Roshan Lal Bahita
c.1928
Engineering
Born in Punjab, India, in 1905, Roshan Lal Bahita was from a middle-class Indian family. His father, also called Roshan, was a native of Punjab and achieved a BSc at Punjab University in the same year as Roshan was born. He later worked for the Government College, Lahore, as a demonstrator in Zoology, becoming the first person at Punjab University to achieve the MSc in Zoology. Roshan was the eldest son, and had three sisters and one younger brother. In 1927, the family moved to Hoshiarpur, Pubjab, when their father was made Principal of the Government College. Both Roshan and his younger brother Shri were sent abroad to study at engineering. For Roshan, this meant being sent to the University of Manchester, where he was a student of St Anselm Hall in the late 1920s. Unfortunately little of his hall file has survived and so nothing is known of his life in hall or at University. After graduating Roshan returned to India where in later life he was Principal of the Punjab Textile Institute.
Leslie David Bale
1927- November 1929
Leslie Bale was born in July 1908 in Tondu, a small mining village close to Bridgend in Glamorganshire, Wales. He was the eldest child of Adrian Bale and Clara Jones, who had married that year. Adrian was a train driver for Great Western Railway, who were responsible for the various railway lines in the area. Leslie remained an only child until he was 10, when his younger brother Eric was born. The families’ parish priest provided an insight into family in Leslie’s hall reference, describing him as ‘[coming] from a very respectable home; the parents are faithful communicants…’
As a young boy Leslie attended Tondu Council school from 1914-1921. From 1921-1927 he was a student at Bridgend County School, where he achieved his school certificate in 1926. John Rankin, headmaster of the school from 1898 to 1928, wrote in his reference to the hall ‘[Leslie] is a boy of exceptionally fine type and has intellectual powers of a very high order.’ Keen on economics, he was also a prefect and a member of the School Rugby XV.
On the basis of his Higher Certificate Examinations, Leslie was awarded a Glamorgan County Scholarship. His first known contact with St Anselm dates from September 1927, when he wrote to the Warden explaining that he was considering studying at Victoria University in the next session and would like the particulars of the hall.
Leslie entered St Anselm Hall in October 1927 and remained there until he was sent down in November 1929. In a somewhat tactful letter sent to his father, the Warden claimed that Leslie had been sent down for ‘taking one of the parlour maids out in the evenings… as he frankly admitted he knew, it is very strictly forbidden to students to have any dealings with the domestic staff, except those of an absolutely official nature…’
It is probable, however, that Leslie was in fact the student recorded in the hall history book who was found in his room with the Warden’s personal maid at 6AM one morning. The student [Leslie] was sent down, the maid was kept on and the resulting wrath of the JCR was managed by the Warden’s right hand man who proposed that ‘members of the Junior Common Room request completed licence with the domestic staff’, thus turning the whole affair into a bit of fun on the JCR’s part.
A further incident followed in December 1929, at the end of the Michaelmas term. While the exact details are unclear, a letter written by the Warden to the JCR president of the time (James Colling) does give some insight into the night. It is implied that some kind of end of term ‘festivities’ occurred, and that Bale and a fellow student named Downham had refused to leave these when asked. This resulted in a half-hour argument with Colling. Whilst Colling was given a dressing down by the Warden, Bale was forbidden to come onto hall premises except at the express invitation of the Warden or Sub-Warden. He was warned that any further disobedience to the Warden would result in his being reported to the University Court of Discipline.
It is unclear whether Bale completed his University education. The next surviving record of him is his marriage to Alice Jones in Laleston in 1938. In 1939, they were living with Alice’s widowded mother in Port Talbot and Leslie was working as a Brewers Representative. The details of Leslie’s later life remain unclear, however it is known that he lived only a short life. He died in Bridport, Dorset, in April 1951, when he was 42 years old.
Andrew Beattie
1936-37
B.Sc Maths
Andrew Beattie was born in 1919 in the village of Frizington, Cumberland. He was the eldest of the three sons of Andrew Beattie, a police constable, and his wife Jane Bosher. By 1921, the family had moved to the town of Dalton-in-Furness and a later move later placed them in Bury. Lancashire. As a young man, Andrew initially attended Ulverston Grammar School, between 1930 and 1935, before attending Bury Grammar School between 1935 and 1937. Andrew’s headmaster at Bury Grammar wrote to the Warden of him ‘I can recommend him to you without any hesitation… he will be a useful member in the common life of the hall and his moral character Is thoroughly good.’
Andrew nearly didn’t enter hall as he failed to secure a hall scholarship. However a change of circumstances in September 1937, the details of which are unspecified, allowed Andrew to secure his place in hall. Andrew was in hall for the 1937-38 but, again for reasons unspecified, was unable to return for the 1938-39 session.
During the Second World War, Andrew served with the Royal Engineers. In 1944, he married Jean Crabbe, a Scottish girl, and after the war they settled in Huntley, Aberdeenshire, where Andrew worked in a local secondary school. In 1949 he wrote to Tommy Lawrenson, a senior member of the hall staff, ‘Life in Scotland is very pleasant… We are not affected with the “Manchester dirt & rain”…’ By 1954, the family had moved to Cardenden, Fifeshire, where Andrew taught Maths and Science at a local school. There is little evidence regarding Andrew’s life post 1955. He died in Invernessshire in 2004, at the age of 85.
Jack Beetham
1929-1932
B.Sc Maths
JCR Treasurer 1930-31 &1931-32
Jack Beetham was born in April 1911 and was the second child of William Newton Beetham and Edith Annie Beetham. He had one older sibling, William, and two younger siblings, Alice and Richard. The family lived in Burnley, Lancashire, where William senior worked as the assistant superintendent for the local Post Office. Although he volunteered for service in the Signal Service during the First World War, William was listed as a Class W Army Reserve, meaning that as a fit, married man, over the age of 35, he was considered to be performing important war work in his day job and as such was not called to fight.
A young Jack attended Coal Clough school (1915-17), Spring Bank School (1917-19) and Todmorden Road School (1919-22.) In 1922, at the age of 11, Jack was awarded a place at Burnley Grammar School. Jack did well at school. His specialist subject was Maths, with his headteacher describing him in a reference written to the hall as ‘certainly the best mathematician we have turned out for 3 or 4 years.’ Jack was also a keen sportsman, eventually achieving school colours in Football and Cricket, where he played for the First XI, being vice-captain for both teams at different times. In Tennis, a sport for which he was later well-known in the Burnley area, he was captain in 1928 and 1929. In summing up, William Howarth, Director of Education for Burnley, wrote of Jack ‘I have no doubt he would be an acquisition to the Hall, and would highly value its privileges’
Jack had originally intended to study at Cambridge but a lack of scholarships forced his hand and he instead studied at the University of Manchester. On the advice of Edward Graham, a close friend of Jack’s and a former resident of St. Anselm Hall, Jack applied to be a student in hall. In support of his friend’s application, Graham wrote specially to the Warden, stating that ‘He is very sound in his ‘academics’ [and] very useful in the sport. In character he is extremely sound… I know him very well & am quite confident that you will like him- although his speech is decidedly north country…’
Granted a Stocks Massey Scholarship by the local authority, Jack came up to St Anselm Hall in 1929. Little evidence of Jack’s time in hall has survived, however he was Junior Treasurer in the 1930-31 and 1931-32 sessions. Jack obtained his B.Sc. in Maths in 1932, after which he returned home. He initially worked for a local builder, before being appointed to the engineering staff of the Borough Surveyor in Burnley in 1935. In August 1938, at the Manchester Road Methodist Church, Burnley, Jack married Nora Lancaster, a 23-year-old who lived in Burnley with her widowed mother. They had two sons together.
In 1941, Jack, by now engineering assistant for the Burney Borough Surveyor Department, achieved first place in the order of merit for associate membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Jack was briefly appointed chief engineering assistant to the County Borough of Wigan but by 1948 he was back in Burnley where he was made chief engineering assistant for the Borough. In 1955, Jack was promoted to Deputy Engineer for Blackburn with a salary of £1400. Jack lived in Blackburn until his death in October 1975. He was outlived by Nora who died in Blackburn in 1981.
Harry Leslie Beswick
1936-37
Teaching Diploma
Harry Beswick was the younger child of Arthur and Fanny Beswick (nee Mason), and had one older sister, Margery, who was born three years before him. Although they had been living in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, when Margery was born, both Arthur and Fanny were natives of Warrington, Lancashire, and had returned to the town by the time Harry was born in June 1915. Arthur was a engineer who in the early 1920s worked for Pearson & Knowles Coal & Iron Co. Ltd, a mining and engineering company which had been founded in Warrington in the 1870s.
As a child Harry initially attended Beaumont boys Council School, where he was a pupil from 1920-26. Harry then attended the Warrington Boys Secondary School, a local fee paying school established in 1903 in Palmyra Square, central Warrington. At school, Harry was a prefect and also a keen sportsman. Described as ‘exceedingly good’ at games, Harry was captain of the school Football XI for two seasons as well as captain of the cricket XI. In his reference Harry’s headteacher recommended him unreservedly to the hall as ‘one who will contribute not a little to the social & intellectual life of a Hall of Residence’
At home, Harry’s family were Methodist and attended Padgate Methodist church under the ministry of the Rev. John Henry Saunders who also wrote to the hall to support Harry’s application, echoing the words of Harrys’ headteacher that ‘His social qualities are above the average & I feel confidant he will settle down happily in the Common life of the Hall & will contribute… to its general well-being’
Harry had studied for a BA in Manchester, most likely from 1933-36, however he was not a resident in hall until the 1936-37 session. Harry came into Hall as a postgraduate student studying for the Teaching Diploma. Although little is known of Harry’s life in hall, he did take part in the 1937 hall play, ‘The Terror’, where he played criminal sidekick Joe Conner. He also took part in hall sports, at one point obtaining a knee injury during a football game.
After achieving his Teaching Diploma, Harry worked in an elementary (primary) school, most likely in the Warrington area. During the Second World War, Harry served although in what section remains unclear. He came through the war unscathed, excepting a cartridge operation on the knee he had originally injured at Slems. In 1942, at Beswey Road Methodist Church, Warrington, Harry married Joyce Stephenson, a local farmers daughter. They had one daughter, born shortly after the war.
Between 1950 and 1958 Harry was headmaster of the Church of England school at Galgate, a village in Lancaster, Lancashire. When Slems caught up with him in 1954 (a long process which involved going through the Girls Secondary School at Palmya Square- in Harry's words ‘thank goodness I’m so far away that I’ll never have to live it down’), he wrote to ‘Dicky’ Richardson, a stalwart of hall life in the 1930s, of his life at Galgate ‘I’ve rusticated here in the most beautiful countryside… complete with pigs, poultry and garden, now my enthusiasms.’ In 1958, Harry and Joyce returned to Warrington where he came full circle, becoming headmaster of his own former school Beaumont Boys Council School, now Beaumont Junior School. Harry was headmaster of Beaumont Junior School from 1958 until he retired in 1976.
In later life, Harry lived in Arnside, a village on the Cumbria-Lancashire boarder. He died in April 1996, at the age of 80 and was outlived by Joyce.
Walter Henry Bleby
1936-39
B.A. French
Born in Tokyo, Japan, in September 1918, Walter Bleby was from a religious family. His father, Henry, an ordained priest, was a missionary in Japan from 1890 to 1907 and then from 1917 to 1921, when he was the Church Missionary Society representative in Tokyo. Henry had one older daughter, from his first marriage, and married Walter’s mother, Emmeline, in 1912, by whom he had two sons.
The family returned to England in the early 1920s, when Henry was made rector of East-Lydford-with Wheathill, Somerset. He was later vicar of of St. Augustine’s, Derby. Whilst the family were in Derby, Walter attended Derby School, the local grammar school. As a student there he took a keen interest in games, with colours in Cricket and Hockey. He was also a praepostor (prefect) and sergeant-major in the O.T.C (Officer Training Corps.) Walter’s headmaster wrote of him in the reference written for hall ‘… he may be a little conceited and lacking in tact, but I do not doubt as to his essential soundness. He is a boy of marked personality, who should become a good School Master.’
Walter was a resident of hall between 1936 and 1939, whilst studying for a B.A. in French. He had likely intended to stay in hall for a further year whilst he took his Teaching Diploma, however on the outbreak of World War II he found himself called up to fulfil his obligations in the R.A.F.
After the war, Walter returned to the University (although not to St. Anselm) and achieved his Teaching Diploma. Walter had wanted, since he was at school, to be a teacher of the deaf and after receiving his Teaching Diploma he worked at the Royal School for the Deaf in Derby. In 1953, Walter was appointed headmaster of Stoneleigh Special School, a school for the deaf in Leicester. In speaking about his job with a local paper in 1968, Walter spoke of how the staff at the school were ‘not only teachers but also salvage experts.’ He was keen to ensure his pupils went on to live full lives, stating that they should grow up ‘as sturdy and independently as possible… They need to be tough mentally… Tremendous obstacles must be faced.’ A core part of his approach to headmastership was his belief that ‘You must assess their needs with your head, and apply the remedies with your heart.’
In the late 1950s, Walter was married to Particia Cudd, with whom he had two sons. Walter retired from teaching in 1981. He died in 2001.
Stanley Graham Brade Birks
1912-1913
BA Arts
Born in Burnage, Lancashire, in 1888, Stanley (Graham) Birks was the eldest child of Brooklyn Birks, a grey cloth merchant, and his wife Annie. One younger sister, Marianne, was born in 1896. Graham grew up with his parents and sister in Burnage, attending Hulme grammar school and later the University of Manchester. He was a resident of St Anselm Hall 1912-1913, prior to being awarded a Masters of Science degree from the University of Manchester, along with his future wife Hilda Brade.
Ordained as a deacon in 1914, Birks was appointed to Holy Trinity, Darwen and later to a lectureship at the South East Agricultural College (Wye College), Kent, where he served until 1948. In addition to his lectureship, he was made vicar of Godmersham, Kent, in 1930 and later given the additional appointments of Crundale and Rural Dean of Westbridge Cantebury.
On his marriage in 1917, Graham joined his name with that of his wife to become Brade Birks and the pair together published twenty-three papers on myriapoda, with a further twelve papers published by Graham alone. This was in addition to Graham’s variety of other interests, which included history and archaeology. In 1972, at the age of 84, he presided over the Second International Congress of Myriapodology at the University of Manchester, welcoming members in three languages. Graham died in 1982, just a few months before Hilda.
You can find out more about Graham’s story here.
Leslie Rowland Brasher
c.1911
Matriculation
Born in Cheltenham in 1894, Leslie Rowland Brasher was the eldest son of William Brasher and Jessie Folley and had two younger siblings, a sister and brother. His father- who had been educated at Nottingham University College- ran a Stationer’s and booksellers in Cheltenham High Street. In 1901, Leslie was living with his parents, his siblings and his spinster aunt, Alice Folley, a schoolmistress, at Langton Grove Road in Charlton Kings, a village just outside of Cheltenham. By 1911, Leslie now aged 16, was a matriculation student residing at St. Anselm’s Hostel, Rusholme. It is, however, unclear whether Leslie went on to take a degree. Leslie served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the in the Royal Berkshire (Princes Charlotte of Wales) Regiment and at the end of the war, in 1919, married Olive Spencer. The couple settled in Cheltenham & had two children. Leslie worked as an Insurance Broker. He died in Kent in 1956.
Harold Barnes Brayford
Gartness Hostel 1919-1921
St Anselm Hall 1921-1922
B.A. History
From Tunstall in Staffordshire, Harry Barnes Brayford was the son of Edwin and Sarah Ann Brayford. Edwin worked as a potter’s manager and Harry (who was born in 1900) was the second of four siblings, including his older sister Kate who had learning difficulties from a young age. As a young boy, Harry attended Christ Church, Tunstall, where he eventually became a Sunday School teacher.. During the First World War Harry served with the Sherwood Foresters.
After the War, Harry joined the Ordination Test School (Knutsford) in Le Touquest France, remaining with it after its transfer to Knutsford, Cheshire. During his subsequent studies at the University of Manchester, Harry was initially a student at Gartness Hostel and was one of the students who transferred to St. Anselm’s during the 1921 merger.
Harry graduated with honours in history in 1922 and spent a further two years studying at Rippon Theological College in Cuddesdon, Oxford. He was ordained as a deacon in 1924 and appointed to St Mark’s in Woodcote, Purley, Surrey. Ordained as a priest at the Southwark Trinity Ordination of 1925, Harry was appointed curate of Eltham, Kent, in 1926 and in 1927 married Ethel King. The marriage service was conducted by his fellow Slemsman Thomas Gribbin.
Harry’s next appoint saw him move to Yorkshire where he was made curate of Hebden Bridge, Kent, with a living of St. John’s, Bradshaw, to which he was officially appointed vicar in 1934. In 1937, Harry again collaborated with Thomas Gribbin, preaching at the St Chad’s Ascension Day service.
Harry’s next appointment was to Spetisbury in Dorset in 1943, and from there he was appointed to nearby Frampton in 1959. Harry died in Hereford in May 1972.
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George William Brindley
1923-1927
B.Sc. Physics (1st class honours.) Teaching Diploma.
Born in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1905, George William Brindley was a descendant the 18th century canal pioneer James Brindley, a connection of which he was always proud. A childhood in the potteries likely inspired George’s own life’s work in clay mineralogy, a subject in which he became, in later years, a world leading expert.
George’s father, John William Brindley, was an elementary (primary) school teacher working at a local boys school. With his wife, Florence Salt, John had three sons, of whom George was the eldest. Spending his childhood in Hanley, George attended Newcastle High School, a local fee paying school, between 1917 and 1923.
In 1923, George was awarded a Major Scholarship by the City of Stoke-on-Trent. Worth £40 per annum, it funded his undergraduate studies at the University of Manchester. George, probably a resident of St Anselm Hall throughout his undergraduate degree, did well at University. In 1924 he was awarded the Higginbottom Exhibition for Physics and in 1925 he was jointly awarded the Moseley Memorial Prize. In 1926 George achieved first class honours in physics and in 1927 he completed his teaching diploma, after which he was awarded an advanced studentship in education and a research scholarship in education.
In this period George was working with Professor Reginald William James, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography, on x-ray diffraction, and in 1928 a joint paper, George’s first, was published. In the same year, George completed his M.Sc. and was subsequently awarded a Darbishire Fellowship, providing him with funded study for the next year.
In the late 1920s, George was awarded the post of Assistant Lecturer in the Physics Department at the University of Leeds, with a subsequent promotion to reader (a professor without a chair) in Physics. George’s particular focuses at that time were the deformation of metals, x-ray physics and lattice vibration. An obituary written shortly after George’s death noted that ‘His research was always carried out with meticulous attention to detail… [His papers] logical argument and lucidity serve as a model for others…’ By the time he was awarded his PhD from Leeds University in 1933, George had published 27 research papers.
In his personal life, meanwhile, George had married Caroline Fenton in May 1931. They had two children together, a son and daughter.
The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted George’s work, however, and he turned instead to geological subjects and mineralogy. What was intended to be a short project of a few weeks became his life’s work. An early prominent role held by George was that of the first chairman of the clay minerals group, the first special interest group of the Mineralogical Society of the UK & Ireland.
In July 1953 George and his family left England for America, where he had taken the post of Research Professor of Mineral Sciences at Pennsylvania State University. In 1955, George was appointed Professor of Solid State Technology and Head of the Department of Ceramic Technology at Penn. From 1962, he was a professor of mineral sciences. George had a keen interest in people from a wide range of backgrounds, which his research group at the University being described as ’almost always a mini-United Nations’, whilst his teaching was considered to have ‘unequalled excellence and long-lasting effectiveness’
By the end of his life, George was considered a world leading expert in the subject of clay mineralogy. From 1969-70 he was president of the Clay Minerals Society and in 1970 he was given the Roebling Medal, the highest award given by the Mineralogical Society of America.
Despite becoming an Emeritus (retired) professor in 1973, George continued to research, to work with learned societies and to supervise small groups of graduate students until a few weeks before his death in 1983. In paying tribute to him, the Clays and Clay minerals journal wrote ‘He was the archetypical scientist who set high standards for truth… His keen mind and dedication to quality scientific reporting will be sorely missed.’
Harold Young Burnett
St Anselm Hall 1922-1923
Harold Young Burnett was born in Bristol in June 1892 and was the youngest of the two surviving children of Charles Burnett, a draper, and his wife Bessie Young. As a young man, Harold followed his father into the drapery trade and the 1911 census records him as a drapery salesman for the Midland Drapery. This was a department store in Derby and, like many department store staff, he lived in residential accommodation provided by the store.
During the First World War, Harold served as a private in the 1st/3rd South Midlands Field Ambulance and at the end of the war he began his ordination training at Knutsford. Harold began his University education at Manchester in 1919, however he does not appear as a resident of Slems or Gartness in 1921 with later hall records suggesting he was probably a member of the 1922-1923 session. Harold later spoke of his war experiences ‘He had, in common with others lost good friends in the last two wars, and he had particularly in mind two young men with whom he used to get about in Bristol. And ex-Service men knew how they felt about pals. He thought of those lives which might have been spent usefully in the service of God and their fellow-men’
After leaving the University of Manchester, Harold was a student at the London College of Divinity from 1922 until his ordination as deacon in 1924, when he was made curate of St. Clements, Broughton, in Salford. On finishing at the London College of Divinity, Harold married Gladys Conibear, with whom he had two sons.
In 1927 Harold was given a new curacy, this time of St. Margarets in Burnage, Manchester and between 1931 and 1934 he was vicar of Audley, Staffordshire.
For a period of twelve years, from 1934 to 1946, Harold was vicar of Clitheroe, Staffordshire and for ten of those years was also chaplain to the Clitheroe branch of the British Legion. On leaving Clitheroe, Harold was given a cheque for £50 and Gladys an electric kettle. In his farewell speech, Harold spoke about how much the church and school meant to him and how many he was going to miss many things, especially the children.
Between 1946 and 1953, Harold was vicar of Heapey, near Chorley, Lancashire and he was then made Vicar of Broomfield-with-Faxfleet in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a position he held from 1953 to 1960 when he took up his final appointment as rector of Norton-in-Hales, near Market Drayton, Shropshire.
Thomas William Byrne
1924-1927
B.A. Honours
Born in Blackburn in 1906, Thomas ‘Tom’ William Byrne was the youngest of the four children of Thomas Byrne, a police sergeant, and his wife Kate. Few details are known of Tom’s childhood, but as a boy he attended Blackburn Grammar School, alongside fellow Slemsman Leslie Hargreaves, achieving success in the Northern Matriculation Exam in 1924.
Tom studied for a BA at the University of Manchester and was a resident of St Anselm Hall throughout his studies, initially under the wardenship of Rev. Dewar and, in his final year, under the wardenship of Rev. Armytage. Tom took an active part in hall life, including being one-time editor of the hall Log book, librarian (he once described the library as the place where ‘second and third year men try to atone for not having done that which they ought to have done’) and taking the role Lieutenant Buckmaster in the 1926 hall play, J.B. Fagan’s The Wheel, which he is reported to have played ‘with an individuality which was very refreshing.’
In a series of letters written to the hall in the 1950s, Tom donated 10s 6d towards the hall war memorial and provided advice on where to locate other old members (he was particularly pleased to receive a Christmas card in 1952 from Arthur Patrick ‘my former study-mate whom I had not heard from in twenty-two years.’) Crucially, Toms’ letters also provide some of the earliest known evidence of the long-standing relationship between St. Anselm and Langdale, a nearby girl’s hall. In providing the 1954 Shrove Tuesday entertainment for his parish, Tom had enlisted the help of the students at Kings College, Newcastle, whom he found ‘… so natural and happy together that they seemed to reproduce the St. anselm [sic]- Langdale entente of nearly thirty years ago. Only I thought that they seemed more sensible than most of us were then!’
Tom achieved his B.A. in 1927 and completed his theological training at Wells theological college before being made deacon in 1930 and priest in 1931. Tom was curate at Jesmond Parish Church, Newcastle, from 1930 until 1933, during which time he also wrote his MA thesis ‘Judicial Investigations in Northamptonshire under the Dictum de Kenilworth.’
In 1933, Tom was made priest-in-charge of St. Oswalds’ in the parish of Walker Gate, Liverpool. He remained there until 1944 when he was appointed to the rural parish of Humshaugh, Northumberland. Thomas was the rector of Humshaugh from 1944 until the mid-1970s. In the late 1950s he was joined in the parish by a fellow Slemsman, in fact the first Slemsman, the Rev. Spencer Wade, who had decided to retire there. In his autobiography, Rev. Wade recalled that ‘Very soon we made good friends… particularly with the bachelor vicar who, I discovered… was wearing my University Masters hood! He was a Manchester graduate and, oddly enough, had been resident of St. Anselm’s Hall… He was a charming fellow and cordially welcomed us to his parish… His churchmanship suited [us.] ‘
In 1969 Tom was one of four honorary canons appointed by the Bishop as Canons of St. Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle. Tom left Humshaugh at some point between 1973 and 1976. He died in Blackburn in 1982, at the age of 76.