Harry College Fives trophy, 1904. Image courtesy of the Causton family.

Much of the focus upon the life of Henry ‘Harry’ Moseley relates to his scientific achievements but in parallel to these, he was a keen sportsman throughout his early education and University studentship.  Harry’s sporting interests began with the game of ‘Fives’ a sport he first took up as a student at Summer Fields in north Oxford which he attended between 1897 and 1901. This was not the traditional English handball sport of ‘Fives’ but rather ‘racquet-fives’, the game now known as squash. There are many mentions of the game of ‘racquet-fives’ in school magazines as well as letters in the Summer Fields archives but it was not until 1922, over twenty years after Harry had left Summer Fields, that the first ‘hand-fives’ (more commonly known as ‘Fives’) courts were constructed in the school playground. The new ‘Fives’ courts were constructed, in part, to honour the memory of the Old Summer Field students (including Harry) who were killed in the First World War.

‘Eton Fives’ was one of the many sports Harry was encouraged to pursue during his time at Eton and Harry willingly participated in all the sports available to him with the exception of cricket. ‘Eton Fives’ was and is the most common variant of Fives, a traditional English handball sport, so called as it was first developed at Eton College from essentially hitting a ball against the side of the chapel. The basic pattern of play is quite like rackets or squash, but there is no singles version of the game, and you hit the ball with your hands (protected by gloves) rather than a racket. In 1901, Harry left Summer Fields for Eton College on a King’s scholarship and continued to play ‘Eton Fives’ for his five years at the school between 1901 and 1906. The first proper ‘Eton Five’ courts were built at Eton in 1847, so Harry would have been able to play officially rather than when the boys thought they wouldn’t get caught! In 1904, Harry won an internal house competition for ‘Eton Fives’ – for King’s scholars such as Harry only – and was awarded the small tankard shown as a prize.

Sports of all kind, in particular rowing, were esteemed at Eton during this period and Harry actively participated in Eton Fives alongside Eton football, and rowing. He determinedly pursued success in rowing and was eventually awarded a place in the second College Fours although he preferred to use rowing as a means of solitary pursuit of birds eggs – Harry saw his sporting activities as being complementary to his academic and scientific activities In 1904, the same year Harry was awarded the ‘Eton Fives’ tankard trophy shown, he was also awarded a copy of Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1899) as an academic prize in spring 1904. The book is now held in the Trinity College War Memorial Library to which it was donated by Harry’s mother Amabel after the war.

When Harry left Eton College in 1906, he went up to Oxford where he studied Natural Sciences (eventually choosing physics) at Trinity College and was awarded a Millard scholarship.  He also continued his parallel academic and sporting activities: rowing in the college 1st eight (once) and college 2nd eight (thrice) during his four years at Oxford.

With thanks to the Causton family for the photograph of Harry’s Eton Fives trophy as well as Eleanor Hoare, College Archivist at Eton College, for further information about the game of Eton Fives and Gavin Hannah, for further information about ‘racquet fives’ at Summer Fields.

Further Information
Harry Moseley at Summer Fields, 1897 – 1901 by Gavin Hannah, Summer Fields, Oxford, Editor Summer Fields, the First 150 Years (Third Millennium, 2014).

Gavin Hannah, Summer Fields, the First 150 Years (Third Millennium, 2014): 126-127.

Eton College – Fives

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Rachel McCarthy and her elements mug. Credit: Ian Beech Images.

I’ll come clean. I’m an instrumentation geek. Squeals of joy that only dogs can hear are emitted whenever I stray into the vicinity of astrolabes, early microscopes and yes, of course, the periodic table. I worry that we forget in our world of ‘invisible’ technology (the internet, mobile phone signals etc) the journey humankind has taken to get to such innovations and of the sacrifices involved.

The Museum of the History of Science charts that history and also shares it through public events.  I was very honoured to present ‘Alphabet of Our Universe’; part social history, part poetry reading, part chemistry talk, there on the 12th January to a sell-out crowd in the lab. Especially as it was accompanying their excellent exhibition ‘Dear Harry’, detailing the discoveries and life of the incredibly talented Harry Moseley. Moseley’s work on the X-ray spectra of the elements provided a new foundation for the Periodic Table and contributed to the development of the nuclear model of the atom. Yet Moseley’s life and career were cut short when he was killed in 1915, aged 27, in action at Gallipoli, Turkey.

Together we talked about Moseley, war, octopuses, iphones and why Henry VIII was called ‘old coppernose’.  We discussed inappropriate dinner parties, spermicide, a small outer villiage in Sweden, Marvel Comics and lunacy. Essentially, we talked about humanity. Elements are, well, elements. It is how we use them, for good or evil, love or war, that defines us.

Thank you; to everyone who came on the journey with me, the staff at the Museum of the History of Science, particularly its Director Dr Silke Ackerman,  Assistant Keeper Dr Stephen Johnston, Designer extraordinaire Keiko Ikeuchi  and for organising me, Public Engagement Officer Robyn Haggard. It was great meeting and conversing with you all.

Museums like this are jewels. In the same way I worry about us losing tales of awe in early science, I worry about us ‘not knowing what we got until it’s gone’ with museums. The Museum of the History of Science deserves every penny of funding it gets, and could do more with more – you can donate here.

Rachel McCarthy is a Senior Scientist at the Met Office, as well as an award-winning poet, essayist and broadcaster. In 2015 her collection Element caught the attention of the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who picked it out as marking one of the best new voices in British poetry, and Rachel as “one to watch”.  To find out more, visit her website.

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Moseley’s death in 1915 was a great loss both personally and to science. As a gifted young physicist, he was a likely candidate for one of the Nobel Prizes of 1916. However, it was not be.

Summer Fields school photograph of ‘A Regular Fix’ cast in costume including Moseley in centre back (1900).

At the beginning of the Michaelmas Term 1897, Henry Moseley, better known to his friends and family as Harry, began his Summer Fields career as one of twenty-eight new boys. One can readily imagine the heady mixture of excitement tinged with apprehension as they set foot in a strange, new world and climbed on to the springboard for what should have been a straightforward trajectory: prep school, public school, university or some sort of specific professional training, leading to a prosperous and comfortable life thereafter. But, for these twenty-eight, Fate intervened. In 1914, Europe was plunged into a four-year war of bloody attrition which claimed the lives of millions – combatants and non-combatants alike. In Britain, tens of thousands of volunteers quickly offered themselves for military service, motivated variously by patriotism, a sense of adventure, or by the notion that Britain had just cause to go to war, because, as Thomas Hardy put it, ‘the Germans wanted to fight’. What did 1914-18 have in store for Harry Mosley and ‘the class of 1897’? How did they fare?

One new boy, Stewart Ferguson, left after only one year and little else is known about him. He is therefore excluded from most of the statistics that follow. Not all of his new companions were intimate friends, but Harry would have been acquainted with all of them, sharing many experiences both in the classroom and on the sports field.

Summer Fields 1901 Scholars.

On the outbreak of hostilities, twenty-three of the remaining twenty-seven (85%) took their place in the First World War. This piece focuses on these boys and, principally, on those who did not survive. In 1914, their average age was 26. By that date, all had completed their secondary education, the majority having been to Eton, with Charterhouse and the naval training ship, HMS Britannia, the next most popular destinations. Table 1 below provides a detailed breakdown of their schools, including Britannia.

Table1: Summer Fields new boys 1897: Schools of those who served in World War I

In terms of the university education of those who went to war, Cambridge was the preferred place for seven boys; only three went to Oxford: Harry Moseley to Trinity in 1906; William Waller, a medical man who studied at New College and University College Hospital and Caryl Hargreaves, at Christ Church. James Wilson read medicine in London and Charles Saltren-Willett studied Engineering in the brand-new department at Birmingham.

Of the twenty-three in the war, eleven were killed. This represents 48% of those who served and 39% of the original 1897 group. These are high percentages, especially so when compared with the 12.5% death-rate for serving personnel calculated for Britain as a whole. This national figure includes all ranks. Virtually all of those of Moseley’s year who were killed (91%) were junior officers leading their men into battle or succumbing to snipers. Two of the eleven died later of wounds received in action. Interestingly, all those who lost their lives had served in the Army; their average age at death was just 28.

How does this group compare, in terms of the proportion of those killed to those who served, with that for the whole school? According to the Summer Fields Register, approximately 641 Summerfieldians took part in the war; there are 139 names on the Memorial Brasses outside the Chapel. This gives a death-to-service proportion of 21%. However, if we take Chris Sparrow’s slightly higher total of 142 deaths [Chris Sparrow, No Time to Spare? Our Boys who went to War… (Gresham Book Ltd, Oxford, 2006), p. 206], this increases to 22%. The true figure must lie somewhere in this region and, again, is significantly higher than the national average for Great Britain.

What was the pattern of death across the war years for the unfortunate eleven? As shown in Table 2, the year 1915 was the worst, when Harry Moseley and four of his former contemporaries were killed.

Table 2: Summer Fields new boys 1897: The Pattern of Death in 1914-18

The specific military context of each death may be studied in Chris Sparrow’s book, mentioned above. Nonetheless, it is interesting to draw together some other points concerning Moseley’s early friends and acquaintances. Theodore Bailward and Maurice Rutherfurd died in 1915, having been exact contemporaries at Summer Fields and Rugby. In the same year perished Robert Squires (Charterhouse), a keen mountaineer and member of the Alpine Club. Squires was famed for being part of a British team which in 1912 made the first ascent of Mt. Kolahoi, a Himalayan peak of 18,000ft. in Kashmir. He was killed on 9 August, the day before Harry Moseley. Moseley and his fellow Etonian, Roger Gelderd-Somervell, died just five months apart. Moseley was killed in action on 10 August during the assault on the high ground at Chunuk Bair during the Dardanelles campaign, reported as being shot by a Turkish sniper; Gelderd-Somervell was killed on 11 March while on attachment to the Indian Army as an interpreter.

During 1916, three more of Moseley’s Summerfieldian acquaintances lost their lives. On 21 January, Hugh North (Wellington) died in action against the Turks in Mesopotamia and Edward Bovill (Harrow) fell a few months later, on Saturday 1 July, the first morning of the battle of the Somme. John Ansthruther, another Eton contemporary of Moseley, was killed in action with the Life Guards on 30 October at Zandvoorde, south-east of Ypres, during a massive German attack on their trenches.

James Wilson (Radley), a doctor with the RAMC, died on 23 August 1917 at Poperinghe from wounds received in action at Somme Farm. He had won an MC during the previous year for his ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’. On several occasions Wilson had gone up to the front line from his Aid Post to treat and supervise the evacuation of wounded men under heavy fire. His citation recorded that ‘by his pluck and skill he undoubtedly saved many lives’.

The final year of the war, 1918, saw the remaining two deaths of those boys who had started Summer Fields with so much promise in 1897. John Muir (Fettes) was killed in action near Ypres on 11 April. As a major at the time of his death, he held the most senior rank of the eleven to die. Six months later, on 14 October, Maurice Arbuthnot died from his wounds after being invalided home. Arbuthnot was another Etonian contemporary of Moseley. He had had a notable war, winning an MC in 1917 and, just a few months before his death, being honoured by the French with a Croix de Guerre. Arbuthnot was also twice mentioned in despatches and before the war had served as ADC to the cavalry commander, General Sir Hubert Gough.

Harry’s name on the Summer Fields war memorial.

So, what did the post-war years hold in store for those who had started at Summer Fields with Moseley and who had served and survived? Of the five naval men, little is known of Edward Hastings other than that he attained the rank of commander and was awarded an OBE. Francis Bridgeman, who had served in the Dardanelles and at Jutland (1916), became a bank manager with Kleinwort & Co. Frederic Buchanan remained in the Navy, rose to the rank of captain and eventually became the Chief Inspector of HM Coastguards. Richard Guinness (Eton) went into business and Charles Saltren-Willett (Charterhouse) became a successful electrical engineer, dying in 1949.

Of others at Eton with Moseley, John Churchill enjoyed a successful military career winning a DSO and an MC, as well as being three times mentioned in dispatches. He also served as ADC to King George VI from 1947 to 1952. George Henderson, who had entered College as a scholar with Moseley, was also the recipient of an MC. He continued his Royal Flying Corps career in the RAF and was killed in a flying accident in 1930 having survived all the aerial dangers of the Western Front. Caryl Hargreaves worked as a company director and also found time to publish several books, including, A Glimpse at Soviet Russia (1931).

Francis Lee-Norman (Harrow), yet another MC winner, transferred to the RAFVR in 1939, as a change from his service with the Royal Engineers during 1915-18. Later, he enjoyed a successful Civil Service career. After a post in the Foreign Office and a spell as a Company Director, Richard Bryatt (Radley), qualified at St Tomas’s Hospital and became the Medical Officer for Trinity College Glenalmond. Medicine was the calling also of William Waller (Charterhouse). Having spent the war with the RAMC, he was later appointed as a Demonstrator in Physiology at the University of Liverpool. He died in 1946. Finally, Victor Cartwright (Marlborough) quietly took up farming in Warwickshire.

Those were the fortunes of Harry Moseley’s year-group who went to war, 1914-18. The number of medals and mentions in dispatches is testimony that these Old Boys fought bravely. Whether they survived or were killed was down to chance. As Erich Remarque put it, ‘Every soldier owes the fact that he is still alive to a thousand lucky chances and nothing else. And every soldier believes in and trusts to chance’.

A guest blog post by Gavin Hannah, editor of Summer Fields, the First 150 Years (Third Millennium, 2014).

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According to his mother’s diary, on this day – 11 October – in 1906, Harry began his four-year degree in Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Oxford.  Our walking tour of Trinity College starts as Harry would have started when he arrived in October 1906, heading up the front drive from the porters’ lodge on Broad Street. Back then the porters sported black bowler hats, while the students were rarely seen without their tweed jackets. Today the lodge staff look smart in college-crested blazers and ties, while students stroll past the lodge in far less formal clothing! The famous view up the drive to the Trinity College Chapel has not changed much – apart from the cedar trees which have grown to be enormous. On our right is the President’s Lodgings. Harry climbed those stone front steps to be formally welcomed by the President, and to sign his name in the Admissions Register.

Trinity College Chapel, photograph by Clare Hopkins.

Harry held Trinity’s only science scholarship, the Millard. He would have sworn an oath in the Chapel, and taken his turn to read Bible lessons. Regular chapel attendance was expected of all Oxford undergraduates in the years before World War One. We can’t go in to admire the magnificent Grinling Gibbons reredos and screen, because the Chapel is closed for major refurbishment. So we pause outside in the Durham Quad. This is Trinity’s oldest quadrangle, and it is very much at the heart of the College.

Next we go into the Hall. Communal dining around long oak tables has always been a vital part of Oxford college life, and Harry would have eaten dinner here most nights during his four years at Trinity. Traditionally, the scholars sat together at the table nearest to the large, open fireplace. The Hall is ringed with portraits of distinguished past Presidents and alumni, but not many are scientists, for science was very much a late-comer to Oxford University. Harry was the only man in his year at Trinity to read Physics. On the gallery however we see June Mendoza’s 1981 ‘Arts and Sciences’ group portrait which includes the biochemistry professors Sir Hans Krebs and Rodney Porter. Their Nobel Prize-winning research in the 1950s and 60s would have been impossible without the foundation of Harry Moseley’s ground-breaking discoveries about the structure of atoms.

Window boxes in the Garden Quadrangle, photograph by Clare Hopkins.

The Garden Quadrangle is next on our route. Harry lived on this quad for three years. These exuberantly colourful window boxes would be very familiar to him, and so too the commemorations of rowing victories chalked around the staircase doorways. Harry was an enthusiastic oarsman throughout his time at Trinity, although he was never selected for the First Eight. His room was on the top floor – we gaze up at his sash windows. These rooms are still used as student accommodation. Who has been given that room this year, and what will they go on to do?

Unusually for an Oxford college quadrangle, this one has three sides, while the fourth is open onto the long garden that runs down to large ornamental gates on Parks Road. A small door in the high stone wall allows today’s members to take a short cut to the Science Area; but not in 1906. Back then Trinity’s only science provision was a teaching laboratory ‘in the back yard’. This part of Trinity is not open to the public. The lab building remains, but in 1915 it was converted to the carpenter’s workshop.

Trinity’s gardens are beautiful – smooth lawns and a well-tended long border lead towards a high line of yews. Beyond these is the newest part of the College, which was not here in Harry’s day. It is the Library Quadrangle, and it takes its name from the War Memorial Library that was opened in 1928. Today’s undergraduates are fortunate to have such a fine facility to work in. They enter through large oak doors, above which is an board inscribed with the names of 154 college members who fell in the First World War. Fifteen of them, including Harry, were killed in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. The names are are arranged by date of admission, and Harry’s is near the top of the middle column, one of six of his year group who fell. We pay our respects too at a smaller, matching board was unveiled in the Library in April 2015. This bears the names of five German and Austrian undergraduates who also gave their lives in that conflict.

The War Memorial Board, photograph by Clare Hopkins

Trinity college is open to visitors: Mon-Fri 09.00-12.15, 13.30-16.00. Sat-Sun (term time) 13.00-16.00. Sat-Sun (vacation) 09.30-16.00 or dusk (Spring and Summer only) and charges £2 for adults and £1 for seniors and children which includes a booklet.  There is no charge for group leaders/teachers accompanying school groups and groups of more than 25 people must be accompanied by a tour guide.

See https://www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/contact-or-visit-us/ for further details.

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Scientists and their work have long inspired writers too, so we were pleased to bring together our current exhibition on Henry Moseley with members of poetry group Oxford Stanza Two. These poets have been working with us to produce original new work, as well as running workshops in the Museum for local sixth form students, helping the students to explore and create their own poetry. You can read one student’s thoughts on workshop here.

Oxford Stanza Two and some of the students will present their work at the Museum at 7pm on Thursday 8 October in Harry Moseley: “…meteor of a summer night…”. Everyone is welcome, and the event is free, but we recommend reserving a ticket through our Eventbrite page.

Ahead the event, Oxford Stanza Two share a few thoughts and feelings that shaped their work, below. Now the event has taken place you can read the poetry produced here.

Amabel’s Diaries
“I’ve always kept diaries and I still do, so seeing [Harry’s mother] Amabel Moseley’s diaries for 1915 caught me up in a web of remembering. Like her I used my own small, lined Letts diary mainly for engagements … Amabel had gone back through 1915 crossing out appointments and adding events relating to Harry, turning [her diary] in fact, into a memorial to Harry. I was struck by how in this way the past had been both fixed and altered for her… I hope the resulting poem will do justice to all this.” – Hilda

Harry’s Eyes
“It’s his eyes that took hold of me: as clear as a schoolboy’s, as penetrating as a poet’s. The photographer has him forever gazing directly into the camera, with the vigilant but calm concentration of the experimental scientist. I wanted to write about that young man, Harry Moseley.” – Bill

Harry Moseley and the War
“Looking round the exhibition, the everyday quality of the war is evident. The heavy equipment, the matter-of-fact letters home, the complaints about the heat … the day-to-day problems. The ordinariness and irritations of war. It was your job to deal with the matter in hand – and to trust in the high command back home to deal with strategy, the wider picture. After Harry was killed at Gallipoli, the high command was forced to consider an even wider picture. Maybe such great minds should be preserved? I wondered what Harry’s surviving men would have thought of this new directive … My poem ‘The Line’ is written from their point of view.” – Meg

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Early in September 1897, the ten-year-old Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley, generally known as ‘Harry’, arrived at his prep school, Summer Fields, Oxford, as one of a batch of twenty-eight new boys. Founded in 1864, by the energetic and progressive Gertrude Maclaren, initially to teach Greek and Latin to her nine-year-old daughter, the school had soon attracted other pupils and the necessary staff to teach them. Thus, when Harry began his studies Summer Fields was a thriving institution numbering about 120 boys, most of whom were boarders. By that time also, it had established a formidable reputation for the rigour of its teaching, particularly of Classics. Indeed, Summer Fields was renowned for its success in preparing its pupils for the Eton Scholarships. In 1905 for example, no fewer than 19 of the 70 scholars in College at Eton, were Old Summerfieldians.

Moseley’s entry in the Summer Fields school register.

So began an educational journey that took Harry Moseley on to Eton, as a Scholar, in 1901, then to Trinity College, Oxford (also as a Scholar) followed by the Victoria University of Manchester for research under Ernest Rutherford. Moseley then returned to Oxford in 1913 to continue his independent scientific investigations which eventually led to the formulation of Moseley’s Law and a reassessment of the Periodic Table. At the outbreak of the First World War, Moseley forsook the Groves of Academe for the Royal Engineers and while serving as a communications officer in the Gallipoli campaign, he was killed in action on 10 August 1915. Of note is the fact that the Great War claimed the lives of ten of his peers, many of them friends, who had started their Summer Fields careers alongside him.

Thus perished one of this country’s greatest scientific minds; nipped in the bud. Indeed, Rutherford speculated that Moseley might have been awarded a Nobel Prize for physics had his life not been cut short. It is said that he accomplished in a brief but brilliant career of just forty months, what few achieve in a lifetime of research and study.

What then may be said of Harry’s time at Summer Fields? What do we know of that world he entered, centred on an early nineteenth-century villa tucked away in 70 acres of fields at the end of Summerfield Road in Summertown? What of those who taught him? What of Harry’s progress and attainment at the school? Was it from Summer Fields that his passion for science was first stimulated and then nurtured?

Although founded by a woman, Summer Fields was essentially a male world, and for Harry, feminine influence was sadly lacking. The only women he might have met, apart from the kitchen maids (as they were termed), laundry girls and cleaning staff, were Miss Sarah ‘Sally’ Williams, who taught some of the junior boys, Nurse Bright, Miss Lilwall Peirce, the school Matron, Mrs Paine, the Housekeeper and Mabel Williams, the Headmaster’s wife.

However, during his first days Harry would have definitely encountered the redoubtable Miss Wheeler, who taught music. As a new boy, he had to parade before her for an aural test. This consisted of placing one finger on piano keys in an attempt to pick out the melody of the National Anthem. To those with no musical ear came the firm command, ‘You will not learn music.’ Unfortunately, we do not know whether or not Harry was a recipient of this stern rebuke!

Summer Fields school photograph of ‘A Regular Fix’ cast in costume including Moseley in centre back (1900).

In 1897 there were twelve masters including the Headmaster, Dr Williams. Of these, nine were Oxford men, not surprising considering the proximity of the university to the school. Cambridge had only one representative. The two others were graduates of Trinity College, Dublin.

Not all of them taught Harry, but, around the school, he would have encountered such characters as J. F. ‘Crab’ Crofts. Tall, lean, bearded, rather yellow of complexion, he did not suffer fools gladly but was at heart a kindly man. Crofts also hated any rounded back and would stride swiftly and alarmingly along the benches on which boys were apt to lounge, driving into any arched vertebrae a bony-knuckled fist and chanting through clenched teach, ‘Creatures! Creatures! – sit up, sit up!’

Another of Harry’s masters was F. H. ‘Ping-Pong’ Penny from All Souls. Penny was a lugubrious, wraith-like figure, fond of putting on school plays. Care was needed with him as he had a strange habit of walking down the corridors with a clenched fist outstretched in front of him for boys to walk into if they ran round corners!

Harry received his French instruction from G. W. ‘Bam’ Evans. ‘Bam’ was an Irishman with a little moustache and beard who taught his pupils in a broad Dublin accent and enjoyed bowling when playing cricket. Affable and learned in an odd, haphazard way, he had an excellent knowledge of both English as well as French literature and was a fast reader. He once boasted that he had read the whole of Thackeray’s works during one Easter holiday and the whole of Dickens in another. ‘Bam’ had a peculiar habit of coughing with his tongue out and, when speaking, he thrust his face forward until it was within inches of the listener. He lived in Newton, one of the large villas on the school site where, as a keen gardener, he tended the roses with both affection and skill.

Summer Fields Upper Schools register for 1899. Harry is listed the Lower Fourth Form and is in the top three in all subjects.

During his penultimate year, in a Form called the Upper Remove, Harry studied Latin and Greek grammar, as well as the easier plays of Euripides, under the Rev. Edward Hugh ‘Bear’ Alington. Brought up in a strict Victorian parsonage, ‘Bear’ insisted on the highest standards of both discipline and scholarship. He was also a fine sportsman having won a soccer Blue at Oxford. Thus, he organized all the school games. Alington was a firm believer in the idea that effort should be rewarded and he gave a silver pencil case to every boy in his Form who subsequently won a scholarship, so it is highly likely that Harry Moseley boasted one such trophy.

In Fifth Form, Harry was successfully prepared for his Eton Scholarship during his final terms by the renowned Dr Williams, Headmaster 1896-1918. ‘Doctor’, as he was known, was a fine Classical and Biblical scholar – he held an Oxford DD. The Doctor was another austere character who insisted upon the highest standards of scholarship in all aspects of Latin and Greek literature and Grammar. Under him, Harry studied his copy of Borva Notes, a vade mecum of Classical grammar for generations of Summerfieldians. If tradition were followed, in 1901 Harry was taken to Eton by the Doctor along with the other scholarship candidates. The boys wore straw hats with the school ribbon in the colour of Brasenose (the Doctor’s old college). They stayed at the White Hart in Windsor, invariably cramming in some last-minute revision over breakfast at which fish was always served in order to stimulate the brain. They were ‘trained to the hour’, recalls one of Harry’s peers and ‘full of the joy of battle’. Despite the strictness and general austerity of the prevailing Summer Fields regime which Harry endured, one famous Old Summerfieldian later remarked that, ‘Dr Williams and his staff gave us a very happy and encouraging start to our young lives’.

From the surviving Form Lists it is possible to trace some aspects of Harry’s progress and attainment throughout his school career. The Form hierarchy at Summer Fields, which occasionally changed, looks complicated to the modern eye with strange names such as ‘Shells’ and ‘Removes’. In Harry’s day, there were fourteen Forms, ranging from the First Forms for the youngest pupils, to Fifth Form for the potential scholars. Within each Form boys were ranked in order of success in Latin. There was room for movement between Forms (both up and down) during the course of the academic year. The school was further set from top to bottom in nine academic Divisions for other examinable subjects.

The curriculum facing Harry in 1898 (his second year) consisted of Classics (Latin and Greek, with both prose and elementary verse composition), maths, English, French, Divinity, history, geography, dictation, spelling, music, drawing, carpentry, gymnastics, athletics and swimming. Opportunities existed for drama, but there is no mention of science!

As a New Boy, in 1897, Harry was placed in the Upper Second Form. This suggests that his academic ability had already been recognized as there were three Forms below this to which new boys could be assigned. By May 1899, having moved through the Third Forms, and skipped the ‘Shells’, Harry appears in the Lower Fourth. From the Lists, it seems that he was no mean Classicist as he is ranked second in a Form of ten boys. Indeed at the end of that Summer Term, Harry was awarded the Classics Prize; ‘Bear’ Alington, the adjudicator, claiming that the overall standard of Harry’s Latin grammar was higher than his skills in pose composition. At this stage, he was better at maths than English; placed in the 2^nd Division for maths, but only the 5^th for English.

In September 1899, Harry was significantly promoted to the Lower Remove. Again in ‘Latin Order’, he is listed as 4^th in the class of ten. Still in the 2^nd Division for maths, he has now moved up the 3^rd for English.

By 1901, his final year, Harry was a member of Fifth Form – the group of potential scholars. Fifth Form was usually constituted as a class only in the January of the relevant scholarship year. Thus, Harry probably spent the Lent, Summer and Michaelmas Terms of 1900 in Upper Remove before his final elevation to the ranks of the school’s academic élite.

Classical teaching was the most efficient in the school and very effective in securing Eton scholarships. Everything on the work side was geared towards them. The teaching approach was skilfully devised to prepare the boys for examination conditions. For most lessons in his two final years, Harry perched on his stool in a half circle around the desks respectively of ‘Bear’ Alington and Dr Williams. He and his peers attended extra evening sessions laid on in the Doctor’s private quarters, at which the boys received cake as an incentive to master their irregular Greek and Latin verbs. Harry was trained as thoroughly as a racehorse. Even at table, after meals, the study of Latin and Greek grammar was the order of the day for potential scholars.

Summer Fields Scholars photo (1901).

All the Doctor’s drive and encouragement paid off and the result was academic success. Harry won the 5^th King’s Scholarship to Eton in a year when Summer Fields achieved a total of seven Eton awards, ‘although not the First KS which we have successfully held against all-comers for the last five years’. Harry Moseley had done well. His own Classics papers were described as being ‘of a very high standard’ by the Eton examiners. In his final Prize Giving Harry received the top award for mathematics and the ‘Supplementary Prize’ for Classics in Fifth Form. This latter award, although a kind of proxime accessit, strongly suggests, when assessed against Sumer Fields standards in Classics at that time, that Harry was truly a fine Latin and Greek scholar. That his mind was clear and logical is suggested again by his success in mathematics.

As might be expected in a school founded by a woman whose husband, Archibald Maclaren, ran the Oxford Gymnasium and wrote physical training manuals for the Army, the notion of health and fitness achieved through sport was highly valued at Summer Fields. Unfortunately, Harry Moseley does not feature in this aspect of the school. His name never graces any of the team lists for the major games, such as cricket and football, although he did enjoy a little golf. On the playing fields, the well-organized games and athletics, included the amusing ‘Torpids’ in which the boys ran bumping races over low hurdles wearing in their caps coloured ribbons of either Oxford or Cambridge colleges of their choice. Most boys naturally chose Oxford colleges and a popular college could have a large number of ‘boats’ on the ‘river’. None of this appealed to Harry and it is even recorded that he ‘lost his place in Torpids’ during the Lent Term of 1899. Later, of course, he rowed he rowed in real Torpids for Trinity College when at Oxford.

Harry’s most notable athletic achievement seems to have been to pass his swimming test during the summer of 1900. This he achieved in the muddy ‘deep end’ bathing place on the Cherwell where the river flows alongside the school fields. He had to swim to the far bank and back then tread water, hands held up aloft, while his feet pedalled. The whole operation was directed from the bank by the Doctor issuing his commands through a megaphone. Fortunately for Harry, the final verdict was, ‘Passed!’, rather than, ‘oh dear, not yet’, that reserved for those who sank!

So, how did Moseley’s passion for science begin and what was the role of Summer Fields in developing it? Clearly, Harry Moseley was an intelligent and observant boy and his innate interest in the natural world around him may have sparked the desire to learn more about how it worked. There was a strong family influence, too. His father was Linacre professor of Anatomy at Oxford and both his grandfathers were Fellows of the Royal Society. It would have been surprising had there not been scientific conversations at home.

Sadly for Summer Fields, there is little that the school can take credit for in this respect. Science was not highly regarded during Harry’s days there. It was barely part of the curriculum and such material as was taught was rudimentary, to say the least, when compared to the advanced standards of Classics. It is true that there was an unhurried trend towards the observation of scientific phenomena through controlled experiments. And science became especially appealing to inquisitive boys when a young woman arrived to teach biology and told a group of embarrassed, but attentive, twelve-year-olds the facts of life, with diagrams. Sadly she lasted less than a term! But such developments came long after Moseley had left.

School cups and prizes awarded to Moseley League, Summer Fields

If Harry were a boy at Summer Fields in 2015, he would enjoy a very high standard of science teaching in a dedicated, well-equipped science centre with specific laboratories for chemistry, physics and biology, as well as a state-of-the art ICT suite.

It is most likely that Harry’s science began to flourish at Eton in a school with better facilities and generally more science on the curriculum. There, his aptitude for science began to bear fruit and in December 1905, he received two ‘Natural Science’ prizes for chemistry and physics, some of the earliest scientific honours to come his way.

However, if intellectual discipline, hard work, perceptiveness, inquisitiveness, observation, rigorous analysis, critical thinking and clear expression, both orally and on paper, are considered to be some of the prerequisites of a good scientist, Summer Fields may be said to have honed these skills in Harry’s early days.

Harry’s name on the Summer Fields war memorial.

In 1926, the four Summer Fields ‘Leagues’, modelled on the public-school House system, were first introduced to give the boys some esprit de corps. ‘Moseley’ was chosen as the name for one of them. Its colour is blue. To-day, the Leagues serve as organizational units for competitions of all kinds, both academic and sporting, and Moseley comprises roughly one quarter of the school population. Harry Moseley’s name is daily on the lips of many boys and, a century after his death, he thus lives on.

Summer Fields: the Interior of the Macmillan Hall and Music Centre, formerly the gymnasium during Harry’s time at the school. Photograph by Elizabeth Bruton.

Summer Fields: The modern library, formerly the dining room during Harry’s time at the school. Photograph by Elizabeth Bruton.

Summer Fields: A view of the cricket fields, as they are now and were during Harry’s time at the school. Photograph by Elizabeth Bruton.

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Harry in his Royal Engineers officers uniform complete with signallers armbands, c.1914.
Image courtesy of the Royal Society.

Today, 10 August 2015, marks the centenary of the death of Second Lieutenant Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (known to friends and family as Harry), killed in action at Gallipoli, Turkey aged just 27. Harry had enlisted for officer training in the Royal Engineers in mid-October 1914 and trained as a signals officer at Aldershot and Salisbury camp. In February 1915, Harry’s unit was attached to the 13th Division of Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ and Harry was allocated responsibility for the communications of the 38th Brigade.

Harry and his unit assumed that they would be sent to France and the Western Front but instead Gallipoli, Turkey was there destination where they were sent along with a total of over half a million other Allied soldiers to fight soldiers from the Ottoman Empire, later Turkey.

“The battle of Sari Bair. The situation at dawn, 10 August 1915.” from Aspinall-Oglander, Brigadier General C.F. Official History of the Great War. Military Operations. Gallipoli Volume 2: May 1915 to the Evacuation. With the companion volume of Appendices. (1932).

In June 1915, Harry and his division arrived in Alexandria where Harry wrote his will leaving everything to the Royal Society to support original scientific research. By July, these inexperienced soldiers of Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ had arrived at Helles, at the southernmost tip of the Gallipoli peninsula. There they gained essential combat experience against Turkish troops before being sent to Murdos harbour on the island of Lemnos, a staging area for the upcoming fresh invasion further north near ANZAC cove.

Having landed up the coast at ANZAC cove in early August, the objective of the British troops and their allies was to take a precarious salient on Chunuk Bair (Turkish: Conk Bayırı) in what became known as the Battle of Sari Bair. In the murderous four days that followed thousands of men on both sides died.

After the landing, the 13th Signals Company of which Harry was a member was put to work to support this attack. Cables were laid to 40th Brigade at Damakjelik Bair as well as the Indian and Australian Brigades taking part in the attack. On 7 August, the 38th Division led by their brigadier C.H. Baldwin led a desperate attack against the northern portion of Chunuk Bair.   The Division did not reach its objective but instead became stuck in an area known as “Farm Hill” about 300 yard west of their initial objective.   Despite leading an attack later that day (7 August), the division remained at Farm Hill and held it for 8-9 August but never reached the high ground at Chanuk Bair.

Early on the morning of 10 August, a Turkish counter-attack took place: machine guns fired down on the position of the 38th Division including Moseley while 30,000 Turks poured down over the summit of Chanuk Bair attacking “Farm Hill”. Combat was hand-to-hand and was later described in a British record of the battle thus:

So desperate a battle cannot be described. The Turks came on again and again, fighting magnificently, calling upon the name of God. Our men [the 38th Division] stood to it, and maintained, by many a deed of daring, the old traditions of their race. There was no flinching. They died in their ranks where they stood.

Cigarette card of Gallipoli signals work at battle of Chunuk Bair.
Image available in the public domain via Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia.

One of these soldiers killed was Harry Moseley. His body, like that of so many others, was never found, but his name is commemorated on Helles Memorial.

An extract from Harry’s will. Image courtesy of Gordon Woods.

Harry was one of many soldiers killed or injured on both sides during the Gallipoli Campaign (Turkish: Çanakkale Savaşı): over 100,000 men were killed and over 400,000 killed or injured on both sides during the brief campaign which ran from 25 April 1915 through to early January 1916. In his death, Harry was both ordinary and extraordinary. He was an ordinary representative of 100,000 men killed on both sides as well as the hundreds of Allied soldiers killed near Chunuk Bair on 10 August 1915 but in the way that death was reported and later commemorated he was both extraordinary and exceptional.

Amabel’s diary, 10 August 1915.

News of Harry’s death reached his family on 30 August when the War Office telegram arrived to the home of his mother Amabel at 2.15pm or thereabouts according to her diary. She immediately sent for Margery, her daughter and Harry’s sister. Amabel went back in her diary to 10 August – the day her son died – and wrote in somewhat shaky handwriting, “My Harry was killed in the Dardanelles Chunuk Bair”.

Amabel wrote to the War Office in early September enquiring as to further news of her son’s death, noting that “any information that you can give will be gratifying to me”. The War Office was unable to provide any further details and it is believe that the report of Harry’s death being a shot to the head by a Turkish sniper while telephoning through an order as later reported in Rutherford’s Nature obituary was communicated informally by a soldier from Harry’s division who had survived the attack.

A mere two days after the news of Harry’s death had reached his family, Harry’s death was reported in “Fallen Officers – List of Casualties” the Times on 1 September under the sub-headline “A Brilliant Physicist”. News of Harry’s death spread quickly. Newspapers in Britain reported it under headings such as “Sacrifice of a Genius” and “Too Valuable to Die”. Even German newspapers commented on his loss, though he was now formally an enemy.

Across the political and military divide, the international scientific community was shocked by Harry’s death. His former supervisor Sir Ernest Rutherford especially condemned the waste. Upon receiving the news of Harry’s death, Rutherford wrote a heart-felt letter and obituary in Nature published in September 1915, a month after Moseley’s death:

Scientific men of this country have viewed with mingled feelings of pride and apprehension the enlistment in the new armies of our promising young men of science – with pride for their ready and ungrudging response to their country’s call, and with apprehension of irreparable losses to science.

Rutherford concluded his heartfelt obituary of Moseley with a plea that Moseley’s death not be in vain:

It is a national tragedy that our military organisation at the start of the war was so inelastic as to be unable, with a few exceptions, to utilise the scientific services of our men, except as combatants in the firing line. Our regret for the untimely death of Moseley is all the more poignant.

Rutherford along with Harry’s mother Amabel began to assemble recollections and results of Harry’s work and to gather together his scientific legacy. However, Harry’s untimely death meant he was not eligible for the 1916 Nobel Prize for Physics which many thought his achievements deserved. Rutherford, who had tried unsuccessfully to get Harry out of frontline service, argued strongly that scientists should put their talents to use in research aimed at meeting military goals in wartime rather than being sent to fight and die on the battlefield. By the end of the war, Rutherford’s goal had been achieved in part due to the immense impact of Moseley’s death.

Nearly sixty years after Moseley’s death, Isaac Asimov wrote,

In view of what he [Moseley] might still have accomplished … his death might well have been the most costly single death of the War to mankind generally.

Memories, recollections, and commemorations of Harry, his life and scientific legacy, continue through to the present day: there was a moving evensong service on Sunday 9 August 2015 at St Giles’ church in Oxford of which Harry was a parishioner and whose name is the second of seventeen names marked on their World War One memorial of parishioners killed in the war between 1914 and 1919. His named is also featured on war memorials at Summer Fields school in North Oxford (a school league/house is also named after Moseley), Eton College, and Trinity College, Oxford as well as the Helles Memorial at the southern point of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey with the latter being recently visited by our director Dr Silke Ackermann on a visit to Gallipoli in Harry’s footsteps. We too remember Harry with our exhibition Dear Harry…: Henry Moseley, a scientist lost to war at the Museum of the History Science which tells the moving and personal story of the life and legacy of Henry ‘Harry’ Moseley – son, scientist, and soldier – and is timed to mark both the centenary of the Gallipoli Campaign and the centenary of Harry’s tragic death as well as those hundreds of men killed on both sides at Gallipoli on 10 August 1915.

Further information about the Gallipoli Campaign

All About Turkey: Gallipoli campaign

Australian War Memorial: Gallipoli

BBC iWonder Guide: “Gallipoli: Why do Australians celebrate a military disaster?”

Imperial War Museum (IWM), UK: The Gallipoli Campaign by Josh Blair

Imperial War Museum (IWM), UK: What You Need To Know About The Gallipoli Campaign by Nigel Steel

The Long, Long Trail: Gallipoli

The National Archives (UK): The Gallipoli campaign

Smithsonian Magazine (February 2015): A New View of the Battle of Gallipoli, One of the Bloodiest Conflicts of World War I. The Turks are now rethinking their historic victory in the terrible battle by Joshua Hammer

The post 100 years later: the life and death of Henry ‘Harry’ Moseley appeared first on 'Dear Harry...' - Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War.

Although our special exhibition gallery is quite a small space, mounting a show is nonetheless a complex, varied and often long process. So how does an exhibition like Dear Harry come together? Co-curator Dr Liz Bruton explains…

» Read more on the Inside MHS blog

The post Creating and curating a special exhibition appeared first on 'Dear Harry...' - Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War.

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The post Death at The Farm – (Re-)visiting Harry on Gallipoli appeared first on 'Dear Harry...' - Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War.

Our physical exhibition ‘Dear Harry’ is now open and we are pleased to say that people are taking an enthusiastic interest in Moseley’s important story. The exhibition is part biography, part World War I centenary, and part history of science. It presents Harry Moseley intimately as a son, scientist, and soldier.

A great piece of coverage for the exhibition was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where our director Dr Silke Ackermann chatted with presenter John Humphrys about the impact of Moseley’s scientific work on the x-ray spectra of the elements, and the subsequent ordering of the Periodic Table, and the legacy of his death in Gallipoli, Turkey on 10 August 1915. She was joined by Professor Andy Parker, head of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University.

» Read more on the Inside MHS blog

The post Too valuable to die? appeared first on 'Dear Harry...' - Henry Moseley: A Scientist Lost to War.