BCN remembers IMCC Barry Barnes who passed away on Tuesday, January 14th 2025 aged 87.
Barry Peter Barnes was born in Brighton on August 1st 1937 and his mother’s maiden name was Simpole. (Barry was a cousin of Julian Ivan Peter Simpole, who was a Brighton school teacher and who taught Edward Gerard Winter to play chess).
Barry most recently lived in Halling, Rochester, Kent with his wife Jean.
From The Encyclopedia of Chess (Robert Hale, 1970 & 1976) by Anne Sunnucks :
“International Master of FIDE for Chess Compositions (1967) and International Judge of FIDE for Chess Compositions (1967).
Born on 1st August 1937, Barnes works in transport advertising. He has composed about 250 two-move problems. With Lipton and Rice, he has contributed to the advance of the modern two-mover. Problem Editor of Two-Move and Twin sections of The Problemist. Co-author with M.Lipton and JM Rice of The Two-Move Chess Problem : Tradition and Development (Faber and Faber 1966).
“A promising career as a county chess player came to an end when I was given Brian Harley’s classic book Mate in Two Moves in the belief that it would help my chess, but it had quite the opposite effect. My interest in competitive chess waned, and I was on the road to an an International Master title for problems!
Early influences in my problem career were the weekly chess problem solving competition in The Observer (my first problem published there was in 1955), a teenage friendship with J. M. Rice and M. Lipton (both now lnternational Masters), Herbert Grasemann’s book Problem Schach / with its near revolutionary post-war German problem ideas, and the expert British problemist, A. R. Gooderson who had I but known it only a few years earlier was the officiating master when my Hove Grammar School played Steyning Grammar at chess.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the genuinely original problems I was making in cooperation and in competition with Rice and Lipton were being published mostly abroad in such specialist problem magazines as Die Schwatbe (with its inspired two-move editor, Hermann Albrecht) where I gained the epithet the English prize-snatcher’! It was also written that the work of the avant-garde composers, Rice, Lipton and Barnes, was like a fresh two-move wind blowing from our island. It was sad but true at that time that the specialist magazine of the British Chess problem Society (founded 1918), The problemist, was unreceptive to change and our often bizarre ideas.
A milestone of sorts was reached when I won lst prize for problem I in 1958, a prize for the best new problem by a member of the British Commonwealth aged under 21. In 1966, I was invited by problemist Grandmaster Comins Mansfield, who was President of the FIDE Problem Commission, to act as Secretary at the Barcelona meeting. With Mr. Mansfield’s retirement, I became the British Member to the Commission, and at the Wiesbaden meeting, 1974, I was elected 2nd Vice-President. (1st Vice-President from 1982)
The FIDE Problem Commission meets annually to discuss matters relating to all branches of problem chess, to organize the World Chess Composing Tournament (WCCT), the World Chess Solving Competition (WCSC), and to publish FIDE Album anthologies of the best problems. It was on the strength of my success in these FIDE Albums that the Commission granted me the titles in 1967 of ‘lnternational Master of the FIDE for Chess Composition’ and ‘lnternational Judge of the FIDE for Chess Composition’. Since 1974, I have been Chairman of the Titles Sub-Committee of the Commission.
Since 1965, I have been the two-move editor of The Problemist and have served almost without break on the BCPS Committee. I have contributed to The Encyclopaedia of Chess by Anne Sunnucks (Robert Hale, 1970), I am co-author, with J. M. Rice and M. Lipton, of The Two-Move Chess Problem: Tradition & Development‘ (Faber A Faber, 1966), and I am the sole author of Comins Mansfield MBE: Chess Problems of a Grandmaster: (British Chess Problem Society, 1976) and Pick of the Best Chess Problems (Elliot Right Way Books, 1976)
To date I have made just over 300 two-movers and some helpmates.”
From The Encyclopaedia of Chess (Batsford, 1977), Harry Golombek OBE, John Rice writes:
“British problem composer, output about 400, nearly all modern style two-movers. Two-move sub-editor of The Problemist. Secretary of the FIDE Problem Commission during C. Mansfield’s Presidency. Co-author of The Two-Move Chess Problem: Tradition and Development (1966).”
The Two Move Chess Problem : Tradition and Development
Author of Pick of the Best Chess Problems (1976)
Pick of the best Chess Problems
Comins Mansfield MBE : Chess Problems of a Grandmaster (1976).
Comins Mansfield MBE: Chess Problems of a Grandmaster, BP Barnes, 1976
International Judge (1967); international master (1967).
Source: The Problemist, May 1996. Photo taken March 1996 at the Mansfield Centenary Meeting at Paisley, when Barry Barnes delivered a lecture on Comins Mansfield. Left to right: Geoffrey Mansfield (son of Comins), Robert Gray and Barry Barnes, International Master of Chess Composition.
For several years in the 1930s, two blind players, Theodore Tylor and Rupert Cross, were amongst the competitors in the British Championship, restricted at that time to twelve players selected from the best in the country.
Tylor was a player of genuine master standard, competing with distinction against the best in the world, while Cross was a very strong county standard player. In addition, another blind player, Reginald Bonham, halfway between Tylor and Cross in age, was of similar strength to the latter, although he played most of his chess after the war. Tylor and Bonham were also formidable correspondence players, both winning the British Correspondence Championship on three occasions.
All three of these players had attended the same school, Worcester College for the Blind, where chess was promoted by their inspirational headmaster, GC Brown. This is his story.
George Clifford Brown was born on 29 May 1879, the son of a chemist and pharmacist from Brading on the Isle of Wight. His paternal grandfather, though, had been a master mariner from Yorkshire. In the 1901 census he, along with his brother John, was a pupil at Solent College in Lymington, just a short ferry ride from Yarmouth, on the other side of the Isle of Wight from Brading. By 1901 he was teaching at Shoreham Grammar School, on the Sussex coast, but he seems not to have stayed there long.
In 1902, George married Catherine Harvey Robertson Smith in Wealdstone, near Harrow, giving his profession as a schoolmaster and an address in Jersey. They would go on to have four children, Clifford (1906), Geoffrey (1909), Douglas (1911) and Joan (1913).
In 1905 something very strange seems to have happened, judging from these news items.
Western Gazette 21 April 1905Evening Standard & St James’s Gazette 05 July 1905
George’s sisters, Lilian and Muriel, ran a private school in Wealdstone called Hillside between 1900 and 1915: George might have been teaching there at some point, and might possibly, I suppose, have met Catherine there.
It seems he wasn’t suited to the world of journalism and publishing, and returned to teaching, by 1907 becoming one of the principals of Tollington Park College, a private school near Finsbury Park, in North London which had been founded by William Brown (as far as I know no relation) in 1879.
At the same time he was studying for an external degree at London University, graduating in 1910 with a second class degree in Modern European History.
University of London Student Records (ancestry.co.uk)
Here he is, and there, on his left, is Alfred Dudley Barlow, whom he would later meet over the chessboard on at least two occasions.
He was still at Tollington Park in the 1911 census, but left in 1912, in part due to young Douglas being unwell, and, in January 1913, started a new job as Headmaster of Worcester College for the Blind. A public school for boys with visual impairments, it was struggling financially at the time, and there were only five pupils there when he arrived. One of them was Theodore Tylor, who was already playing chess, and, as Brown was himself a chess enthusiast (he ran a club at his previous school) the two must have bonded.
Although he had only attended a small private school himself, Brown was a supporter of the Victorian and Edwardian Public School ethos, where excelling at games was considered almost as important as academic success. He was very keen to promote games at which the blind could compete on level terms with their sighted contemporaries, and settled on rowing and chess, which are both practised while seated. He also encouraged swimming and adaptive forms of football and cricket, and, Chris McCausland will be delighted to hear, would later introduce dancing lessons.
He soon started a chess club, encouraging all the boys to learn chess, and, by 1916, they were good enough to win the Worcestershire Public Schools Chess Championship for the first time, an event they would win on almost every occasion for more than twenty years.
The First Seventy Years: Worcester College for the Blind, 1866-1936 by Mary G Thomas
Every year a star player was invited to give a simultaneous display against the students, who were joined by players from other schools and clubs in the area.
Visiting simul givers included Alekhine, Maroczy, Réti, Kostich, Sultan Khan, Sir George Thomas, Mieses, and, in 1919, none other than Capablanca, who even lost a game to one of his sightless opponents.
Evesham Standard & West Midland Observer 01 November 1919
Here’s a photograph of the display in progress.
Chess Pie 2 (1927) via Neil Blackburn
The winner, Edward Ingram Reed (1899-1951), from Monmouthshire, who later became a solicitor, continued playing county chess, both over the board and by correspondence, until the outbreak of World War 2. He came from a working class background – his father was a platelayer on the Great Western Railway – so must have been on some sort of scholarship. What a great day this must have been for him.
He’s seated on the right in this family photograph from about 1912.
We can also identify the college chess captain Vernon Charles Grimshaw (1901-1958), a headmaster’s son from London. By 1921 he was living in Brook Green, Hammersmith, just the other side of the park from where Amos Burn would move a few years later, and playing for West London Chess Club in matches against Richmond. He later became the Assistant General Secretary of the National Federation of the Blind.
Sadly, Reed’s game hasn’t survived, but this one has. Capa’s Stourport opponent might be considered rather unlucky to lose, having had the better of things most of the game. Click on any move in any game in this article for a pop-up window.
Brown later started to be involved with chess outside the college, taking up county chess and being elected Secretary of the Worcestershire County Chess Association.
In 1924 he took part in his first tournament, entering the 1st Class B section at Weston-Super-Mare.
The results were as follows:
(1) Percival John Lawrence (Reading) 7½/9;
(2) F A Richardson (London) 7;
(3-4) Mrs. Agnes Bradley Stevenson (London), Rev. Ernest Walter Poynton (Bath) 5½;
(5) Hiram James Horace Cope (Ilfracombe) 5;
(6) George Clifford Brown (Worcester) 4;
(7) Samuel Waterman Viveash (Bristol) 3½;
(8) Ernest Fowler Fardon (Birmingham) 3;
(9) Edward Buddel Puckridge (Kent) 2½;
(10) Francis Frederick Finch (Bristol) 1½.
The clergyman from Bath beat him with some smooth positional chess.
In 1926 Alekhine visited Worcester College for a simultaneous display. George Clifford Brown put up some stiff resistance in his game, only losing control at the end of the session when his opponent would have had just a few games left.
Chess Pie 2 (1927) via Neil Blackburn
Here’s Alekhine, with Brown on his right, and young Rupert Cross on the right of Brown, with other Worcester College pupils who took part in the display.
You can read the whole Chess Pie article, along with a lot of other interesting material in this article by Neil Blackburn (simaginfan).
In the 1926-27 season Brown achieved a significant success, winning the Worcestershire County Championship, a title his pupil Tylor had won in 1923-24 and 1924-25. Another pupil, Bonham would later take the title on no less than 18 occasions between 1939-40 and 1960-61. His immediate successor, though, was former Minor Piece subject Dr Abraham Learner.
The school’s prowess at chess was recognised nationally in 1928 when they were awarded a British Chess Federation Schools Shield along with an annual medal to be awarded to the College champion.
George Clifford Brown returned to tournament chess over Easter 1929, but he finished in last place in the First Class C section at Ramsgate, won by one of the competitors in the inaugural London Boys’ Championship.
That winter Brown ventured to Hastings for the first time, scoring 3/9 in the Major B section, where he lost to his pupil Rupert Cross, and drew with the previously mentioned Alfred Barlow.
But on 19 May 1930 George Clifford Brown’s life was struck by tragedy, with the sudden death of his wife Catherine, who had, beyond her family duties, played an important role in helping her husband run the school.
The Evesham Standard (24 May 1930) paid tribute: She was a genial and charming hostess, a lady well fitted to have a kind of maternal oversight of a company of blind students, unfailingly cheerful and gracious in all sorts of circumstances, and mindful in every way of the peculiar claims which are made upon one occupying such a position. She will be greatly missed by many intimate friends, and particularly by the students and those chess players of the Midlands and West of England who were wont to gather at the College for chess matches.
This blow didn’t curb his interest in chess, which still remained popular at the school. In November a pupil, William George Coppage (1912-1985), the son of a house painter (1911) and builder (1921) scored a victory against Znosko-Borovsky.
Stratford-upon-Avon Herald 14 November 1930
George Clifford Brown was back at Hastings that New Year, with a similar result in the same section as the previous year. This time he lost to both Cross and Barlow, as well as to the winner, the future Sir Richard ‘Otto’ Clarke, who would much later devise the first British Chess Federation grading system.
On 7 February 1931 Worcester College hosted a 100 board match between Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The top 25 boards counted towards the South Midlands County Championship.
Evesham Standard & West Midland Observer 14 February 1931
You’ll notice that Brown lost to Ritson Morry on Board 9, while Bonham won his game on Board 4.
Architect Arthur Troyte Griffith, on Board 6, was a close friend of Edward Elgar (who, as a young man, had taught music at Worcester College) and the dedicatee of one of his Enigma Variations, which you can hear here conducted by another of Elgar’s great friends, Sir Adrian Boult.
Three of Brown’s children were also involved: Clifford and Geoffrey both played on lower boards, neither troubling the scorer. Their sister Joan was on hand to welcome the players and provide refreshments, also making a presentation to the Warwickshire top board to mark his forthcoming retirement to Hastings.
Warwickshire won the match by the narrowest possible margin, but, of greater significance, it was announced that the school would be hosting the British Championships that August, a considerable coup, not just for the Headmaster but for the whole school community.
The school community was well represented: Tylor played in the Championship, won by Yates, just ahead of Sultan Khan and Winter. Cross was in the Major Open, won by the young Vera Menchik, while Bonham shared third place in the Major Open Reserves, with Ritson Morry in mid-table and BH Wood bringing up the rear.
One of their students also took part: Barnet Ellis (1914-1974), born in Leeds, the son of a Ukrainian Jewish tailor, took park in the 2nd Class B section, where his opponents included future Leicester chess historian Don Gould and a young Russian boy named Rostislav Chernikeeff. Barnet later gained a 2nd Class Degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford University, going on to run a solicitor’s practice in Pickering, North Yorkshire.
The British Chess Magazine (September 1931) commented:
According to the rota it was the privilege of the Midland Counties Chess Union to hold the Congress in its area. It is fortunate that the Union had ideal opportunities of carrying out the Federation’ ambitious programme. Worcester has many attractions which appealed to the public as the large number of entries and visitors amply showed. The College for the Blind afforded the best accommodation. It is situated in a pleasant position outside the town. The various rooms and grounds were placed at the disposal of the visitors for every purpose that could be devised. The lounge and swimming pool especially were luxuries not often to be found at a Chess Congress. Above all the Union is to be congratulated upon its organising officers! A. J. Mackenzie, president of the Union, as an old hand experienced in Congresses, was probably quite at ease in leaving the arrangements in the hands of the headmaster of the College, G. C. Brown, M.A. It is only fair to state that the exceptional success of the Congress was due to the quiet organisation and to the general courtesy and welcome that was extended to every one by Mr. Brown and the members of his family and staff who outdid one another in their efforts to make things go smoothly.
You can find full details of the event, along with some games, on BritBase here.
One of Worcester College’s regular match opponents were Oxford University. In 1931 Brown faced a future multiple Scottish champion, coming away with half a point.
He was back again at Hastings, again in the Major B section, over the 1931-32 New Year, where his opponents included my distant kinsman Alfred Lenton.
Brown missed Hastings in 1932-33, but was again in the Major B section in 1933-34, where he shared last place.
He went down to a crushing defeat in this game against former Sussex champion Harold Stephenson.
The following year he made what would be his final appearance at Hastings, where he unfortunately lost all his games, but this was a pretty strong international tournament, featuring Koblents, who would later achieve fame as Tal’s coach, and the eccentric Nazi Diemer, of Blackmar-Diemer Gambit fame.
The winner was a Belgian international player who had no problem outclassing the tail-ender.
In August 1935 George Clifford Brown took part in a small tournament in Ludlow. Playing in the top section, his opponents included future chess author and historian R Nevil Coles, whom I played many years later.
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 24 August 1935
His son Geoffrey also took part, winning a prize in the Second Class section.
This was to be his last tournament. We can sum him up as a strong club and county player who was rather out of his depth when competing against stronger opposition in the 1st Class sections at Hastings and elsewhere. It’s unfortunate that I’ve only been able to find draws and losses so far: if you have the scores of any of his wins I’d love to see them.
1936 marked the 70th anniversary of the school and a book was published marking the event.
There were several mentions of chess, and, at the end, a list of the school’s chess successes.
The First Seventy Years: Worcester College for the Blind, 1866-1936 by Mary G Thomas
(The last name should be ARN Cross, not ARH Cross.)
I think that you’ll agree that these statistics are extraordinary, considering that this was a school which had only 5 (or 3, sources differ) pupils when Brown arrived, and, at its peak only 45 or so, and that they were all either totally blind or had severely limited vision.
The number who went on to study at Oxford or Cambridge, also listed in the book, is also notable, with some of them, including Bonham, the son of a butcher, and Ellis, the son of a tailor, coming from non-academic backgrounds.
George Clifford Brown was clearly an outstanding and inspirational headmaster, but by now age was catching up with him, and the strain of running the school was perhaps affecting his health. In 1938 he was forced to take early retirement.
Birmingham Daily Gazette 24 June 1938
Brown died on 16 July 1944, at the age of 65
Birmingham Mail 19 July 1944
George Clifford Brown should be remembered as a pioneer of chess for the blind as well as a devoted and popular headmaster for a quarter of a century.
In the rowing world, too, he’s remembered as a pioneer of adaptive rowing, now known as pararowing, and thus as a pioneer of the whole concept of parasports. I’m sure he’d have been delighted to see the success of the Paralympics today, but perhaps also disappointed that not more has been done to promote chess for children with visual impairments.
On the surface, and wearing my chess hat, everything seems wonderful. Brown was clearly an extraordinary man who was passionate about chess, passionate about his pupils, and passionate about helping them thrive as sightless people in a sighted world. Wearing my rowing hat, if I had one, I would no doubt reach the same conclusion.
Behind the scenes, though, there were problems, which grew more acute after Catherine Brown’s premature death in 1930.
In 1931 the school received its first full inspection since 1915. Although it was, in general, highly favourable, a few suggestions were made as to how it might improve.
There was a concern about the use of unqualified staff: Reg Bonham had recently returned after completing his Oxford degree to teach mathematics and Braille, while the Oxford Rower LCR Balding had also joined without a teaching qualification. In 1936 he would marry Joan Brown. There were also suggestions that the organisation of the school was unsatisfactory, that the curriculum was too narrow, and that the academic standards in some subjects could be improved.
It’s notable that the 1928 prospectus included eight photographs of rowing and six photographs of chess, compared with seven photographs of classrooms and one of the school play. While this was no doubt wonderful for the boys who excelled at rowing or chess, or, in the case of Rupert Cross, both, there would surely have been doubts about whether they had their priorities right, and whether they should be doing more to ensure academic success rather than training students to live the life of a leisured Edwardian gentleman. It’s a debate which is still extremely relevant today, a hundred years on.
One of the pupils who gained a lot from chess was John (surname not available) who, in 1935, wrote (I’ve corrected a few mistakes):
Foremost in winter comes the inevitable chess. This fascinating game attracts almost universal interest in the college and matches frequently take place between the college teams and other clubs including, Oxford University, Birmingham City and many others. We have also held the Worcestershire Public Schools Championship for many years, and in 1928, carried off a shield awarded by the British Chess Federation. We also compete in several other chess leagues, and it may also be noted that in the last sixteen years the college has provided Oxford University with several chess champions. Tournaments and informal instruction circles are arranged; whilst chess masters are invited to give lectures and to play the members of the school simultaneously. During my short residence here I have met over the board: Sultan Khan (former British Champion), Maroczy, Sir George Thomas (Present British Champion), TH Tylor (a well-known competitor at the Hastings Congress and an Old Boy of the college), Herr Mieses and Fräulein Sonja Graf (the girl champion of Germany).
Another growing issue was one of discipline, which could be lax at times. Brown was warm, empathetic and approachable, taking a full part himself in all school activities, and clearly being held in great affection by all his pupils. But he wasn’t a strict disciplinarian, and perhaps the boys sometimes took advantage of him.
While efforts were made to broaden the curriculum and improve academic standards, the organisational problems were not addressed, and, the school archives reveal, their financial position was gradually spiralling out of control.
In 1936 the governors, concerned about the deteriorating situation as well as Brown’s nepotism, decided to take action. Brown had expensive tastes in food and drink, which he expected the school to pay for, and the local butchers and wine merchants were owed significant amounts of money. Joan, who had been employed as his housekeeper, had her post terminated, and his son (I presume this was Geoffrey, who was involved in rowing as well as chess) lost his retainer for contributions to social activities. He was also told that his own employment would be terminated by his sixtieth birthday: in fact he left slightly earlier than that. All this must have been extremely distressing to him, but schools have to do what they need to do to survive and be successful.
What happened after his departure? Chess still continued to be prominent in the school for some time, as would be expected with Reg Bonham on the staff. Perhaps the strongest player from this period was John Anthony Wall, who represented Oxford in the 1949 and 1951 Varsity Matches before becoming Britain’s first High Court Judge.
Years later, a pupil at The King’s School Worcester, Malcolm (again surname not available), recalled his contacts with his blind contemporaries:
I was at Worcester Kings School as a boarder from 1949/58, and have memories of playing chess for the school in matches versus the College for the Blind who produced good players under the excellent guidance of Mr RW Bonham, who beat me soundly (at chess, that is!) in 26 moves in a Worcester & District league match on the 8th December 1956.
In that same 1956/57 chess season, 5 boys from the College were entered into the Worcestershire County Individual Junior Championship (Under 18s). Between them they produced one of the finalists – Jones – who lost to me on 17th March 1957 in an exciting 44 move game which started at the College on 13th December and had to be adjourned because of time.
In 1987 Worcester College merged with Chorleywood College (for girls with little or no sight) to form a new school: New College Worcester. Do they still play chess? The website mentions board games and a Scrabble club, but there’s no specific mention of chess.
George Clifford Brown was a remarkable man who, although, like all of us, he had his faults, undoubtedly transformed the lives of many boys who were blind or had limited vision during his 25 year tenure as Headmaster of Worcester College. His opinion that chess is something which can help young people with disabilities integrate into the outside world is something that we’ve perhaps forgotten today. He would, I think, be saddened to see how, a hundred years later, so few children with visual handicaps seem to play the game.
His story prompted quite a few thoughts.
In the 1930s, while the blind boys in Worcester were playing chess so successfully, you might recall that the boys from Desford Approved School near Leicester were also taking part in competitive chess with success. You can read their story here and here. Although the two schools were dealing with very different pupils, they were both using chess to help disadvantaged boys, and both run by men who were considered progressive in many ways. There’s even a family connection. George’s youngest son Douglas Brown’s wife had a brother-in-law, an auctioneer in Market Harborough, who was distantly related to Sydney Gimson via the Symington soup and corsets family. It’s a small world.
I spent some years involved with what was, at first, a small family-run school which, although open to everyone who could pay, attracted a high proportion of children who, for a variety of reasons, didn’t fit in to mainstream schools. Comparing the two schools I can see quite a lot in common: many of the same strengths, and also perhaps some of the same weaknesses.
There’s also the wider question, which I alluded to earlier, as to whether secondary schools should focus purely on academic attainment and future earning potential, or whether they also have a responsibility to provide cultural and social capital. This is discussed in indirect terms, for instance, in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys. I suspect I know what Brown’s view would be and, on a personal level, I think I’d agree with him.
With regard to children with disabilities, to what extent should we be helping them meet other children who share their disabilities, and to what extent should we be finding ways to help them make contact with the wider world? Ideally, of course, you want to do both, but perhaps our education system could do more of the latter.
Leading on from this, should we in the chess community be doing more to use chess to help children with a variety of disabilities? One of the great aspects of chess, for me, is that it has few barriers of this nature. We’re not just talking about children with visual disabilities, but also children with auditory and physical disabilities, not to mention children diagnosed with conditions such as ASD (autism) and ADHD. On several occasions I’ve tried to arrange meetings in schools to discuss this, but have found no interest in anyone even talking to me. Perhaps the demand from within schools isn’t there, but it certainly should be. If you know me well you’ll know my views.
You’ll be meeting some of the young chess players from Worcester College again in future Minor Pieces.
Sources and Acknowledgements
If you’re interested in taking the story further, there’s a lot of material readily available online.
If your interest is specifically on the chess side, I’d recommend the three-part series written by Neil Blackburn, from which I took two of the photographs here. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
If you’re interested in the college itself, start with The First Seventy Years: Worcester College for the Blind, 1866-1936 by Mary G Thomas, which you can read online here.
Then there’s the centenary history: The Experiment in Education; the History of Worcester College for the Blind 1866-1966 by Donald Bell. You can read some of the pages here, but, for copyright reasons, not all are available.
More importantly, there’s a PhD thesis, ‘They can because they think they can?’: The education of pupils at two secondary schools for the blind, 1920-58, by Jeanette Normanton Erry (2011), which can be read online here. Jeanette, who is currently the Head of Outreach at New College Worcester, had access to the college archives, and paints a much more rounded picture of Brown than that in the official publications of the time.
Finally, there’s this page on the school website, written to celebrate the school’s 150th anniversary in 2016, from which I took the chess memories of John and Malcolm quoted above.
Other sources:
ancestry.co.uk (Reed family tree)
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
BritBase (John Saunders)
New College Worcester website
YouTube
Unless you’re interested in British chess in the first four decades of the last century you might not have heard of Reginald Pryce Michell (1873-1938).
Carsten Hansen hadn’t heard of him either, until he came across a collection of his best games written by Julius du Mont and first published in 1947. Acknowledgement was given to LW Barden, who read the proofs: and, of course, he’s still writing about chess 78 years later.
Michell was one of England’s leading players for several decades, and, in the 1920s and 1930s, a regular participant in the British Championship and Hastings, along with other seaside holiday tournaments. Back in those days at Hastings and elsewhere, the top section would comprise a couple of world class players, a few minor European masters, some of England’s top exponents and perhaps one or two enthusiastic amateurs, so Michell was able to cross swords with many of the greats of his day.
He had draws to his credit against four world champions, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe and Botvinnik, as well as wins against the likes of Bogoljubov, Sultan Khan, Réti and most of the top British players from Blackburne via Atkins and Yates through to Alexander and Golombek, all of whom feature in these pages. I’d consider this a record that almost anyone could be proud of. EdoChess has him at over 2300 for more than 40 years and above 2400 in the early years of the last century.
Carsten Hansen thought it worthwhile to investigate further. Here we have a handsome hardback (there’s also a paperback edition which contains rather less material) comprising many of his best games, along with a biography and other material.
I may well write much more about Michell at some point in the future, as he was a member of Kingston Chess Club and lived in my part of the world, but for now I’ll tell you a bit more about the book.
We start with a brief biography written by du Mont, but including a tribute from one of his contemporaries, EG Sergeant: well worth reading to give you an idea of the man behind the moves. Then we have 36 original games from du Mont’s book. His, rather shallow and inaccurate in places, annotations have been retained, but Hansen has added his own annotations based on current opening theory and computer analysis. For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the comparison between the two sets of notes, demonstrating just how much chess has changed over the past 80 years.
Following that, there are another 36 games, annotated by Hansen, the last five of which don’t appear in the (earlier) paperback edition, along with another new feature: 36 puzzles based on the games in the book.
The author helpfully provides indexes of openings, ECO codes and players at the back of the book.
Michell was a quiet and studious man who played, for the most part, quiet and studious chess. Although the games in this book are all of interest, you won’t see all that much in the way of brilliant sacrificial attacks.
Du Mont judged this game, a victory with the black pieces against a future world championship candidate, perhaps his finest performance. Click on any move for a pop-up window.
Back in 1947 there were comments about what Michell had done to deserve a games collection, when many much stronger players hadn’t been honoured in that way. You might think they had, and still have, a point: if so I’d advise you to go away and write some of the missing books yourself. Michell, like many quiet people, had hidden depths.
I know there are many chess book enthusiasts who enjoy games collections of this type. If you fall into this category, or if you have an interest in British chess from that period, you won’t want to miss this well produced book. There are quite a few typos, but that probably won’t concern you very much.
Carsten Hansen should be congratulated for bringing du Mont’s original book back into print, and for his invaluable updates and additions. If what you’ve read about Michell has piqued your interest, don’t hesitate – and go for the hardcover version with the additional material.
You can read more about Michell and see some of his other games in this excellent article by Neil Blackburn.
R. P. Michell – A Master of British Chess: A forgotten chess master, Carsten Hansen and Julius du Mont, Publisher : CarstenChess (16 Mar. 2024), ISBN-13 : 978-8793812888
The 1920s saw the beginnings of chess competitions for juniors. In 1921 a boys’ tournament took place in Hastings: this was repeated in 1922 and by 1923 had become the official British Boys’ Championship, for those under the age of 18. The first winner was Philip Stuart (later Sir Stuart) Milner-Barry.
That year the London Chess League decided to run their own championship for boys, starting on 31 December 1923, so you might just about claim that 2024 marks its centenary. It’s still going strong under the name of the London Junior Chess Championships.
The tournament took place, along with two sections for adult players, at St Bride’s Institute, which would remain its venue for many years. Sir Richard Barnett, whom you met last time playing chess on a liner in 1930 before sailing off into the sunset, was on hand to open the congress, advising the contestants to put ‘safety first’.
In these days of pre-teen grandmasters and an 18-year-old world champion, it’s salutary to consider how, just a century ago, the whole idea of teenagers playing chess was considered strange. The press commented on how well they played, and on how they used up most of their time on the clock.
The tournament attracted ten players, and press interest was such that we have all their initials and surnames, and, in some cases, their schools. Of course it doesn’t help that one of the competitors was J Smith, but we can at least have a stab at identifying all of them. While most of them grew up to have fairly anonymous lives (mostly) away from the chessboard, two of them had more interesting stories to tell, one inspirational, the other disturbing.
The first story I’d like to tell is that of Max Black. Born in 1909 and a pupil at Dame Alice Owen’s School in North London, he was one of the younger competitors. In spite of his relative youth he scored 6/9, finishing in third place.
Max’s father Lionel was a wealthy Jewish silk merchant, born in Kyiv, but, by 1909 living in Baku where Max (like Garry Kasparov many years later) was born. In 1912, deciding that Russia wasn’t a safe place for a Jewish family, Anglophile Lionel, his wife and two young sons (Max had now been joined by Misha) moved to England, translating their name from the Russian Tcherny to Black. Two more children would be born there: Samuel (Sam) and Rivka (Betty).
Here, in a family photo from an online tree, you can see the family at some point in the mid 1920s.
Max played in the London Boys’ Championship for the next three years (I’ll tell you how he fared another time) before graduating to adult chess in 1928. By this time he was reading mathematics at Queens’ College Cambridge, and was also moving in the same circles as the leading philosophers of the day, such as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
He was selected to play on board 5 in that year’s Varsity match, where he faced future Communist spy Solomon Adler.
He was losing for much of the game, but, after Adler made an instructive error just before adjudication, he was fortunate to be able to share the point. (As always, click on any move in the game for a pop-up window.)
Max entered the 1928-29 Hastings Congress where he was placed in the Major B section, won by his contemporary C H O’D Alexander.
He lost this game against another talented teenager, where he made a couple of understandable defensive errors against Mortlock’s kingside attack.
In the matches preceding the 1929 Varsity Match Max won two games against Maurice Goldstein, one of the strongest London amateurs of his day.
Here’s one of them.
It’s interesting to observe in these games that players were experimenting with openings (the Pirc Defence and the Benko Gambit) which would only become established several decades later.
In the Varsity Match itself he again faced Solomon Adler, this time getting crushed with the black pieces after playing the opening much too passively.
Max’s next appearance was in the 1930 Varsity Match, by which time he’d reached the heights of Board 2, facing (Arthur) Eric Smith.
Again, he was lucky to escape with a draw after the future Canon missed a couple of wins.
But that was to be the end of his competitive chess career, as, on completing his studies he chose to devote himself to his academic and family life.
After graduating in 1930 Max spent a year studying in Göttingen, before taking a post teaching mathematics at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, at the same time writing his first book, The Nature of Mathematics: a Critical Survey. In 1936 he returned to London, lecturing in maths at the Institute of Education (part of University College London). In 1940, switching from maths to philosophy, he accepted a post at the University of Illinois, before becoming a philosophy professor at Cornell University in 1946. He remained at Cornell until his retirement in 1977, but continued lecturing worldwide until his death in 1988.
Describing himself as a “lapsed mathematician, addicted reasoner, and devotee of metaphor and chess”, he maintained an interest in chess throughout his life. He is particularly noted for the ‘mutilated chessboard’ problem, devised as means of demonstrating critical thinking. Take a chessboard with two opposite corners removed. Is it possible to fill the whole board with 2×1 dominoes? If you stop and think for a moment, the solution is obvious, but not everyone is able to think like that.
His celebrity chess opponents included Arthur Koestler, whom he beat in four moves, and Vladimir Nabokov, whom he beat twice, neither game lasting more than 15 minutes. It’s said that he gave displays of blindfold chess and, even in his late sixties, gave simultaneous displays against up to 20 opponents.
Source: Wikipedia
I would suggest to you that, as an analytical philosopher, searching for meaning in language, mathematics, science and art, promoting logic and critical thinking, Max Black was one of the most important figures of the 20th century you probably haven’t heard of. It’s gratifying to know that, in his teens, he took part with distinction in the first four runnings of the London Boys’ Chess Championship.
If you’re interested you can read more about him on Wikipedia and MacTutor. You’ll find lots more online as well: Google Books and Amazon Books are both helpful.
His brothers both achieved eminence as well, in very different fields. Sir Misha Black, who wasn’t a competitive chess player, was an architect and designer noted for the street signs in Westminster and for designing trains for British Rail and the London Underground. Sam Black, the youngest of the three brothers, was also an alumnus of the London Boys’ Chess Championship, and had a very distinguished international career in the field of public relations while at the same time practising as an optician. A lifelong chess player, he was Secretary of Finchley Chess Club and President of the North Circular Chess League, who still run an annual blitz tournament in his honour.
While Misha Black was campaigning for peace in the 1930s, one of Max’s opponents was following a very different path.
Clement Frederic Brüning , as the youngest player in the competition, attracted some media attention.
Daily News (London) 02 January 1924
He finished in last place, with a score of 2/9, but, undaunted, he also took part in the British Boys’ Championship a few months later, drawing with the eventual winner Wilfred Pratten in his preliminary group and finishing runner-up to Alfred Mortlock in his section of the finals.
Like Max Black, Clement came from an immigrant background. While Max was the oldest child of Russian Jewish parents who were first generation immigrants, Clement was the youngest of five sons of a German Catholic father and an English mother.
Carl Alexander Marcell Brüning (usually known as Marcell) seems to have come to England from Cloppenburg in Lower Saxony in about 1890 along with his brother Bernhard, assisting their older brother Conrad’s coal merchant’s business. The 1891 census found the family in Hampstead, and in 1901 Bernhard and Marcell were boarding in Kingston. In 1903 Marcell married Clara Mary Bagshawe, from a prominent Catholic family, whose Uncle Edward had recently retired as Bishop of Nottingham.
At this point Clara and Marcell were living a peripatetic life, living in Rochford, Essex, Newcastle, back to Rochford and then to New York, presumably for his coal dealing business. During these peregrinations, five sons were quickly born: Guy, Maurice, Roland, Peter and finally Clement in 1911.
Here, in a family photograph, is a smiling young Clement on his rocking horse.
In 1921 most of the family were still abroad, but Clara was visiting her father in Chiswick (I used to have a pupil in the next road) while Guy, taking a break from his studies, was on holiday in Westcliff on Sea, near Southend and not far from his place of birth.
They must then have returned to settle in Ealing, the Queen of Suburbs, living in a large detached house just west of the Broadway. Clement was enrolled as a pupil at Ealing Priory (now St Benedict’s) School, which was where we found him in 1924.
Clement competed in both the London and British Boys’ Championships in 1925. In the latter event he shared third place in the top section, again drawing with Pratten in a game he should have won.
John Saunders comments in BritBase:
Sources: Staffordshire Advertiser, 16 May 1925; BCM, May 1925, p216. The score of the game in BCM (from which the newspaper score may have been taken) gives the players as Bruning (White) and Pratten (Black) but the detailed description of the game on p214 makes it fairly certain that Pratten played White in the game: “In the last round Pratten very nearly had a shock. Opening with a Ponziani, which turned into a kind of Ruy Lopez after Bruning had played 3.., P-Q 3, he got a strong-looking game; but Bruning defended so well that the situation changed entirely to the holder’s disadvantage, and at last a sacrifice was obviously Black’s policy. Bruning saw this, but unfortunately sacrificed the wrong piece, and Pratten, by giving up his Queen, for adequate compensation, was able to extricate himself, and a draw resulted.” But we cannot be certain.
The computer informs me that White had an easy win in the final position, but no one seems to have realised this at the time. Insipid, as the Staffordshire Advertiser annotator calls it, it certainly wasn’t.
In 1926 he took part in the same two tournaments, but with less success, this time he performed poorly in his preliminary section of the British, but did manage to win his consolation event.
Perhaps this result was the reason why Clement decided to give up chess at this point.
In 1934, though, by which time the family, perhaps now less well off, had moved a mile to the west, to a semi-detached house in the less prestigious suburb of Hanwell, he was in the papers again, for a very different reason.
Middlesex County Times 19 May 1934
Over the next few years young Clement, clearly a young man with a gift for oratory, played an increasingly important role in Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, speaking at events around the South of England and writing letters to newspapers. His older brothers were apparently also Blackshirts, but didn’t play a prominent role.
(Another BUF member was aviation pioneer Alliott Verdon Roe, whose mother, Annie Sophia (Verdon) Roe, had been a regular competitor in the early years of the British Ladies’ Chess Championship.)
Eastbourne Chronicle 21 November 1936
Clement is probably one of the young men in this photograph from a meeting in Eastbourne protesting against the Public Order Bill banning political uniforms: a reaction to the Battle of Cable Street.
A brief quote from the same source:
By 1937, and now the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Wood Green constituency, he had risen to the post of Propaganda Administrator for the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists, and was working closely with both Mosley and William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw).
He was often invited to speak at Rotary Clubs, for instance here in Cheshire.
Alderley & Wilmslow Advertiser 01 October 1937
He then moved to Bethnal Green, working for what was by then the British Union, and, when war was declared in 1939, was in Germany, apparently working for Welt-Dienst (World Service), an anti-Semitic broadcasting network.
Then something unexpected happened. He ended up in a concentration camp, where he was murdered by the Nazis on 17 August 1942. What had happened? We know he was being investigated by MI5. Perhaps he’d changed his opinion and fallen foul of the Nazis, or maybe he’d been recruited as a double agent. Nobody knows, or if they do they’re not telling. A very sad and mysterious end for the cute, chubby-cheeked smiling lad on the rocking horse, for the young perpetrator of dashing but unsound attacks in his three years of participation in boys’ chess tournaments.
Two contrasting stories, then, the brilliant mathematician and philosopher whose name was Black, and his rival whose shirt was black, and whose premature endgame resulted in tragedy.
But what of the other eight pioneers of London Boys’ Chess? Their lives, as far as I can tell, took rather more conventional courses.
The tournament winner, with a 100% score, was J Allcock of Coopers’ School, now in Upminster, but then in Bow Road, East London. I believe this was Jack Adams Allcock (1906-1969), who lived very close to the school. He was clearly a promising player, but seems to have played little chess on leaving school. We can pick him up playing for London University in 1928, and in the London League for North London in 1933. His father ran an off licence in Bow, later becoming the landlord of the Duke of York in Hackney, and it seems that Jack and his wife Eliza helped him running the pub. In spite of Jack’s education the family were never well off, both Jack and Eliza leaving very little money. I can’t find any immediate connection with the strong City of London player James Frederick Allcock.
In second place, on 6½/9, was Stanley Thomas Henry Goodwin, born in 1906, and, like Max Black, a pupil at Dame Alice Owen’s School. Also from Hackney, Stanley’s father Vincent was a Post Office sorter. He married in 1932, and the 1939 Register found him living in North London and working as a brewery clerk He served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in World War 2, and, it seems later emigrated to Australia where he died in Perth, but I don’t have a death date. I have no further record of any chess activity after this tournament.
Percy Geoffrey Husbands (1906-1987) of Regent Street Polytechnic scored 5/9 for fourth place. Percy lived in Ealing: his father Basil was working as a furniture dealer in 1911, but by 1921 he was a house furnisher and decorator, no longer employing servants. In 1934 Husbands became a husband, marrying Lucy Sophia Eavis, whose family owned (and still own) Worthy Farm near Glastonbury. Michael Eavis, the founder of the Glastonbury Festival, is the son of Lucy’s half-brother Joseph Eavis. By 1939 Percy was living in Uckfield, Sussex, working as an Insurance Clerk. His chess career continued in the 1924 British Boys’ Championship and the minor section of the London tournament in 1924-25, but after this event he seemed to stop playing: perhaps work, as it often does, got in the way.
Being confronted by J Smith is a genealogist’s nightmare, and that’s who we have on 4/9. We do know, though, that he was John B Smith of Sir Walter St John School in Battersea, and that he also played in the following year’s tournament. The most likely candidate is John Bryan Smith, born in 1908, the son of a plumber from Wandsworth. He spent much of the 1930s travelling 1st class to and from West Africa, described first as an Assistant and then as a Merchant’s Agent before disappearing from view.
On 3½/9 we find Hugh George Excell (1907-1993) from North London Chess Club. Hugh was the son of an Insurance Claims Inspector from Hackney. He signed up for the Royal Artillery in June 1939, but in September that year was living with his fiancée in Suffolk. Hugh continued playing competitive chess occasionally until at least 1932, including this tournament the following year, and, most notably, one of the first class sections in the 1929 Ramsgate Easter Congress. In the later 1930s he took up correspondence chess, but his chess career seems to have ended with the outbreak of the Second World War.
Here he is, playing in the London Secondary Schools competition (a separate event) in 1925.
London Daily Chronicle 28 March 1925
His opponent in this game was Philip Ernest Bowers (1908-1999), who scored 3/9 in the inaugural London Boys’ Championship. Philip was the son of a Police Constable, originally from Norfolk, but who was living in Chelsea by 1921. He was a pupil at Westminster City School, and would also compete in this tournament for two more years. He returned to chess in 1935, by which time he had moved to Birmingham, and rose rapidly through the ranks to become one of his club’s leading players. By 1940 chess activity there was curtailed by the war, and it seems that, like many others, Philip stopped playing at this point. Like many chess players, he spent his adult life teaching maths.
Known as ‘Bill’ rather than Philip, here he is pictured later in life from an online family tree.
Half a point below him, and half a point above Clement Brüning in 9th place was Jack Liebster (1907-1996), the son of a Russian born GP from Stoke Newington. Both his parents were Jewish, but his mother was born in Stepney: Jack was the youngest of their five children. Chess must have been played in the family: his father is recorded as submitting correct solutions to problems in the London Daily Chronicle in 1901, but this was to be, as far as I can tell, his only experience of competitive chess. In the 1939 Register Jack was described as a Traveller, and also as an ambulance driver. He married a chemist’s daughter in 1941, and they moved to Dunstable, where they had two children and played a significant role in the local Jewish community.
That leaves one other player, variously recorded as JS Lauder or JS Lander, whose score of 3½ left him level with Hugh Excell. I can’t find anyone with that name in the right place at the right time, but I did find Joseph John Lauder (1906-1999), the son of a Scottish born Police Inspector based at Wimbledon Police Station. He was certainly a chess player, and, more importantly, a much respected chess administrator for many years. Joseph (Harry to his friends, Mr Lauder to me) was secretary of both the Surrey County Chess Association and the Southern Counties Chess Union for many years and later, in the 1970s, the SCCU Bulletin Editor. I used to visit his home in Wimbledon every year to collect our club copies of the SCCU Grading List. Quite rightly, the chess players of Surrey now compete for a trophy named in his honour. There’s no way of knowing for certain, but I do hope it was him.
There are no more pre-war chess references, but we can pick Mr Lauder up in the 1939 Register, where he was employed as a Bank Clerk and living in the next road to where he was in the 70s. The first post-war chess record I can find for him is in 1947, playing for his local club. For some years he played regular club and county chess, also enjoying competing at Bognor Regis every year up to 1962. He was a decent, above average club strength player, but it was as an administrator that he deserves to be – and still is – remembered.
There’s much more to be written about the teenage boys who played tournament chess in the 1920s. At some point I’ll introduce you to some of the other LBCC players, and perhaps some of the other competitors in the British Boys’ Championship during that period.
Sources and Acknowledgements
ancestry.co.uk (Black, Brüning and Bowers family trees)
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Archives
Wikipedia
Google Books (search for Max Black and Clement Brüning)
MacTutor
British Chess News
chessgames.com
ChessBase 18/Stockfish 17
Surrey County Chess Association and Southern Counties Chess Union archives/websites
Various other sources mentioned above
I’ve long been intrigued by this match played on board a liner in 1930.
Linlithgowshire Gazette 06 June 1930
There’s much to be written about the Imperial Club, which played an important part in many aspects of London chess between its foundation in 1911 and the outbreak of the Second World War. It provided a venue for social chess for both Londoners and those from other parts of the British Empire who happened to be passing through, but it was also far more than that. The club was founded by the extraordinary Mrs Arthur Rawson (Ella Frances Bremner): I’ll tell her story, and more of the club’s story in future Minor Pieces.
The list of their players in this match provides a snapshot of their membership, and, more generally, tells us something of the social status of chess in the inter-war years.
Board 1: Sultan Khan (1903-66: Mir, along with Malik, is an erroneous honorific which shouldn’t be considered part of his name) needs no introduction. In this match he could only draw with the little-known W Veitch, although it’s quite likely the result was diplomatic.
Only seven months later he won a Famous Game against none other than Capablanca. For this and all games in this article, click on any move for a pop-up window.
Here he is, on the left, playing against his patron (board 18 in this match).
Board 2: Major Sir Richard Whieldon Barnett (1863-1930) – Irish barrister, sportsman (shooting), volunteer officer and freemason, Irish chess champion 1886-89, Conservative and Unionist MP 1916-29. Most of his constituency now comes under Holborn and St Pancras, represented today by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. He died just a few months later, on 30 October 1930, following an operation. You can read an extensive obituary published by the BCMhere (scroll down to ‘Barnett’).
Here’s his game from this match, which also looks like a diplomatic draw as he was a pawn up with a probably winning advantage in the final position.
Board 3: Charles Wreford-Brown (1866-1951) – amateur footballer (one of the best of his day, captaining his national team) and cricketer. He didn’t play a lot of competitive chess, but what he did was at a high standard, taking part in the unofficial chess olympiad of 1924 (he lost to Marcel Duchamp in an unlikely encounter between two very different celebrities) and playing in the 1933 British Championship, where he unfortunately had to withdraw for health reasons having won and drawn his first two games. A few years ago I met one of his cousins in a school chess club and was able to show him this game.
Here he is, wearing his England football shirt.
Board 4: Vickerman Henzell Rutherford (1860-1934), politician and doctor. The Imperial Chess Club attracted many politicians, mostly from the Conservative Party, but the splendidly named VH Rutherford was an exception, representing the Liberal Party as an MP before switching allegiance to the Labour Party. The current incarnation of his Brentford constituency, now Brentford and Isleworth, is currently represented by Ruth Cadbury, very distantly related to the Secretary of Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club.
In 1925 Barnett and Rutherford played in the two parallel sections of the First Class tournament at the British Championships in Stratford, both scoring 6/11, suggesting that they were both strong club standard players. EdoChess gives Rutherford’s rating at the time as about 2000. Judge for yourself from this game.
Board 5: Colonel E Marinas: not certain about his identity but there was a Spanish (?) naval officer named Eugenio Marinas around at the time so it might possibly have been him.
Board 6: Edward Harry Church (1867-1947), a pharmaceutical chemist from Cambridge, was a leading light in local chess circles, being President of his club for many years and would later (1938-39) be elected President of the Southern Counties Chess Union. He must have had occasion to spend time in London as well.
Board 7: JG Bennett. I’m uncertain as to the identity of this player. There were two JG Bennetts loosely involved in chess: James George Bennett (1866-1952) was a journalist from Grantham in Lincolnshire: quite a long way from London, but he could have been there on business. There was also a JG Bennett involved in administration and occasionally playing in Kent, perhaps in the Canterbury area, but I haven’t been able to identify him further.
Board 8: Miss Kate (Catherine) Belinda Finn (1864-1932) had been active in Ladies’ chess circles, being a founder member of the Ladies’ Chess Club in 1895, as well as winning the British Ladies’ Championship in 1904 and 1905. For further information see John Saunders here.
She’s on the right here, playing in the 1905 British Ladies Championship.
Board 9: this must be John Goodrich Wemyss Woods (1852-1944), a retired schoolmaster (second master and mathematics teacher at Gresham’s School, Norfolk) and amateur artist. The only other chess reference I can find for him is helping to provide some annotations to a game played by a fellow Imperial member some years earlier.
Here’s one of his paintings.
Woods, John Goodrich Wemyss; Star Bridge, Newbury, Berkshire; West Berkshire Museum; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/star-bridge-newbury-berkshire-27437
Board 10: Hon. Arthur James Beresford Lowther (1888-1967) was a barrister who served in the First World War (see here), After the war he became Assistant Commissioner for Kenya (1918-20) and later Aide-de-Camp to the Governor of Southern Rhodesia in 1923. On his return to England he took up competitive chess, finishing runner-up in the 2nd Class tournament in the 1927 British Championships.
Board 11: Miss Alice Elizabeth Hooke (1862-1942), who has featured in earlier Minor Pieces here and here. She was a chess player and organiser, sharing first place in the 1930 and 1932 British Ladies Championships.
The Imperial Review 15 July 1909 (from the Hooke family website)
Board 12: Mrs Amy Eleanor Wheelwright, née Benskin (1890-1980), another of the strongest lady players of the period, sharing first place in the 1931 British Ladies Championship, and taking the runner-up spot in 1933. Here she lost to the tournament winner, a member of Sir Umar Hayat Khan’s entourage.
Liverpool Daily Post 14 October 1931
Board 13: Rufus Henry Streatfeild Stevenson (1878-1943), later the husband of Vera Menchik and Hon. Secretary of the BCF, was one of the most important figures in British chess in the inter-war years as an administrator and also a promoter of women’s chess. He was also a regular competitive player, winning the Kent championship in 1919: a result which probably flattered him as I suspect the stronger players in the county didn’t take part.
https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/arch30.htm
Board 14: James Frederick Chance (1856-1938) came from a prominent family of glass manufacturers in the Black Country but later devoted his life to the study of history. In 1911 he was in Offchurch, near Leamington Spa, visiting his sister Eleanor and her husband, a retired clergyman named William Bedford. They were living next door to the vicarage where James Agar-Ellis employed my great aunt Ada Padbury as a cook. He was a long-standing member of the Imperial Chess Club, serving as president from 1934 until his death. His obituary in the BCM described him as being a chess player of medium strength.
Here he is, in 1935, playing the young Elaine Saunders.
Daily Herald 25 November 1935
Board 15: Julian Veitch Jameson (1880-1932) came from a family with Irish and Scottish connections as well as links to both India and Kenya. In 1891 he was living in Bowden Hall, Great Bowden, near Market Harborough, where he might, I suppose, have met some of my father’s relations. He later worked as an indigo planter in India. His middle name came from his grandmother Mary Jane Veitch, so he may have been distantly related to Sultan Khan’s opponent. He was active in chess circles for the last few years of his life, scoring 50% in the 2nd Class B section at the 1929 British Championship in Ramsgate, when he was living in Chalfont St Giles, but later moving to Folkestone, where he drew with Yates in a 1931 simul. His son Thomas played cricket for Hampshire.
This photograph from an online family tree shows Julian with a friend.
Board 16: Miss Mary Ann Eliza Andrews (1863-1954) was born on the island of Jersey, but her family later moved to Brighton. Her brother, William Richard Andrews, was a prominent Sussex player. She later worked as a schoolmistress. In 1921 she was living in New Cross, South London, in the same road as Jack Redon and his family, but teaching at Halley Road School in Limehouse, north of the Thames. She only seems to have taken up competitive chess on her retirement, playing in the British Ladies Championship in 1923, 1926, and in 8 consecutive years from 1928 to 1935. Her best scores were 8/11 in 1934, and 7/11 in 1930, 1931 and 1932. In 1928 she shared first place in the 2nd Class B section of the West of England Championships (well ahead of Arthur Lowther), but lost this game to the other joint winner, who was killed by a Japanese sniper in Burma in 1944.
British Chess Magazine May 1923
Miss Andrews is the lady wearing what looks like a fur stole centre left, with Lilly Eveling next to her. Lilly’s sister Clara is further along the same row towards the right. If you visit BritBase here you can hover over the faces to identify the names.
Board 17: FH George. I have no information about this player. Seemingly not connected to TH George of Ilford, who would have been on a much higher board. There was a player of that age who lost all his games in a junior tournament in Ramsgate in 1929. There was a Frank Harold George from London (1870-1940) who was, intriguingly, a Comedian in 1911, and working for Harrods as a Clerk in the Counting House in 1921. This might, I suppose, have been him.
Board 18: Major General Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan Tiwana (1874-1944) was a soldier of the Indian Empire, one of the largest landholders in the Punjab, and an elected member of the Council of State of India, who had brought Sultan Khan to London and promoted his chess career. He must also have been a reasonably strong player himself.
Board 19: Mrs Latham is something of a mystery. She played in the 1907 Ostend Ladies tournament, then joined the Ladies club in London, moving on, like many of her clubmates, to the Imperial Chess Club, where she played at least up to this match. She can be seen in a photograph of a reception held for Alekhine in 1932, but she was never awarded even an initial, let alone a first name. Can anyone out there help identify her?
British Chess Magazine Feburary 1932
Mrs Latham is the lady seated on the left, with Mrs Arthur Rawson next to her. You’ll then spot Vera Menchik and Alekhine, with Sultan Khan on the floor on the right. Other participants on the liner included RHS Stevenson (2nd left top row), C Wreford-Brown (4th left top row), next to him Sir Ernest Graham-Little, and then Sir Umar Hayat Khan. Edward Winter provides the full list of names here (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). Note that A Rutherford is not related to VH Rutherford.
Board 20: Mrs M Healey is another mystery. She played in some tournaments in the late 1920s when she was living in South Croydon, and again in the late 1930s by which time she had moved to Hastings. She won a prize at Hastings in 1938 for the best score by a lady in the Second Class section. It’s not clear whether M was her or her husband’s initial.
Board 21: Arthur Newton Streatfeild (1859-1956) was secretary of the Carlton Club for many years. He doesn’t appear to have been a competitive chess player. A member of a distinguished family (note the spelling) who would therefore have had a family connection with his teammate on Board 13.
Board 22: most likely to be Harry Norman Hunter (1883-1966?), a music salesman/publisher originally from Sunderland. In 1921 he was working for Francis, Day & Hunter: the Hunter comes from the music hall composer and performer Harry Hunter, whose real name was William Henry Jennings, and seems to have had no connection with Harry Norman Hunter. I can’t find any other record of him playing chess.
Board 23: Miss Lilly Eveling (1867-1951) came from a prosperous family of drapers in Kent. She played competitively from 1913 up to the second world war, but with little success, scoring only 1/11 in both her appearances in the British Ladies Championship, in 1930 and 1931. Her sister Clara was also a chess player.
Board 24: Henry Bell (1858-1935) was a banker and financier, rising to become general manager of Lloyds Bank, and also a Director until his retirement in 1924. In that year he unsuccessfully stood for parliament representing the Liberal Party in a by-election for the City of London constituency. He was also the President of the Imperial Chess Club for several years.
Board 25: Sir Thomas William Richardson (1865-1947) was a former civil servant and High Court judge in India, who, on returning to England, was very much involved with promoting the development of municipal housing in Fulham.
From the National Portrait Gallery. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp137152/sir-thomas-william-richardson
Board 26: Mrs Fitzgerald. The full name and dates of this player are currently unknown to me.
Board 27: likely to be Miss Marion Isabella McCombie (1866-1936), the daughter of a quill merchant. I have no further information about her chess.
Board 28: Mrs Yuill The full name and dates of this player are again currently unknown to me.
Board 29: Mrs Ella (Ellen on her birth record) Frances Rawson (née Bremner) (1856-1942) was the founder of the Imperial Chess Club and a promoter of chess for women and girls. Born in Glasgow, she emigrated to New Zealand where she married Arthur Rawson. Her husband died in 1894, and in about 1909 she moved to London, where she founded the Imperial Chess Club. I’ll write more about this in a future Minor Piece. Although purely a social player herself she was a very important figure in London chess in the inter-war years.
Board 30: Florence Mary (Miles-)Bailey (née Hobson) (1866-1952), daughter of a master builder and widow of a stockbroker, who achieved some fame by playing chess on long-distance aeroplane flights (see here). Although some of her games took place at a high level, her standard of play was probably at a relatively low level.
Daily Mirror 24 February 1927
Board 31: Sir Ernest Gordon Graham Graham-Little (1867-1950) was a dermatologist and Independent MP for London University from 1924 to 1950. If he’d stood for election there in 1922 or 1923 he’d have faced the novelist and chess enthusiast HG Wells, who unsuccessfully represented the Labour Party. Although not a strong player himself, Sir Ernest was a great patron of chess who rarely missed an opportunity to support his favourite game.
Board 32: Hon Mildred Dorothea Gibbs (1876-1961), known as Minnie in her family, was a daughter of the 2nd Baron Aldenham, a Conservative politician from a famous banking family.
From a family website: Quartermaster of London Voluntary Aid Detachment No. 30 of the British Red Cross Society, 1910; commandant of No. 116, 1913. Served with Bulgaria Red Cross Society in Kirk Kilisse 1912-13 (decorated by the Queen of Bulgaria). In the Great War, amongst other V.A.D. services in London, was in 1915 successively a Nurse at Westminster V.A.D. Hospital, in charge of a Belgian Refugee Convalescent Hostel, and on Air Raid duty; and, from October 1915 to November 1918, Head of the Posting Department of County of London Branch of the Bulgaria Red Cross Society. Attached to the Westminster Division of the B.R.C.S. October 1919, sometime temporary secretary and vice-chairman, chairman 1926-8. Resigned V.A.D. 1929. ‘Member’ 1918, ‘Officer’ 1919, of the Order of the British Empire. Member of the Church of England National Assembly from 1925.
She’s the girl on the right in this charming family photograph.
You’ll immediately notice a few things about the Imperial team. Most obviously, there are 13 ladies amongst the 32 players, although mostly on the lower boards. They’re all from upper middle class or even minor aristocratic backgrounds. They’re mostly older, with many born back in the 1850s and 1860s. Apart from Sultan Khan, the youngest was Amy Wheelwright, born in 1890.
And here they all are: the players from both teams: you can see a larger version, thanks to Edward Winter, here.
British Chess Magazine June 1930
I can add a little about the top three players in Lord Kylsant’s team.
Board 1: William Veitch (1877-1957) was born in Kincardineshire in the East of Scotland, which is where his surname originates. His family moved down to Hampshire, where he played for Southampton and Hampshire in the years before the First World Wat, then moving to the Lewisham area of London, where, in the 1939 Register, he was described as a Ship Owner’s Clerk. Playing on a high board for his club and a lower board for his county, he was a decent above average club standard player.
Board 2: Leslie Alec Seymour Howell (1900-1959: Alec Leslie on his birth record) was a shipping accounts clerk from the Edmonton/Tottenham area of North London, working for the Royal Mail Line. I have no other record of him playing competitive chess, but he was clearly a decent player. Here he is, pictured with his wife, Hilda.
Board 3: David(?) Storrar. Another rather unusual surname, again from the East of Scotland, so it shouldn’t be too hard to track him down. Here we hit a problem. D Storrar from Plaistow was solving chess problems in the Daily News in 1904. There was a D Storrar living in Islington in 1911, born in Perth in 1889, but he worked in banking, not in shipping. There was also a David Storrar on the electoral roll in East Ham (adjacent to Plaistow but some way from Islington) in 1913 and 1915. These three may be all the same person, or two or three different people. The 1911 Islington Storrar is apparently the same person as the David Duncan Storrar who married in Westminster in 1933, and died in Kampala in 1944, having worked for the National Bank of India. We can also pick him up in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, in the Scottish 1921 census, again described as a banker. If this is our man he must have been a ringer. Perhaps the East London 1904/1913/1915 David Storrar is a different, chess-playing, shipping person but I can’t find him on any census records or family trees. Who knows?
As a result of my problems with Mr Storrar, I decided not to go any further down Lord Kylsant’s list. None of the names looks familiar: I presume that, apart from Veitch, who had played competitively 20 years earlier, they were purely social players.
But what of Lord Kylsant himself. I’m sure you want to know more.
He was Owen Cosby Philipps (1863-1937), who had been a Liberal MP from 1906 to 1910, and then, switching allegiance, a Conservative MP between 1916 and 1922. His family also ran a shipping company, and he became involved with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, of which he became managing director in 1902. They gradually took control of various other shipping companies, including the Union-Castle Line, whose ship the Llangibby Castle, which had only been launched the previous year, served as the venue for this match.
Llangibby Castle in naval service during World War II
All was not well with the company, though. In 1928 investigations began looking into financial irregularities, and this match may well have been part of a charm offensive to garner favourable publicity before the trial took place. The nub of the issue seems to have been that they were accused of misleading potential investors about the company’s financial health.
When the trial took place in 1931 Kylsant, despite the efforts of his defence team led by Imperial Chess Club Vice-President Sir John Simon, was found guilty on one charge, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, of which he served 10 months in Wormwood Scrubs. Large companies these days get away with far worse crimes.
If you have any corrections or further information about any of the players in this match, especially about those I’ve been unable to identify, please let me know.
There’s a lot more to write about the Imperial Chess Club: there will be further posts going backwards and forwards in time and introducing you to more of their members.
But first, taking a different view of the social function of chess in the inter-war years, there’s a significant anniversary to celebrate later this month.
Join me soon for another Minor Piece.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
BritBase/John Saunders
Chess Notes/Edward Winter
British Chess Magazine
chessgames.com
ChessBase 18/Stockfish 17
Gibbs, Jameson, Howell and Hooke websites/family trees
Kingston Chess Club website
Other sources linked to above
We remember IM Adam Hunt who passed away on Tuesday, December 3rd 2024 following a nine year battle with cancer.
Adam Ceiriog Hunt was born on Tuesday, October 21st, 1980 in Oxford and his mother’s maiden name was Williams. The UK Number one single was “Woman in Love” by Barbara Streisand. Adam shared his birthday with Kim Kardashian.
Adam attended The Cherwell School and The University of Sussex to study general biology.
Jeremy Morse, Adam Hunt (12), Nick Pert (11) and Nigel Short at the Lloyds Bank Masters
Adam became an International Master in 2001 and then a FIDE Trainer in 2016. According to Felice and Megabase 2020 his attained his peak FIDE rating of 2466 in January 2008 at the age of 28.
Adam Hunt in 1998 Cathy Rogers
In 2004 Adam was living in Headington, Oxfordshire and in 2007 he moved to Ipswich in Suffolk and was married in 2019. Recently, Adam and his partner became parents to Henry.
As a junior (and together with Harriet) Adam first played for Cowley Chess Club.
Most recently Adam played for 4NCL Blackthorne Russia, prior to that Bettson.com, Midlands Monarchs and Perceptron Youth with Witney being his original team.
He was Director of Chess at Woodbridge School in Suffolk and was the brother of IM Harriet Hunt
With the white pieces is (almost exclusively) an e4 player playing the main line of Ruy Lopez (8.c3) and favouring the Fischer-Sozin against the Najdorf.
As the second player Adam played the Sicilian Najdorf and a 50:50 mixture of the King’s Indian and Grünfeld Defences.
If you share my interest in the subject of child prodigies, I’d probably start by referring you to this article by Edward Winter.
One name missing from this article, though, is that of Harry Jackson, who, in the late 1870s, was billed as the Yorkshire Morphy.
You might have met him briefly in my previous Minor Piece, but I’m sure you want to know where he came from, and what happened next.
Our story starts in what was in the 19th century the thriving mill town of Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, south of Leeds and Bradford, north east of Huddersfield.
Among those working in the cloth industry in the middle of the century was John Jackson. He and his wife Hannah had four sons and a daughter. While two of his sons, Samuel and Joshua, graduated into the middle classes, becoming solicitor’s clerks, the other boys pursued different careers. Abraham worked as a labourer before emigrating to Canada where he became a farmer. John, the youngest son, became (like my paternal grandfather in Leicester) a painter and decorator.
It was John who was the chess player, although I’d guess the whole family played socially. He and his wife, another Hannah, had a large family, three of whom played competitive chess. Harry, the Yorkshire Morphy, was his oldest son, born 16th December 1863. We’ll return to him later.
The next chess player in the family was William Ewart Jackson (1867-1951), his name suggesting that the family were supporters of the Liberal Party.
William (known as Willie) played for Dewsbury in the 1880s before moving to Leeds, where he worked for William Pape, a firm of glass merchants, and joining the local club. He was active in Leeds chess, both over the board and correspondence, until at least 1918.
Huddersfield Daily Examiner 15 February 1915
In what may have been one of his last matches (the Woodhouse Cup was suspended between 1916 and 1919) he was privileged to watch Atkins beating Yates in masterly fashion on top board.
Here are two games. Click on any move in any game in this article for a pop-up window.
White unnecessarily sacrificed a piece on move 39 when he might have held by going after the a-pawn.
The youngest of the chess-playing Jackson brothers was Joshua (1878-1935).
Joshua had an unusual competitive chess career, most of it taking place towards the end of his life.
There’s a J Jackson playing alongside Harry for Dewsbury in 1889, but it’s not clear whether this was John or Joshua.
It seems, though, that he only really started to take chess seriously after the First World War. In 1921 he entered the Yorkshire Championship, and also ventured to Manchester for the Northern Counties championship, where he was rather out of his depth, scoring only 1/7 against opponents such as Yates and Wahltuch, who shared first prize.
He was also playing correspondence chess, in 1922 winning his game for Yorkshire against Eric Augustus Coad-Pryor, whose father was at the time Vicar of Hampton Hill.
In 1923 he played again in the Northern Counties Championship, this time in Liverpool. That year the top section was a strong master tournament headed by Mieses, Maroczy, Thomas and Yates. Joshua played in the Major section, scoring 4½/9. Much interest was caused by the participation of 15-year-old Gerald Abrahams, who beat him in the first round.
In 1925 Scarborough Chess Club decided to run what they hoped would be the first of an annual series of tournaments over the Whitsun holiday. Joshua entered the major tournament, which was split into A and B sections along with another group for late entrants. The top two players in each section advanced to the play-offs.
Not all the results were recorded, but we know that he drew with Frank Schofield of Leeds, who won both his section and the play-offs, and beat both Sydney Meymott and Stephen Ludbrooke of Rotherham. As he didn’t qualify for the play-offs, I’d guess he may well have been third in the Major A section. A highly commendable result for someone in his late forties with, as far as I can tell, little competitive experience.
The 1926 Scarborough tournament was graced by the presence of the great Alekhine, who duly won the top section. Joshua again played in the Major, this time coming second to Edith Holloway in his section, and, second again in the play-off for 4th, 5th and 6th places. There were always several ladies competing in Scarborough.
I note that J Jackson of Dewsbury’s Yorkshire Terriers won a lot of prizes in the Belfast Dog Show that year. Is this also Joshua, I wonder?
He didn’t take part in 1927, but was back again in 1928, scoring 5/9 in his section of the Major tournament.
In 1929 they were struggling for strong players, due, in part, to the local corporation withdrawing their support, so the top section was very much a mixed affair. There were two genuine masters, Tartakower and Sir George Thomas, two strong amateurs in Harold Saunders and Victor Wahltuch, and four lesser players, one of who was Joshua Jackson. Unexpectedly, he had made the big time late in life.
While he was no match for the top players, he managed a win and two draws against the other lesser lights of the tournament, scoring a respectable 2/7.
The games were all recorded by Tinsley and have now been published in a book by Tony Gillam and by John Saunders (no relation to Harold) on BritBase.
Joshua played the Old Indian Defence too passively against both Saunders and Wahltuch and was duly squashed.
Here’s the Saunders game.
Against both Tartakower and Thomas he sacrificed a piece unsoundly thinking he was going to regain it but missing a fairly obvious tactic.
Here’s the Tartakower game.
He played out a steady, uneventful draw against Edith Holloway, concluding in a level pawn ending. Against Bolland he seemed to agree a draw in a winning position with two extra pawns.
His one win came from an instructive ending, when his opponent chose the wrong queen trade, going for a lost rather than a drawn pawn ending. There were further mutual blunders on move 42.
Among the other competitors was the 15-year-old Maurice Winterburn, also from Dewsbury, who may well have travelled there with Joshua.
Scarborough hosted the British Championships in 1930, although the championship itself was replaced by an international tournament. Joshua didn’t take part this time, but continued to play both over the board and by correspondence into the 1930s.
Chess was now becoming increasingly popular with teenage boys, and Joshua, as Dewsbury’s star player, served as a mentor to the youngsters coming through the door.
One of those was Maurice Child, who joined as a 15-year-old in 1932, and, 75 years later, had very fond memories of Joshua Jackson.
The outstanding personality between the two world wars was Josh Jackson. A fine player, among the top half-dozen in Yorkshire, and a great analyst. He was always ready to teach any young player and could play several games simultaneous and blindfold!
He was a barber and there was always on show in the shop a board with the latest position in his current correspondence game.
But it’s Harry you really want to know about, so we need to return to Dewsbury.
His father John first attended the annual meeting of the West Yorkshire Chess Association in 1876. Both John and Harry would also attend every year between 1877 and 1880.
In January 1877 John and Harry travelled to Lincolnshire, both taking part in the Second Class section of the inaugural Lincoln County Chess Association meeting.
The Chess Player’s Chronicle reported on this event.
The Westminster Papers added that “Master H Jackson is a young gentleman of promise, aged 13, and is likely to be heard from again in the world of Chess”. For the winner, Abraham Cockman, see this discussion.
It’s easy to forget, in these days of pre-teen grandmasters, how unusual it was for even 13-year-olds to take part in chess competitions, and interesting to note how much attention young Harry received at the time.
Inspired by this success, John was inspired to give young Harry a trial game against Samuel Walter Earnshaw at Leeds Chess Club a few weeks later.
Leeds Mercury 15 February 1877
At the gathering of the West Yorkshire Chess Association, there was concern that the strain of match play was too much for one so young.
Bradford Daily Telegraph 30 April 1877
Try telling that to Bodhana or Ethan.
In December a delegation from Huddersfield Chess Club led by John Watkinson, who would found the British Chess Magazine in 1881, visited the Dewsbury Working Men’s Club to assess their chess players. Watkinson took on ten of them, including both John and Harry Jackson, in a simul.
Harry’s game was unfinished but Watkinson thought he could win. Stockfish agrees with his assessment.
Harry played in Lincolnshire again over the New Year, but this time was less successful, as the Chess Player’s Chronicle reported.
The winner was Thomas Walter Marriott, not, as was reported in some sources, Arthur Towle Marriott. You’ll also note that Mary Rudge finished 3rd.
An interesting feature of this event was a displacement tournament, where the bishops and knights started on each other’s squares, an early precursor of Chess960.
A chess club had now started in Dewsbury, with Harry finishing in second place in their first tournament, and playing on top board in their first match, against Huddersfield.
John Watkinson visited again for another simul: this time Harry put up rather less resistance, inadvisedly choosing an unsound gambit as early as move 2..
After winning a prize in the West Yorkshire gathering, Harry ventured to London for the Counties Chess Association meeting.
He did well to win both his games against Rev John De Soyres, a pretty strong player (2146 on EdoChess at the time), who would later emigrate to Canada. You can read more about him here.
In this game his opponent, whom I believe to be Frederick Orme Darvall, who had been Auditor-General of Queensland 1867-77, but was by that time living in London, overlooked a mate in one.
Harry’s participation must have caused quite a stir, not just because of his age but because of his background as the son of a painter and decorator from Yorkshire. It was also not without controversy.
Batley Reporter and Guardian 10 August 1878
I like the description of John here, who sounds very much like some (but, I hasten to add, not all) chess parents today.
After this trip to the capital Harry continued playing locally, and also by correspondence.
He lost this game against the blind player Henry Millard.
Stockfish thinks it’s mate in 15, not mate in 11, but never mind.
In November 1879 he took the top board in a match between Dewsbury and Wakefield, winning two games and drawing one against schoolmaster John William Young, who taught English and Music at Wakefield Grammar School. John played in the same match, on bottom board, but was only able to conclude one game, which he lost.
In this game Harry’s speculative sacrifice proved successful.
In 1880 Harry returned to Lincolnshire, this time to Boston, where he won the 2nd class tournament of the Counties Chess Association.
But now he was playing less as he’d taken up a new hobby: composing chess problems. Between 1879 and 1881 many problems bearing his name appeared in a wide variety of publications. Two of them even won first prizes.
Problem solutions can be found at the end of the article.
Problem 1. #3 1st Prize (London) Brief 1880.
Problem 2. #2 1st Prize The Boys’ Newspaper 1881.
By 1881 Harry was living in London and involved with the City of London Club, taking on the role of librarian. In a match against St George’s he did very well to beat the very strong William Hewison Gunston 2-0. On 31st May the Chess Player’s Chronicle reported that ‘young Mr Jackson (lately Master Jackson of Dewsbury)’ had reached the last three in a handicap tournament before being eliminated.
I haven’t been able to locate him in that year’s census, but the rest of his family were all present and correct back in Dewsbury.
He remained in London for a few more years, playing, alongside his old friend Samuel Walter Earnshaw, in a simul against Mackenzie in 1882, and in 1883 beating Hugh William Sherrard in a match between the City of London 3rd team and Cambridge University, although he seems to have taken a break from composition.
At this point he may have moved back to Yorkshire. A couple of problems appeared in 1885, and then, in 1877, he turned up in York.
Yorkshire Evening Press 21 January 1887
Here he is at their 1887 AGM, resigning as secretary and being appointed vice-president, as well as winning their club championship and guaranteeing himself top board for the next year. Although this is the earliest mention I’ve been able to find he must have been there for several months.
Later records give the club venue as at Mr Jackson’s Cocoa House in High Ousegate, suggesting that this was Harry’s occupation at the time.
On 24 April 1889 the local unionist party held a major event. No less than 3000 people sat down for tea, followed by concerts, dancing, and a demonstration of living chess. Although this was not Harry’s party (he also played for York Liberals) he wasn’t above taking part. There was a pre-arranged game between two local dignitaries, and then a more serious game between Charles George Bennett and Harry Jackson.
York Herald 25 April 1889
The game was played to a pretty high standard considering the circumstances.
He had returned to the role of secretary of the Ebor Chess Club, but in 1890 he switched to the job of treasurer. The following year he resigned from that role and didn’t enter the club championship because he was away from home. But the 1891 census found him living in lodgings and working as a clerk, which suggests the cocoa house hadn’t been successful.
He continued to be very much involved with the Ebor club: as well as playing in matches he was giving regular simuls and lectures up until November 1894. After that, he seemed to disappear for a year or so.
In 1896 he turned up again – in another country.
Dundee Courier 24 February 1896
Here he is, having moved to Edinburgh. He would stay there some time.
The 1896/97 Scottish Electoral Register gives his address as 47 Comely Bank Place, north west of the city centre and not far from the Royal Botanic Gardens.
In this game from 1899 he overlooked a tactic.
In 1901 Harry was part of the Edinburgh team which won the Richardson Cup (Scottish KO Championship) for the first time.
Bridge of Allan Gazette 16 February 1901
And here, thanks to Edinburgh Chess Club, is the winning squad.
From https://en.chessbase.com/post/edinburgh-chess-club-200-anniversary. The 1901 Richardson Cup team members (Whitelaw was not in the five-player final) | John Moffat Studios, Edinburgh – courtesy of Edinburgh Chess Club
Harry Jackson is the burly (like his father) gentleman second from the left.
There’s no sign of Harry in the 1901 Scottish (or even the English) census. However (thanks to Alan McGowan for the information) he was in the 1901 Irish census, in Cork. He gave his occupation as a Commercial Traveller (Glass) and was living in a boarding house along with a number of other commercial travellers. He also said that he was married, but there was no sign of his wife.
In 1902 Edinburgh started two correspondence games against their counterparts in Rome, with Harry being one of the team.
Here’s the game in which Edinburgh played the white pieces, which concluded in early 1905.
Harry’s opponent in this game was an important figure in Scottish chess. The rather unimpressive 1. d4 d5 2. Qd3, which had been tried once by Pollock, seemed to have been his usual choice with White at this time.
Archibald Johnston Neilson might be considered Scotland’s answer to Antony Guest. He contributed an excellent column, usually twice a week, to his local paper, the Falkirk Herald, for 47 years, from 1895 right up to his death in 1942.
Perhaps he chatted with Harry after the game, asking him to contribute some problems. Since his early enthusiasm between 1879 and 1881 he had only composed occasionally, but now he entered the most prolific period of his chess problem career. For the next three years he regularly contributed problems, not just to the Falkirk Herald but also to the Mid-Lothian Journal.
His games from this period shine a light on both Harry’s strengths and weaknesses.
He could lose horribly when his opening went wrong, as in these two games. You’ll see in the first game that, although he was an Edinburgh player, he sometimes represented Glasgow in matches against English club. (Coincidentally, a Scotsman with the same name as his English opponent here wrote an excellent book on the King’s Gambit some years ago.)
Given the opportunity, Harry could demonstrate skill in the ending: another couple of games.
By way of contrast, here’s an exciting game featuring opposite side castling with both kings seemingly in danger.
Now for a few of his problems from this period of his life.
Problem 3. #2 Mid-Lothian Journal 21 Apr 1905
Problem 4. #3 Falkirk Herald (for Stirling solving contest) 15 May 1905
Problem 5. #2 Falkirk Herald 31 May 1906
To conclude, an easy one with a very familiar theme.
Problem 6. #3 Falkirk Herald 24 Apr 1907
The year 1911 brings us a surprise. Harry isn’t in the Scottish census, but turns up in the English census, in Salford, near Manchester, visiting John Harry Leyland and his family. He’s aged 47 and working on his own account as a dealer in glass bottles. Perhaps there’s some connection there with his brother William, who was also in the glass business. He also has a wife, Ellen, aged 43: they’ve been married 17 years with one child, who is still alive, but not on the census record. Later records will tell us that their child’s name was May.
It’s a reasonable guess that Ellen, also known as Nellie, was related to the Leyland family, and we can locate an 1867 birth record which matches. The family were from Lancashire, but spent the first few years of their marriage in Smethwick. There’s no marriage record for Harry Jackson and Ellen Leyland from round about 1893-94, but there is one from 1902 in Chorlton, not all that far from Salford, so I’d guess that was where and when they married. There’s also a birth record for May Leyland in York in 1895 (no mother’s maiden name given), which was about the time he moved from York to Edinburgh. It seems like Harry and Ellen had had an affair, and perhaps the birth of their daughter prompted them to move to Scotland. They only got round to getting married some years later. Although we know Harry was on the 1901 Irish Census, I haven’t yet been able to find Ellen/Nellie and/or May on any of the England and Wales, Scottish or Irish census for that year.
Harry seems to have been back in Scotland by June, when he was elected one of the vice-presidents of the Scottish Chess Association. He was in august company: one of his fellow VPs was future Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law.
In February 1912 he returned to the Edinburgh team after an absence, facing Percy Wenman of Glasgow in the Richardson Cup final, the game being drawn on adjudication.
And that he seems to have taken a long break from chess, and it’s not for almost a decade that we pick him up again.
The 1921 Scottish census goes some way to confirming my suspicions.
Here we have Harry, 57, born in Dewsbury, Nellie, 54, born in Smethwick, and May, 26, born in York. Harry was still working as a glass dealer on his own account, while Nellie and May were engaged in household duties. Their address was 13 South Charlotte Street and their residence, right in the city centre, just off Princes Street very close to the castle, had six rooms. Harry’s glass dealing business must have been very successful: not bad for the son of a painter and decorator from Dewsbury.
After an absence of more than a decade Harry returned to the fray in 1923, continuing to play until late the following year, when, perhaps for health reasons, he retired from competitive chess.
Again there was an unexpected move: back to London. They may have been somewhere else first, but in 1927 Harry and Nellie showed up on the electoral roll in Hampton Wick, which is just over Kingston Bridge. Their address was 1 Garden Cottages, Park Road, which, I suspect is where Ingram House is now, just across the road from the Timothy Bennet memorial and a gate into Bushy Park.
This was one of a pair of cottages: number 2 was occupied by John and Unity Chatterton: the unusually named (after her mother) Unity was Nellie’s sister, and it seems the families must have moved there at the same time.
He didn’t stay there very long, though, dying of heart disease just a few months later.
The death record tells us he had been a Medical Bottle Merchant, perhaps acquiring them from his brother William’s company and selling them to hospitals, pharmacies and doctors. His daughter May had travelled down from Scotland where she was living in a remote village on the shore of Loch Tay with her husband, William Eric Graham Wilson.
His old friend Archibald Neilson wrote an obituary.
Falkirk Herald 12 October 1927
The British Chess Magazine noted his death in October, and published this obituary in November.
British Chess Magazine November 1927
You’ll note that they mistakenly called him Henry rather than Harry, the same error they would make a few years later by calling Fred Yates ‘Frederick’.
“A fine and striking personality, he was of a reserved, if not shy, disposition.” “Generous to a fault, and of a quiet and modest demeanour.” A fine way to be remembered by your friends. In the words of the cobbler Timothy Bennet, whose memorial stands opposite where Harry spent his last days, “I am unwilling to leave the world a worse place than I found it”. I’d like to think Harry Jackson would have approved.
Blackburne’s prophecy wasn’t quite fulfilled, but he was still one of the best players around, first in Yorkshire, and then in Scotland. If he hadn’t hampered himself by playing ‘certain bizarre moves in the opening’ he might have ranked higher still. He was also a skilled and, at times, prolific problem composer.
Nellie, John and Unity were still in Garden Cottages in 1928, and by 1929 John and Unity’s son, also John, had reached voting age. By 1930, though, both cottages were in different ownership.
One further thought: in 1928 a new shop opened not very far from there. Perhaps Nellie walked up the road for a few minutes, turned right into Bushy Park Road, crossed the railway line over the level crossing (there’s a footbridge there now) and, coming to the end of the road, visited the Ham and Beef Store owned by the Misses Ada and Louisa Padbury to stock up on provisions. Perhaps she saw a young girl there as well: Ada and Louisa were juggling running the shop with bringing up their irresponsible sister Florence’s illegitimate daughter Betty. (Nellie, the mother of an illegitimate daughter herself, would have been sympathetic.) Perhaps John Chatterton, who was a schoolmaster, taught at the local primary school she attended. Perhaps the family also worshipped at St John the Baptist, Hampton Wick, just a short walk from their homes in the other direction. This was the church where, two decades later, Betty would marry, and where her older son would be baptised. Many years further on, he would tell the story of the chess career of Harry Jackson, the Yorkshire Morphy.
Another coincidence: Unity returned to Lancashire, dying in Ormskirk in 1961. At round about that time, Betty and her family visited Ormskirk, where her favourite cousin Marion, the bridesmaid at her wedding, lived for many years.
It’s another golden thread that binds us all together.
If you’re interested in my file of Jackson family games and problems, let me know and I can send it to you. If you have any more information about this family, I’d love to see it and perhaps incorporate it in this article. And don’t forget to join me again soon for some more Minor Pieces.
Problem solutions
Problem 1.
Problem 2.
Problem 3.
Problem 4.
Problem 5.
Problem 6.
Sources and Acknowledgements
I thought this might be a quick article to research, but it turned out to be anything but. You have someone with a common name who moved around quite a lot (Yorkshire, London, Edinburgh) and disappeared from the records for a time. There are a lot of traps for the unwary and I hope I’ve avoided most of them.
Steve Mann’s Yorkshire Chess History is excellent on the Jackson family in Yorkshire, but doesn’t pick up Harry’s time in Scotland. Rod Edwards (EdoChess) picks up most of his English results, including some of his London matches, but attributes at least one to a totally different Jackson, and also doesn’t record his Scottish results. His Scottish problems are not to be found in the online collections I’ve consulted, which sometimes give him a non-existent middle initial: HS Jackson. Confusingly there was also an HB Jackson from, of all places, Fiji, submitting problems to the Illustrated London News in the late 19th century, some of which have been incorrectly attributed to Harry. This was the unrelated Henry Bower Jackson, whose aunt was married to a distant cousin of Edmund and Eliza Thorold. He in turn was seemingly not related to Sir Henry Moore Jackson, who became Governor-General of Fiji in 1902.
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Scotland’s People
Yorkshire Chess History (Harry Jackson here)
Alan McGowan (Chess Scotland historian/archivist)
New in Chess (Edinburgh CC 200th Anniversary here)
EdoChess (Rod Edwards: Harry Jackson here)
BritBase (John Saunders)
ChessBase/Stockfish 17
Yet Another Chess Problem Database (Harry Jackson here)
MESON chess problem database (Harry Jackson here)
Google Books and Hathi Trust Digital Library (Chess Player’s Chronicle) British Chess Magazine November 1927
Geoff Steele website
My first Minor Piece, 3½ years ago, featured the Reverend Samuel Walter Earnshaw, the missing link between Paul Morphy and my great grandmother Jane Houghton.
I promised another article at some point demonstrating some more of his games. It’s more than time I wrote it, so here it is.
Let me take you back first of all to 9 July 1858, when Earnshaw, a young chess addict in his mid twenties in his first ministry, at St Mary’s Church Bromley St Leonards in East London, just south of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, travelled into town to watch the young American star Paul Morphy in action against Samuel Standidge Boden. He recorded the moves, and, in 1874/5, submitted it for publication in the City of London Chess Magazine. You can read the first volume online here (it’s on page 280, with extensive annotations by Steinitz). The two Samuels became firm friends: I suggested in my previous article that Earnshaw might have been considered Boden’s Mate.
Here’s what Stockfish thinks of the game. Click on any move for a pop-up window.
Boden must have taught Earnshaw this variation, which would become his lifelong pet defence to the King’s Gambit.
The following year, he obtained a second curacy at St Thomas’s Church Birmingham, and, for some years, disappeared from the chess world.
His next job was in the small village of Nether Whitacre, 12 miles or so outside Birmingham, where he baptised several members of my great grandmother Jane Houghton’s family.
By 1865 he’d returned to chess, joining the Birmingham and Edgbaston Chess Club. Here he is, winning their club championship.
The Era 31 December 1865
He was also submitting many of his games, losses as well as wins, to the Birmingham Journal (editor unknown, appearing irregularly between 17 June 1865 and 26 December 1868, 57 articles in total, according to Tim Harding in British Chess Literature to 1914). One wonders if Earnshaw himself wrote the column, given that it published many of his games and stopped at the point when he left Birmingham.
Let’s look at a few of them.
You can judge from these games that Earnshaw enjoyed attacking chess, being particularly fond of the Evans Gambit.
He was also travelling down to London to play at the capital’s chess haunts, where he was winning games against opponents such as the German endgame expert Josef Kling.
In this game he was successful on the white side of the King’s Gambit.
At this time, matches between clubs were starting to take place. In 1866 he played for Birmingham in a match against Worcester. Although he lost both his games, his team scored a narrow victory.
Illustrated London News 14 April 1866
You’ll spot some interesting names in the Worcester squad. There’s Lord Lyttelton, Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire and sometime President of the British Chess Association. Then we have the future Sir Walter Parratt, whom you might recall would, a few decades later, play in several Windsor – Twickenham matches.
At some point that year Earnshaw played, as you will have seen in the earlier article, a series of games against Steinitz. It’s uncertain whether these were played in London or in Birmingham. I showed you the games last time, but have now asked Stockfish for its opinion.
Another game between Earnshaw and Steinitz was published in 1879, without any indication of when (except ‘some time ago’) or where it was played. It might, I suppose, have been one of this series.
In the 1866-67 Birmingham Club Championship Earnshaw reached the semi-final, where he was paired against John Halford. After 8 games the scores were level, with three wins apiece and two draws, so lots were drawn, resulting in his opponent proceeding to the final.
Here’s one of his wins.
In April 1867 Earnshaw took part in another match, this time against a combined team from two other clubs.
The Era 21 April 1867
Lord Lyttelton was again representing the opposing team. I guess he was an honorary member of several clubs. Within a couple of decades exceedingly pleasant meetings between chess clubs would become much more frequent, strengthening the social bonds of friendship between Chess players. Long may they continue.
But then there seems to have been a break in Earnshaw’s chess career. In August 1867, as reported in my previous article, he was involved in a tragic incident, which must have affected him very much. Perhaps as a result, he left Nether Whitacre at the end of the year. His last baptism was in November, and by 22 December a new incumbent had taken over.
And look! There, on the other side, is Maria Howton (Houghton)’s illegitimate son, not, I should add, her first, fathered by a butcher in a neighbouring village, being baptised. Maria was a sister of my great grandmother Jane Houghton. Soon afterwards she’d finally marry, and Henry would take on his step-father’s surname, becoming Henry Tomes.
Earnshaw then took on a chaplaincy in Tremadog in North Wales, before being appointed headmaster of Archbishop Holgate School, Hemsworth, Yorkshire.
With a new job and five young children (born between 1861 and 1870) he must have been too busy to devote much time to chess, but by the mid 1870s he had joined both Sheffield and Leeds Chess Clubs. In 1874 he lost to Blackburne in a Sheffield simul, and in 1877 he was matched against a child prodigy in a friendly game.
Leeds Mercury 15 February 1877
Young Master Jackson didn’t exactly become a second Morphy, but his story is one perhaps for another time.
Here’s the game.
At the end of 1876, it appears that Earnshaw’s friend and fellow clergyman George Alcock MacDonnell took over the chess column of the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. In 1877 Earnshaw returned to the ministry, becoming Rector of Ellough, a tiny village near Beccles in Suffolk, which nevertheless boasted a splendid church. His predecessor there, Richard Aldous Arnold, who had served his few parishioners for more than 60 years, came from the same family as Thomas Arnold of Rugby School and his poet son Matthew.
He now had more time for chess, travelling to London every seventh week to play at Simpson’s and Purssell’s, crossing swords, usually unsuccessfully, with the likes of Gunsberg, Blackburne, Mason and Bird, as well as winning miniatures against fellow amateurs. He would have been able to take the Great Eastern Railway from Beccles to their new Liverpool Street terminus, which had opened in 1874. He sent many of his games to Macdonnell, who was happy to publish them in his magazine column.
He was winning at one point in both these games, but ended up losing.
In the summer of 1878 Earnshaw played what would be his only public tournament, the Counties Chess Association meeting in London, but it didn’t go well for him. He only managed one draw from eight games (one may have been a loss by default) before withdrawing with four rounds still to play.
He threw away a good position again in this game.
The tournament proved controversial in more ways than one. The second class tournament included teenage prodigy Harry Jackson, whose father provoked some anger by interfering in one of his son’s games. Yes, we’ve all known parents like that. But that was a minor incident compared with the participation of the automaton Mephisto (operated by Gunsberg, although this wasn’t known at the time) in the Handicap Tournament confined to amateurs.
A few weeks later, Earnshaw tried a Fried Liver Attack against Mason when Black’s pawn was already on a6. Stockfish, unlike MacDonnell in his annotations, is happy with this, but again White lost the thread, ending up on the wrong end of a brilliancy.
Back in Suffolk, he was doing his bit to promote chess in Beccles.
Norfolk Chronicle 07 December 1878
By 1880 he was even described as a ‘chess celebrity’.
Norwich Mercury 14 January 1880
Here are a couple of wins against lower level opposition from this period.
His friend Samuel Boden’s death in January 1882 hit him hard: perhaps this is one reason why, by that time, his games were appearing less often in the press.
But in 1885 he turned up in an inter-club match. The St George’s team included Marmaduke Wyvill, runner-up in the first ever international tournament back in 1851, and formerly Rishi Sunak’s predecessor as MP for Richmond, Yorkshire.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 24 January 1885
On the other side of the board, you’ll notice George Archer Hooke, who had another half century of competitive chess ahead of him, two boards above Earnshaw, with the splendidly named problemist Edward Nathan Frankenstein sitting between them.
But the next we hear from Samuel Walter Earnshaw, sadly, is from this death record, giving his name as Earnshaw-Wall (Wall was his mother’s maiden name, an affectation used by his son Walter Ethelbert Stacey Earnshaw-Wall .
The cause of death is given as Gout (21 days) and Pericarditis (3 days).
You’ll have read MacDonnell’s warm tribute to his friend in the previous article.
A true and enthusiastic lover of chess, we are told. Not a great player, but a good enough player, and really that’s all that matters. He was, for his day, well booked up, enjoying gambit play and demonstrating strong attacking skills, but all too often he would miscalculate or make careless mistakes and throw away his advantage. But he clearly enjoyed playing, whether against fellow amateurs or against the leading masters of his time. He, and many others like him, over the past 150 years or more, are what chess, in my opinion, is really all about. I’m delighted that my great grandmother and her family had made his acquaintance.
Join me again soon for more Minor Pieces.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
ChessBase 17/Stockfish 17
chessgames.com (Earnshaw here)
Yorkshire Chess History (Steve Mann: Earnshaw here)|
EdoChess (Rod Edwards: Earnshaw here) British Chess Literature to 1914 (Tim Harding: McFarland 2018) Steinitz in London (Tim Harding: McFarland 2020)
Other sources referenced and linked to above
Ralph Jackson won the Sydney Junior Championship back in 1976 and is currently ranked 7th among players in Australia born before 1960.
He is also intrigued by family history, and his interest was piqued in 2015 when a cousin showed him transcripts of letters his great grandfather’s brother had been sent by an English nephew in 1874 and 1875 concerning his family’s financial struggles, and his mother’s illness and subsequent death.
He idly, as one does, entered the name of his English relation, of whom he had previously been unaware, into Google and was both startled and delighted to discover that Antony Guest had been a prominent chess player and journalist. You could even make the case that he was the Leonard Barden of his time, and that, almost a century after his death, his influence can still be felt today.
When Ralph noticed that I’d mentioned Guest in an earlier Minor Piece he contacted me to ask what more I could discover about him. As he was on my list of future Minor Pieces, in part because of his local connections to me, I was more than happy to oblige.
The birth of Antony Alfred Geoffrey Guest (he didn’t use his rather splendid middle names for chess purposes) was registered in the second quarter of 1856 in Staines, Middlesex. His father Augustus was a schoolmaster, classicist and artist, the son of Thomas Douglas Guest. His mother Phoebe, also known as Elizabeth or Mary, was the daughter of refugees, originally from Eastern Europe, but who had arrived via Denmark. Although she was born in the Jewish faith she later converted to Christianity.
Antony was baptised by cricketing clergyman Henry Vigne in St Mary’s Church Sunbury on June 18 that year. Entirely coincidentally, I visited that church recently and took a few photographs.
I don’t know the age of the font on the left: the inscription records when it was moved, not when it was installed, but I’d guess it wasn’t the one in which baby Antony was baptised.
By 1861 the family, now joined by Isabella Katherine Celia Guest (who would later be known as Katherine or Kate), had moved to Thayer Street in central London, conveniently situated just a few yards from the Chess & Bridge Shop in Baker Street.
But on 20 June 1864 Augustus was admitted to Grove Hall Lunatic Asylum, where he died on 19 March 1866. The family were now struggling to maintain their previously affluent lifestyle, and Antony had to leave school early. By 1871 he was working as a clerk, while his mother was now a lodging-house keeper. Isabella was, for some reason, visiting a carter’s family in Hampshire.
Meanwhile, Phoebe’s three brothers, Abraham (who changed his name to Alfred Lionel), Henry and Maurice had emigrated to Australia in the 1850s, seeking their fortune in the Gold Rush.
Henry, in particular, did very well for himself. After visiting the gold fields he took a job in public service, later rising to become Registrar-General of Victoria as well as attaining the rank of Major in the volunteer forces.
It was Uncle Alfred who was the recipient of Antony’s surviving (in transcript) letters.
The first letter Ralph has is from July 1874.
Circumstances have gone very hard with us of late, my mother has been very ill lately, and has been unwell for the last two years, and find it very very difficult to make ends meet-, especially since food and other necessities have become so dear, a little assistance therefore now and then would be a very great comfort to her.
In October he wrote again with the sad news that his mother had died of gastric (typhoid) fever the previous month.
My poor mother left her affairs in a very unsettled condition, her debts amounting to nearly 70 pounds, and my sister and myself would be greatly obliged to you or our uncle Henry for any assistance you could give us.
In December he informed Uncle Alfred that he had moved into a boarding house and his employer had lent him enough money to pay off his mother’s debts, but it appears that his family in Australia had been unable to help financially.
Ralph’s final letter, from April the following year, sees Antony telling his uncle that his prospects were now good, but thanking him for his offer of a home in Australia for his ‘delicate’ sister Isabella. If she took up the offer she wasn’t there long as she was back in England by 1881.
Here, then, was a formerly prosperous family that, due to illness and death, and perhaps also financial mismanagement, had hit hard times. Young Antony was doing his best to sort things out.
He also developed an interest in chess, watching one of the games in the 1876 match between Steinitz and Blackburne, and remembering, almost a quarter of a century later, how deeply absorbed he was.
We next pick him up in 1880, when he applied to become a member of the London Stock Exchange. The 1881 census found him on holiday at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, giving his occupation as Stock Jobber. A Stock Jobber was a private trader in stocks and shares, as opposed to a Stock Broker who worked for clients. The Grand Hotel, according to Wikipedia, “was intended for members of the upper classes visiting the town and remains one of Brighton’s most expensive hotels”. He’d clearly turned round his family fortunes, then.
By this time, Antony was spending much of his spare time frequenting Purssell’s and other places where the game was played socially.
He also acquired a new job, as a journalist for the Morning Post, a Conservative daily newspaper which would be taken over by the Daily Telegraph in 1937. In 1883 a major international tournament took place in London and Antony was dispatched to report on it. His reports must have proved very popular as the paper commissioned him to start a weekly column, beginning on 28 May 1883.
The column would typically include a problem (sometimes two) for solving, a list of successful solvers of the problem from two weeks earlier, a game, either contemporary or historical, news from home and abroad, answers to readers’ questions and, on occasion, book reviews, such as this one.
Morning Post 16 July 1883
Guest was always very enthusiastic about promoting chess for ladies, so would have been pleased to support Miss Beechey‘s venture.
Although he was not yet playing in public, he started publishing a few of his own games later in the year. Here he gave his opponent odds of pawn and move (he played black without his f-pawn). As always, click on any move in the game for a pop-up window.
By 1884 he had also started to compose problems, at first in collaboration with future BCF President John Thursby.
You’ll find the solution to all problems at the end of the article.
Problem 1. #3 A Guest & J Thursby Morning Post 26-05-1884
At the same time he played in public for the first time, in a handicap tournament at Simpson’s. Here he was accepting odds of pawn and move from the masters, who, in his section, were Blackburne and Gunsberg. He won his section with 7½/9, but was beaten by Mason, also giving him odds, in the play-off between the winners of the two sections.
Buoyed by this success he took part in his first master tournament, an event run by the British Chess Association in London. His performance, considering his lack of experience, was rather remarkable.
Gunsberg, as expected, ran out a comfortable winner with 14/15, but Guest shared second place with Bird on 12/15.
In his game against Wainwright (see earlier Minor Pieces) he gave up the exchange in the opening but later trapped his opponent’s queen.
He won very quickly against Hewitt, who wasn’t given the chance to recover from a hesitation in the opening.
This was a most auspicious debut for a relatively young (by the standards of the day) player. It was probably anticipated that he would have a big future in master chess, but, as it turned out, his first high level tournament would also be his best result.
Later that year Guest was involved in an interesting debate with John Ruskin.
Morning Post 14 September 1885
The debate as to whether chess should be on the school curriculum is still going on today, almost 140 years later. Unlike many of my colleagues in the world of junior chess, I’m very much in agreement with Guest here. Ralph Jackson shares our views.
Here’s another problem, this time a joint composition with Louis Desanges.
Problem 2. #3 A Guest & L Desanges Morning Post 16-11-1885
On the same day that this problem was published there was some important news.
Morning Post 16 November 1885
A few months later the new club ran a master tournament in which Guest took part, but this time he was much less successful, only scoring 2/7, well behind Blackburne (6½), Bird and Gunsberg (both 5), and not helped by defaulting his game against Pollock.
I’m not sure whether or not this game was played in the tournament. Guest attempted to play like Steinitz, but it didn’t end well.
He had better luck later in the year in the British Chess Association Amateur Championship, which was won by Gattie (15/18), Guest sharing second place with previous Minor Piece subjects Hooke and Wainwright on 13½/18.
Guest’s next tournament was towards the end of 1887: the British Chess Association Congress in London. He had originally entered a lower section, but, on the withdrawal of Skipworth, was, at the last minute, promoted to the master section, where he would face the likes of Blackburne, Burn, Gunsberg and the ailing Zukertort.
He got off to a flying start, winning his first three games, against Bird, Pollock and the perpetual backmarker Mortimer.
His game against Pollock wasn’t short of excitement. He defended the Evans Gambit and, after various adventures, his extra pawn on the queenside eventually turned into a queen.
In Round 3 Guest sacrificed two rooks to win Mortimer’s queen. He miscalculated some later tactics, but his opponent failed to take advantage.
After a loss to Lee in the fourth round, his fifth round opponent, Mason, failed to arrive because he had confused the start time. Guest was originally awarded a win by default, but it was later decided that the game should be replayed, Mason winning.
He then lost his last four games against some of the world’s strongest players.
Against Burn he played a totally unsound Greek Gift sacrifice in this position, overlooking Black’s diagonal defence.
The game continued 9. Bxh7+? Kxh7 10. Ng5+ Kg8 and now he must have realised that 11. Qh5 fails to Bf5, while the move he tried, Qd3+, failed to g6. Regular Minor Piece readers will recall Locock making the same mistake.
Here’s the tournament crosstable.
In August 1888 the British Chess Association Amateur Championship took place in Bradford. I’m not sure how ‘amateur’ was defined (Guest was a professional chess journalist, but not a professional player), but the 1888 event was a rather weak affair compared to other years, notable for the participation of Eliza Thorold in days when ladies very rarely competed against gentlemen. There was a master tournament taking place at the same time in which some of the stronger amateurs, such as Charles Dealtry Locock, participated. Guest won with a score of 10/12, just half a point ahead of 20-year-old Bradford born mathematician George Adolphus Schott, who, however, defeated him in their individual game.
In this game, winning his opponent’s IQP proved decisive.
The Field 01 September 1888
In August 1889 Antony Guest reported some important news. A lady had won the championship of the Bristol and Clifton Chess Club.
Morning Post 19 August 1889
“There is no reason why (ladies) should not excel at the game.” Guest’s views, propounded in a Conservative-leaning newspaper, were quite enlightened for his day. It was not until 1895, though, that another – very successful – Ladies’ Chess Club was started.
In November and December 1889 the British Chess Association Masters and Amateur tournaments took place consecutively rather than simultaneously in London, so George Wainwright was able to play in both events, while Guest only took part in the latter event. In those days games in amateur tournaments were played on a fairly casual basis with games often being postponed when one of the players was unavailable.
It seems that this event ground to a halt just before Christmas once Wainwright had guaranteed victory. Several of the other players, including Guest, had been too busy to play many of their games.
It’s not known whether any further games were played after this incomplete crosstable was published.
The Field 21 December 1889
As you’ll see, Guest was the only player to beat Wainwright, in an opening variation still topical today.
He made a tactical oversight in his game against Thomas Gibbons. His opponent, a disciple of Bird, opened with 1. f4 and sacrificed a pawn on the kingside for nebulous attacking chances.
In this position, 25… Ne7 would have kept him well in control, but he erred by playing 25… Be7? 26. Rdg1! Qxh4? 27. Rxg7+ Kh8 28. Qxf5!!, after which he had to resign.
From here on, Antony Guest was playing less frequently, perhaps by choice, or perhaps because he was too busy with other activities.
The 1891 census found Guest and his fellow chess journalist Leopold Hoffer living in lodgings in Fulham Road, right by Stamford Bridge stadium, which would, in 1905, become the home of the newly founded Chelsea FC.
Just look at the name of their next door neighbour.
Yes, there he is: Raymond Keene. Not, to the best of my knowledge, related to his grandmaster and author namesake, although this Raymond’s son and grandson were also named Raymond Keene.
In an 1891 club match Guest’s temporary queen sacrifice brought victory against a strong opponent who really should have spared himself the last 20 moves.
Later that year, Guest and Hoffer were both involved in a telephone chess match against Liverpool.
Daily News (London) 14 December 1891
Liverpool won the first game, while the second game resulted in a draw.
In August 1892 Guest returned to tournament chess, taking part in the Counties Chess Association tournament in Brighton.
It didn’t go well.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 13 August 1892
George MacDonnell was particularly scathing about his performance.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 13 August 1892
He should make due preparation and exert himself to the utmost. He didn’t pull his punches, did he?
Guest went horribly wrong on move 10 against the eventual winner.
But he did manage to win a nice minature against Lambert.
The following month he reached this position in a game at Simpson’s against OC Müller.
Here, Guest played 27. Qg6!, an offer which can’t be accepted, and threatening Qxh7+, an offer which can’t be refused. Black should now play 27… h6, when the game is likely to be drawn by perpetual check after 28. Rh3 and a later Rxh6+. Instead he erred with 27… Bg2?, and had to resign after 28. Rg4, as h6 would be met by Rxg2.
This scathing criticism of his play in Brighton didn’t stop him playing in club matches, such as this one against Twickenham.
The Field 21 January 1893
You can read more about the Humphreys family here and about Guest’s opponent here.
He was also playing for Metropolitan, here losing a brilliancy against one of the ‘fighting reverends’. He really should have known his chess history, though. Wayte reached a winning position from the opening by transposing into a very well known predecessor.
By now Antony Guest had resumed his problem composing career, now without collaborators.
Problem 3. #3 A Guest Morning Post 1893
(Source given in MESON: however I wasn’t able to find it in a quick look to identify the date of publication.)
Problem 4. #3 A Guest Illustrated London News 25-08-1894
In 1895 he took part in the cable match between the British and Manhattan Chess Clubs, where he faced John ‘Paddy’ Ryan, capable, according to the press, of producing ‘startling brilliancies’.
Here, Ryan punted the speculative 21… Bxh3!?. What do you think? We’ll never find out what would have happened as at that point time was called and the game declared drawn.
The Ladies’ Chess Club had been founded in January 1895, and Guest used his Morning Post column to promote their activities. He was invited to give a simul at their prizegiving ceremony.
Morning Post 29 July 1895
Approaching his 40th birthday, it might have seemed like Antony Guest was a confirmed bachelor, but in 1896 he married Violet Harrington Wyman, some eleven years his junior. Violet’s brother Harrington Edward Hodson Wyman, was a knight odds player at the British Chess Club, later becoming vice-president of Ealing Chess Club. Her family firm were the publishers of Mortimer’s The Chess-Player’s Pocket Book.
In January 1897 Guest returned to tournament chess, playing in a ten-player selection tournament for that year’s Anglo-American cable match. Again he failed to complete the event, withdrawing after only three games, two losses and a win against Herbert Jacobs. Whether or not this was due solely to pressure of work is unclear.
This would be his last tournament, although he continued playing club chess. His performances, as you can see here (taken from EdoChess), show a steady downward trajectory after a promising start.
The year 1897 was significant for the publication of FR Gittins’ volume The Chess Bouquet.
As one of the Chief Chess Editors of the United Kingdom, Guest certainly qualified for inclusion.
We’re offered a photograph, a biography, a game (against Pollock, see above) and two problems. Here’s how Gittins describes him.
Physically, Mr. Guest is a perfect giant, his towering form and splendid proportions being well in evidence at the recent Hastings Festival. Socially, he is one of the best, full of bonhomie and good humour.
This is a charming mate in 2, which, unfortunately, had been anticipated by Conrad Bayer, who had published a mirror image back in 1865. It’s been reprinted on a number of occasions over the years.
Problem 5. #2 A Guest The Chess Bouquet 1897
The second problem, number 3 above, was unfortunately given with a missing pawn on c7, allowing an unwanted second solution.
He wasn’t the only Guest in The Chess Bouquet. There were also entries for Black Country problemists Thomas Guest and his son Francis Hubert Guest, who were not, as far as I can tell, related to Antony.
Here’s an exciting game played at Simpson’s against a French opponent.
Although now retired from tournament play, Guest was still making occasional appearances in consultation games, and club and county matches, both over the board and by correspondence. He was also publishing the occasional problem, such as this one, from 1900.
Problem 6. #3 A Guest Morning Post 12-03-1900
Later that year, Guest wrote a very interesting article entitled Steinitz and Other Chess-Players, first published in The Contemporary Review, and later republished in the USA in The Living Age.
The last three paragraphs, which take a broader social view of the game, are those which interest me most.
Here he is, celebrating the increasing popularity of chess among the working classes.
The present extraordinary growth of the popularity of the game must surely have some significance. Many of the players are young men engaged in offices, shops and factories; that their numbers include several clergymen, doctors, lawyers and members of other professions is not so remarkable. What strikes me as important is that so many young clerks, and others of similar occupation, should find their chief recreation, at least in the winter months, in the game of chess.
And here again on the artistic side of chess.
But I believe that in most of us there is some kind of artistic instinct, some aesthetic tendency, that finds no outlet in the humdrum of everyday life. If this is true it would sufficiently account for the increasing popularity of chess, for it is an art as well as a game. Its intricacies and combinations are capable of affording aesthetic delight that may be compared with the emotions produced by poetry, pictures or music — different, no doubt, but, to many, similarly sufficing. One need not be an expert to enjoy the pleasure of play; to the beginner it is like a voyage through an unknown country teeming with beautiful surprises. Every sitting reveals some new and captivating feature, suggests some tempting path, or affords some hint as to the best mode of pursuing the journey.
They don’t write them like that any more, do they?
You can read the whole article, along with the chapter about Guest in The Chess Bouquet, in this excellent article by Batgirl (Sarah Beth Cohen).
In 1901 it was time for another census. Strangely, Mr & Mrs Guest were not together. Antony was lodging in Bayswater, while Violet and her parents were lodging in Hastings, perhaps on holiday together.
He returned to the social aspect of chess in a 1901 article explaining how chess can build friendships between people of different nationalities.
Bromley and West Kent Telegraph 12 October 1901
For a few years now, Guest seemed, apart from his column, to stop both playing and composing, only resuming in 1907.
In this game against G Freeman from a Surrey v Essex county match he built up a strong attack from the King’s Gambit Declined.
Black had just blundered and now the rather neat 23. Rf5! forced resignation.
Problem 7. #3 A Guest Morning Post 12-08-1907
His game annotations were also being syndicated across various newspapers.
In July 1909 Antony Guest was honoured to be the subject of a feature in the British Chess Magazine, who published a photograph along with a biographical sketch contributed by Frank Preston Wildman.
Problem 8. #3 A Guest British Chess Magazine 07-1907
At some point during this decade, Antony and Violet moved out to 1 Anglesea Road, Kingston, alongside the Thames half way between Kingston and Surbiton. This was a sizeable property, with 12 rooms excluding bathrooms. (I’m not sure whether or not it was the white building you can see behind the trees, which is now Anglesea Lodge, 28 Portsmouth Road.)
This is the view from the Barge Walk on the other side of the river.
The 1911 census found them there, along with two servants, William and Marie Wilkins, a married couple of about their age, and the Wilkins’ teenage daughter Elsie.
Guest decided to join Surbiton Chess Club, playing in this match against Wimbledon.
Wimbledon News 23 December 1911
He was now becoming less active in the chess world, but in 1914 had the opportunity to express his views again on chess for schoolboys.
Cork Weekly News 25 July 1914
“In opening the way to friendships the practice of chess is very valuable to young men.”
I totally agree, although these days we might want to refer to young people instead. It worked for me, anyway.
Guest’s column continued through the war, although there was little chess action to report.
Here, he took the lack of competitive chess during the hostilities to promote the value of social chess in promoting friendship.
Cheltenham Chronicle 15 January 1916
His wife Violet sadly died in February 1921. That June the 1921 census found him still the head of the household at 1 Anglesea Road, and still working as a journalist. There was a resident housekeeper, but most of the property was taken up by motor builder John Bambury, who ran his own business in Kingston, along with his wife and five children aged between 17 and 22.
Guest was still seen regularly at major events such as Hastings and the British Championship, but by the 1924-25 Hastings Congress he was clearly in poor health and died after an operation on 29 January.
Linlithgowshire Gazette 13 February 1925
He didn’t leave that much money, compared to Hamilton Brooke Guernsey, one of whose administrators, Leslie Dewing, – one for coincidence lovers here – would have seen him at Hastings four weeks earlier, where he lost all his games in the Premier Section 1. (Coincidentally again, or perhaps not, there’s currently a marketing agency in Guernsey called Hamilton Brooke.)
The Morning Post was far from being Guest’s only chess outlet. At various times, according to Tim Harding in British Chess Literature to 1914, he also wrote columns for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, the Daily News, Cassell’s Saturday Journal, Life and Tinsley’s Magazine.
Nor was chess the only subject on which he wrote. In 1891 Guest and barrister Sylvain Mayer co-authored Captured in Court, a novel with a legal setting. Some of the reviews were pretty harsh. “It is very unlikely to add to the reputation of either as story writers”, according to the Glasgow Herald. “… the bundle of incidents which does duty for a plot is as amateurish as the style”, proclaimed the National Observer. According to the Weekly Dispatch, “The plot is preposterous and the dialogue inane”. Preposterous plots and inane dialogues were perhaps more suitable for children’s literature, and, from 1895 onwards, he contributed to collections of short stories alongside such authors as E(dith) Nesbit, still much loved and remembered today for books such as The Railway Children.
In 1896 Antony Guest contributed an article on Some Old English Games to The Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, describing games such as Pall Mall and Shuffleboard, illustrated by Albert Ludovici., followed by More Notes on Old English Games a year later, this time including Bandy-Ball and Nine Men’s Morris.
In the early 20th century he developed (pun not intended) an interest in photography, and in 1907 his book Art and the Camera was published by G Bell and Sons, who of course also published chess books.
Morning Post 10 August 1907
This time the critics were unanimous in their praise. Modern reprints are readily available should you wish to read it.
In 1910 he turned his attention from cameras to cancer.
London Evening Standard 15 March 1910
It’s still a hot topic today, and the evidence is still inconclusive.
A man of many interests, as well as chess, then. Polymaths were probably more common then than now.
There are a couple of family issues to clear up.
Antony and Violet had no children. His sister (Isabella) Katherine married a wealthy man named Robert Edward McLeod in 1883. Robert’s brother Bentley was a chess player, representing Surrey, Brixton and Metropolitan, through the last of which he would have known Antony. Robert died in 1893, leaving his wife with two young children. Neither of them had children, so that was the end of Augustus Guest’s family. Katherine died, like her father, in a mental hospital, in Brighton in 1941.
To find Antony’s closest relations, then, we have to travel to Australia. Henry, whom you met at the start of this article, returned to England with some of his many children after his retirement. The family was hit by tragedy when his daughter Helen died in 1907. Helen and her older sister Ethel were very close, and, 18 months later, Ethel, suffering from depression as a result of the loss of her beloved sister, took her own life. There were mental health problems, then, on both sides of the Guest family.
Henry’s son Stanley later returned to Australia, married and had six children, the youngest of whom, Marisa, born in 1929, is still alive. Marisa, the closest surviving relation of Antony Guest, is the mother of Ralph Jackson.
One of the wonderful things about chess is that, even if playing competitive chess doesn’t appeal to you, there are many other ways of living your life through your favourite game. For Guest’s contemporary and acquaintance Charles Dealtry Locock it was through problems, writing and, in the last period of his life, teaching. For Antony Guest himself, it was as a journalist and occasional problemist. His record of almost 42 years might pale in comparison with Leonard Barden’s records, but it’s still very impressive. You can see a lot in common: both strong players who, finding competition a little bit too stressful, concentrated on their, in both cases, excellent newspaper columns, and perhaps did far more good in promoting chess in that way than they would have done by just playing.
He was in many ways a man ahead of his time as well. Although he wrote for a conservative newspaper, he was always very keen to promote chess for ladies, for the lower middle and working classes, and for schoolboys (it would be left to Locock to include schoolgirls). He also promoted chess for recreational and social reasons, to establish friendships on a local, national and international basis. I couldn’t agree more. Ralph Jackson is very lucky to be able to count Antony Guest as a close relation.
Problem Solutions:
Problem 1:
Problem 2:
Problem 3:
Problem 4:
Problem 5.
Problem 6.
Problem 7.
Problem 8.
Acknowledgements and sources.
Ralph Jackson – private correspondence
Batgirl (Sarah Beth Cohen) articles on Guest and Donisthorpe at chess.com
Krone Family website here
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
ChessBase/MegaBase2023/Stockfish16.1
chessgames.com (Antony Guest here)
EdoChess (Antony Guest here) British Chess Literature to 1914 (Tim Harding) The Chess Bouquet (FR Gittins) British Chess Magazine July 1909 (thanks to John Upham)
Wikipedia
Yet Another Chess Problem Database
MESON Chess Problem Database
Jack Redon was one of the elder statesmen at Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club for the first 20 years or so of my membership. On completing my studies in 1972 I joined the committee and got to know him well.
Jack was a pretty strong player who was known for his artistic interests. He was a commercial artist by profession, designing things like LP sleeves, but had a particular interest in amateur dramatics and seemed to be involved with every artistic society in the area.
He seemed to live a life of some affluence, sharing a large Victorian house near Richmond Bridge with his wife and sister. Richmond Junior Chess Club would later spend many years in another large house on the same estate, which had been converted into a community centre.
(I also visited the house regularly years later, to teach a chess pupil whose name, coincidentally, was also Jack.)
If you have an interest in 19th century domestic architecture it’s well worth a stroll round these roads. You can also read more about the Twickenham Park estate here and here.
The distinguished poet John Greening also knew Jack very well at about this time, describing him well in a memoir.
He was indeed an extraordinary man, full of wise saws and anecdotes. He did tend to repeat them time and time again at every committee meeting, but, given his age and seniority within the club, we forgave him his eccentricities. He generously made his residence available for these meetings in the mid 1970s, and, when one of our younger members suggested we might meet in a pub instead, he didn’t take kindly to the idea.
While John Greening recalls the unperformed playscripts, I recall the skirting boards being lined with paintings, which, like his plays, were created for his own pleasure rather than for profit. My recollection is that they may well have been in the style of Odilon Redon: and he also told us that he was Odilon’s great nephew. But was it true?
Almost certainly not. Odilon (Wiki) came from a wealthy slave-trading family and, although born in Bordeaux, was conceived in New Orleans, like Paul Morphy the son of a Creole mother. Jack’s family background was very different. It has little to do with chess, so if you want to see some moves you’ll have to jump ahead, but if you’re interested in social history you’ll want to read on. Or even Redon!
Redon is a rather unusual French surname specifically associated with the South West of the country. But let me take you back more than 300 years, to 1722. We have a record of a clandestine marriage for one Peter Redon, a weaver living in Stepney. If you see a weaver with a French surname in that part of London at that time you’ll probably assume that he was a Huguenot. Maybe, but Jack’s ancestors later embraced the Jewish religion, calling their children Elias, Abraham and Reuben, Leah, Esther, Rachel and Rebecca.
By 1798 the Redons had crossed the river to Southwark, where Elias (a labourer) and his wife Rachel were accused of running a brothel. In 1839 Abraham Redon, perhaps a son of Elias and Rachel, was on the other side of the law, a victim of a crime. He was working as a toll collector at the Cambridge Heath tollgate in Hackney and, while he was sleeping, two of his assistants, Henry Walker and John Hollingshead, stole his takings. Both were found guilty at the Old Bailey and sent to prison.
In the 1841 census we have John and Leah Redon, along with their children Alfred (20) and Esther (15), living in Woolwich, with John working as a toll collector. Alfred’s occupation is not legible, but certainly not ‘toll collector’. Woolwich is not all that near Hackney. Alfred was actually Abraham Alfred, so was John actually Abraham John, or were Abraham and John brothers sharing an occupation?
Esther, who had an illegitimate daughter, spent much of her later years in and out of the workhouse, their records describing her as a Jewess. Abraham Alfred, showing the first sign of artistic talent in the family, worked as a painter and signwriter. He married Rose Sawyer in about 1854 (or perhaps he didn’t: I haven’t been able to find a marriage record), but, tragically, none of their first six children lived to see their seventh birthday. Their two youngest sons did survive, though: John Edward, born in 1867 (baptised in the Church of England) and Reuben Alfred, born in 1869. Rose died in 1887, and by the time of the 1891 census Abraham Alfred, unable to look after himself in old age, was in the workhouse, where he died the following year.
So far, the Redon family history is one of poverty and tragedy, very different from the affluent environment in which their namesake Odilon grew up. But Jack gave the impression of being fairly affluent himself. What happened to change the family’s fortunes?
Reuben Edward Redon, continuing the family’s artistic tradition, making a living first as a glass embosser (in 1901 he was living in the road running alongside my old school, Latymer Upper), and later as a designer of showcards, running a business in Harrow for several years.
Harrow Observer 22 September 1911
He was married, but had no children, and died, by that time living near his brother in Peckham, in 1927.
We need to follow John Edward Redon and see what happened in his life. In 1871 he was in Manor Place, Walworth (just south of Elephant and Castle) with his parents, brother and aunt. In 1881 the family were still at the same address: John had left school and was working as an office boy. In 1891, his mother having died and his father in the workhouse, the two brothers were living in a boarding house near the Old Kent Road, the cheapest place on the Monopoly board. John was now, following in his father’s footsteps, working as a signwriter.
By the 1901 census John was working as a clerk for London County Council, and boarding just south of Waterloo Station, right by Westminster Bridge. Also there was a dressmaker named Bessie Emma Varney, and, in October that year they married. Bessie’s family seems to have been London working class, and, her mother having died when she was only 5 years old, she and her younger sister were brought up by relatives. John and Bessie had three children, René Bessie (1902), John Edward, named after his father, who would always be known as Jack (1905) and Reuben Ernest (1908-1912).
At some point, I’d guess from circumstantial evidence, round about 1903, John left his job with the council and formed a partnership with Danzig born Charles Ernest Rokicki. They started two companies, a moneylending business based at John’s home address in Lambeth, and a shop in the Old Kent Road.
In 1907, John, like his grandfather before him, fell victim to a robbery when a habitual criminal named Reuben Vaughan (there are a lot of Reubens in this story) paid for a gramophone and 46 records using a forged cheque, receiving a sentence of six years penal servitude.
Their partnership was dissolved in 1910, with John apparently buying his partner out.
London Gazette 5 July 1910
The family business of Musical Instrument and Cycle Factors and General Furnishers must have been successful. In 1911 they were living above their Old Kent Road shop. John, perhaps no longer involved in the moneylending business, was described as a Dealer in Musical Instruments (Gramophones), while Bessie was assisting in the business. They were able to afford to employ a Domestic Servant (Mother’s Help) to give Bessie a hand in looking after the children. Young Reuben, sadly, would die the following year.
Within the space of two decades the family had gone from workhouse poverty to employing a servant. At some point between 1911 and 1921 they moved their shop to 185 Queen’s Road, Peckham.
During the First World War John was called upon to serve his country as a clerk in the Admiralty: he was still there in 1921. Bessie, who seems to have been a remarkably strong and ambitious woman, was running the business on her own, describing herself in the 1921 census as a Music Seller. René had no occupation recorded, although I’d guess she was helping out in the shop, while 16-year-old Jack was a part-time art student.
As well as studying art, Jack was becoming interested in the Art of Chess, joining Battersea Chess Club.
Richmond Herald 29 September 1923
Here he is, in 1923, becoming the second ever winner of the Wernick Cup, which is still, more than a century on, the fourth division of the Surrey individual championship. In 1962 the name of another promising young player, RD Keene would be engraved on the trophy. It’s easy to forget that, in these days of preteen grandmasters, a century ago it was relatively unusual for teenagers to take part in competitive chess against adults.
His would be a solid rather than a meteoric chess career, though, developing into a strong club player who, by 1926, was good enough to be selected for an important county match.
Birmingham Daily Post 11 October 1926
He lost his game, but Surrey’s greater strength on the higher boards saw them through. Crossword addicts will notice an anagram on the other side.
While he continued playing chess, Jack soon took up a new interest, in amateur dramatics, setting up a group in his local church. (By now the family were very much Church of England.)
South London Observer 02 November 1929
You’ll note the name Florence Warden, also known, from what I recall, as Flossie, who was living with her grandmother and step grandfather, having lost her mother in childbirth when she was only one year old.
John died in early 1931, and it’s quite possible that Jack now had to take a greater role in running the family business. He still had time to play chess, though, and by 1935 had reached top board for Battersea.
South Western Star 29 November 1935
He had also reached the top section of the county championship, but in this game from 1937 he was out of his depth against a strong opponent. (For this and all games in this article, click on any move for a pop-up window.)
In this county match game from the same period against an electrician from Brighton, he played an opening gambit and probably didn’t have enough for the pawn, but when he threatened a queen sacrifice his opponent carelessly overlooked it.
and probably didn’t have enough for the pawn, but when he threatened a queen sacrifice his opponent carelessly overlooked it.
The amateur dramatics must have been going well too, as in 1938 he married his fellow thespian Florence Warden.
You’ll immediately note Jack’s artistic signature, appropriately for a member of a family involved in signwriting. There are two other things to note as well. The marriage took place not locally but in the City of London, at St Michael Paternoster Royal, a church associated with Dick Whittington, which had been rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire. He gave an address nearby, which, I suspect, was a dummy address enabling him to marry there. You’ll also see that his late father’s occupation was given as Accountant, which doesn’t tie in with other records. Perhaps he did the accounts for the family shop, or maybe it was a euphemism for Moneylender.
His marriage certainly didn’t stop his chess career: at this point he was very active in both club and county chess, winning a prize for one of the best performances in the Battersea first team. If you look at some of the other names here you’ll observe that it was a very strong club at the time.
Streatham News 08 September 1939
Although marriage didn’t stop Jack playing chess, the war did. Just three days before this report appeared, and with war just having broken out, a national registration of the civilian population was taken.
Bessie, now in her late 60s, was still running her shop in Peckham, selling gramophone records, musical instruments and cycles. Jack and Florence were living there as well, as was Florence’s elderly grandmother Matilda, an old age pensioner. Florence had a temporary job operating an Elliott-Fisher bookkeeping machine. Jack was described as a designer of sight tests on glass, etching and stencil cutting.
Most of London’s chess clubs, including Battersea, closed for the duration, so there was little opportunity now for Jack to play chess. Matilda died in 1942, and Bessie in 1943. I presume Jack and René would have inherited the business, selling it and moving, along with Florence, to their new home in Twickenham. They must have done pretty well for themselves: not only were they able to afford a large house in a desirable area, but it seems that they no longer needed to work for a living. Not quite Old Kent Road to Mayfair, but still pretty impressive.
Jack threw himself enthusiastically into his theatre and chess hobbies, which would dominate the rest of his life. In 1944 he was a member of the Twickenham Community Players, writing and producing plays for them, just as he had done back in Peckham. They even met for rehearsals at his house (was he the founder, I wonder), but sought larger premises at the new Georgian Club in Richmond.
Jack joined Kingston and Thames Valley Chess Club, which, like Barnes Village, continued meeting during the war. He also rejoined Battersea, who resumed their activities in 1945, where he would win their club championship in 1960. There was now no active chess club in Richmond or Twickenham, though, and this was something he wanted to change. He started a chess section at the Georgian Club, which had modest beginnings.
Richmond Herald 02 June 1945
Retired schoolmaster Phillip Flower, who lived round the corner from Jack, had been strong enough to play in the Major Open at the 1911 British Championships, as well as the First Class in 1921 and 1922, where his victims included future stars Fairhurst and Buerger. Jacob Zafransky ran (or at least he did in 1939) a radio and cycle shop again just round the corner from Jack: there might have been a work connection as his business was very similar to that of Jack’s family.
By the following year they were able to raise a dozen players for a match against an established club.
Richmond Herald 08 December 1945
Jack had managed to recruit two very strong players for the top boards: eccentric philosopher, schoolteacher and much else Dr JD (John David) Solomon, and civil servant Geoffrey Ashcroft, who, although he lived in East Sheen, was a friend and colleague from Battersea Chess Club. It’s pleasing to see that Reginald Tarrant (and it was lovely to hear from his son-in-law recently) provided a link with the ‘Old Richmond and Kew Club’.
The following March, Jack gave a simultaneous display, which proved very successful.
Richmond Herald 30 March 1946
The prizewinning Miss Nesbitt must have been Violet Ella Nesbitt Kemp, an architect’s daughter, who would, some three decades later, rejoin what was by that point Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club. Remarkably, being born in 1888 and dying in 1992, she lived to the age of 103 . I was led to believe she was an actress, but perhaps only on an amateur basis, which might have been where she met Jack.
In 1947 a match was played against Twickenham Chess Club, which had recently reformed, the previous club of that name having folded some years previously. Richmond seem to have dropped ‘Georgian’ from their name, now established as Richmond Chess Club.
Richmond Herald 01 February 1947
Captain Samuel Ould (a civil servant in 1939, although he always used his military rank from the First World War) provided another link with the previous Richmond and Kew Chess Club, while Ted Fairbrother would remain a member into the 1970s.
A few months later Kingston and Thames Valley Chess Club staged a megamatch against a combined Richmond and Twickenham team (just as they did again in 2022). The Teddington club would have been the NPL, the Sunbury club British Thermostat and the Whitton club perhaps Old Latymerians.
Richmond Herald 14 June 1947
You’ll see that Jack, as their club champion, represented Kingston on this occasion. By beating Blake, who had, many decades earlier, beaten Rev John Owen, who had beaten Morphy, this gave him a Morphy Win number of 3.
Being a member of three chess clubs wasn’t enough for Jack Redon. He also played for Twickenham in the London and Middlesex Leagues. (I haven’t found any online information about the founding of the post-war Twickenham Chess Club, but I suppose he might have been involved.)
Here he is, playing in a match against Uxbridge in 1950.
Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette 08 December 1950
His opponent here, Harry Bogdanor, was a rather dodgy pharmacist (see discussion here) and the father of political scientist (and David Cameron’s tutor) Vernon Bogdanor. FG (Griff) Griffiths was still involved with Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club into the early 1970s. I also have an interest in SA Lester, who, I hope, was precision tool maker and amateur musician Sydney Arthur Lester. At any rate he was the only SA Lester I’ve been able to find in the Twickenham area at the time. Perhaps I’ll tell you more in a future article.
Richmond and Twickenham Chess Clubs were clearly working closely together, in 1952 sending a combined team down for a friendly match at Hastings. Jack scored a fortuitous win on top board against an English international.
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 06 September 1952
You’ll notice endgame study expert John Roycroft on Board 2. I ‘m sure AL Fletcher was L Elliott Fletcher, author of Gambits Accepted, and Miss Fletcher his daughter Lesley, who would later marry Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club’s Robert Pinner. I lose to George Anslow in the corresponding fixture in 1974.
In 1954 the team visiting Hastings, although billed just as Twickenham, was quite a lot stronger, seeming to have recruited some players from other Middlesex clubs rather than Richmond for the match.
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 11 September 1954
I don’t know much about Edgar Brown, whose club was sometimes billed as Wembley & Hampstead. He won the RAF Championship and 1944 and shared 1st place in the 1950-51 British Correspondence Championship. Another Twickenham player in this match was was chess administrator and bigamist Alan Stammwitz (see this thread).
Playing on second board in the 1956 Hastings v Twickenham match he defeated a highly respected opponent with an original sacrifice in the Max Lange Attack. Although it wasn’t quite sound, his opponent, a bank official who, like all the best chess players at the time, had retired to Hastings, was unable to cope, rapidly going down in flames.
Throughout this time, Jack remained very active in amateur dramatics. He never had the looks of a leading man, but excelled in comic and character roles. In 1946 his portrayal of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night was ‘handled with a delightful touch and never over-played’, while in 1949 he was ‘well cast as the cowardly Oswald’ in King Lear. I’m not sure whether that was a compliment or an insult.
Although he was an enthusiastic participant in club and county chess, tournaments were, with one exception, not for him. In 1957 he successfully entered the qualifying tournament for the British Championship, held that year in Plymouth.
In 1956 he’d appeared in the BCF Grading List at 5a, about 2050 Elo, and remained round about that level for several years – a pretty strong amateur who could – and did – hold down a high board in club matches and a low board in county matches.
Here, he found the going tough, finishing on just 3 points out of 11.
He was well beaten in this game, where his opponent exploited his space advantage with a central breakthrough.
He demonstrated his tactical skills in this game, winning with a powerful kingside attack.
You can see him here, the bald-headed gentleman standing in the centre, with Milner-Barry and Franklin seated in front of him
1958 saw a merger between Richmond and Twickenham Chess Clubs. The result, Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club, is still thriving today. I’m not sure what part Jack played in the merger, but he must surely have been involved and given his blessing.
I’m not sure whether or not he was playing for Richmond & Twickenham in this game, a clash between the 1923 and 1962 winners of the Wernick Cup.
A few years later, Ray would treat the opening in more restrained fashion. Here, he gave Jack some difficult chances, but he was unable to take advantage.
It was only a few years later that Keene would publish his first book, Flank Openings, which I bought and eagerly devoured. It influenced my choice of opening when I faced Jack in the 1969 Richmond & Twickenham Club Championship. I called this system, a cross between a Réti and an Orangutan, the Yeti Opening.
It worked well here (I think the opening was never Jack’s strong point) and soon won a piece, but didn’t want to win hard enough against such an illustrious opponent and let him escape with a perpetual check. (If I’d won, as I should have done, it would have given me a Morphy Win number of 4, although I may well have beaten him in a casual game at some point.)
You might assume that chess players with artistic interests would play artistic chess, while those with scientific interests would prefer scientific chess. It doesn’t always work, but it was certainly true of Jack Redon. From the small sample of games here we can see someone who, at least with the white pieces, favoured dashing gambits and sacrifices, which, while not always sound, often worked over the board.
By now well into his sixties, there was inevitably some decline in his playing strength, but he continued to take part in club matches as well as serving on the club committee. In 1981 he designed a new logo for what was then the British Chess Federation.
His beloved wife Florence died in 1985, but he remained on the grading list until 1988, his clubs listed as Richmond Community Centre as well as Richmond & Twickenham. Suffering from dementia, he eventually moved to a care home in nearby Hampton Hill, where he died in 1994 at the age of 89. It appears, although there are some inconsistencies in the records, that his sister René died in Hastings in 1996, bringing an end to that branch of the Redon family.
Jack may not have been, as he believed, or wanted us to believe, the great nephew of Odilon, but I think he was something far more interesting. A man who was fortunate enough to be able spend the last fifty years of his life indulging in his favourite hobbies. He was a very good, but perhaps not brilliant, actor, playwright and artist, but he wrote plays and painted pictures not with the intention of making money but for the sheer joy of doing so. He played chess for many decades for the same reason: not a great player, but certainly a good enough player: champion of Kingston and Battersea, British Championship contender, achievements not to be taken lightly. Perhaps many of us can learn from the way Jack lived his life.
But more than that, he contributed an enormous amount to the local community in Richmond and Twickenham by founding and organising clubs and societies so that others had the opportunity to share his passions, and, through them, form friendships and enhance their lives. I believe that hobby clubs, whether chess, theatre or a thousand and one other wonderful things, are of vital importance for social cohesion, mental health and many other reasons. All of us at Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club have reason to be grateful to Jack Redon, who might justifiably be seen as the club’s founder. I hope he’s looking on benignly, delighted that, many years later, the club is still thriving.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Archives
chessgames.com
BritBase
ChessBase/MegaBase
Surrey County Chess Association website
Battersea and Kingston Chess Club websites
Brian Denman
John Saunders
We focus on the British Chess Scene Past & Present !
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