmes is present, and on the back row are S.D.M.Horner, C.F.R.Fryer, M.J.Hogan, R.E.Trease and J.P.K.Groves. Seated are R.G.Cairns, R.B.Wray, R.Cooper (Captain) and L.W.Peters, Seated on the grass are H.E.Mills and P.G.Richards. On the right is the so-called twelfth man, the reserve player, who is Frank Cadle Mahin. I believe that the photograph was taken on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 12th 1904, just before the High School played against Mr.Hughes’ XI. The School won 12-5, and we know that Cooper in defence was the outstanding player, but the whole team played well, and the forwards’ finishing was particularly deadly. This year, the team was amazingly successful. Their season began with victories by 5-4, 2-1, 23-0, 12-5, 9-0, 15-0, 3-1, 4-1, 11-0, 16-1. They had scored exactly 100 goals by November 3rd, in only ten games:

The detectives among you will notice that it is warm enough for the changing room windows to be open, and the design of the ball is very different from nowadays. Young Horner has forgotten his football socks, and, because this game marked his début for the side, Mr Fryer’s mother has not yet had the time to sew his school badge onto his shirt. Frank is, in actual fact, in the full school uniform of the time, which was a respectable suit or jacket, topped off with a neat white straw boater, with a school ribbon around it.

Frank also performed as a linesman, or assistant referee, in First XI football fixtures on several occasions in 1904-1905:

“Referees during the season were Mr.W.T.Ryles, Mr.R.E.Yates, Mr.M.R.Hughes and Mr.A.G.Onion. F.C.Mahin and K.M.Brace also performed as linesmen.”

Frank was perhaps a better cricketer than footballer, and he was, in actual fact, the regular captain of the Second XI at cricket.

This photograph shows the First XI cricket team, in an unrecorded year, probably 1905. The individuals are thought to be on the back row, Mr.A.G.Onion, (Groundsman and Coach), S.D.M.Horner, R.G.Cairns, C.F.R.Fryer, unknown and F.C.Mahin. In the middle row are P.G.Richards, L.W.Peters, W.G.Emmett (Captain), M.J.Hogan and R.B.Wray. Seated on the grass are J.P.K.Groves, H.E.Mills, and an unknown player.
In his time at the High School, Frank played for the First XI cricket team only sporadically. We know that he batted once in the 1904 season, and scored five runs, and then batted once more in 1905, and obtained the same score.
In addition, we also know that, on Saturday, June 24th 1905, which was School Sports Day, Frank dead-heated for first place in the Open Long Jump, managing a jump of fifteen feet nine inches, exactly the same distance as C.F.R.Fryer.
In the academic world, Frank won the Mayor’s Prize for Modern Languages, and, most significant of all, perhaps, he reached the rank of sergeant in the newly formed Officer Training Corps.

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Frank left the High School in July 1905, and returned to the United States where he was in the Class of 1909 at Harvard University.

The university’s proud boast nowadays is that they produce the most highly paid university alumni in the United States:

Frank’s close contemporaries included Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and two sons of the current President of the time, Theodore Roosevelt. They were called Theodore and Kermit.

Both of these men had the same interest in the military as Frank. In 1917, Kermit Roosevelt, although he was obviously an American, joined the British Army to fight in Mesopotamia during the Great War. He was awarded a Military Cross on August 26, 1918. Theodore Roosevelt served as a Brigadier General in the United States Army during the Second World War. He died in France in 1944, a month after leading the first wave of troops onto Utah Beach during the Normandy landings. This brave act was to earn him the Medal of Honor. To me, it would seem ludicrous to suggest that they were not, at the very least, among Frank’s acquaintances at Harvard, if not friends.

Hopefully, Frank had little or no association with another famous member of the Class of 1909. This was Ernst Hanfstaengl, a prominent member of the German Nazi party in the 1920s and early 1930s. A close personal friend of the Führer, Hanfstaengl provided part of the finance for the publication of “Mein Kampf” and the Nazi Party’s official newspaper, the “Völkischer Beobachter“. Using his experience of Harvard football songs, he composed many Brownshirt and Hitler Youth marches and also claimed to have invented the “Sieg Heil” chant. Eventually, “Putzi” was to defect to the Allies and to work as part of President Roosevelt’s “S-Project”, providing information on some 400 prominent Nazis.

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During his time at Harvard, according to the Secretary’s Second Report on the Harvard College Class of 1909, Frank married Miss Carrie Knight Whitmore on December 10th 1906. Alas, the poor lady was to die on February 11th 1907. Details are lacking, unfortunately, but this was an era where women could die not only giving birth to a child, but even of morning sickness in the early part of a pregnancy. The same source reveals that Frank remarried on August 18th 1908 in New York, New York State. The lucky lady was called Miss Sasie Avice Seon.

Frank represented the University at football on a number of occasions. Here is one of them:

On November 30th 1906, Frank was selected as a goalkeeper against Columbia University:

“Tonight at 6 o’clock the University association football team will leave on the Fall River boat for New York, where they will play Columbia tomorrow afternoon at 2 o’clock. While in New York the team will stay at the Murray Hill Hotel. On Sunday, they will leave for Ithaca, play Cornell on Monday afternoon, and return to Cambridge that night. The following men, accompanied by Manager E. B. Stern ’07 and Assistant Manager P. Woodman ’08, will be taken: G. W. Biddle ’08, W. M. Bird ’08, P. Brooks ’09, E. N. Fales ’08, W. A. Forbush ’07, H. Green ’08, O. B. Harriman ’09, F. C. Mahin ’09, C. G. Osborne ’07, A. N. Reggio ’07, A. W. Reggio ’08, L. B. Robinson ’07, W. T. S. Thackara ’08.”

Further details followed in “The Crimson Banner”

The association football team will play its first game of the season with Columbia this afternoon at 2 o’clock on Alumni Field, New York. Individually the team is strong; but, as several of the men have only recently joined the squad, the team work is not well developed. Captain Thackara will be in the line-up today for the first team this year. Columbia finished second in the intercollegiate league last year and defeated Yale last week in a well-played game by the score of 4 to 0.
The line-up will be: HARVARD. COLUMBIA. Mahin, g. g., Graybill Green, l.f.b. r.f.b., Voskamp Thackara, r.f.b. l.f.b., Fairchild Biddle, l.h.b., r.h.b., deGarmendia A. W. Reggio, c.h.b. c.h.b., Dickson Bird, r.h.b. l.h.b., Rocour Forbush, l.o.f. r.o.f., Billingsley Brooks, l.i.f. r.i.f. Simpson Osborne, c.f. c.f., Hartog A. N. Reggio, r.i.f. l.i.f., Dwyer Robinson, r.o.f. l.o.f., Cutler
Tomorrow the team will leave for Ithaca, and will play Cornell on Monday afternoon, returning to Cambridge that night.

Frank did well:

“The association football team defeated Columbia on Saturday at Alumni Field, New York, by the score of 1 to 0. With only ten men in the line-up, Columbia was unable to block the clever attack of the University team, and was on the defensive during most of the game. The single goal was scored in the first half after a series of speedy passes by the forwards to A. N. Reggio, who sent the ball into the net. Osborne, the University team’s centre forward, played an excellent game, and continually broke up the Columbia attack before it was fairly started. Two 30-minute halves were played.
Harvard vs. Cornell at Ithaca Today.
This afternoon, the team plays Cornell on Percy Field, Ithaca. Last month Cornell defeated Columbia by the score of 2 to 1, and has a fast, aggressive team.
The teams will line-up as follows: HARVARD CORNELL. Mahin, g. g., Wood Green, l.f.f. r.f.b., Van der Does de Bye Thackara, r.f.b. l.f.b., Sampaio Biddle, l.h.b. r.h.b., Malefski A. W. Reggio, c.h.b. c.h.b., Dragoshanoff Bird, r.h.b. l.h.b., Wilson Forbush, l.i.f. r.o.f., Van Bylevelt Brooks, l.i.f. r.i.f., Deleasse Osborne, c.f. e.f., MacDonald A. N. Reggio, r.i.f. l.i.f., Samirento Robinson, r.o.f. l.o.f., Chryssidy ”

On December 4th, Frank appeared against Cornell University:

“ITHACA, N. Y., Dec. 3.–On a field covered with snow the association football team defeated Cornell this afternoon on Percy Field, by the score of 5 to 1. In spite of the unfavorable conditions, the University team played well and showed a marked improvement in team work over the form in the Columbia game. Cornell’s defense was unable to check the hard attack of the University forwards, and but for the snow which made accurate shooting impossible, the score would have been larger. Of the five goals, Osborne made three, and Biddle and A. N. Reggio one each. Cornell’s goal came after a hard scrimmage in front of the net, following a kick out from the corner of the field. Two thirty-minute halves were played.
The summary follows: HARVARD. CORNELL. Mahin, g. g., Wood Green, l.f.f. r.f.b., Van der Does de Bye Thackara, r.f.b. l.f.b., Sampaio Brooks, l.h.b. r.h.b., Malefski A. W. Reggio, c.h.b. c.h.b., Dragoshanoff Bird, r.h.b. l.h.b., Wilson Forbush, l.o.f. r.e.f., Van Bylevelt Biddle, l.i.f. r.i.f., Delcasse Osborne, c.f. c.f., MacDonald A. N. Reggio, r.i.f. l.i.f., Samirento Robinson, r.o.f. l.o.f., Chryssidy
Score–Harvard, 5; Cornell, 1. Goals –Osborne, 3; Biddle, A. N. Reggio, Dragoshanoff. Time–30-minute halves.”

This is the Harvard team for an unknown match in the 1906-1907 season:

On December 8th, news came of an important game:

“The University association football team will play Haverford this afternoon at 2.30 o’clock in the Stadium. As neither team has been defeated this fall, the game today will decide the intercollegiate league championship.
The University team has improved steadily during the season and has developed an effective attack, as shown in the Cornell game last Monday. Haverford has a well-balanced, team of experienced players, many of whom played on last year’s championship team. Last month they defeated Columbia by the score of 2 to 1, while the University team defeated Columbia, 1 to 0.
The line-up will be: HARVARD. HAVERFORD. Mahin, g. g., Warner Kidder, l.f.b. r.f.b., Brown Green, r.f.b. l.f.b., Godley Thackara, l.h.b. r.h.b., Drinker A. W. Reggio, c.h.b. c.h.b., Rossmaessler Bird, r.h.b. l.h.b., Windele Brooks, l.o.f r.o.f. Bushnell A. N. Reggio, l.i.f. r.i.f., Furness Osborne, e.f. e.f., Baker Robinson, r.i.f. l.i.f., Shoemaker Biddle, r.o.f. l.o.f, Strode
The privileges of the Union are extended today to all Haverford men.
D. J. Pryer has been elected captain of the Brown University football team for next year.
The novice revolver shoot, finished last night, was won by M. R. Giddings ’08 with a score of 329 out of a possible 500.”

Frank duly appeared as the goalkeeper for Harvard on December 10th:

“The University association football team was defeated by Haverford on Saturday in the intercollegiate championship game by the score of 2 to 1. Haverford’s light forwards were very fast and displayed better team work than the University players, who depended almost entirely on individual work. On the defense, the University backs were not given enough assistance by the forwards.
For the University team, Brooks and A. N. Reggio played especially well. In spite of a constant guard of two Haverford players, Osborne played his usual good game. In the second half, several opportunities to score were lost by the University forwards through inaccurate kicking. Baker, Haverford’s centre forward, played brilliantly and was the most untiring player on the field.
Haverford won the toss and chose to defend the north goal with a strong wind behind them. During the first half, Baker made two goals, aided by fast team work on the part of the other forwards. Shortly after the beginning of the second period, A. N. Reggio scored Harvard’s only goal.
The summary follows: HARVARD. HAVERFORD. Mahin, g. g., Warner Thackara, l.f.b. r.f.b., Brown Kidder, r.f.b. l.f.b., Godley Brooks, l.h.b. r.h.b., Drinker A. W. Reggio, c.h.b. c.h.b., Rossmaessler Bird, r.h.b. l.h.b., Windele Forbush, l.o.f. r.o.f., Bushnell A. N. Reggio, l.i.f. r.i.f., Furness Osborne, c.f. c.f., Baker Robinson, r.i.f. l.i.f., Shoemaker Biddle, r.o.f. l.o.f., Strode
Score–Haverford, 2; Harvard, 1. Goals–Baker 2, A. N. Reggio. Referee–J. H. Fairfax-Luey. Linesmen–D. V. Leland ’10 and F. R. Leland ’10. Time–25-minute halves.”

On October 25th of that year, Frank had taken part in the university rowing:

This was in the “first bumping races” and Frank rowed for a crew called “Brentford”. The latter were classified as fifth out of six, in the third division out of three:

“Brentford–Stroke, C. L. Hathaway ’10; 7, J. F. Frye ’09; 6, J. A. Curtis ’10; 5, W. F. Doake ’09; 4, P. N. Case ’09; 3, I. E. Willis ’09; 2, F. C. Mahin ’09; bow, H. F. Bingham ’10; coxswain, E. B. Gillette ’10.

The full details were:

“This afternoon at 3.45 o’clock the first division of the Dormitory crews will race upstream over a one and three-eighths mile course, starting at the Boylston street bridge, and rowing up the river to the beginning of the long stretch, leading up to the Brighton bridge. A stake boat will be placed at this point and all the crews will finish at the same place. Immediately after, the second division will row over the same course, and as soon as the shells are returned, the third division will start. The divisions of the crews and the order in which they will start follows:
Division I–1, Claverly; 2, Mt. Auburn street; 3, Dunster-Dana-Drayton; 4, Randolph; 5, Westmorly; 6, Craigie-Waverley; 7, Russell.
Division II–1, Thayer; 2, First Holyoke; 3, Hampden; 4, Holworthy; 5, Perkins; 6, Matthews; 7, Weld.
Division III–1, Foxcroft-Divinity; 2, Grays; 3, Second Holyoke; 4, Hollis-Stoughton; 5, Brentford; 6, College House.
On the two days’ racing, which will follow, the order of the crews in the divisions will change; the crews securing a bump advancing in position, while the crews against which a bump is scored, will be put in the rear, one place for each bump.”

On March 17th 1906, Frank had volunteered to play cricket:

“At the meeting of candidates for the cricket team last night, the following handed in their names: W. P. Phillips 2L., R. M. Gummere 3G., N. L. Tilney ’06, C. G. Mayer 2L., C. G. Osborn ’07, A. W. Reggio ’08, R. N. Wilson 1G., A. N. Reggio ’06, H. R. Waters ’07, N. B. Groton ’07, T. E. Hambleton ’07, L. C. Josephs ’08, E. M. B. Roche ’09, A. E. Newbolt ’09, A. L. Hoffman ’09, F. C. Mahin ’09.
For the present the men will be divided into two squads, which will practice in the old baseball cage in the Gymnasium on alternate afternoons between 3.30 and 5 o’clock. Outdoor practice will begin as soon as the condition of the ground on Soldiers Field permits.”

Frank was really quite bored with life at Harvard though. He wanted to be a soldier. After two years of university life, he left Harvard to join the Regular Army, not as an officer, but as a private soldier. I will take up his fascinating tale in another blog post.

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Filed under Football, History, Nottingham, The High School

Tagged as Brentford, Cambridge, Carrington Roosevelt, Columbia, Cornell, cricket, F.C.Mahin, Football, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Great War, Harvard University, Haverford, Iowa, Ithaca, Kermit Clinton, Lido, linesman, long jump, Mapperley Park, Mesopotamia, Military Cross, Modern Languages, Muscatine, New York, Officer Training Corps, rowing, Serjeant Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt, United States, United States Army, United States Consul, Worksop College

by jfwknifton | August 12, 2015 · 6:55 pm

Victorian Cormorants and Victorian Shags

To keep birdwatchers on their toes, many birds exist in what are called “species pairs”. This means that you may know that a particular bird is either a Ruff or a Buff-breasted Sandpiper, but it will not necessarily be that easy to separate them:

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And there are literally hundreds of these species pairs, some easy, some not quite so simple. House Sparrow and Tree Sparrow are unmistakable, but what about that rare vagrant to England, the Spanish Sparrow?

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Montagu’s Harrier and Pallid Harrier, for females or juveniles at least, will require careful and probably lengthy examination:

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Occasionally, a particular bird will never be identified for definite. Nearly thirty years ago, I drove all the way to Weymouth in Dorset, a round trip of nearly 500 miles, to see a Pipit which was present from mid March to early May 1989, in a field near the Observatory. Look for the orange arrow:

It was either a Richard’s Pipit (not that rare) or a Blyth’s Pipit (one of the first two or three ever in England). Here they are:

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And the controversy has never really been solved. Indeed, this particular bird is usually known to twitchers as the “Portland Pipit” after the Bird Observatory in whose fields it spent the winter.

In the Victorian era, of course, without modern telescopes worth more than my car, and, more importantly, field guides with colour photographs, many birds remained unidentifiable especially if they were both fairly rare. One such pair, which I still find challenging enough even now, is the Cormorant and the Shag. Here is a Cormorant:

And here is a Shag:

You can probably guess what the Victorian solution was to this problem, at least as far as a rare bird was concerned. You shot the bird, if at all possible.

With all that in mind, let’s take a trip back to the real era of Steampunk:

“According to H.E. Forrest in a letter to “The Zoologist” magazine, it was on an unrecorded date during the year of 1863 that a single Cormorant was shot at Lamb Close Reservoir near Eastwood and acquired for the collection of Joseph Whitaker:

“The keeper had seen it about some few days and noticed when he put it up, it always flew over the boathouse to another pond beyond. He told Mr Percy Smith, who was staying there, who the next morning took his gun and stood by the side of the boathouse; the keeper rowed round the lake, the bird rose, came as usual and was shot. Just as Mr Smith was lowering his gun, another large bird followed and shared the same fate; on getting to it, he found it was an immature Great Black-backed Gull; thus he brought off a very curious right and left, and secured two very rare Notts birds, which through his kindness are now in my collection.”

Thirty years later, in 1893 came the appearance of another Victorian anecdote about cormorants, this time concerning a famous bird at Newark on Trent. Once again Joseph Whitaker tells the tale:

“I am indebted to Mr Cornelius Brown of Newark on Trent for the following very interesting note : during October 1893 Newark was a centre of interest to naturalists and others owing to the visit of a friendly cormorant which continued to perch week after week on the arrow on the top of the spire of the Parish Church. The Times, Standard, and most of the leading newspapers noticed the incident while Punch magazine had some poetry upon it. The bird went away several hours each day to fish in the Trent, and returned after its sport to its lofty perch, where it might be seen trimming its feathers and making himself smart and comfortable. It left on Friday, November 17th, the day after a heavy storm, after a state of eight weeks save one day.”

The poem appeared in the comical magazine Punch on November 11th, 1893, and is a surprisingly radical comment on the church in general and clergymen in particular. It went thus:

“We are told a Cormorant sits, and doth not tire,
For a whole month, perched upon Newark spire!
Vinny Bourne’s jackdaw is beaten, it is clear
Yet there are cormorants who, year after year,
Perch in the Church. But these omnivorous people
Favour the pulpit mostly, not the steeple
Thrivers upon fat livings find, no doubt,
Cormorant within is cosier than without.”

Wikipedia tells the tale of Vincent “Vinny” Bourne, a Classical scholar who wrote a comic poem about a jackdaw which lived on a steeple.(In Latin, of course)

For some people, the Cormorant was a bird of very ill omen. Out in the wilds of Lincolnshire:

“On Sunday, September 9th, 1860, a Cormorant took its position on the steeple of Boston Church, much to the alarm of the superstitious. There it remained with the exception of two hours absence, till early on Monday morning, when it was shot by the caretaker of the church. The fears of the credulous were singularly confirmed when the news arrived of the loss of the P.S.Lady Elgin at sea with 300 passengers, amongst whom were Mr Ingram, Member of Parliament from Boston, and his son, on the very morning when the bird was first seen.”

The Shag is very similar to the Cormorant, but is slightly smaller, a fact which is much more obvious when the birds are seen together. A single bird is often nowhere near as easy to identify as it is supposed to be. In the Victorian era both species were very rare in Nottinghamshire, so the chance of seeing the two together in order to make a comparison was never going to happen. For this reason, people had great difficulty in distinguishing between the two species of birds.

However in 1879, Joseph Whitaker wrote a letter to “The Zoologist” about some Shags which had turned up in the City of Nottingham itself.

“ON COMMON BIRDS IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.- ….Early in the same month, as some workmen at Nottingham were one morning proceeding to their work, they came across two Shags, flapping about in Cross Street, and after an exciting chase caught them both. They were taken to T.White, birdstuffer, who tells me they dived for fish in his tank, eating several; he kept them alive for two days, but finding they “did not look like living”, killed and stuffed them. I have purchased them for my collection. Another was caught in a street close by, and the fourth was shot on Mapperley Plains. They were all young birds, possibly from the same nest, and having wandered away, got lost; or they may have been driven inland by a gale.”

In one of his newspaper articles about birds in North Nottinghamshire, published in the Nottingham Evening Post on June 21st, 1937 , Clifford W. Greatorex, a Fellow of the Zoological Society told the following story:

“Finally, mention must be made of a Shag, three or four examples of which were recorded in early spring from various parts of North Notts. Contrary to a widely held opinion, the Shag does travel inland occasionally, although its inland visits are not so frequent as those of the more familiar and more abundant Cormorant.

One of these visitors from the coast lingered on a part of Welbeck Lake, where it was seen by several reliable observers and its instinctive characteristics noted. Another, apparently injured in some way, was found in a field near a North Notts Village.

The finder induced this bird, which could not fly, to enter a small pond, where it remained, and for the greater part of the week was fed by school children who brought it herrings, soaked bread and table scraps, all of which were devoured with avidity. Unfortunately, however, its injuries proved fatal, and one morning the young folk were grieved to find their new pet lying dead upon the bank.”

Nowadays, Shags remain fairly numerous on the rocky coasts of England, particularly in the west, but overall, they are probably diminishing in number. They are still very rare inland. Cormorants are extremely numerous, enjoying the many lakes conveniently filled with large fish for anglers to pit their wits against. At the moment, they are a protected species, but this may not last too much longer.

In the meantime, Cormorants will continue to entertain, as greedy but ever optimistic birds:

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Filed under History, Nottingham, Twitching, Wildlife and Nature

Tagged as Blyth’s Pipit, Boston, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Cormorant, Green Cormorant, House Sparrow, Joseph Whitaker, Lady Elgin, Mapperley Plains, Newark-on-Trent, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Portland Pipit, Richard’s Pipit, Ruff, Shag, Spanish Sparrow, Tree Sparrow, Vincent Bourne, Vinny Bourne

by jfwknifton | July 24, 2015 · 4:05 pm

The Corncrake: the sound of Victorian England

Nowadays the Corncrake is limited to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland although there is also what seems to be a highly successful reintroduction scheme being carried out in the RSPB Nene Washes Reserve in Cambridgeshire, England:

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Corncrakes were present throughout the length and breadth of England and their distinctive call was heard in every sunlit field. Even their Latin name, crex crex, is onomatopoeic. The birds were described as producing the most distinctive summer sound to be heard on a country walk anywhere in England. This is the song of the corncrake, beautifully recorded by “therhys927”

Corncrakes will often sing all through the night, and they can in fact be pretty aggravating little so-and-so’s once the initial novelty has worn off:

John Clare, England’s greatest poet, wrote a poem about the bird which he knew as the “Landrail”:

“How sweet and pleasant grows the way
Through summer time again
While Landrails call from day to day
Amid the grass and grain

We hear it in the weeding time
When knee deep waves the corn
We hear it in the summers prime
Through meadows night and morn

And now I hear it in the grass
That grows as sweet again
And let a minutes notice pass
And now tis in the grain”

Nowadays, the Corncrakes are all gone, gradually killed off by decade after decade of desire for profit, intensive farming practices and in particular the mechanised mowing techniques used by the nation’s farmers in place of the trusty scythe. This sad decline is chronicled in Nottinghamshire by the county’s Victorian birdwatchers:

In 1866, in his “Ornithology of Nottinghamshire”, William Felkin wrote that “the corncrake is very common”. Three years later, in 1869, William Sterland provided a charming account of this delightful bird in “The Birds of Sherwood Forest”:

“That bird of singular habits and note, the corncrake, visits us in abundance every year, sometimes arriving as early as the first of May, while in 1853 I did not hear its note until the 18th. This was unusually late; the season being a remarkably cold and backward one, a fact of which our other migratory birds also seemed, in some mysterious way, to be fully cognisant. Nothing, indeed, relating to the feathered tribes is more wonderful or more deserving of our admiration than that knowledge, call it instinct or what you will, which, implanted in them by their Creator, enables them to hasten or delay their departure for their distant but temporary places of abode, according as the seasons there are suitable to their necessities or otherwise. How strikingly is this wisdom brought forward in Holy Scripture: “Yes, the Stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow observe the time of their coming.”

William Sterland seems well aware of the piece of Corncrake behaviour which was to prove its downfall, as the mechanized mower made its inexorable way forward:

“I have never succeeded in causing the Corncrake to take wing except with a dog, and even then its flight is always brief, as it takes an early opportunity of dropping to the ground and regaining its cover. It flies rather slowly with its legs hanging down, and there is such an air of effort about his movements on the wing, that I have often wondered how its migrations are performed.
Its ventriloquial powers are well known to every observer. Now it’s harsh “Crake, crake” seems within a few yards, and the next moment it sounds as if it were halfway across the field, and this apparent variation in distance is so well simulated that in a consecutive repetition of its call for ten or twelve times, a few notes will sound as if uttered almost at your feet, and the next two or three from afar, and yet the bird is standing motionless all the time, as I have several times tested. Its singular call I have often imitated by drawing my nail across the teeth of a pocket comb, and thus inducing its near approach.”

Again Sterland reveals how fully conscious he is of the problems the Corncrake will face throughout the rest of the nineteenth century:

“The female sits very closely on eggs, so closely indeed, as not infrequently to lose her life by the mower’s scythe. I have known two instances of this, in one of which the poor bird was almost cut in two.”

Ten years later, in 1879, William Sterland provided additional details about the Corncrake:

“An abundant summer visitor. It is also been found in winter, and on this account has been thought by some to hibernate; but apart from the fact that no bird is known to hibernate, why should a corncrake which remains during the winter not be able to fare as well as a water rail or a common snipe. Cold does not affect them.”

In his “Scribblings of a Hedgerow Naturalist”(1904), Joseph Whitaker wrote:

“The other evening when talking to Rose the Nottingham taxidermist (who has set up a great many specimens in this collection) I remarked how very few Corncrake there were about, he said he well remembered about 35 years ago, a man bringing a large basket to his father, of these birds, which he had shot in two days, and they numbered over fifty; at that time he said the meadows round Nottingham were full of them, and their call could be heard on all sides. This year I have heard one, although I have been about a great deal.”

No Corncrakes in 1904, no meadows in 2014! Elsewhere Joseph Whitaker wrote about his country house at Rainworth, between Nottingham, and Mansfield:

“I am sorry to say the Corn Crake is getting scarcer. I have not heard one near the house was several years, although twenty years ago they were in every mowing field. No doubt the result of mowing machines which cuts the young up often I fear.”

Three years later in 1907, Joseph Whitaker provided in “The Birds of Nottinghamshire” the following information :

“I sorrow to say that this interesting bird is a rapidly vanishing species, not only as far as Notts is concerned, but in many other counties. Twenty years back it was the exception in the spring not to hear a corncrake in nearly every mowing field in the Trent Valley, and almost every seed and grass field left for hay in other parts. In this very high and dry parish of Blidworth, we had between ten and fifteen pairs, now for the last three years not a bird has been heard.”

Like his fellow nature writers, Joseph Whitaker chronicles the decline:

“At Southwell, on a June night, their curious call resounded on all sides; now this year there may be two pairs. Mr Henry Smith Junior of Cropwell Butler informs me that this scarcity is very noticeable in that part, and in fact all over the south of the county.”

Alas, Whitaker was to be proved wrong when he wrote:

“Let us hope that it will be many years before they are quite a bird of the past, but if they decrease during the next twenty years as fast as their decrease during the last two decades, it pains me to think that it may be so.
I once heard a corncrake calling inside the kitchen garden at Welbeck Abbey.”

And finally, in “Jottings of a Naturalist” in 1912, Whitaker wrote:

“Twenty years ago there were Corncrakes all over the parish, in fact it was the exception not to hear them in every mowing field, but I know that there is been none for the last ten years, not a single bird heard, and the parish is six thousand acres; and it is not only so in these parts, it is the same everywhere.”

And really, that was that. The end of the Corncrake.

As the Great War loomed, the Victorian age drew to a close. No more mowing fields, no more meadows full of flowers, no more clouds of brightly coloured butterflies. And no more Corncrakes. Just mud, blood, war and death.

To film a Corncrake nowadays, you are more or less wasting your time in England. This beautiful, atmospheric video comes from “mikhailrodionov” in faraway Russia:

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Filed under History, Nottingham, Science, Twitching, Wildlife and Nature

Tagged as birdwatcher, Blidworth, corncrake, Cropwell Butler, Great War, Henry Smith Junior, John Clare, Joseph Whitaker, Jottings of a Naturalist, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, Ornithology of Nottinghamshire, Outer Hebrides, Rainworth, Rose the Nottingham taxidermist, RSPB Nene Washes, Scotland, Scribblings of a Hedgerow Naturalist, The Birds of Nottinghamshire, The Birds of Sherwood Forest, Trent Valley, Victorian, Welbeck Abbey, William Felkin, William Sterland

by jfwknifton | June 22, 2015 · 7:15 pm

The Officer Training Corps 1915 Part Three

This photograph shows the Officer Training Corps in 1915. You might be forgiven for thinking that they are all far too young to have left the school, to have immediately joined the army, trained as officers, gone to the Western Front and then been killed. But you would be wrong. Three of the twelve were to be lost, although this is a much better casualty rate than the rugby team of Boxing Day, 1913. On the other hand, though, it is still a staggering 25%!

Previously, I have written about the eventual fate of the teachers, and I have talked about the fate of the three boys who were destined to die in the Great War. This time I will try to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the remaining nine boys, all of whom, you will be pleased to know, came back home from the fields of Flanders.

Once again, here are the names. On the back row of the photograph are, left to right, F.A.Bird, J.R.Coleman, D.J.Clarkson, J.Marriott, A.W.Barton, G.R.Ballamy, S.I.Wallis and W.D.Willatt.

On the front row are, left to right, L.W.Foster, V.G.Darrington, Second Lieutenant J.L.Kennard, Captain G.F.Hood, Second Lieutenant L.R.Strangeways, G.James and R.I.Mozley:

If J.Marriott was John Marriott, then a wild guess says that his father, or perhaps even grandfather, may have been Frank Marriott, an Old Boy of the school who played First XI football from 1868 at least, and then played nine times for Notts County between 1872-1874. Frank’s own father was John Marriott, a victualler, of Warser Gate in Nottingham. In England, a victualler was the keeper of an inn, a tavern or a restaurant, who had a licence to sell alcohol.

G.R.Ballamy was the brother of Harold William Ballamy, the Captain of Football in 1912. The family lived at 17a, Gedling Grove, Nottingham. I will be writing a blogpost about Harold Ballamy in the future. This is the family’s house in Gedling Grove, which nowadays is just behind the northbound High School tram stop:

S.I.Wallis left the High School for the Army. He became a Lieutenant in the Sikhs/Pioneers and then a Captain in the same unit. He was also at various times, a Captain in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers and the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

On May 29th 1915, William Donald Willatt was to play for the 2nd XI cricket team against Derby Grammar School 2nd XI. He scored five runs before he was out to Shellard leg before wicket. William was the school Fives champion on one occasion, a title also won by his brother, Victor Guy Willatt. Fives was a Victorian and Edwardian version of Squash, using a fingerless leather glove to bash a ball made of cork, gutta percha and leather. Not a game for softies! Here is the school Fives Court:

In partnership with a fellow pupil, Roy Henderson, William was later to start a school magazine called “The Highvite”. By Henderson’s own admission, it was “a pretty dreadful magazine”, and it only survived because it was financed by a variety of different adverts. The two enterprising young men went round to canvas support from local companies, shops such as Sisson & Parker and many other businesses. This screen capture shows the moment William was promoted to temporary Second Lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry:

At the end of the war, he could walk away:

Eventually, William became the Vicar of St.Martin’s, Sherwood:

At this time, he was living in West Bridgford. In 1949, a W.D.Willatt became Vicar of Edwalton, a post which he held until 1955. This was presumably the same man.

G.James has proved difficult to trace and I have found out very little about him. In the 1912-1913 football season, he played at left half or right half for the 1st XI. The School Magazine reported that he:

“Plays a good defensive game sometimes, but completely fails to help the attack.”

A year later, in 1913-1914, he played more or less exclusively as a right half. We also have his contributions to what seems a heated debate about various matters of school discipline. At this time, the Prefects were more or less in charge of this aspect of school life:

“On April 29th 1915, at 4.15 p.m., all of the Prefects met to discuss a “revision of the rules of discipline”. With reference to Rule 18, G.James suggested that attendance at the Officer Training Corps be made compulsory. This was seconded by School Captain, L.M.Clark, and carried unanimously. J.H.Boyd, the Captain of School Cricket, then suggested that games also be made compulsory. Again, the motion was carried unanimously.”

Young James was obviously a young man well ahead of his time, because he then went on to put forward the idea that three afternoons a week should be allocated to games, or perhaps two to games and one to military training:

“Unfortunately, his idea was not supported, the rest of the Prefects thinking that this would involve a too sweeping reform of the school time table.”

Presumably, from a logistical point of view, even with perhaps four afternoons available, it would have been completely impossible for a large proportion of the High School, which now numbered almost five hundred boys, all to play sport simultaneously, at a sports ground designed to accommodate perhaps only a hundred boys at a time.

L.W.Foster, or Lancelot Wilson Foster, to give him his full name, remains a figure about whom I have discovered just unrelated snippets. Before the Great War, the Fifth Form, (Year 11), always used to play their football under cover, in the sheds tucked under the Forest Road wall. They were noted for kicking the ball against the wall in an effort to get past their opponent. The Fifth Form usually played mainly in the eastern half of the sheds:

This is the view in the other direction:

Among these fifteen and sixteen year old boys, Lancelot Foster was remembered as a particularly good full back. In 1915, Roy Henderson, of “Highvite” fame, arranged a summer camp at a farm near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Six boys, all members of his father’s church, went with him. They were all Prefects, and comprised three pairs of friends, Harold Connop and Francis Bird, Thomas Wright and Lancelot Foster, and John Boyd and Roy Henderson.

In the Great War, Lancelot Wilson Foster became Lieutenant Foster of the 9th Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters He survived the carnage and in 1929, was living in Buglawton Vicarage, Cheshire, presumably as the vicar.

Victor George Darrington, lived at “The Limes” in Eastwood. He was born on November 25th 1896 and entered the High School on September 23rd 1909, at the age of twelve. His father was William Darrington, the Schoolmaster at the School House in Eastwood. As such, he must surely have taught the young D.H.Lawrence, who was born and bred in this mining village, before continuing his education at the High School in September 1898. Perhaps William Darrington was the person who encouraged the budding young author to sit for a scholarship to the High School:

From 1938 to 1939, William was Mayor of Eastwood:

Victor was in the team which won the Football Eights competition in 1912. He was a regular member of the First Team in the 1913-1914 season, playing at either centre half or left half. The decision having been taken to switch from football to rugby in the Spring Term of 1915, the First and Second Football Teams played their last ever fixtures during the Autumn Term of 1914. At this sad time, Victor duly became the last High School Captain of Football until 1968. During this Autumn Term, Victor was also the Captain of the School.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, given that there was an imminent change of sport in the offing, neither of the two football teams seems to have had their hearts in it, and their results were very disappointing. The Nottinghamian does not appear to have listed any of the players who took part. After the demise of football, Victor was to become the school’s first Captain of Rugby, a post he was to retain during the following season of 1915-1916.

During the Great War, Victor became a Lieutenant, firstly in the Royal Field Artillery, and then in the newly formed Royal Air Force:

He was wounded on May 30th 1916, and then again on September 29th of the same year. He survived the conflict, and in 1922, was awarded a Diploma in Forestry at Oxford. Victor returned to Nottinghamshire, and in 1929, he was still living at “The Limes”, in Eastwood.

I will be writing a blogpost about Victor George Darrington in the future.

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Filed under Football, France, History, Nottingham, The High School

Tagged as Ballamy, D.H.Lawrence, Derby Grammar School, Eastwood, Edwalton, Fives, gutta percha, Highvite, Nottingham, Nottinghamian, Notts County, Oxford, Royal Air Force, Royal Field Artillery, Sherwood, St.Martin’s

by jfwknifton | June 3, 2015 · 1:03 pm

The Officer Training Corps 1915 Part Two

This photograph shows the High School Officer Training Corps in 1915. I have previously written about what happened to the teachers in the years after this iconic photograph was taken.

This time I want to write about the fates of some of the boys. You might be forgiven for thinking that these twelve individuals are all far too young to have left the school, joined the army, trained as officers, gone to the Western Front and then been killed. But you would be wrong. Three of these young men were to perish. And this, tragically, is a much better casualty rate than the rugby team of Boxing Day, 1913. On the other hand, though, it is still a staggering 25%!

On the back row of the photograph are, left to right, F.A.Bird, J.R.Coleman, D.J.Clarkson, J.Marriott, A.W.Barton, G.R.Ballamy, S.I.Wallis and W.D.Willatt.

On the front row are, left to right, L.W.Foster, V.G.Darrington, Second Lieutenant J.L.Kennard, Captain G.F.Hood, Second Lieutenant L.R.Strangeways, G.James and R.I.Mozley.

I have not been able to find information on all of the boys in this photograph, but here is what I have come up with:

In January 1918, the school magazine, “The Highvite” carried a list of the school prefects, with their nicknames. They included the Captain of the School, F.A.Bird (Dicky) and A.W.Barton (Fuzzy). Both of them feature in the photograph.

They seem to have been very good friends and we have already noted their advertisement “for poisons, the quality of which was endorsed by Mr.Strangeways”. I know nothing further of Mr Bird except that his first name was Francis and he was the best friend of Harold Arno Connop, a Flight Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service, who was killed at Dunkirk on Sunday, March 31st 1918:

Arthur Willoughby, “Fuzzy”, Barton had an unbelievably varied life. In his last year at the High School, he was Captain of the School and during the First World War, he became a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers Signal Service, until he was demobilised in December 1918.

Arthur then went to Cambridge University to study Physics and helped Lord Rutherford to split the atom. He became a top flight football referee and officiated in the only football match that Adolf Hitler ever watched. I will be telling you his story in another blogpost (Fuzzy Barton, not Adolf Hitler).

Arthur had been, however, the recipient of a gangster type extortion racket in the early part of his school career. The Prefects’ Book records that on Tuesday, October 27th 1908:

“…A meeting was held at 2.30 p.m. in the Library. All the prefects were present. M.M.Lyon was reported for bullying A.W.Barton during the preceding day. He had tried to make Barton accompany him home & as Barton refused, he dragged him along Forest Road towards Waverley St. Lyon also hit Barton with the knob of his umbrella on his head just behind the ear. This blow had raised a big lump on Barton’s head. Lyon only allowed Barton to go home on receiving a promise that he would bring him a penny in the afternoon. As Barton did not bring the money, Lyon thrashed him again in the afternoon.

Lyon admitted the offence, & was treated as a first offender & received 6 strokes.
On the next day, however, Mr Woodward told the school captain that Lyon had treated other boys in a similar way, & had obtained 2d, from J.B.Cooper. Dr.Turpin stated that he had warned Lyon previously, & threatened him with expulsion on a repetition of the offence. Mr Dark had also complained about Lyon’s bullying propensities. H.J.Hoyte reported Lyon at the end of the summer term for swearing, but Lyon had not been punished as he was away from School. Taking all this into consideration, the prefects offered Lyon the alternative of 15 strokes or expulsion by the Doctor. Lyon chose the strokes.”

Richard Inger Mozley was born on May 10th 1898, the son of Albert Henry and Laura Mozley. He entered the High School on January 14th 1908, at the age of nine.

In the School Register his address is given as Grosvenor Avenue, Mapperley Park (1908), and then later, “Hollies”, Burton Joyce, Nottingham. One other website gives the family address as 17a, Woodborough Road, Nottingham. His father, Albert Mozley, was a Coal Merchant.

Richard was a Sergeant in the O.T.C. and, as such, was recommended for a commission in the Army both by Captain Hood and by the Headmaster, Dr G.S.Turpin. Richard had already applied himself to the O.T.C. of the 3rd Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters, but they were already vastly oversubscribed, and he duly joined the 3rd York & Lancaster Regiment.

He was then attached to the 36th Battalion of the Machine Gun Corps (Infantry):

During the course of “Operation Michael”, the Germans’ last do-or-die effort to win the war before the Americans began to influence the outcome of the conflict, Richard’s unit was assigned to defend the Forward Zone. Richard himself was stationed in the forward trenches, but he and his colleagues were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers of the enemy. They perished more or less to a man.

Richard was listed as missing, presumed killed, on March 21st 1918. At the time he was nineteen years of age:

By the time he died, he was living in Hoveringham and his parents remained at the “Hollies”, Burton Joyce. In due course, a letter arrived from Sergeant Crenston:

“When Lt. Mozley came back to the Coy. in Dec. last, he took charge of “A” Section and I being the section Sgt. was nearly always with Mr. Mozley and when in the line that terrible morning 21st March Mr. Mozley, myself and about 19 others were in the same position and dugout, the most forward position of the Division, 4 guns with us; at about 4:30 the barrage started. We were being pounded most cruel with gas and high explosive shells but we stuck it till about 9 when your son was hit …… a piece of shell penetrated Mr. Mozley’s right breast …… I helped to bandage your son and asked him to get down to the dressing station a short distance away (it was a nasty wound and it would have got him home) but no, he refused to go, saying I will see it through Sergeant.”
“Now this splendid spirit and example inspired us all and setting our teeth we all determined to stand by to the end …… The first indication we got of the German approach was a death scream from one of the boys and after that my memory is nearly a blank for we all seemed to work by machinery, Mr. Mozley and self took up positions with revolvers and did our best, we were however surrounded by the Germans, a bomb or shell burst amongst us and I found myself with a wound in the back feeling dizzy”.
“Now as to what happened to your son I cannot say”.

Richard has no known grave and is remembered on the Pozières Memorial. This was one of his buttons:

John Roberts Coleman was the son of John Bowley Coleman and Florence Annie Coleman of 29, Derby Grove, Lenton Sands, Nottingham. His father was a schoolmaster. John was born on April 16th 1899 and he entered the High School on September 23rd 1909 at the age of ten. He was a Foundation Scholar in both 1911 and 1914. He left in July 1916 and became a Second Lieutenant in the Special Brigade of the Royal Engineers. In the era before antibiotics, he died of pneumonia in Tourcoing, after the end of hostilities, on November 26th 1918. He was only nineteen years of age, and this fresh faced young man had seen so very little of the world beyond mud, blood and death.

He is buried in Pont-Neuville Communal Cemetery in Tourcoing.

Donald James Clarkson was born on May 11th 1899. He was son of James Clarkson, whose occupation was listed as “a manager”, and his mother was called Alice. The family lived at “Wyndene”, which is now Number 52, Caledon Road, Sherwood. He entered the High School on September 23rd 1909, at the age of ten. He was always known by his many friends as “Pug” because of his upturned nose.

Donald played for the Football 1st XI as a goalkeeper during the last ever term of the sport at the High School. He was a replacement for Roy Henderson, who, by his own admission “..did horribly.., conceding eight goals… for the First Team in an away game at Trent College.” Both of them were in the Fifth Form, Year 11, at the time. In one unrecorded year, Donald was also the High School Fives champion. This is the Fives Court, which was demolished during the 1980s.

The only other specific mention of him that I have been able to find is in a rather surreal report about a meeting of the Debating Society on Saturday, February 27th 1915, when the school magazine stated that “Mr.Barber was glad Mr.Clarkson had a long arm.” Perhaps you had to be there.

Donald left in December 1915, and then seems to have gone to University College, Nottingham where he immediately joined their Officer Training Corps. After that, he went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst where, in his passing out examination in early 1918, he was placed first of all the candidates in the college and was awarded the King’s Sword and the King’s Medal.

On April 23rd 1918, Donald became a Second Lieutenant in the 1/6th Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters.

Just four months later, Donald was killed in action on August 9th 1918. He is buried in Fouquières Churchyard Extension in France. This cemetery is in the village of Fouquières-les-Béthune, about one kilometre to the south-west of Béthune in the Pas-de-Calais.

Donald’s death is commemorated on the memorial of University College, Nottingham’s Officer Training Corps as well as the High School’s war memorial.

Like the two other casualties in the photograph of the OTC, he was just nineteen years of age.

I was a teacher in the High School for thirty eight years. Neither there, nor in the rest of my life, do I ever recollect knowing anybody who was called “Clarkson”. On the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, a simple search for any casualty with the surname “Clarkson”, in the Great War, in the Army, yields 226 results.

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Filed under Aviation, Football, France, History, Nottingham, Politics, The High School

Tagged as A.W.Barton, Adolf Hitler, Cambridge University, D.J.Clarkson, Dr G.S.Turpin, Dunkirk, F.A.Bird, Harold Arno Connop, Highvite, Hoveringham, J.R.Coleman, Mr.Strangeways, O.T.C., Operation Michael, Pozières, Pug, R.I.Mozley, Royal Engineers, Royal Naval Air Service, Sandhurst, Sherwood Foresters, Tourcoing, Trent College, University College

by jfwknifton | May 22, 2015 · 1:03 pm

The Birdwatchers of Victorian Nottinghamshire

In the Victorian era there were hardly any birdwatchers in Nottinghamshire. Most ordinary people seem to have been too busy just living their lives to have a hobby such as watching birds. Among the richer individuals such as the landed gentry and the nobility, their particular interest was not watching but shooting birds:

Even so, the very fact that they enjoyed shooting birds would actually have led them to develop some identification skills, however rudimentary, if only to avoid shooting a species which was out of season, or the same species over and over again:

At this time, there was great interest in having a large collection of stuffed birds or animals. Here again, identification skills would have been important:

The earliest actual birdwatcher in Nottinghamshire seems to have been a man called William Felkin junior who lived in Nottingham from at least 1845-1870. Like his father, he was a lace manufacturer, but he became a Fellow of the Zoological Society and possessed a collection of stuffed birds of some 313 species. In 1866 he wrote the first ever book about birds in the county, entitled “The Ornithology of Nottinghamshire”. It was incorporated in Allen’s “Hand-book to Nottingham” published in the same year. This, I believe, is William Felkin senior. Hopefully. he looked a lot like his son:

A contemporary of Felkin was William Foottit of Newark-on-Trent (fl 1840-1860). He was the local Coroner and ordinary people from miles around would bring unusual birds to him. Foottit was a frequent contributor to “The Zoologist” magazine:

In 1869, clearly an outdoorsman of some competence, William Sterland of Ollerton wrote the marvellously entertaining “Birds of Sherwood Forest”:

This book contained many anecdotes, and a number of records of rare birds. Sterland was the relatively uneducated son of a “grocer/ ironmonger/ tallow chandler/ dealer in sundries”, and, when the great man deigned to review it, his book was slated by Edward Newman, owner of “The Zoologist” magazine :

This was possibly because Sterland was a frequent contributor to “The Field” magazine, a fierce rival of “The Zoologist”:

It is more likely, though, that this was a slightly more complex issue. Newman had himself left school at sixteen to go into his father’s business. Now he mixed with some of the most prominent scientists and zoologists in the land. I suspect that if Newman’s well healed and well connected upper class friends found out that William Sterland still worked in his Dad’s village grocer’s shop, they might well have been strongly reminded of the humble origins of Newman himself.

Unabashed, though, in 1879, William Sterland produced “The Descriptive List of the Birds of Nottinghamshire”. Needless to say, Edward Newman still had quite a few buckets of bile left to throw, but all the local newspapers in the Nottingham area really liked the book.

Sterland’s collaborator in this venture was a young man called Joseph Whitaker, now universally acknowledged as “The Father of Nottinghamshire Ornithology”. Whitaker (1850-1932), the son of a farmer, was born at Ramsdale House, nowadays a golf centre and wedding venue to the north of Nottingham. Look for the orange arrow:

Recently this beautiful building received a great deal of publicity as the erstwhile residence of the most infamous dentist in the history of the National Health Service:

In later life Whitaker moved to Rainworth Lodge, a large country house with a lake, slightly further north in the county. Look for the orange arrow:

Here, he was known to one and all as the man to contact about birds in Nottinghamshire, whether it be a member of the nobility or a simple farm labourer who had found an unusual bird dead in the road as he walked to work:

Whitaker would travel around Nottinghamshire by horse and trap to see various interesting species of birds, or to talk to people who had seen, and/or shot, unusual birds on their estate.

Whitaker wrote a number of books about nature, including “Scribblings of a Hedgerow Naturalist” and “Jottings of a Naturalist: Scraps of Nature and Sport on Land and Sea”. His finest title was most assuredly “Nimrod, Ramrod, Fishing-Rod and Nature Tales”. I believe that the young lady on the front cover of the book is the maid, rather than Whitaker himself:

Whitaker was a frequent contributor to “The Zoologist” and in later years to the newly fledged “British Birds” magazine:

Before the rise of the pager, the mobile phone and the Internet, this publication was the only way to announce the presence of rare birds.

Whitaker also corresponded with his social betters, the Lords and Ladies whose many estates were the origin of the expression “The Dukeries” to describe north Nottinghamshire. There is a large collection of Whitaker‘s letters in the local collection at Mansfield Library. As well as the nobility, Whitaker also exchanged letters with many of the great ornithologists of the Victorian era, the men who wrote textbooks on birds, either in Britain, or in Europe as a whole. Joseph Whitaker’s greatest triumph, though, was a book entitled “The Birds of Nottinghamshire”, which he had printed privately in 1907. It contains information about every single species of bird which the author knew to have occurred in the county. In Mansfield Library, we still have Whitaker’s own copy of this book, to which he has had a professional bookbinder add extra pages. In this way, the great man could cut out interesting stories from newspapers or magazines and then just paste them in. Alternatively, he could simply handwrite in any interesting items of bird news which he had gleaned. Unfortunately, I have been able to trace only four photos of Joseph Whitaker, none of them as a young man. In all of them, he has a reassuringly large walrus moustache:

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Whitaker’s greatest claim to fame was the Egyptian Nightjar which was shot in 1883 in Thieves Wood near Mansfield by a gamekeeper called Albert Spinks. At the time this poor lost individual (the bird, not the gamekeeper) was the first known sighting in England, and just the second in Europe. Even now, a hundred and thirty years later, only one more has been seen in this country. Whitaker erected a stone to commemorate the event but it was smashed to smithereens in the 1980s (to celebrate its centenary, presumably) and replaced by a wonderful modern sculpture costing well in excess of £8.50:

The pieces of the original stone were recently found and reassembled, although one little bit does seem to be somewhat of an enigma:

The bird itself was stuffed and, as an item of immense prestige, it went into Whitaker’s enormous collection. After his death, it eventually finished up in the foyer of Mansfield Library, safe behind highly reflective glass.

I thought it might be quite interesting to bring to a wider audience some of the birdwatching anecdotes which Whitaker mentions, both in his original book, and in the very many additions which he made to it. In future blog posts, therefore, I will bring you the true story of the famous Egyptian Nightjar and any number of other notable birds.

One final point is that the Nottinghamshire of the Victorian era was a very different place to the Nottinghamshire of today. The current Nottingham ring-road was just a muddy footpath alongside the Daybrook. Had our own suburban house existed then, there would have been no other private houses in sight in any direction. Just Bagthorpe Prison, Bagthorpe Hospital and the City Workhouse. It is amazing just how few people must have been alive in the county at that time.

A second final point is that many of these early ornithologists would not have had optical aids of any great standard, whether binoculars or telescopes. They may have had nothing beyond the Mark One Eyeball. In addition, they may have had no access to identification books, where they could carefully check what they had seen. This is why, if the presence of a rare bird was to be proven beyond doubt, it had to be shot. That is the origin of that grand old saying, “What’s hit is history, what’s missed is mystery”.

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Filed under History, Humour, Nottingham, Wildlife and Nature

Tagged as Albert Spinks, Bagthorpe Hospital, Bagthorpe Prison, British Birds, Cambridge University, City Workhouse, Edward Newman, Egyptian Nightjar, Fishing-Rod and Nature Tales, Joseph Whitaker, Jottings of a Naturalist: Scraps of Nature and Sport on Land and Sea, landed gentry, Mansfield Library, Newark-on-Trent, Nimrod, nobility, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Ollerton, Rainworth Lodge, Ramrod, Ramsdale Farm, Scribblings of a Hedgerow Naturalist, shooting, The Birds of Nottinghamshire, The Descriptive List of the Birds of Nottinghamshire, The Dukeries, The Field, The Ornithology of Nottinghamshire, The Zoologist, William Felkin, William Foottit, William Sterland, Zoological Society

by jfwknifton | May 14, 2015 · 7:15 pm

The Officer Training Corps 1915 Part One

This photograph shows the Officer Training Corps in 1915. You might be forgiven for thinking that they are all far too young to have left the High School, to have immediately joined the army, trained as officers, gone to the Western Front and then been killed. But you would be wrong. This time, it was only three dead out of twelve though, and this represents a much better casualty rate than the rugby team of Boxing Day, 1913. On the other hand, though, it is still a staggering 25%!

On the back row of the photograph are, from left to right, F.A.Bird, J.R.Coleman, D.J.Clarkson, J.Marriott, A.W.Barton, G.R.Ballamy, S.I.Wallis and W.D.Willatt.

On the front row are, from left to right, L.W.Foster, V.G.Darrington, Second Lieutenant J.L.Kennard, Captain G.F.Hood, Second Lieutenant L.R.Strangeways, G.James and R.I.Mozley.

In 1915, the High School, according to the anonymous writer of some reminiscences about school life at the time, was a place:

“…dominated by the War and its effects. Masters disappeared and were replaced by women teachers, the Officer Training Corps underwent intensive training, and the School Flag seemed to be constantly at half-mast for Old Boys, many of whom had left us only a few months before.”

Only a year earlier, before August 1914, the O.T.C. had been poorly equipped and they frequently complained of the lack of equipment, both rifles and bayonets. Over the course of the war, however, the O.T.C. was to take on a much greater importance. According to the “History of the Corps”, written fifty years later by a member of staff, Mr.A.G.Duddell:

“By 1913 the O.T.C. had become a well-established organisation in the school, and while it had exchanged its picturesque uniform, of which the wide-awake hat with green puggaree and plume of black feathers was a striking feature, for the more conventional khaki tunic with flat peaked cap, knee-breeches and puttees, it had also become a contingent of the Officers’ Training Corps (Junior Division)…The reality of war brought a great increase in numbers, and gave urgency to the training ; parties of cadets were taken for camps at Barton-in-Fabis and field exercises were carried out on the Gotham Hills. Field Days then, and for many years after, were held at Ramsdale Park, and as no transport was available in the early days, much of the time, and energy, was used for the five mile long march out and back. Later the position was eased, but at first only by special trams between the Forest and Daybrook Square. Another handicap of those earlier days was the state of the School playground, the surface of which consisted of the raw sandstone rock, with a covering of loose sand. Uneven at all times, from dust in dry weather, it became a quagmire after rain.”

The senior officers in the O.T.C., Mr Leggett of the Preparatory School and Mr Lloyd Morgan, were among the first to join up in 1914, becoming Captain and Lieutenant, in the 11th Service Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters and the 2nd Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment respectively. The school magazine hoped that:

“they will both have a “smack” at the enemy and return safely again.”

Ironically, Messrs Leggett and Morgan had been the two prime movers in favour of the school’s switch from football to rugby in December 1914. Here is one of the oldest photographs of a school rugby team that I have been able to find. It was taken around 1924:

Presumably, if they had got to the Front in time, Messrs Leggett and Morgan would have been able to encourage the soldiers during the Christmas Truce to forget the football and play rugby across no-man’s-land.

As soon as they left, the O.T.C. was taken over by Captain Hood, assisted by Mr Kennard. I could not write a biography of Captain Hood, but I can recount one or two occasions when his name was on people’s lips. He had come to the school in 1908 as a teacher of Chemistry, or “Stinks” as it was nicknamed at this time. Mr Hood’s own nickname was “Freddy”, although I have been unable to trace his real first name. After three years in charge of the O.T.C., he finally received his very own chance to have “a “smack” at the enemy”, although by now it was a rather unsporting enemy who was using phosgene, chlorine and any other “Stinks” that could kill human beings in large numbers. Luckily though, the call came as late as July of 1918 so the chances are that Captain Hood may not have seen a lot of action during his spell with the Royal Engineers. A more sinister interpretation would be that when the Royal Engineers sent for somebody with a degree in Chemistry, they themselves were the ones trying to manufacture poison gas in larger quantities and at a faster rate than the Germans:

In 1925, the School was feeling the financial pinch and seems to have been, on occasion, extremely strapped for cash. Mr Hood, along with Mr Betts, offered to install electric lighting in part of the school while their classes were taking examinations. The offer was eagerly accepted, presumably in the days before that fateful phrase, “Health and Safety” had quite the ring to it that it has now.

A few years later, Mr Hood must have become a pastoral tutor, since, on Monday, July 6th 1931, in an effort to improve the general behaviour of one Burton of 2C, he put in him detention for receiving “too many detentions”. On Tuesday, April 5th 1932, Mr Hood, accompanied by Mr Houghton, took a group of thirty boys to visit the Home Brewery in Daybrook. They saw the entire brewing process, from barley to the finished product. At the end of the visit, the boys were given sandwiches and soft drinks, while the delighted teachers “sampled the real stuff”:

In July 1946, Mr Hood retired after decades of service to the school. After 38 years as a dedicated teacher, his departure was marked in the school magazine by a warm tribute and farewell which lasted for just a line and a half of print, and must have been quite a bit short of one word for every year.

Second Lieutenant J.L.Kennard had the first name Joseph. He had come to the school in November 1910, and had previously been a teacher in Switzerland. He was a famous sportsman, having captained Lancashire at rugby, and having played for the North of England in an England trial. Here he is, on the left, with Mr Onion the groundskeeper and the First XV after the Great War in 1926-1927:

Inside the classroom, Mr Kennard was a teacher of Modern Languages and his nickname was “Guts”. When Mr E.P.Gaskin, the Head of Languages, retired in July 1927, he was succeeded by Mr Kennard. Around this time, Mr Kennard became the Housemaster of Mellers.

When war again came knocking at the school doors in 1939, the school had enormous difficulties carrying on with the ordinary day-to-day teaching because a large number of classrooms were being used by the men of the South Notts Hussars. By the Spring Term of 1940, Mr Kennard, along with Mr Duddell, came up with an emergency schedule, which allowed a full timetable of lessons to be taught, although every form had to spend one day per week at the Games Field, with normal classes in the mornings and then games in the afternoon:

The masters, who in many cases were forced to commute the mile and a half between the main school and the Games Field by bicycle, were somewhat less than happy with this situation. In 1941 when Mr Goddard retired, Mr Kennard was appointed Second Master. He had himself retired as the school rugby coach in 1939, although he was soon forced to resume these duties at the age of sixty by the absence of younger members of staff who were away in the forces. Mr Kennard finally retired in 1947. After a splendidly long retirement, he died on Sunday, January 5th 1969, at the age of eighty-seven, after a short illness:

“sentiment had little place in his character, and his guiding principles were devotion to duty, loyal service and firm discipline”

Second Lieutenant L.R.Strangeways had come to the High School in 1908 as just Leonard Ralph Strangeways. He was a teacher of Classics and had been educated at Sheffield Royal Grammar School:

By late 1916, he was helping to produce food for the starving population of a U-boat beleaguered Britain:

“An area of some three quarters of an acre was cultivated by the boys at Woodthorpe. Despite being a “very uncompromising clay dump”, it was eventually to produce much fresh food. One member of staff, Mr Strangeways, a Classics teacher, dug so energetically that he “not only shattered one spade in sunder, and so bent another that it was impossible to discern which side was which, but also succeeded in unearthing an ancient Roman broom.”

Two years later, in January 1918, “The Highvite” carried the humorous story about two prefects and one teacher:

“Barton, Bird and Co Ltd. had an advertisement for poisons, the quality of which was endorsed by Mr Strangeways.”

Mr Strangeways left the school in 1918. He went to Bury Grammar School where he was Headmaster from 1919-1936. The school still has its Strangeways Library.

In my next blog post about this photograph, I will try to find out what happened to the boys in the years after it was taken.

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Filed under Football, France, History, Nottingham, The High School

Tagged as A.G.Duddell, A.W.Barton, Barton-in-Fabis, D.H.Lawrence, D.J.Clarkson, Daybrook, Daybrook Square, Debating Society, Donald James Clarkson, F.A.Bird, Fives, G.F.Hood, G.James, G.R.Ballamy, Home Brewery, J.L.Kennard, J.Marriott, J.R.Coleman, L.R.Strangeways, Lenton Sands, Mapperley Park, Officer Training Corps, Operation Michael, poison gas, R.I.Mozley, Ramsdale Park, S.I.Wallis, Sheffield Royal Grammar School, Sherwood, V.G.Darrington, W.D.Willatt, Western Front, William Donald Willatt, Woodthorpe

by jfwknifton | May 10, 2015 · 11:12 am

Jer Falcon. one shot at Park Hall by Mr Shelton. Now in my collection.

In his own vastly expanded version of “Notes on the Birds of Nottinghamshire”, published in 1907, and now housed in the local collection of Mansfield Library, author Joseph Whitaker has added, for the most part in pencil, his own notes and additions. In some cases, he has pasted newspaper clippingts onto the pages. At one particular point, towards the end of the book, he has added the following handwritten note, misspellings and all:

“Jer Falcon. one shot at Park Hall by Mr Shelton. We were beating a plantation on Clipstone Road near the Red House Farm it was misty + this falcon flew low over the trees + was shot by him.
I missed this bird out when this book was written. Now in my collection”.

Sceptics might say, of course, that Joseph Whitaker was mistaken in his identification of the bird and that it was, quite simply, not a definite Gyrfalcon. This is, however, a rather unlikely scenario. Joseph Whitaker was familiar with many, many different kinds of raptor. If anything, he had probably seen more species within the county than the majority of present-day birdwatchers. And don’t forget. Mr Shelton shot it. They were identifying a corpse, not a distant dot disappearing into a dismal sky:

In any case a Gyrfalcon would have been easily identifiable on size alone. It is a falcon as big as a Common Buzzard And if Whitaker’s bird was a white phase individual, it would have been totally unmistakeable:

There are only two birds of this size which are completely white, namely Gyrfalcon and Snowy Owl. The latter is not exactly difficult to identify:

Gyrfalcons exist in two different colour morphs and it would, admittedly, have been more difficult to identify a dark morph bird:

The issue of size would still have been there, of course. Gyrfalcons of both white and dark morphs are huge birds. Furthermore, even dark phase Gyrfalcons are very distinctive birds, especially when viewed as dead specimens.

Dark morph birds may just be an academic problem anyway. According to at least one ornithological authority, namely Fisher in 1967, the vast majority of Gyrfalcons seen in England during the Victorian era were, in actual fact, white phase birds, with apparently only one dark morph individual recorded nationally during the last third of the 19th century.

And in Whitaker’s day, of course, there was no need to worry about the presence of escaped foreign falcons from Australia, or exotic, artificially inseminated hybrids produced by Baron Frankenstein the Falconer. It would have been very difficult to misidentify one of these charismatic killers:

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what Mr Shelton shot, if it were not a Gyrfalcon. We also know that the bird went into Joseph Whitaker’s collection. This fact in itself would have served as some kind of checking mechanism, since the specimen would have been mounted and then inspected by the continuous parade of visitors to Whitaker’s house in Rainworth. These would have included a large number of nationally reputable ornithologists and it would have been impossible for a man like Joseph Whitaker to have shown them such an important county specimen without their quickly mentioning the fact had the bird be misidentified.

Why then do we not have the Gyrfalcon now? Again, answers are not difficult to find. The bird may have been sold privately, either before or after Whitaker’s death. Equally it was common practice, when the owner of a great collection died, for selected individual birds to be passed onto close friends, before the collection as a whole was sold, usually at a public auction. It is also conceivable that the specimen may have been stolen after Whitaker’s death.

On the death of a great collector, it was a frequent occurrence that the beneficiaries of the estate had little or no expert knowledge of the worth or importance of certain individual stuffed birds. These vulnerable specimens were then liable to disappear between the death of the collector and the public disposal of the collection. This has certainly happened to a number of other birds which are known to have been in Whitaker’s possession but have now disappeared, presumably between his death and the acquisition of his collection on behalf of the Mansfield Museum.
In any case, why should we automatically cast doubt on Whitaker’s handwritten note? What clearer message can the great man have hurled forward into the future, than the one we now have? He offers us the word of an honest man.

You might be lucky enough one day to see a Gyrfalcon in this country. I never have. But I console myself by watching the Peregrine Falcons which have nested for years in the middle of the City of Nottingham:

They can be seen on the Newton and Arkwright Building of Nottingham Trent University on South Sherwood Street, Nottingham.

In this aerial view, the Fire Station is coloured orange as it is the most well known building in this part of the city for the majority of people. (No, it’s not on fire):

Look at the street to the right of the Fire Station and follow it towards the top of the photo. The Newton and Arkwright Building is the enormous white building on the right as you walk up the slight slope towards the Theatre Royal. It is a very distinctive Third Reich type of 1930s architecture.

If you go there, take some binoculars if you have any. Look at the right side of the building. The nest is on a wide lip that runs the whole length of the building, just below a row of largish windows. This street map might help. Look for the orange arrow:

If you wish, you can watch them on a live webcam. The birds are present pretty much all they year round. Theoretically, they should not be here in the winter, but somehow they seem quite frequently drawn back, a little bit like teenagers returning to the Bank of Dad. At the moment, they should be feeding their young. In the past, there have been catastrophes with this, as is always the case with Mother Nature, but if all goes well, it can be a wonderfully blood spattered spectacle.

But back to Gyrfalcons.
Here are a pair of them, filmed by “thegowser1” at 78 degrees north between Svalbard and Greenland:

More typical for a twitcher in north west Europe would be these two films of a bird which had strayed to Champtocé-sur-Loire, in Maine-et-Loire, France. The two films come from Alain Fossé, and show a raptor doing what they spend most of their time doing…absolutely nothing!. High calorie meals of meat mean you only need move around infrequently (or so I tell my wife).

These are much more typical of a March day near Mansfield than an icebreaker near the North Pole!

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Filed under History, Nottingham, Science, Twitching, Wildlife and Nature

Tagged as “Notes on the Birds of Nottinghamshire”, Bank of Dad, City of Nottingham, Clipstone Road, Frankenstein, Gyrfalcon, in Rainworth, Joseph Whitaker, Mansfield Museum, Mr Shelton, Newton and Arkwright Building, on South Sherwood Street, Park Hall, Peregrine Falcons, Red House Farm, Victorian

by jfwknifton | April 22, 2015 · 7:50 am

School Sports Day, 2.30 pm, Wednesday, April 5th 1930

On Wednesday, April 22nd 2015 at 1.00pm, yet another High School Sports Day will begin. A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to purchase, in an online auction, the aging programme which was sold (not given away, as they are now) to spectators who turned up at the School Ground in Mapperley at 2.30 pm on Wednesday, April 5th 1930. The programme was priced at 3d, which is around 2p in decimal money. We have already seen the long walk along Mansfield Road to the sports ground. Look for the orange arrow. The High School is in the bottom left corner of the map, near the meeting point of Mount Hooton Road and Forest Road East. The school is the incomplete beige rectangle which is outlined in black:

I found it extremely difficult to scan this aging document. I have therefore divided it into a long series of smaller scans where, hopefully, all of the print will be large enough to be legible. An unknown parent has gone through each event and added the order of the finishers, and, in some cases, the performance they achieved. I taught at the High School for almost forty years, and how familiar are some of the boys’ names! I suspect that they may have been the grandfathers, or even great grandfathers of some of my own erstwhile pupils.
Here is the top of the front cover. The school badge is the same as nowadays, and so is the Latin motto. What I do not understand, though, is the presence of two swastikas. And they are proper swastikas, right-facing ones and not Hindu good luck symbols or badges taken from the horse bridles of the Lakota Sioux. And I don’t know why they are there. Perhaps the event had a secret sponsor:

This is the bottom of the front cover. Three pence from so many different spectators must have been a nice little earner:

Here is the second page, with the names of the two track judges. Nowadays there are twelve of them. but in 1930 things were a lot more sedate. The Brewills were a family with at least two famous athletes (G.F. and G.W.) who, in the latter years of the Victorian era, had both achieved a number of triumphs at national level in both sprinting and hurdling . A.S.Brewill had been the commander of the 7th Sherwood Foresters throughout most of the Great War. Almost thirty years previously, on the afternoon of Saturday, July 25th 1903, our current track judge, E.Brewill, had participated in the School Sports held at the same venue. Along with G.F.Brewill, he had been a member of “The Past” (Old Boys) tug of war team against “The Present” (Masters and Boys). The latter were a team of three boys, namely R.Marrs, W.Oldershaw and H.A.Watson, and three masters, Messrs Hughes, Jones and Yates. The Old Boys soon pulled the School over the line, but were found to have included a seventh member of the team, J.Johnstone. (Cheats!!!) The result was overturned, and the School soon won a fair contest by 3-0. (Hurrah!)
Tinsley Lindley was a very famous figure in High School history and in the history of Nottingham itself. He will perhaps warrant his own blog post one day:

I have been unable to find any background information about J.H.Scothern, although there was a “Scothern” who played amateur football internationals for England before the Great War. As a frequent team mate of the High School’s Olympic Gold Medal winner, Frederick Chapman, both for Oxford City and for England, he would certainly have known him, and probably Tinsley Lindley as well. This bottom half of the page, with its list of House Colours, attests the presence of boys from both the Main School (the four on the left) and the Preparatory School (the four on the right):

Here are the first two events, with winners and times, the latter expressed as fractions (much more of a challenge than those silly decimals):

H.W.Bellamy was a misprint. It should be H.W.Ballamy. Even here, more than ten years later, the Great War’s foul tentacles stretch out. Harold Ballamy came from a poor family. His father was a commercial traveller. Harold won many school prizes such as Silver Medals for Mathematics and Science, and Dr Gow’s Prize for Geometry. He was Captain of Football, Secretary of First Team Cricket, the School Librarian, the Colour Sergeant in the Officer Training Corps and the Captain of the School.
At Cambridge University, he won the Bishop Open Exhibition for Natural Science. He obtained a First Class Degree in Mathematics. He then changed to Natural Sciences, where he was placed first in the whole University of Cambridge. What more ideal choice, what better qualified man, to put in charge of a pile of mud near the village of Passchendaele ? And then he was killed:

And now, Events 3, 4 and 5. I have taught a Wildgust and a Weinberg:

And I have taught a Sharman and a Lawrence. I wonder who the latter was related to. And why don’t they have “Throwing the Cricket Ball” any more? Health and Safety, I wouldn’t wonder:

Notice that the High Jump was an Open Event with no age restrictions. I think the pencil mark means that the winners both achieved equal heights:

And here are the next events, except that another foul tentacle reaches out and grabs another victim. Captain Frederick Cuthbert Tonkin lived at 13 George Road, West Bridgford. He represented the High School at football, cricket and athletics. He interrupted his Dentistry studies at Guy’s Hospital to enlist and was killed on November 4th 1918, only seven days before the end of the war. He was just 24 years old:

There were two long jumps, sensibly based on height, rather than age:

Why don’t they bring back the Sack Race? H.C.Wesson, by the way, had been Captain of the School in 1928:

I just don’t know how the Tutor Set relay races worked:

Another Open Event, with no age restrictions:

An obstacle race. Much more fun than boring old athletics!

And another Sack Race. You can’t have enough of them, I say. Have you noticed how the parent has gradually began to lose interest. Fewer pencil marks. Fewer performance times.

Two more tug of wars. Or should that be tugs of war? Or just tugs? Sounds like fun for everybody, though. W.H.B.Cotton was a hero, a genuine hero, as well as a record holding athlete. Spending his holidays in Glamorgan in Wales in 1928, he had managed to rescue two sailors from a ship which was sinking, just offshore from Porthcawl:

The back of the programme is a grid where all the keen and interested parents can keep the inter-house score, event by thrilling event:

And that’s it! The Annual Athletic Sports were over for another year. And, indeed, the days of holding them at Mapperley were over for ever. The Valley Road Playing Fields had been purchased for £5.600 in 1929. The ground had been levelled, the marsh had been drained and they were ready for athletic action by Thursday, April 30th and Saturday, May 2nd 1931. But that, as they say, is another story.

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Filed under History, Humour, Nottingham, The High School

Tagged as Cambridge University, Dr.Gow, Frederick Chapman, Glamorgan, Gold Medal, Guy’s Hospital, Harold Ballamy, Health and Safety, Lakota, Lawrence, Mapperley, Officer Training Corps, Old Boys, Passchendaele, Porthcawl, Sioux, Sports Day, Tinsley Lindley, Valley Road, West Bridgford

Category Archives: Nottingham

The Incredible Story of Frank Mahin, Volume II, 1908-1920

The Incredible Story of Frank Mahin, Volume I, 1887-1909

Victorian Cormorants and Victorian Shags

The Corncrake: the sound of Victorian England

The Officer Training Corps 1915 Part Three

The Officer Training Corps 1915 Part Two

The Birdwatchers of Victorian Nottinghamshire

The Officer Training Corps 1915 Part One

Jer Falcon. one shot at Park Hall by Mr Shelton. Now in my collection.

School Sports Day, 2.30 pm, Wednesday, April 5th 1930

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