As is commonplace, I had four grandparents. Some other day I must write
about Jennie Maxwell Welbourne (née Myles), Rosalind Peers (née
Harvey) and Roger Ernest Peers, who was a bomb-disposal officer for the Royal
Navy during World War II. In the mean time, I have at least a certain amount of
information about my paternal grandfather, after whom I am named.
Edward Welbourne
Born in 1894, the son of a country policeman in Lincolnshire, decorated with
the Military Cross in World War I, master (1951 to 1964) of Emmanuel College,
died in 1966.
The Open Library
has his
dissertation, The miners' Unions of Northumberland and Durham.
The Harvard Magazine,
discussing the
room reserved for Emmanuel's Harvard Scholars; apparently he oversaw a
renovation of it.
World War I
On a
search on
his name will reveal various details. His award, as a second lieutenant in
the Durham Light Infantry, of the Military Cross was described thus:
For conspicuous gallantry in action—for carrying out
several dangerous reconnaissances under heavy fire and obtained valuable
information. Later he led a raid with great courage and skill. He was severely
wounded.
The same blogspot site also supplies that his father (another Edward)
was Sgt. Welbourne of the Barton police. Grandpa was Refused entry to
army several times through ill health. Finally accepted and severely wounded
in winning the Military Cross.
College master at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, in the 50s and
60s. The above citation (from a roll of honour) also supplied (with some
corrections and annotations):
He began his army career on this list of reserve army officers as a
temporary 2nd Lieutenant on 27th September 1915, attaining this full rank on 8
May 1917. He became a full Lieutenant and got his commission in the Durham Light
Infantry (formerly a service battalion of this regiment) attaining his rank of
Acting Captain (Lieutenant's pay) on 17th August 1918. After his injuries he was
transferred to a young soldiers battalion.
On 27th February 1919, Edward retired owing to ill health caused by the
injuries that had won him the MC. He went on to be a much renowned Master
of Emmanuel
College, Cambridge, where his
portrait hangs. The leg injury he picked up winning the Military Cross
was to bother him for years. He died in 1966 as a result of this injury, slipping on ice while getting
into his car.
The blogspot gives his death as 1965, but other sources (including below,
from the same source) give 1966; perhaps the fall was in 1965, as I believe he
was taken to hospital and died a few days later, so New Year may have
intervened. Attributing the death to the war wound is something of a stretch;
slipping on the ice (and thus falling) broke his hip and (if I remember
correctly) triggered a heart attack. While a leg injury may well have
contributed to the fall (albeit ice can catch out even the fit and agile), and
might somehow be implicated in a fragile hip bone, its contribution to the
consequent heart attack is unlikely to be significant. He was in his
70s and I
believe he was significantly overweight, which surely were factors making
a heart attack more likely. He was also over six foot tall: his weight shall
surely have reinforced the higher they come the harder they fall,
contributing to the severity of the shock on falling (hence both the broken bone
and heart attack). On the other hand, his contemporaries understandably
preferred to remind their readers of his war-time gallantry, rather than dwell
on his weight.
A longer entry (another, quoted but not reproduced here, alludes
to Notes that I suspect this may be) goes into more detail (I have taken
the liberty of breaking the quoted letter into paragraphs, and turned what
appear to be anachronistic comments, by whoever quoted it, into annotations of
the text, prefixed with B: to distinguish them from my own
annotations):
Edward Welbourne, son of the police
superintendent, at study for his Master of Art (MA) in Cambridge writes
to his old school about the latest developments–
To make promises is easy; to fulfil them is a much more
difficult matter, hence the lateness of this letter. This term has been, as you
can well conceive, unusual. Roughly about 40 to 45% of the
University kept a team, and of that
percentage the greater part was medically unfit, or freshmen.
I came up, intending to apply through the OTC for a Commission. The OTC and the application were in order
but the doctor refused to pass me as fit for duty. Some time in
the summer I must be cut up—a two months job—for it seems that I
have strained myself internally at some period and produced a slight rupture.
In the mean time I made myself more or less militarily efficient in the
O.T.C. and have progressed with my next year's work.
Much of the time I have spent looking for new acquaintances to fill in the
badly left gaps. Cambridge feels very lonely with one man on the stair known,
and with few people to lunch with. It feels strange too
without the river
though there has been a scratch holiday eight out two or three times.
Sport is practically extinct, a little hockey, a little soccer, a little weekly
rugger, and a few enthusiasts keeping up their athletic power.
Strange as it may seem my French will allow me to listen to a conversation
without embarrassment. We swarm with Belgians, mostly undesirable since the
better have returned to fight. We swarm too with wounded at least 1000 in our
hospital, and with troops, 2000 or 3000. Weekly there come up for rest youth in
khaki uniforms and budding moustaches who have to be amused and fed. Daily come
the letters imploring me for news, for the writers are stationed in Godless
training camps drilling 8 to 10 hours a day.
I am coming home next Tuesday. If the school is still present, I will
attempt to visit it with you, if I may; till then I will relapse into
silence.
A fantastic picture is painted of an entire University, one of the oldest,
emptied as everyone answered the call to arms, for Kitchener's New Armies.
Kitchener had asked for 100,000 volunteers—within months there were a
million.
Welbourne did get to serve eventually, with the 18th Durham Light Infantry,
for a short time only, enlisting, winning the MC and being invalided out within
months.
Returning to his studies in the post-war years, Edward went on to be the
master of Emmanuel College, winning the Seeley, Gladstone and Thirwell prizes
and medals in one foul swoop in 1921, for a dissertation on the Durham and
Northumberland miners unions. His tenure as the 20th master of Emmanuel was a
massively influential, and he is still remembered today by the many that he
taught. Welbourne was said to have a startling line of questioning and was very
much against humbug and pretentious ignorance and the muddled thinking of
mistaking the label for reality. His flow of oratory was prodigious and too
fast for mortals to grasp at times. He was known to take six heavyweight books
home with him every weekend, returning them, fully read, on the Monday
morning.
Still at a rather young age when he died, his death sent the university into
shock. Edward slipped on ice while getting into his car, breaking his hip and
dying a short while later. He had seemed to be doing well in hospital, but had
lapsed. The final words of his obituary remarked that he would be spoken of for
many years to come.
I can attest to the accuracy of the closing
prediction that he would be spoken of for many years to come: even
in the 21st century, I have had e-mail correspondence from some who knew him,
contacting me because I inherited his name – which is
why my home page mentions him, linking here for
details.
In the letter quoted, I'm not at all clear as to what kept a team
means. It might conceivably be a mistranscription of kept a term which, in
turn, might plausibly have been contemporary jargon for attending the university
for the requisite weeks to count as a term towards a degree – but this is
pure guesswork on my part.
The blogspot site also contains a mention of (I must suppose) my
great-grandfather – who, by the time of The Great War (as it was then
known) had apparently risen to the rank of Superintendent:
Mrs. X of Beck Hill also received a fine of one pound from the
judges for harbouring a deserter, one Arthur Evans, of the Leicester Regiment at
her home in Beck Hill. Superintendent Welbourne, who saw her one evening, had
challenged her on the subject. She replied that the soldier had come searching
for another escapee who had overstayed. She gave him a cup of tea and after a
while he went out but returned. I told him he should leave, but he would not.
I had a remedy to get rid of him, but I suppose I ought to have gone to the
Police in the first instance. I am awfully sorry. The charge was of
assisting a deserter. Mrs X was a soldier's wife who was now fighting on the
Western Front!
I suspect that last sentence should say Mrs X was the wife of a soldier
who was now fighting on the Western Front! (that is, the soldier, not his
wife, was fighting abroad), albeit that may be how it would be read by
contemporaries of its writing.
