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Minor Pieces 86: London Boys Chess Championships (2)

March 6, 2025 Richard James 1 Comment

I recently introduced you to the competitors in the first London Boys Chess Championship, which took place in 1923-24.

Let’s look at how the competition progressed over the next few years.

In 1924-25 there were again ten competitors. Five had returned from the previous year: Black, Bowers, Brüning, Excell and Smith.

One of the newcomers in particular attracted a lot of press attention. This was the young blind player Alfred Rupert Neale Cross (1912-1980), known as Rupert, a pupil at Worcester College for the Blind.

He wasn’t new to competitive chess, having taken part in the British Boys Championship the previous April when he was only 11. But the press, intrigued by the novelty, provided short paragraphs about how he played the game. He was also photographed, as here in the Daily Mirror…

… and also in the Daily News.

Linlithgowshire Gazette 09 January 1925

The Staffordshire Advertiser (10 January 1925) published this game between the two youngest players, commenting that it is a really excellent game when considering that Rupert Cross is a blind boy, and has to play with board and pieces specially made for the blind.

Click on any move for a pop-up window.

The last record I have of the complete scores was this, from before the final round.

The Daily News didn’t publish the full final results, but we know that Bowers, Black and Charles all finished on 6/9 (or perhaps 6½/9: sources differ), with Excell and Smith on 5½/9, and that Cross finished on 3/9.

It was therefore the established players who, for the most part, dominated. The only interloper was Alfred George Charles, one of two competitors who would live to witness the 21st century (1907-2001). Alfred was the son of an insurance agent (previously a letter sorter), born in Holloway, North London, but, by the 1921 census, living in Tooting. He was educated first at Seddon Street School in Canonbury, and then at Battersea County (Polytechnic Secondary) School. He had previously taken part in the 1924 British Boys Championship, where he performed fairly well. In 1933 he married a South African girl who later worked as a physiotherapist: they had three daughters, one of whom died in infancy. By 1939 he was working for the Statistical Office of the Ministry of Supply in Rugby, which must have been temporary war work as the family had settled in New Malden.

Did Alfred go on to have a glittering chess career? Sadly not: this seems to have been his second and last appearance in competitive chess.

Rupert Cross wasn’t the only pupil of Worcester College for the Blind taking part in the tournament. There was also Arthur Charles Threlfall, who, as he wasn’t mentioned in the press reports, was probably partially sighted and didn’t require a special board. Arthur who was another who had a long life (1910-2002), was a Worcester pupil from 1921 to 1928. His family came from Clapham, and his father seems to have had a variety of jobs, including working as an agent in metals and for a paper. By 1939 he was an area manager for an electrical goods company in Solihull before moving to Salisbury.

Threlfall continued playing chess while he was in Worcester, sometimes representing his county on one of the lower boards.

The other two competitors were both, like Black, Jewish. Moses Lazarus Adler (1908-1978) was living in Whitechapel in 1921, just round the corner from where Mary Ann Nichols had been murdered by Jack the Ripper on 31 August 1888. His father, a newsagent, was Polish and his mother Russian. He married in 1932, but in 1939 was still living with his father, by now a widower, and the rest of his family, working as the secretary of a skin merchants’ company. Towards the end of his life he seems to have moved to Canada, where his brother had earlier emigrated.

Moses had made his tournament début in the British Championships at Stratford on Avon the previous summer, in the 3rd Class B section.

You’ll see he scored a convincing victory against a field including future BCF President Vic Soanes and Vera Menchik’s sister. You’ll also note with interest that nine of the 12 players in this section were female.

He returned to the London Boys Championship the following year, and continued playing occasionally in Middlesex through the 1930s, appearing in county matches and winning the Minor section of the 1937 county championship.

The most interesting competitor, apart from Cross, in the tournament was the player whose surname was variously given as Apfelbaum, Appelbaum and Applebaum. There were several possible candidates named John/Jack in birth and census records but I eventually managed to locate him through an obituary.

Our John, born in 1908, came from a Polish family: his father, born in Łódź, was from a family of merchants, but, in 1921, living in Greek Street, Soho, was employed more humbly as a tailor’s cutter, a job he still had in 1939.

Here he is in a school match and there, in the other match reported in the same column, is a certain Bromowski, who was actually the great polymath and chess player Jacob Bronowski.

The family later changed their name to Apley, and it’s under that name that we can pick up the rest of John’s life. In 1927 he won a scholarship to study medicine at University College London. On completing his studies he became a GP in Pinner, and was also developing an interest in paediatrics. On the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserves as a medical specialist based in Wiltshire, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader. After the war he worked in paediatrics in Bath and Bristol, but with a few spells abroad, becoming, as well as a much loved doctor, a prominent author, teacher, lecturer and broadcaster. His obituary on the website of the Royal College of Physicians tells us that he was also a musician, playing oboe and clarinet, a first class chess player, a golfer and skier

You can see him on YouTube giving a tour of the Bristol Children’s Hospital.

His obituary is here and find details of his books here.

The following year there were again ten competitors. I’d assume there may have been more applications but the selectors chose the players they considered to have the best credentials.

The event still had something of a novelty value. The Evening News told its readers about the growing popularity of chess in schools.

Evening News (London) 02 January 1926

Rupert Cross was back again, as explained by the Daily News, who were not averse to repeating some still current stereotypes.

Here’s Rupert again, playing Moses Adler.

And here’s a smiling Max Black.

I don’t have the names of all ten participants at present but I can identify (at least) six returnees along with (at least) three newcomers.

As in the previous year there was a three-way tie for first place on 6/9, with two of the players repeating their earlier success: Black, Bowers and Smith.

Two of the newcomers shared 4th place on 5½: Geoffrey Harold Rowson and Simon Edward Bloom Solomons.

Geoffrey is of considerable interest. He was born on 14 May 1910, the younger of two brothers, Leslie having been born in 1905. His birth was registered in Brentford, so he might, like me, have been born in West Middlesex Hospital. His family name was originally Rosenbaum, so he may have prononced the first syllable of his surname to rhyme with ‘know’ rather than ‘now’. His mother was Esther Bloomer Caro: I haven’t been able to find any immediate connection with Horatio. Geoffrey’s father, Simon, founded a film distribution company along with his brother Harry in 1911. Ideal Film Company were originally distributors but soon started producing their own films.

Harry, who was himself a chess player, moved on to other things, spending time in America where, at one point, he worked with Emanual Lasker. Simon was later joined by his older son, Leslie, who himself became a renowned cinematographer.

Geoffrey was educated at St Paul’s School in West London, which would later count the likes of Jon Speelman, Julian Hodgson and William Watson amongst its pupils. He spent a few years, 1926 to 1928, playing chess, taking part in the London Boys Championship on three occasions and the British Boys Championship twice.

In the 1926 British Boys Championship he lost this game to a young C H O’D Alexander, that year’s winner.

Moving briefly forward, the following year Geoffrey became British Boys Champion, but after the 1928 London Boys Championship he moved on to other things in his life. After working for the family company for a short time he decided to branch out, becoming an accountant working for Marks & Spencer.

The 1939 Register found Geoffrey, his wife and their young son Henry living in a leafy suburb of Nottingham. He then moved to Leicester, where he returned to the chessboard, playing in the county wartime league and in informal matches against Nottinghamshire.

At the same time he also joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve, qualifying as a pilot of Avro Lancaster bombers.

On the evening of 17 January 1943, his plane took off from Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, but never returned. It appears that it was shot down by a German night fighter, crashing into the sea off the Dutch coast. You’ll find more details here.

In a tragic coincidence, the following year, John Henry Hewitt, the son of the man who donated an equipment cupboard to Twickenham Chess Club, and whose story was told in my previous Minor Piece, would lose his life in exactly the same way.

Geoffrey and John were both members of the RAFVR, both flying Lancasters, and both losing their lives when their planes were hit by night fighters.

Here are the names of Geoffrey’s crew. We should never forget the brave young men who paid the ultimate penalty in our fight against Fascism.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a photograph of Geoffrey, but here’s his brother Leslie as a young man.

Sharing 4th place with Rowson was Simon Edward Bloom Solomons. Simon was born in Battersea on 2 May 1908, but by 1911 the family had moved to Willesden, where his father ran a tailor’s shop. His business was sufficiently successful for him to afford to employ a servant. The family were still there in 1921, but, as Simon was educated at Owen’s School, they may have moved to Islington at some point. They would return to Willesden later.

This seems to have been his only foray into competitive chess. On leaving Owen’s School, Simon went to London University, where he was awarded a General BSc.

He married Ada Eisman in 1936 (pictured below) but, to the best of my knowledge they had no children.

The family moved around quite a lot. In 1939 they were in Wycombe, where Simon’s occupation was given as a Civil Servant and Physicist. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Simon and Ada were living in Ruvigny Mansions, a block of mansion flats on Putney Embankment, where they were near neighbours of Enid Mary Lanspeary, They must have retired to Chichester, where Simon’s death was recorded on 25 January 1996.

The other new name in 1926 was one with some very local connections to me: William Francis Darke.

William was born on 8 December 1911 in Twickenham. For some reason he was baptised in Eastleigh, Hampshire, although neither of his parents had any obvious connection there, with his address given as 4 Gothic Road, off Staines Road not far from Twickenham Green, and his father’s occupation given as a farmer. The 1911 census, though, found the young and newly married Francis and Ada Darke at 95 Staines Road, Francis was born in the Devon village of Lamerton: his occupation here was given as a railway engine stoker working for the South Western Railway. Make of it what you will.

We can pick up the family again in the 1921 census, where the family’s address was 40 The Green, Twickenham. (This address is now a house down an alleyway behind Sainsburys, but the numbering might have changed since then.) Francis had been promoted to an Engine Driver with the London and South Western Railway, while young William had been joined by siblings Leslie and Alma.

William, a bright boy, gained a place at Hampton Grammar School, where chess was popular at the time (and indeed still is, although these days it’s just Hampton School). He learnt the moves from a children’s encyclopaedia.

His first tournament was the 1926 British Boys Championship, where he won this entertaining but inaccurate game. His opponent, the son of missionaries and born in what was then Madras, would go on to win the London Boys Championship in 1928. I also recall him playing for Staines in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, he lost a piece in the opening against (Arthur) Eric Smith: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O b5 6. Bb3 Nxe4 7. d4 f6 8. dxe5 d6 9. Bd5 and White eventually won.

William played in both the British and London Boys Championships for several years, reaching the final stages of the former in 1928, and drawing with Harry Golombek, who went on to win the title, in the London 1929 event.

He also joined Twickenham Chess Club, in this match against Richmond & Kew, playing on top board against Wilfred Kirk.

On leaving Hampton Grammar, William continued his studies – and his chess at London University. In this match Harry Golombek was unexpectedly beaten by George Tregaskis on top board.

From London University he then joined Balliol College Oxford, playing for the University team, but not selected for the Varsity matches.

(In a further tragic coincidence, FG Tims Collins would also, like Geoffrey Rowson and John Hewitt, lose his life in a Lancaster bomber: details here.)

On leaving Balliol, William joined the Civil Service, working as an economist in agriculture. His job soon took him to California, where he met and fell in love with a GP’s daughter named Marjorie Aileen van Vorhis (or Vorhies: sources vary).

Here she is now, from the University of California Berkeley 1936 Yearbook.

After what must have been a whirlwind romance, they wasted little time tying the knot: they were married before the year was out, settling in a newly built house in Beech Way, a short walk from Twickenham Green in one direction and from where I currently live in the other direction.

But something very quickly went wrong. By the time of the 1939 Register, just a few months later, he was back at home with his family, claiming to be a widower.

Except that he wasn’t. The 1940 US Census found Marjorie back at home in California with her mother, working as a schoolteacher.

They briefly reunited: in 1947 they were living in 12 Arlington Park Mansions, Chiswick, a block of mansion flats overlooking Turnham Green. At number 9, just down the corridor, was the eminent novelist and chess enthusiast EM Forster (commemorated by a blue plaque on the wall). One wonders if William and Morgan ever got together for a few games. But by 1948 they’d split up again, with William having returned to his family in Twickenham.

By 1955 he was living on his own in Grange Avenue, just the other side of Twickenham Green, and, curiously, registered as a Service Voter, implying that he was in the Armed Forces, although that indication had disappeared by 1957. He was still there in 1961, but had moved on by 1962, to where I don’t know.

The only other information I have is that William Francis Darke died in Eastbourne, a popular retirement destination, on 13 November 1998. It seems that he and Marjorie had reunited again: she also died in Eastbourne, on 30 April 2006. One online tree suggests they had a daughter, but I have no more information. She may have been born and brought up in California.

I’ll conclude for now by taking a look at the 1927 event.

Rupert Cross was still attracting press attention, but he was not the only prodigy taking part.

The Daily Chronicle managed to get a lot wrong. Rupert had, of course, competed for the London Championship before, and it also seems rather odd to describe Capablanca as imaginative rather than scientific. The sub-editor writing the headline seems to have made the mistaken assumption that this was a knock-out competition.

We need to go back just over a year to witness James Walter Rivkine’s success against the great Capa.

London Daily Chronicle 15 December 1925

He doesn’t look from the photograph as if he has a mass of fair, curly hair, does he?

The Evening News published the game.

Even Stockfish was impressed with Rivkine’s play.

The tournament this year had a different format. This time there were 16 entrants, split into two all-play-all groups of eight, with a final pool to determine the top four placings.

James had rather more difficulty with his opposition here than he did against the World Champion, failing to finish in the first three places in his group.

The following year he gave the London Boys Championship a miss, playing at Hastings instead.

The selectors, giving more credence to his win against Capablanca than his less than stellar results against his contemporaries, placed him in the Major A section, in itself a pretty strong international event: the two winners were, according to EdoChess, above 2400 strength.

Although he was somewhat outclassed, he did have the satisfaction of winning an excellent attacking game against Vera Menchik.

His loss against Landau was also entertaining.

We can see from these games that Rivkine was a creative attacking player with excellent tactical skills, who, with more experience, might well have reached master standard. But, as he suggested in the above interview, he decided to focus on his studies instead.

He was also interested in chess problems, in August 1928 winning a prize in a newspaper solving competition, his address being given as 58 Priory Road Kew Gardens, just the other side of the railway line from the National Archives. By 1931 he was in Hampshire, where he played for the county: playing on Board 3 against Devon he beat Harold Mallison, and, also on Board 3 in 1932, losing to Edward Guthlac Sergeant of Middlesex. On 5 May 1933 he was awarded a Certificate of Naturalization, making him a British citizen. His name was given as Isaac Ritvine, known as James, and he was described as a commercial traveller from Southsea. In 1936 he married Irma Willk, a dental student, and in 1939 was back in London, in Heathfield Court, Chiswick, working as a gas engineer. This is another block of flats alongside Turnham Green, just round the corner from where William Francis Darke would briefly live. James (or Jimmie as he was known within the family) and Irma didn’t stay there very long either: after the war we find them in Cricklewood, North London. After Irma’s death in 1990 he retired to Bournemouth, where he died in his late 90s in 2008.

His memory lives on today. His grandson Simon runs a business consultancy, JWR Ventures, named after his beloved grandfather’s initials.

Simon writes about him here.

James Walter Rivkine did not know when he was born – his UK passport said 1911, his birth certificate stated 1910 and when you asked him he had no real idea! He knows he was born an only child in St Petersburg, Russia and when he was about 10 years old was brought to stay with family friends in Paris by his mother – his parents feeling the real threat of the pogroms closing in. Promising to return with his father, his parents tragically did not make it back to Paris (killed in the pogroms) so James found himself orphaned and alone in pre-war Paris.

However, tragedy seemed to follow wherever life took him, with his wife and both of his children dying before he finally peacefully slipped away aged 97 (we think :-)) in his apartment with a view over the majestic Bournemouth beach on the south coast of England. He was a man that lived a thousand lives, spoke six languages and charmed hundreds that came into contact with him. Sure he had times when he was depressed, pained by all the emotional and physical challenges that life threw at him but he somehow picked himself up and got back on the saddle again more times than I care to remember.

Winding the clock back more than 80 years, I don’t have the names of all the competitors in the 1927 London Boys Championship, and I haven’t been able to identify some of the names I do have.

There were a lot of new entrants, and, unlike previous years, it was they who were the most successful.

The winner was Vincent Peter Kelly (1910-1954), the son of a police officer from Carlow, Ireland, and a pupil at St Ignatius College. This was his first tournament, and would be his only first place, although he would share second place the following year. Vincent was a problemist as well as a player, and, during 1927 had a number of problems published mostly in the Catholic newspaper The Tablet.

Here are a couple of them.

In this mate in 2 (The Tablet 09-04-1927), the key move leaves Black in zugzwang.

Another mate in 2 (mistakenly first published as a mate in 3: The Tablet 27-08-1927), a battle between the black queen and the white bishop.

The solution to the first problem is Qf3, and to the second problem is Ne8. You can work out the variations for yourself.

On leaving school he proceeded to London University, where he played for them in friendly matches, on occasion, as here, on top board ahead of none other than Harry Golombek.

On graduating he became a maths teacher in Essex, but then joined the RAF as a pilot in the Meteorological Branch, later transferring to the Admin and Special Duties Branch, and finally to the Education Branch, eventually reaching, like John Apley, the rank of Squadron Leader.

He had married in 1937, but the marriage soon broke up, his wife obtaining a divorce on the grounds of his desertion. He remarried in 1949, but sadly died young in 1954.

In second place was Harold Israel (1909-1984), the son of an elementary school teacher from Willesden, another Owen’s School pupil.

Whereas many of his contemporaries stopped playing once life, in the shape of work and marriage, got in the way, Harold was someone who continued playing chess at a high level for many years. One reason for this was perhaps that he never married. He was working in the textile industry at the time of the 1939 Register.

For several decades he was one of London’s strongest amateur players, the highlights of his career were sharing the British Correspondence Championship with Frank Parr in 1948-49 and sharing 2nd place in the 1952 British Championship. In the first BCF Grading List, published in early 1954, he was graded 2b (217-224, or about 2350 today).

There’s a discussion about him from some years ago on the English Chess Forum here. This photograph comes from an online family tree.

These two games from different stages of his career bear witness to his tactical ability.

In third place was yet another newcomer, Douglas George Durham (1911-1993). Douglas’s father was a tailor from Tottenham, North London. His older brother, Leonard Ambrose Durham (1904-1996), also a chess player, was, at the time of the 1921 census, working for what was then Crawley, Dixon & Bowring, Insurance Brokers: they later became simply Bowrings.

Here are the family, again in 1921, at their sister Queenie’s ill-starred wedding.

Douglas is on the left on his father’s lap, and Leonard is the young man in the bow tie standing behind the bridesmaid.

He took part in the London Boys Championship in 1928 and 1929 as well, without equalling this performance. By 1930 he was working for Bowrings alongside his brother, where they were seen taking the top two boards for their company team in the Insurance League.

In 1931 Leonard tied with our old friend George Tregaskis in the Insurance Championship, with Douglas down the field sharing 8th place.

In the 1934 Insurance Championship Douglas lost this game against Nevil Coles, who would later write several excellent chess books.

The top sections of the 1936 Insurance Championship included three of my opponents from more than half a century ago: Nevil Coles, Godfrey Nurse and Rodney James (no relation: he had been a competitor in the first British Boys Championship).

Both brothers were later involved in chess in Hertfordshire, where Leonard lost this Best Game Prize winning game to a Scottish international and, later, author.

The two Durham brothers continued playing for a time after the war, but it seems like they gradually withdrew from chess in the early 1950s. They were both strong amateur players, though: I suppose Leonard would be about 2100 and Douglas about 2000 in today’s money.

Fourth place was occupied by Geoffrey Rowson, while the 5th and 6th places were shared between Max Black, unable to repeat his successes of the previous two years, and Rupert Cross. James Rivkine was further down the field, along with William Darke.

There’s one other story I want to share briefly: when you see the name Barnett Bodgin you really have to investigate further.

Barnett, born 15 February 1909 (according to the 1939 Register), lived in Mile End, in what was then the Jewish quarter of London. His family had only just arrived there when he was born: his older siblings, along with his parents, were born in Vitebsk, in what is now Belarus. In the 1921 census, his father, Israel, was working as a Boot Upper Maker. There’s something odd here: The census clearly states he was aged 13 years and 10 months (which, I think, would have made him too old for the tournament), but, if the date of his birth registration and his 1939 claim is to be trusted, he was 12 years and 4 months. Who knows?

Other sources give his name as Barnet Bogin and sometimes also Slobodin: he later changed it to Lawrence Byron. By 1939 he was married to his first wife and living in Manchester, working as an engineer for a radio company. He died in Sale, Cheshire, in 1966.

This seems to have been his only experience of competitive chess.

Here he is with what I’m reliably informed is a Renault, probably a Town Car.

With Lawrence and his car, it’s time to conclude, at least for the moment, the stories of the boys who took part in the London Boys Chess Championships a century or so ago.

What can we learn from this?

Two things immediately stand out from looking at the demographics of the young players.

Firstly, you’ll note that the Jewish community were strongly represented, ranging from the sons of long established families such as Simon Solomons to new arrivals like James Rivkine. We can see this mirrored today: many of the leading young players, and this is true across all English speaking countries, come from the South and East Asian communities.

This was also a time of considerable social mobility, a time of a rapidly growing middle class, and a time when the concept of hobbies for children of secondary school age was starting to take off.

We can see here bright boys from lower middle or working class backgrounds who were winning scholarships to grammar schools, and sometimes then continuing their studies at London University. There was now a schools chess league in London: if you were fortunate enough to attend a school where one of the masters was interested in chess, a club would be set up, matches would be played against other schools, and you’d be encouraged to take part in competitions such as this. I note that my old school, Latymer Upper, wasn’t playing chess at this time, but its local rival, St Paul’s, and my local grammar school, Hampton Grammar, were both strongly represented in boys’ chess tournaments in the inter-war years.

While many of them dropped out of competitive chess on completing their education, there were some who remained hobby players for the rest of their lives, while, for Harry Golombek, chess became a career. But all of them would have retained their love of the world’s greatest game.

And what, you may well ask, about the girls? That will be another article for another time, but I have some other stories to tell first.

Join me again soon for some more Minor Pieces.

Sources and Acknowledgements

ancestry.co.uk (various family trees)
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Archives
PapersPast
Wikipedia
YouTube
BritBase (John Saunders)
English Chess Forum
British Chess News
chessgames.com
EdoChess (Rod Edwards)
ChessBase 18/Stockfish 17
MESON chess problem database (Brian Stephenson)
Yet Another Chess Problem Database (YACPD)
Royal College of Physicians website
aircrewremembered.com
JWR Ventures website

Various other sources mentioned above

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2025, Arbiting, Biographies, Deaths, History, Players, Remembering

Remembering IA Stewart Reuben (14-iii-1939 – 04-ii-2025)

February 5, 2025 John Upham

BCN remembers Stewart Reuben who passed away in Jamaica whilst on a cruise on February 4th 2025.

Stewart Reuben born on Tuesday, March 14th in 1939.

Stewart was born in Stepney, London. His father (SR referred to him as “daddy” in Poker 24/7) was Israel Reuben and his mother was Ann Epstein. Both of his parents was born in England from parents from Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Stewart resided in Twickenham, Middlesex in recent times and in more recent time had moved to sheltered housing in between foreign cruises.

Stewart Reuben interviews Stewart Reuben at the home of Stewart Reuben

Stewart first joined Islington Chess Club in 1951 at the age of 12.

Stewart’s first holiday by himself aged 17 was in 1956 to play in the British Boy’s Championship in Blackpool when he took up Poker.

Stewart studied chemistry at King’s College, London which he did not enjoy likening it to cooking. (It is usual to refer to organic chemistry as “wet” chemistry).

After graduating Stewart worked for British Oxygen as an industrial chemist and rejoined Islington Chess Club in 1961. At that time Islington was the liveliest club in London. There he knew brothers Ron & Ken Harman and Danny wright. He was also to become great friends with Ron Banwell who left a considerable legacy to English chess.

According to the 1982 tournament book of the Phillips & Drew Kings:

“Stewart was a prime mover in the setting up of the organisation in 1972 which was to grow into the London Chess Association. This was formed in order to reintroduce international chess to London, where there has been no tournament of note since 1948. Since then we have had the Guardian Royal Exchange Masters in the Evening Standard Congress on 1973. Evening Standard Chess Fortnight in 1975, Lloyds Bank Masters since 1977, Lord John Cup 1977, Aaronson Masters 1978 and 1979, the bi-annual Robert Silk, Phillips & Drew 1980, Lewisham since 1981 and the King’s Head International in 1982. ”

His personal catchphrase is “If only I had been consulted earlier”

David at Stewart Reuben's 21st, on Stewart's right (Stewart has the jug) - March 1960. Photograph sourced from ECF Obituary — David at Stewart Reuben’s 21st, on Stewart’s right (Stewart has the jug) – March 1960. Photograph sourced from ECF Obituary

Here is his Wikipedia entry

Richard W. O'Brien and Stewart Reuben working on a bulletin — Richard W. O’Brien and Stewart Reuben working on a bulletin

Stewart looks for material for the arbiters handbook

Here are words written about himself from the rear cover of The Chess Organiser’s Handbook :

“Stewart Reuben is internationally recognised as one of the world’s foremost chess organisers and arbiters. He is currently (1997) Chairman of the FIDE Organisers Committee, Secretary of the Rules and Tournament Regulations Committee, member of the Title and Ratings Committee and the Qualification Commission. He is also past Chairman (1996-1999) of the British Chess Federation. He has officiated at and/or organised numerous top-level events, including the World Championship. He holds three FIDE titles : Arbiter, Organiser and Candidate Master”

Leonard Barden, Stewart Reuben and Michael Franklin at the 1978 Aaronson Masters

The Chess Organiser's Handbook — The Chess Organiser’s Handbook

London 1980: Phillips and Drew Kings Chess Tournament

At the Lloyds Bank Masters : Front (l-r) : Joel Benjamin, Ian Wells, Rear : Peter Morrish, Stewart Reuben, Richard Beville, Gary Senior, Richard Webb, John Hawksworth, Andrew King, Nigel Short, Mark Ginsburg, Daniel King, David Cummings, Erik Teichmann, John Brandford and Micheal Pagden

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2024, Anniversary, Biographies, Congress, Deaths, English, History, Journalism, Junior, Minor Pieces, Players, Richard James, Tournament, Varsity Match

Minor Pieces 83: London Boys Chess Championships (1)

December 24, 2024 Richard James 1 Comment

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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

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2024, Analysis, Biographies, British Championships, Club, Congress, Deaths, Games Analysis, Hastings, History, Journalism, Minor Pieces, Organiser, Players, Richard James, Tournament

Minor Pieces 82: Imperial Chess Club (1): Chess on a Liner

December 12, 2024 Richard James 3 Comments

I’ve long been intrigued by this match played on board a liner in 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).

https://kingstonchess.com/sultan-khan-finally-recognised-as-a-grandmaster/

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 BCM here (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.

Richard Whieldon Barnett in 1929 by Lafayette © National Portrait Gallery

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.

https://johnchess.blogspot.com/2015/09/chess-snippet-no1-kate-belinda-finn.html

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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2024, Biographies, Birthday, Players, Remembering

Remembering IM Adam Hunt (21-x-1980 03-xii-2024)

December 4, 2024 John Upham Leave a comment

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.

(Ceiriog was the bardic name of John Ceiriog Hughes (1832–87)

Adam attended The Cherwell School and The University of Sussex to study general biology.

Jeremy Morse, Adam Hunt, Nick Pert and Nigel Short at the Lloyds Bank Masters — 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.

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.

Adam was the brother of IM Harriet Hunt

Chess Strategy: Move by Move, Adam Hunt, Everyman, 2013

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Biographies, Composer, Composition, Congress, English, Games Analysis, History, Journalism, Minor Pieces, Player, Players, Problems, Richard James

Minor Pieces 81: Harry Jackson

November 9, 2024 Richard James 2 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The British Chess Magazine noted his death in October, and published this obituary in November.

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

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2024, Biographies, English, Games Analysis, History, Journalism, Minor Pieces, Player, Players, Richard James

Minor Pieces 68: Leonard Francis Grasty

January 15, 2024 Richard James 4 Comments

Let me take you back 125 years, to the great London International Chess Tournament of 1899.

Most of the world’s strongest players were there: the first two World Champions, Steinitz and Lasker, Pillsbury and Chigorin, Maroczy and Schlechter, Janowski and Blackburne.

Here’s the cross-table.

There was also a second section, won by Marshall, ahead of the likes of Marco and Mieses, along with some local amateurs.

Two brilliancy prizes were awarded: to Lasker for his win against Steinitz and to Blackburne for his win against Lasker.

Here they are: click on any move for a pop-up window.

If you’re running such a prestigious event you’ll want some shiny new chess sets. The chipped and stained old pieces at the back of your equipment cupboard won’t do for the likes of Lasker and Steinitz.

But have you ever wondered what happens to those shiny new sets once they’ve been put away and the players have gone home?

It appears that, at some point after the end of the tournament, some sort of competition was held. I have no idea what the nature of the competition was, and how many sets were on offer. What I do know (or believe) is that one of the sets was won by a certain William Grasty.

William came from a working class family: his birth was registered in the first quarter of 1878 in Lambeth. His father, a stoker in a factory, died in 1884, and, by the 1891 census, young William was living with his aunt in Southwark. I don’t at the moment know whether he acquired this board immediately after the 1899 tournament, but by 1901 he was moving up in the world, living in lodgings in Wood Green and working as a commercial clerk.

He married Arabella Edith Attwood in 1904, but, tragically, their first child, William Arthur, born in 1909, died before reaching his first birthday. By now the family had settled in Lewisham, and the 1911 census found him still working as a commercial clerk. Later that year, another son, named Leonard Francis, was born. Soon afterwards the family moved to Islington, where a daughter, Muriel Florence, was born in 1913.

By 1921 the family had left London, moving to Southsea, where William was working for Weingarten Bros Ltd, Corset Manufacturers as an accountant. As well as William, Arabella and their children, the household included two boarders: the sisters(?) Dorothy and Elizabeth Kilby, both schoolteachers. At the time, Portsmouth was known as the corset capital of the world (who knew?) and they’re still made there now. Many of my relations were employed manufacturing corsets in Market Harborough, but that’s a story for another time.

There’s no evidence that William ever played competitive chess, but his son certainly did. I guess they played at home using the board from the 1899 tournament, trying to emulate the play of Lasker and his colleagues. Between 1928 and 1931, Leonard was a student at Portsmouth Municipal College, playing on top board for their chess team. They started off with friendly matches against Portsmouth Chess Club before graduating to the second division of the local league.

In 1931 Leonard graduated with a BA General Degree with Honours and a First-Class Distinction in Maths awarded by London University and took a job as a Customs and Excise Officer. Like so many others before and since, on finishing his studies he stopped playing competitive chess.

We next meet him in Manchester in 1937, where he married a local girl, May Taylor Shaw, the daughter of a sheet metal worker.

By the time of the 1939 Register, Leonard and May, along, perhaps, with their chess set, had moved back south, now living in Stanmore, North London. They were blessed with three children, Barbara (1937), Robert (Bob) (1939) and Victor (Vic) (1943).

At some point the family moved down to Bognor Regis, on the West Sussex coast, not all that far from Portsmouth. It was there, in 1948, that Leonard returned to competitive chess, joining the local club. As it happens, the Bognor Regis Observer up as far as 1959 is available online. During this period they ran a regular column featuring local chess news, contributed by the pseudonymous King’s Pawn and The Rook, so we have a lot of information about his chess career over the next decade or so.

You’ll see that he soon established himself as one of their stronger players, although it must be said that Bognor were no match for the likes of Brighton and Hastings. What they did have, though, was some very effective and ambitious administrators. You might notice, for example, the name of Joseph Norman Lomax, who would do much to put his home town on the chess map.

Here they are, in 1949, inviting a very distinguished guest to give a simultaneous display.

In fact Harry Golombek took on 33 (or 34, depending on your choice of newspaper) opponents, losing two games and drawing six, including his game against Grasty. He stayed on overnight, the following day playing another simul against five teams of consultants, drawing two and losing one, against Grasty and his veteran partner Stephen Arthur Hardstone (1873-1952), a retired civil service engineer.

Golombek would give a number of simultaneous displays at Bognor over the next few years. Here’s a photo of one of them.

The games we have for Leonard Grasty in this period, sadly, don’t show him in a very good light. If he’d captured the bishop on move 13 in this game he’d have been fine rather than having to resign two moves later.

And here, in an equal position, he found one of the worst moves on the board, allowing a mate in one.

In 1952, the local organisers had a big idea.

In fact the first congress would be held the following year, run by Joseph Norman Lomax (later, after his second marriage he’d style himself Norman Fishlock-Lomax), continuing very successfully until 1969.

Later that year, Leonard Francis Grasty was the subject of a profile in the local paper.

Was his speed of play responsible for the careless mistakes he seems to have made? Perhaps someone should have advised him to slow down.

In 1954 Bognor Regis Chess Club put on a display of chess trophies in a local shop window for National Chess Week.

There you have it. Leonard had inherited the chess set which his father had won perhaps more than half a century earlier.

Here it is.

It didn’t help him in this game against one of Brighton’s young stars, where he had to resign after only nine moves, having fallen for a rather well known opening trap. The earliest example in MegaBase dates from 1908, but the variation itself dates back to Blackburne – Paulsen (Vienna 1882), where Black won after 8… Ng4.

The following year’s National Chess Week also featured the display of chess trophies, along with a Teenagers v Old Stagers match in which Leonard and his older son Robert were on opposite sides.

A few months later, Bob took part in the Southern Counties Junior Championship, held as part of the 3rd Bognor Regis Congress, scoring 3/7. The other competitors included Michael Lipton, who would later achieve fame as a problemist. He returned the following year, when he managed half a point more, which was half a point less than the score achieved by Stewart Reuben.

Leonard continued his chess activity in Bognor throughout the 1950s.

Here’s a photograph from a club prizegiving from 1958, where Leonard shared the club championship with local journalist Alan Lawrence Ayriss (1934-2006), who, as it happens, has a very distant family connection with me (the 2nd cousin 2x removed of the husband of my 3rd cousin 2x removed). He’s holding a Bell book: The Art of Checkmate (Renaud & Kahn), which was published in that edition in 1955. The book is still within the family: an inscription inside reads “BOGNOR REGIS CHESS CLUB Presented to L.F. Grasty RUNNER UP LIGHTNING TOURNAMENT 1958. We can also see copies of Edward Lasker’s Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood in a 1952 edition and Reinfeld’s Improving Your Chess (1954).

This, captioned 1958, shows Bob seated second left, perhaps from the same event as the previous photo.

By December 1959 Leonard had been joined by his younger son, Victor, who was up for selection for a match against Worthing. But, at that point, the online run of the Bognor Regis Observer comes to an end, so I have, at the moment, little information about what happened next.

We do have a photograph from 1961 where he’s playing a friendly game against William Clifford Kendal (1902-1988).

In this game from 1966, he chose an unsuccessful plan in the early middle game, allowing his opponent to bring off a smart finish.

It’s unfortunate that the games of Leonard Grasty currently available have, so far, been rather unimpressive losses with the black pieces. Perhaps he played much better with white.

We do have a draw, from what must have been towards the end of his chess career, against a very strong opponent in Geoffrey James (no relation, but he played for my club, Richmond, for a few years in the 1970s). He was perhaps a bit lucky, though, as Geoffrey uncharacteristically missed a few winning chances.

This was a family steeped in chess: they counted Harry Golombek as a family friend. Bob and Vic’s sister Barbara recalls (although the Guardian journalist doesn’t) once going on a date with Leonard Barden. Barbara later married a man named Michael Armstrong. Their son Alastair, born in 1967, continued the family chess playing tradition into a fourth generation.

Leonard must have been very proud of his grandson’s success. He died in 1981, when Alastair was still quite young, but he still has many very fond memories of his grandfather, who encouraged his early interest in chess.

It was only right, then, that it was Alastair who would eventually inherit his great grandfather’s London 1899 chess set.

Here ‘s Alastair again, 13 years later, winning the Main A Section of the Hastings Congress (the Main A wasn’t the main event at the congress, but never mind).

Shortly afterwards, Alastair moved abroad, but, more than 30 years on, he’s now returned to England, deciding to take up chess again, and by chance living just round the corner from the Chess Palace.

He still has the 1899 chess set and board, and provided the photographs above. His son, though, shows little interest in the game.

So there you have it: the story of a chess set and board first played on, perhaps, by Emanuel Lasker, spanning four generations of the same family and 125 years.

Join me again soon when we’ll return to London in 1899.

Sources and Acknowledgements:

ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
ChessBase/Stockfish 16 for game analysis
Alastair Armstrong and the Grasty family, for the story and photographs
Brian Denman for providing some of Leonard Grasty’s games

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2023, Biographies, English, History, Journalism, Minor Pieces, Players, Richard James

Minor Pieces 62: Elsie Margaret Reid

September 3, 2023 Richard James 7 Comments

We’ve met, briefly, one or two lady chess players in Leicester, and, while we’re still in the home of the 2023 British Championships, it’s time to look at the subject in more detail.

Our story starts in 1912, when, at the Leicestershire Chess Club’s annual social evening, an informal tournament took place between four ladies.

The winner was Mrs Shardlow, ahead of Mrs Collier followed by the Misses N Wilkinson and M Chappin.

Mrs Collier was Eliza Mary (née Webb), the wife of Edward Heath Collier, one of the county’s leading players, and the mother of Philip Edward Collier. The Collier family played a vital role in Leicestershire chess over almost a century: you may well meet them again in a future Minor Piece.

Mrs Shardlow was born Emily Preston in Lancashire in 1877: her husband, works manager Howard William Shardlow, also a chess player, had been born in Lincolnshire in 1878. They didn’t stay very long in Leicestershire before moving on.

Here’s a delightful photograph of Emily, standing on the right, with her sister Edith on the left, and their mother Ellen seated in front of them.

Edith and Emily Preston, with their mother Ellen seated.

We also have a correspondence game played by her husband, which, for some reason, was published in a local newspaper in New Zealand. Howard’s 13th move fatally opened up the position, allowing his opponent, an accountant from South Manchester, a fairly easy tactic to score a swift victory. (Click on any move of any game in this article for a pop-up window.)

Then we have the Misses Wilkinson and Chappin. Muriel Cicely Chappin was the daughter of Frederick Chappin, whom you met here. Born in 1896, she was only 16 at the time, and must have come along with her father for some casual games. I’m guessing Miss Wilkinson was Nelly Wilkinson, also born in 1896, the daughter of a pork pie and sausage manufacturer (nearby Melton Mowbray has always been famous for its pork pies): the two girls lived a short walk away from each other, and, I’d imagine, were schoolfriends.

The Illustrated Leicester Chronicle 24 November 1928

Here’s Muriel, pictured at her wedding 16 years later: her bridegroom, Frederick Archibald Sowter, was a textile salesman.

It was decided to hold a more formal ladies’ tournament during the 1912-13 season. There were three entries, each playing two games against the other competitors.

In a close finish, Emily Shardlow scored 2½/4, Lucy Storr-Best 2/4, and Agnes Champ 1½/4. Lucy was the wife of (Robert) Lloyd Storr-Best, from another celebrated chess family. Again, they didn’t stay long in Leicestershire, later turning up in London, and then in Sussex. You may perhaps find out more about them in a future Minor Piece.

The social evening in 1913 included a pick-up match in which Emily, Eliza and Agnes all took part, the first two winning their games. Muriel and her friend Nelly were paired together, making an amicable draw. You’ll note that Mr Collier selected his wife for his team, but not his son.

The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury 04 October 1913

The Ladies’ Championship took place again in the 1913-14 season. I haven’t found out how many took part, but, as you might have read here, if you were paying attention, Miss Champ, living up to her name, moved from last place to first.

Agnes Champ: interesting name. If you reverse it you get CHAMP AGNES, which is perhaps what she drank to celebrate her success in the tournament. (A century or so later, another Agnes Champ made sporting news. A French racehorse of that name – male rather than female – had an unusually long but rather unsuccessful career, running no less than 93 times, but only winning on three occasions, all at Deauville, in 2012, 2014 and 2015.)

The chess playing Agnes Champ also had a rather long (25 years or so) but not very successful chess career, spanning the same three counties as the Storr-Bests.

Agnes was born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1859, the daughter of a wine merchant (you might wonder whether that was why he called his daughter ChampAgnes) , so she was well into her fifties when she started her chess career. Her brother John was a doctor who moved to Tasmania, and her sister Jessie married a doctor and settled in Leicester. The 1911 census found Agnes staying in a boarding house in Bournemouth, a lady of private means, but shortly afterwards she moved to Leicester, living with Jessie and her husband. In 1912 she joined the Leicestershire Chess Club. She was still living with her sister in the 1921 census, but described as a ‘visitor’.

It looks like she remained in Leicester throughout the 1920s, but by 1932 she was living in a boarding house in the Notting Hill area of London. It was there that she resumed her chess career, joining the Imperial Chess Club, and here playing in a friendly match against the confusingly similarly named Empire Social Chess Club.

Source: Kensington News and West London Times 07 April 1933

You’ll notice a few things here. Firstly, that there were eight ladies out of twenty on each side, an impressive 40%. One of Agnes’s teammates was Alice Elizabeth Hooke (see here and here). She just missed by one board her old Leicester opponent Lucy Storr-Best (at least I presume it was her). Her opponent, Claire Amez Droz, was very interesting: a violinist and future London Ladies’ Chess Champion, who would later be involved with West London Chess Club. Mrs James was almost certainly not related to me.

The Falkirk Herald and Scottish Midlands Journal 14 February 1934

There’s much to be written about these two clubs and their members, and there was clearly a considerable crossover in membership. Here, in 1934, she was taking part in the Empire’s Women’s (interesting choice of word: Ladies was usually used at the time) Championship, alongside several of the country’s top female players.

By the time of the 1939 Electoral Roll, Agnes was living in a different boarding house in the same part of London: among those next door was Leonard Messel, who may or may not have given his name to a magnolia.

Very soon afterwards, it seems she retired, like all good chess players at the time, to Hastings, where, at the age of 80, she made her debut in open competition, taking part in the Third Class section of the 1939-40 Hastings Congress, scoring a very respectable 5 points out of 9 games.

But this would be her swansong: her death was recorded, again in Hastings, in the first quarter of 1940.

It would appear that the Leicestershire Ladies Champion didn’t survive the First World War, and it was some time before we’d encounter another female player.

Here is Miss KE Hirst, selected to play for the league leaders in the first division of the league.

Kate Eleanor Hirst was born in 1896, the youngest child of a Baptist Minister. Kate and her immediately older sister Ethel stayed at home their whole lives, Ethel caring for her widowed mother, and Kate doing secretarial work for her brother Thomas, who ran a hosiery business.

She was a club member for more than three decades, but played rarely in club matches. In 1936 she shared second place in the third division (of four) of the county championship. She also enjoyed a few chess holidays in Margate. In 1936 she scored 2/5 in the Second Class Short Tourney A, where one of her opponents, scoring 1/5, was former Leicester chess lady Lucy Storr-Best. In 1938 she’d been promoted to the Short First Class C section, where she shared second prize on 3/5. One of her fellow competitors in both these events was Marjorie Strachey, sister of Lytton.

In the 1940s she was recorded as playing correspondence chess for her county, and competing in the second division (of three) in the county championship. Kate, it seems, was a player of average club standard, but one who preferred the more social atmosphere of internal competitions to matches against other clubs.

She was still recorded as a member in Don Gould’s Chess in Leicester 1860-1960, but, sadly, her membership didn’t last very much longer.

The 1932-33 Hastings Tournament provided some local interest with the emergence of another Leicester Lady Player: Miss Elsie Reid.

Elsie finished in 4th place, as you see: a highly commendable result for such an inexperienced player.

Elsie Margaret Reid was born in Leicester on 20 May 1909, so she was 23 years old at this point. Her father had been born Frederick Neale in East Leake, near Loughborough, in the fourth quarter of 1876, but when his mother married a widower and framework knitter named Isaac Reid, he took on his stepfather’s surname.

By 1901, Frederick had joined the Royal Marines, and, on returning to civilian life, he married Clara Elizabeth Guillain in Leicester in 1908. The 1911 census found them living about 1½ miles east of the city centre, with Frederick working as an engineer’s driller. Another daughter, named Clara Elizabeth after her mother, was born in 1912. On the outbreak of war, Frederick rejoined the Royal Marines, serving in the Light Infantry division. Tragically, he lost his life on 21 May 1915, perhaps in the Gallipoli campaign. He was buried at sea, but his heroism is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.

Clara, then, was left a widow with two young daughters, and, as it happened, her family were around to help out.

Her background was rather more exotic than that of her husband. Her paternal grandfather had been born in France, but, at some point in the mid 19th century, moved to London where he seems to have been working for the French government, perhaps in some sort of diplomatic role. His son, Adolphe, became a chef and confectioner, and, in the mid 1890s, moved with his family to Leicester. One wonders if he had any business connections with Victor Hextall Lovall.

After her husband’s death, Clara had to find a job to make ends meet. The 1921 census records her as a despatch clerk working for Gimson’s shoe machinery company. You might recall the Gimson family from Sydney’s association with chess at Desford Approved School. His father was also, briefly, a member of Leicestershire Chess Club. The two girls were at school, while Clara’s mother was there to carry out home duties, and one of her brothers, another Adolphe, who worked as a shoe clicker, was also living there.

How, one wonders, did Elsie learn chess? Perhaps the Guillain family were players. From 1935 onwards, one of the solvers in Alfred Lenton’s chess column was M Guillain. The only M Guillain around at the time was Elsie’s cousin Margaret, born in Leicester in 1920. Was Margaret a teenage chess problem devotee? I’d like to think she was.

Returning to Elsie’s chess career, she was also playing for Leicester Victoria, alongside Alfred Lenton, in the top division of the league. In this match she lost to reformed juvenile delinquent Phillip Rimmington.

The following year she was back at Hastings, having been promoted from the Third Class to the First Class.

It looks from the results as if she was rather overmatched here, and would have been much better off in one of the Second Class sections.

That summer, she was selected to play in the British Ladies’ Championship in Chester. The appearance of a young woman from a working class background must have come as something of a shock to the other players, mostly ladies of a certain age and class. (Not so much of a shock, though, as that provided by Miss Fatima, who had won the title the previous year, also taking part in 1931.

You’ll see she performed very well, with a score of +1. Alfred was clearly impressed.

Here’s the game extract, in which Elsie shows exemplary endgame technique, trading off queens to win the pawn ending. Always good to see!

Back at Hastings for the third time that December, she was again placed in one of the First Class sections, meeting several of the same opponents as the previous year, and again rather out off her depth.

The 1935 British Championships took place in Great Yarmouth. Elsie was rather less successful this time round, only scoring 3½ points.

Thanks to Brian Denman for contributing her loss to the tournament winner, whom you’ll meet in a future Minor Piece.

In 1936, Elsie Reid was otherwise engaged, in more ways than one. Her marriage to Alfred Lenton was registered in Leicester in the 4th quarter of 1936.

Now a married woman, she returned to action in Blackpool the following year, this time recording a 50% score.

That was to be her last tournament appearance, although she continued to play club and county chess up to 1939.

The 1939 Register records Alfred and Elsie living next door to Alfred’s parents and brothers at 65 Copdale Road Leicester. Her occupation is given as Hosiery Terrot Machinist. A Terrot Machine, since you asked, is a circular knitting machine made by a company of that name in Germany. They’re still making them now, although they had some financial problems earlier this year.

Although she had long since given up competitive play, she maintained her interest in the game for the rest of her life.

In the mid 1970s, Leicester was a hotbed of junior chess. The local papers were full of the exploits of teenage stars such as Mark Hebden, Glenn Flear and Geoffrey Lawton, not to mention a certain Keith Arkell from nearby Warwickshire. I wonder what happened to them. Elsie Lenton was still following the game, and was mentioned here in 1975.

Leicester Daily Mercury 23 December 1975

Edwin Breckon Chapman (Dick to his friends) (1906-2001) had been involved in local chess journalism since the 1930s, and was clearly still keeping in touch with Elsie.

Unfortunately, the snippet and game above are the only examples I’ve been able to find of Elsie’s play. Her husband published quite a lot of local games in his column, but none of hers.

Alfred and Elsie’s only child, a son named Philip, was born in 1942. His parents naturally taught him chess, and, as it happens, I played him twice during my time running a Leicester Polytechnic team in the Leicestershire League, when he was representing his parents’ old club. I had no idea at that time he was Alfred’s son.

Anyone familiar with my play won’t be surprised by the results. The first one was undoubtedly drawn in the final position.

In this game, though, I appear to have been winning in the final position. I don’t recall whether we agreed a draw or whether the game was adjudicated.

Elsie Margaret Lenton died in the third quarter of 1991, at the age of 82. Alfred outlived her by 13 years. There will be a lot more to write about him in future Minor Pieces. Don’t you dare miss them!

Sources and Acknowledgements:

ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Archive
Wikipedia
BritBase (John Saunders)
chessgames.com
Brian Denman
Streatham & Brixton Chess Club Blog (Martin Smith)

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2023, Biographies, Children, English, Historian, History, Journalism, Junior, Minor Pieces, Players, Richard James

Minor Pieces 59: Eric Harold Patrick (1)

June 19, 2023 Richard James 4 Comments

For a few years in the mid 1930s a remarkable story was playing out in Leicestershire chess. The boys from Desford Approved School, who had been sent there from all over the country having fallen foul of the law, were taking part in the Under 16 section of the county chess championship, dominating the event, winning game after game against their law-abiding contemporaries, and even beating adult teams in the county league.

I wanted to find out more about the lives of some of the Desford boys (the titular Eric was their star player), and about the men who chose to promote chess as an activity for these boys from troubled backgrounds. This article looks mainly at the latter: a future article will consider the former.

First, a bit of history. The Leicester Industrial School for Boys, Desford opened in January 1881. Boys were sent there for all sorts of reasons: some had been in trouble, some were destitute and wandering the streets, some were living in brothels, some were sent there by their parents because they were out of control at home. While there they would be subject to strict discipline as well as learning a trade to help them find employment on their release.

One such boy, beyond his father’s control, was Tom Harry James, who was there from January 1904, when he was 12 years old, until October 1907. His father was expected to pay his expenses, but seemed reluctant to do so.

The young miscreant would live a long and colourful life, dying in Yakima, Washington in 1980, but that’s a story for another time and place. How do I know this? Tom Harry James was one of my father’s half brothers. Tom Harry senior and his first wife had twelve children, and after she died he remarried, producing another six children. My father, Howard James, the youngest of them, was born in 1919.

It was now January 1917, and time for a new chairman to be appointed to Desford Industrial School. The man elected was Sydney Ansell Gimson (it’s pronounced Jimson), a local councillor representing the Liberal Party and a member of a prominent Leicester family.

In 1842, Josiah Gimson and his brother Benjamin started an engineering firm in Leicester. Josiah was a man of progressive views: a supporter of Robert Owen‘s socialist ideas and a secularist, founding the Leicester Secular Society, which is still active today. Sydney, born in 1860, was the oldest son of Josiah’s second marriage, and, although he was also sympathetic towards his mother’s unitarian views, played an important role in the Secular Society. At first, he was anti-union, however, being more interested in the concept of the individual, but seems to have changed his opinion later in life. He worked for some time in the family business, but, not needing the money, retired early in order to devote the remainder of his life to public service.

Here’s Sydney, photographed in 1904.

From The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester (Ned Newitt)

You can read more about both Josiah and Sydney in Ned Newitt’s Who’s Who of Radical Leicester here, and about the family business here (Wiki) and here (Story of Leicester).

Some of his brothers were also of interest. His older half-brother, Josiah Mentor Gimson, also worked for his father. One of JM Gimson’s sons, Christopher, played first class cricket for Cambridge University in 1908, and again for Leicestershire in 1921 when on extended leave from the Indian Civil Service. His 1975 obituary in Wisden described him as ‘an attacking batsman and a fine outfield’. Another of his sons, David, was the first chairman of the Leicestershire Contract Bridge Association on its formation in 1946. A competition for a trophy bearing his name was competed for at least up to 2019.

The most important member of the family, though, was Sydney’s younger brother Ernest William Gimson. Ernest met William Morris at the Secular Society, and soon joined forces with him, working as a furniture designer and architect, being very much involved in the Arts and Crafts movement. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, you’ll find a lot more of interest via your favourite search engine. If you’ve got £50 to spare you could also buy this book.

The Leicester Secular Society has a feature on the Gimson family here. You might want to follow some of their other links and look around other pages of their website.

Meanwhile, back at Desford Industrial School it was now 1921. There was a vacancy for a new Superintendent. Sydney wanted someone who shared his progressive views on education: the right man for the job was 31 year old Cecil John Wagstaff Lane, the son of a farmer and innkeeper from Melton Mowbray, who was already working there as the Chief Assistant. The 1921 census found him settled in with his wife Dora and daughter Joan, along with other staff members and more than 200 boys from all over the country. As well as boys from Leicester, many of them were from other parts of the Midlands, London and Yorkshire, especially Hull. By now they would have been sent there by magistrates who would decide to which institution the young offenders up before them should be sent.

Sydney was very much in the ‘nurture’ camp, believing that most of the young offenders were victims of family circumstances, and, if they were treated well, would grow up to lead useful lives and become law-abiding members of society. He found an ally in Cecil Lane, and, despite the 30 year gap in their ages, the two men became firm friends. Cecil introduced a less punitive regime, running Desford along the lines of an English Public School. There were four houses: Red, White, Blue and Green, each with a house master who acted as a surrogate father to the boys. Much emphasis was placed on sport, with regular visits from top class players and competitions against other schools in the area. The most popular sport there was boxing: the school’s annual boxing competition, held over the New Year period, became a big local event, attended enthusiastically by the great and good of Leicester society.

Looking at the newspaper sports columns in the inter-war years it’s notable how popular boxing was, and also how often the professionals fought.

If boxing was the Desford boys’ favourite sport, the other sport which played a very big part in their lives was, perhaps unexpectedly, chess. Cecil Lane and Sydney Gimson don’t appear to have been competitive players themselves, but it’s clear they both enjoyed the game and had the foresight to realise how much it could benefit the boys in their care.

You might think they missed a trick by failing to invent chessboxing, but that’s something we’ll leave aside for now.

By 1925 word was going round that chess was becoming popular within the school.

Leicester Daily Mercury 16 December 1925

Leicester Daily Mercury 18 December 1925

Gimson and Lane might not have been club players (and here’s Sydney losing to one of his pupils), but they knew someone who was. Councillor Frederick Chappin, a member of the Conservative Party, was a political opponent of Sydney Gimson, but a friend who not only shared his interest but had been a competitive player in the county league going right back to the 1880s, on at least one occasion playing on board 2 behind none other than the great Henry Ernest Atkins.

By 1927 the boys needed more demanding opposition and county champion Victor Hextall Lovell, Leicester’s strongest player at the time (you’ll meet him in a future Minor Piece) was invited to give a simultaneous display. Lovell’s father was a former Mayor of Leicester and, like Frederick Chappin, a Conservative Councillor.

Leicester Daily Mercury 10 February 1927

Lovell returned during the 1929-30 Christmas holidays, and was emphatic that the standard of play had improved since his previous visit.

Desford School celebrated its jubilee in 1931, and this article outlines some of the changes Lane had made since his appointment as Superintendent.

The 1933 Children and Young Persons Act renamed Industrial Schools as Approved Schools, so Desford was now Desford Approved School. However, the school always preferred to be referred to locally simply as Desford School or Desford Boys’ School to avoid stigmatising the pupils. At this point children could remain there until the age of 16.

As you saw last time, Leicester was a pioneer in junior chess, amongst many other things. In January the first county boys’ championship took place in two sections, which appeared to be Under 18 and Under 16. The Desford boys were keen to take part, six entering in the senior and six in the junior section. Other schools represented were Wyggeston, for many years Leicester’s leading academic secondary school, Alderman Newton, also classified as a ‘Public School’ at the time, City Boys and Moat Road.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to identify all the Desford chess players as only initials and surname were given in the local press. In some cases the boys also took part in the annual boxing tournament, where the press gave their full names. Although the Leicestershire Records Office holds admission records, they are not able to release them due to data protection legislation, and, as we’ve seen, the boys might have come from anywhere in the country. Having an unusual surname was of course helpful.

As you’ll see, the Desford boys were pretty successful in their first competitive outing.

On a sad note, the winner of the senior section, Keith Dear, died four years later at the age of just 20.

There, winning the junior section and representing Desford (Approved) School, was Eric Harold Patrick, whose life we can reconstruct, although we don’t know why he was there.

He had been born on 23 August 1921 in Cannock, Staffordshire, the oldest of five children of Harold and Lily Patrick, who had married that January when they were both only 19. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Leicester, Lily’s home town. At the time of his success, then, he was only 12 years old, competing against boys who were a year or two older than him, and attending the city’s most prestigious secondary schools.

When Sydney Gimson came to present his annual report to the education committee a few months later, young Eric’s chess success was the item which elicited the most interest.

Gimson also revealed that he had played two games against Eric, both players winning one game.

There was another administrative change. From now on, boys had to leave Desford at 15 rather than 16. Sydney wasn’t impressed, as he told the school prizegiving. For some reason this was reported in the Women’s column of the local paper.

You’ll see that the school only awarded four prizes – and the fewer prizes you award, the more they’ll be valued. The most public spirited boy, the boy who was best at sports, the captain of the winning house – and the best chess player. A demonstration, I think, of the respect in which chess was held at Desford at the time.

By the end of the year it was time for the 1935 edition of the county junior championship. As boys now left Desford at 15 they were only represented in the junior section.

The local newspapers’ sports correspondents were invited along to have a look.

There was also a photographer present.

One paper even sent along their cartoonist: Eric Patrick was one of his subjects.

The results of the junior section were remarkable. All five of the preliminary sections were won by Desford boys, Eric Patrick retaining his title with a 100% score. Don’t forget that these were young offenders from difficult family backgrounds winning game after game against boys from top academic schools.

Needless to say, Eric again won the school chess prize as well. At the prizegiving, Cecil Lane blamed poor housing and large families on the boys’ problems.

Later that year, the school entered a team into the third division of the Leicestershire Chess League, where they were playing against adult club teams as well as other school teams.

By December they were in second place, having won two and drawn one of their first three matches.

Leicester Daily Mercury 05 December 1935

As the New Year approached, the county boys’ championships came round again. As in the previous year, seven Desford boys took part in the junior section, with Eric Patrick aiming for his third successive title. This time they didn’t have it all their own way, with only two of their players, including Eric, making the final four. He even lost a game in the final pool before regaining the Silver Rook.

Again, we have a photograph.

Leicester Daily Mercury 31 December 1935

The school team continued to do well in the league. In these two matches they beat the early league leaders (Alfred Urban Busby was a more than useful player, beating Alekhine in a 1936 simul and, in 1989, a year before his death, losing a postal game to Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club’s Michael Franklin), with the aid of two defaults, but lost to the second team from the Cripples Guild.

Here are the final league tables, with King Richard’s Road defaulting two matches. If their two opponents were awarded 6-0 victories, that would leave Desford Boys sharing second place.

Eric Patrick was now 15, and would have left Desford School that summer to make his way in the world. He continued playing chess, now representing YMCA in the league, and taking part in the senior section of the junior championships at the end of the year.

There was also a change in the Leicestershire League: they decided to run a separate schools division rather than allowing them to play against the adult clubs. For whatever reason, I don’t know, and, again for whatever reason, Desford didn’t enter the league for the 1936-37 season.

In the 1936-37 boys’ championships, Eric Patrick reached the final pool of the senior section but didn’t quite manage to win the title. The best Desford player in the junior section was Richard Kelsey, who finished in second place.

But the school would soon be hit by tragedy.

Cecil Lane’s wife Dora had died in April 1936. He needed some domestic help and his friend Sydney knew just the right person. Sydney had two sons, Basil and Humphrey. Basil was married to Alice Muriel Goodman: whose relation Nora would be ideal for the job.

Nora soon became rather more than a housekeeper, and, in September 1937, she and Cecil became man and wife.

Leicester Daily Mercury 09 September 1937

As Mr RT Goodman had died more than a year before Nora was born, I suspect that the older lady in the photograph may have been her grandmother, not her mother, and that Nora was actually the illegitimate daughter of Alice’s sister Winifred. Was she aware?

And was Cecil aware that his brother Roderick died in hospital on the same day?

Anyway, the newly wed couple headed off to Scotland for their honeymoon. While there, Cecil was taken ill At first he seemed to be recovering, but then he took a turn for the worse, and, only 11 days after their marriage, Nora was left a widow.

Leicester Daily Mercury 21 September 1937

Desford were still well represented in the younger section of the 1937-38 edition of the county junior championship (now no longer ‘Boys’ following the entry of Betty and Joan Ferrar, whom you met last time), with Hubert Cookland reaching the final pool and Norman Bass just missing out after a play-off.

There was more sad news on 4 November 1938, with the death of Sydney Ansell Gimson at the age of 78. The Leicester Mercury described him as a ‘Noted Leicester Rationalist and Public Man’.

Leicester Daily Mercury 05 November 1938

You can also read an online biography here.

That, sadly, seems to have been the end of competitive chess at Desford Approved School. They appear not to have been represented in the 1938-39 county junior championships. Cecil and Sydney’s successors, I presume, didn’t share their interest in chess. Then, of course, war intervened. Some of the boys and young men who had been engaged in friendly combat over the chessboard, or, at least in the case of the Desford pupils, in the boxing ring, would soon be drawn into a very different fight: the fight against Fascism.

Join me again soon to find out what happened to Eric Harold Patrick and his chess playing friends after they left Desford.

But first, perhaps you’ll join me in drinking a toast to Cecil John Wagstaff Lane and Sydney Ansell Gimson, two men who, for their time, or even for our time, held enlightened and progressive views on education, and believed, as I do, that chess can have enormous social benefits for children of secondary school age.

I’d like to end on a personal note. Of all the people I’ve written about in these Minor Pieces, I think Sydney is the one I’d most like to have met. He seems to have been a man who shared my own opinions, interests and values in almost every respect. My political and religious views are, considering the 90 year gap in our ages, very similar to his. I also share his interests in the environment and in education, particularly in how schools should go about helping disadvantaged children, and in how chess can be used for that purpose. Sydney Ansell Gimson, you are one of my heroes.

Sources and Acknowledgements:

ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
Who’s Who of Radical Leicester (Ned Newitt)
William Morris Society website
Leicester Secular Society website
Story of Leicester website
University of Leicester website

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2023, Biographies, Club, English, History, Journalism, Minor Pieces, Players, Richard James

Minor Pieces 58: Leonard Inskip and Michael Stanley Woodward Ferrar

June 8, 2023 Richard James 3 Comments

Last time I looked at the popularity of chess amongst the residents of the Star and Garter Home for Disabled Ex-Servicemen in Richmond in the 1930s.

Richmond wasn’t the only place in which those with physical handicaps were encouraged to play chess. It’s time to return to the city of Leicester, which, you may recall, was my father’s home city, and also where I studied between 1968 and 1972. In fact my parents’ families were both from the Midlands, crisscrossing the counties of Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, and occasionally bumping into each other in places like Coventry and Leicester.

The Leicester Guild of Cripples was founded in 1898, providing services for the physically handicapped of the city. Between 1925 and 1991 they ran a holiday home in the nearby village of Cropston. Of course, along with other terms for disabilities which became playground insults, we can no longer use the word ‘cripple’ in that context today. They later became the Leicester Guild of the Physically Handicapped and in 2000 changed their name to MOSAIC 1898 where they now cater for those with a wider range of disabilities.

You can visit their website here and watch a 1934 home movie about the Guild here.

We’ll now turn the clock back to 1930 and meet a remarkable man named Leonard Inskip. Leonard, born in 1885 was one of a large family. His father, William John Inskip, was an influential trade unionist working, like very many in Leicester, in the bootmaking trade. He became a local councillor, alderman and magistrate, but was also antisemitic, campaigning against Jewish shoemakers. He merits a Wikipedia page here, and you can also read about him on Ned Newitt’s essential The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester website here.

Leonard, despite his physical handicap, was an enterprising chap. In 1930 he founded a magazine called The Cripples’ Journal, and sent copies of the first issue to newspapers up and down the country.

Biddulph Street, to the east of the city centre, has been split into four sections with different names so it’s not possible to identify the exact house where Leonard lived, but it would probably have been somewhere around here. A completely different world from the suburban mansions where you’d find the civil servants, bankers and insurance executives who played chess in leafy Richmond and Twickenham.

Leonard had a particular interest in sports, and just like the residents of the Star and Garter, believed that those who weren’t able to access physical sports should be encouraged to take part in mental sports.

He therefore wrote to the local paper suggesting a social club where he and his fellow guild members could play friendly games of draughts, chess and billiards against members of other social clubs in the city.

The authorities, as you see, weren’t sympathetic. Most of the cripples were women and children and the men, if they wanted, could go and join another club. However, Leonard received letters of support, and it wasn’t long before the Cripples Guild played their first chess match.

I haven’t been able to identify F Weston: there were quite a few gentlemen named Frank Weston or Frederick Weston living in Leicester at the time, none of whom had an obvious physical handicap. He had previously played for the Victoria Road club and was a fairly strong club and county player. It could be that he came along to help and support them, and perhaps provide some instruction.

His opponent here, Arthur Clement Bannister (1891-1982) was, in 1921, an engineer. His father James, who had been born in Earl Shilton, was the manager of a hosiery company. His sister Laura would later marry High Court Judge Sir Donald Hurst. James’s father and grandfather were both named Stephen. His grandfather was apparently born in Earl Shilton in about 1788 but I haven’t been able to find a parish baptism record. However, I know a lot about other Earl Shilton Bannisters, notably my great grandmother (mother’s mother’s mother) Louisa Bannister, who was born there in 1854. I can (speculatively) trace Louisa back to John Bannister, the son of David, born in Earl Shilton in 1714, which, if we’re both correct, makes me the 7th cousin of antique chess set dealer Luke Honey. It’s also a reasonable guess that Arthur Clement came from the same family, so we may share a common ancestor somewhere along the line.

I haven’t been able to find a record of another match until two years later.

Some of the surnames there will be familiar to anyone researching Leicester genealogy. Names like Freestone, Gilbert, Pratt and Dakin come up over and over again.

Here we have a team of seven players scoring a convincing victory over British United, manufactures of shoe machinery and for many years one of Leicester’s biggest employers.

On board six was the Secretary of the Cripples Guild, Michael Stanley Woodward Ferrar, usually known simply as Stanley Ferrar.

Stanley was born in 1905 in Stamford, Lincolnshire, the youngest of three sons of Walter Ferrar and Annie Woodward. He also had a half-brother, Annie’s son George William Todd Woodward, who would change his surname to Ferrar.

At some point in the 1910s the family moved to Leicester, where Walter died in 1919. The 1921 census finds Annie and her three younger sons at 65 Beaumont Road Leicester. Reginald Walter is a motor driver and John Basil a baker, while Stanley, because of his disability, isn’t at school and has no occupation. George William (using his second name) is back in Lincolnshire, living in his brother-in-law’s pub, along with his wife Maud and their infant son, another Reginald. Like John Basil he’s employed as a baker.

In the autumn of 1933 they played several more friendly matches, and in 1934 applied to join the Leicestershire League, entering a team in the third (lowest) division.

They were pretty successful as well, as you’ll see from the final tables.

The following season saw them promoted to Division 2, while, with so much demand for places in competitive matches, they entered a second team in Division 3. Both teams performed respectably, as you’ll see from the final (there were a few unplayed matches) tables.

On 5 September Stanley Ferrar was selected as one of 40 players to take on the great Alexander Alekhine in a simultaneous display.

Leicester Evening Mail 07 September 1936

You’ll see that he drew his game, and, according to this report, was close to winning.

Leicester Daily Mercury 07 September 1936

(There was some confusion about whether Mr Passant was the fairly well-known AE Passant or his lesser known brother NE Passant, who really should have switched the order of his first names.)

You’ll meet a few of Alekhine’s other opponents in later Minor Pieces.

The next season, though, they were struggling to raise full teams, so they needed some more manpower. Or rather girl power.

You’ll see that two Misses Ferrar have been recruited to their second team in Division 3.

These are Stanley’s nieces, Norma and Betty, who may well have been the second and third females to take part in the Leicestershire Chess League. You’ll meet their predecessor in a future Minor Piece.

Now there’s some confusion here as he had two nieces named Betty, both living in Leicester. His half-brother, George William’s children were, apart from Reginald whom you met in 1921, Norma (1922), Joan (1924), Betty (1926) and Monica (1928). His brother Reginald Walter’s children were Betty (1924), Neville (1926), Brian (1928), Rita (1931) and Brenda (1933). John Basil had no less than 11 children, but none of them fit it. (Leonard Inskip, married to the delightfully named Alice Lovely, also had a daughter called Betty who would later obtain a BA in Geography at Liverpool University. My mother would have told you how popular the name was in the 1920s.)

So Miss N Ferrar must have been Norma, and I suspect Miss B Ferrar was Reginald Walter’s daughter born in 1924 rather than Norma’s sister born in 1926. Both girls, then, would have been in their teens at the time of these matches. To the best of my knowledge, unlike Uncle Stanley, they were not themselves physically handicapped.

Norma didn’t play very long, but her sister Joan replaced her in the team.

Leicestershire, a pioneering county in so many ways, had been running a boys’ championship for several years. In January 1938 Betty and Joan applied to take part in the Junior (U16 or thereabouts) section. Their entries were accepted, forcing the organisers to rename their competition as Juniors rather than Boys.

This report suggests that the event was rather chaotic and the standard of play not very high.

Betty not only won her section, but shared first place in the competition.

Here she is with her co-winner and the trophy.

The Cripples Guild continued playing in the county league into the 1938-39 season, with Betty and Joan now in the first team, but then war put an end to their chess adventure. A wartime league was established, but they didn’t take part. That, then, is the end of the story. Stanley Ferrar married in 1945, had two children, Graham and Sheila, but died in 1951. Leonard Inskip died in 1955.

Leonard’s name lived on for many years in the Inskip League of Friendship for the Disabled: there were several branches of this charity, mostly, it seems, in Lancashire, some of which survived into the 21st century.

Leonard Inskip and Stanley Ferrar may not have been the world’s greatest players, but they represent to me what chess clubs are really about, providing friendship and community, especially for those who are, in one way or another, handicapped or disadvantaged. I’m sure their friends in the Cripples Guild gained a lot from their league matches and appreciated their efforts. Leonard was clearly a remarkable man, while Stanley, the stronger player of the two, by teaching and encouraging his nieces, became a pioneer and supporter of chess for girls.

Again, we see chess being used to provide competition for those who, through physical handicap or incapacitation, were unable to access physical sport. This wasn’t the only example of chess being used for social purposes. in the inter-war period. I recently came across a photograph of boys from a school for the deaf and dumb in Derby being taught chess. Most remarkable of all was the story of chess at Worcester College for the Blind, which I’ll perhaps explore some other time.

But, still in Leicester in the 1930s, there was another story being played out, promoting competitive chess for another disadvantaged sector of society. You’ll find out more in the next Minor Piece. Don’t miss it.

Sources and Acknowledgements:

ancestry.com
findmypast.com/British Newspaper Archives
Wikipedia
Google Maps
The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester (Ned Newitt)
Inskip One-Name Study
Mosaic 1898 website
Media Archive for Central England (MACE)

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