A Toppled Labor Giant: Arthur Griffith: NSW’s Revolutionary Minister for Public Works & Education

By Morris Graham

Arthur Hill Griffith (1862-1946) was a rare species: a noteworthy Minister of the Crown in an Australian state parliament. He has immortality of a kind in the Riverina city named after him and since 1997 in the name Griffith-Hack, giving a firm of patent attorneys an ancestry stretching back to the firm of patent agents formed by Griffith in 1897.

Born in Ireland, the ninth of 11 children, Griffith left Melbourne in 1883 and came to Sydney with nothing more than family pride and self-confidence. During ten years of teaching at Sydney Grammar School he was awarded the Medal of the National Shipwreck Society of NSW for bravery, became a convert to socialism, which he later developed as a system of state ownership of essential enterprises, and joined the newly-formed Labor Party. He gained recognition within the party and notoriety at Grammar after publishing The Labor Platform: an exposition.

In 1894 Griffith won the new seat of Waratah in Newcastle. In parliament he was an ideas factory, constantly moving amendments to bills and even having a few of his own bills enacted. In the Labor Party he was popularly seen as one of its giants and he claimed to have influenced every one of its policies.

Widely read, though not the university graduate everyone assumed he was, Griffith had a vision for Australia and NSW: a democratic White Australia protected by British and American naval power; a unitary, not a federal, system; a uni-cameral parliament under a constitution able to be changed as the nation developed; replacement of the states by local government; closer settlement in NSW with emphasis on the north coast rather than the drought-prone west; water conservation; generous bank loans from a state bank to establish city families on small farms; and progress based on free education from primary school to university.

Griffith took uncompromisingly fearless positions on matters of principle, regardless of the cost, opposing the undemocratic power of the Senate in the Federal Constitution and attacking British policy in the Boer War.

In the revolutionary first Labor Government in NSW in 1910 Griffith was the most revolutionary minister, in Public Works and local government 1910-15 and Public Instruction, which he changed to Education, 1915-16. He became the principal enemy of the Liberal Party, business and the press. His opponents launched continual no-confidence motions charging him with extravagance and corruption.

Griffith offered his Department’s workers the best wages and conditions, including the unheard of provision of paid annual holidays and the most generous workers’ compensation for injury, but demanded hard work in return, making enemies in the unions for his legalistic implementation of the arbitration system. Despite criticisms, the credit went to Griffith for Labor’s unexpected re-election in 1913. He triumphantly declared that NSW would never see another conservative government.

Griffith was domestically, as well as politically, unconventional, leading a secret double life. He apparently had expected to be a family patriarch as his father had been. Married in 1895, but with only the one child, born in 1905, he set up another woman on a farm, fathered her two children, and divided his life between Sydney and the Blue Mountains.

Griffith became a political casualty of the Great War, expelled from the NSW party for supporting conscription. After unsuccessful appeals for readmission to the party he was readmitted in 1930 only to have the decision reversed less than a week later. He became active in the anti-Lang Federal ALP being rebuilt by John Curtin, even standing unsuccessfully as the party’s candidate in his old state seat of Waratah in 1932 and the federal seat of Gwydir in 1934 at the age of 72. He continued to be a commentator on current and past events in letters and articles. Such a significant political figure deserves to be politically memorable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morris Graham
• Release date: Mar 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370123346

Morris Graham

Morris Graham holds the degrees of BA and PhD in Australian political history from University of Sydney, MLitt from the University of New England and MA from the University of Newcastle, both on American political history. He has published A Beginner’s Book of Australian Politics (Social Science Press 1986), a primer much overdue for a revision; A.B. Piddington: the Last Radical Liberal (UNSW Press 1995); a chapter on Piddington in The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia (Oxford University Press 2001); chapter on Griffith in The Worldly Art of Politics (The Federation Press 2006) and related articles on Newcastle in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society. He was head of an English/History department in the New South Wales education system, lectured in History at Newcastle Teachers College and retired as Senior Lecturer and Head of the Social Sciences Department at Newcastle College of Advanced Education in 1986.

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A toppled Labor Giant:

Arthur Griffith: NSW’s Revolutionary Minister for Public Works & Education

Copyright 2016 Morris Graham

Published by Morris Graham at Smashwords

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The Biographer

(For the Bulletin)

[Mob]

The great man’s soul has now forever flown

The scenes of every vict’ry and defeat,

While those whom he in life had never known

Exchange the maudlin mournings in the street,

Reciting loud his record from the roll

Type-filtered and distorted to the view;

All cry for wordsmiths to inscribe his scroll –

But who? But who?

[The Press]

Not you, pen-prostitute, with eager ink

To flow where’er your hirers may direct,

Concerned in naught beyond what they may think;

Your wish – but to supply what they expect,

To eulogise or censure as ‘tis told;

You care not what may be his rightful due

So long as you can trade your words for gold.

Not you. Not you.

[His Wife]

Not you, with heart by loveless life made sour,

Joined without love and with desire still less,

That he might taste the dead sea-fruit of power,

You – advertise your grief with costly dress.

Too weak to boldly love and bear the jibe,

Children you bore to one you never knew;

No less a stranger was the hireling scribe

Not you. Not you.

[The Parson]

Not you, with name of God as stock-in-trade

Threatening the weak and cringing to the great,

Lying to all by whom your wage is paid,

Claiming all good on earth to regulate;

Neat sentences of fulsome praise you turn

With copious tears well placed in public view

Commensurate with guineas that you earn.

Not you. Not you.

[His Partner]

Not you esteemed companion of his life,

Who fought and stole and lied with him who died,

Who, midst the storm and sweat of daily strife,

Took manfully your welcome stand beside,

Helping him onwards, upwards to the goal,

Still! ‘twas at best the husk of him you knew;

You never saw the secrets of his soul.

Not you. Not you.

[?]

But you, who felt his passionate caress,

Beside whose true, fond love he reckoned naught

The puerile plaudits of a pandar press,

The cheers of craven crowds for whom he fought.

You, to whose eyes his heart he did unveil

Who knew each virtue there and every blot

You are the only one to tell his tale

And you will not.

Arthur Griffith pasted The Biographer into a scrapbook. It fitted his sentiments exactly. As the copy of the original shows, the corner that probably had the author’s name was torn off and I have not as yet located the verse in the Bulletin files. Since then, my eyesight has deteriorated so greatly that I am unable to continue this search. Perhaps someone will be interested enough to see if this verse can be located. Griffith fancied himself as a versifier and this piece could well have been his own. The following hand-written remarks on each stanza certainly were his own: Mob, The Press, His Wife, The Parson, His Partner, ?.

Griffith hoped for a place in history mainly through his achievements as Minister for Public Works. Bede Nairn gave him a place in The Australian Dictionary of Biography. Griffith’s second wife Elsie Marion and their daughter, Christian, who was the keeper of many tales and memorabilia of her father, did not attempt a biography. That was a task I have been privileged to attempt.

Preface

This book is a biography of Arthur Hill Griffith (1862–1946), a rare species: a noteworthy Minister of the Crown in an Australian state parliament. He has immortality of a kind in the Riverina city named after him and since 1997 in the name Griffith-Hack, giving a firm of patent attorneys an ancestry stretching back to the firm of patent agents formed by Griffith in 1897.

Born in Ireland, the ninth of 11 children, Griffith left Melbourne in 1883 and came to Sydney with nothing more than family pride and self-confidence.

During ten years of teaching at Sydney Grammar School he was awarded the Medal of the National Shipwreck Society of NSW for bravery, became a convert to socialism and joined the newly-formed Labor Party.

He gained recognition within the party and notoriety at Grammar after publishing The Labor Platform: an exposition.

In 1894 he won the new seat of Waratah in Newcastle. In parliament he was an ideas factory, constantly moving amendments to bills and even having a few of his own bills enacted.

In the Labor Party he was popularly seen as one of its giants and he claimed to have influenced every one of its policies.

Widely read, though not the university graduate everyone assumed he was, he had a vision for Australia and NSW: a democratic White Australia protected by British and American naval power; a unitary, not a federal, system; a uni-cameral parliament under a constitution able to be changed as the nation developed; replacement of the states by local government; closer settlement in NSW with emphasis on the north coast rather than the drought-prone west; water conservation; generous bank loans from a state bank to establish city families on small farms; and progress based on free education from primary school to university.

Griffith took uncompromisingly fearless positions on matters of principle, regardless of the cost, opposing the undemocratic power of the Senate in the Federal Constitution and attacking British policy in the Boer War.

In the revolutionary first Labor Government in NSW in 1910 Griffith was the most revolutionary minister, in Public Works and local government 1910–15 and Public Instruction, which he changed to Education, 1915–16. He became the principal enemy of the Liberal Party, business and the press. His opponents launched continual no-confidence motions charging him with extravagance and corruption.

He offered his Department’s workers the best wages and conditions, including the unheard of provision of paid annual holidays and the most generous workers’ compensation for injury, but demanded hard work in return, making enemies in the unions for his legalistic implementation of the arbitration system. Despite criticisms, the credit went to Griffith for Labor’s unexpected re-election in 1913. He triumphantly declared that NSW would never see another conservative government.

Griffith was domestically, as well as politically, unconventional, leading a secret double life. He apparently had expected to be a family patriarch as his father had been. Married in 1895, but with only the one child, born in 1905, he set up another woman on a farm, fathered her two children, and divided his life between Sydney and the Blue Mountains.

He became a political casualty of the Great War, expelled from the NSW party for supporting conscription. Unlike Holman he never joined the anti-Labor Nationalist Party. After unsuccessful appeals for readmission to the party he was readmitted in 1930 only to have the decision reversed less than a week later.

He became active in the anti-Lang Federal ALP being rebuilt by Curtin, even standing unsuccessfully as the party’s candidate in his old state seat of Waratah in 1932 and the federal seat of Gwydir in 1934 at the age of 72. He continued to be a commentator on current and past events in letters and articles.

Such a significant political figure deserves greater public recognition and even posthumous readmission to the NSW Branch of the ALP.

Morris Graham, 2017

A Note on Presentation

Because he wanted this biography to be read easily by the general reading public, not just specialist historians, the author did not wish to interrupt the flow with footnotes or endnotes. The main sources of political information were the NSW Hansard and the Sydney press, especially The Sydney Morning Herald and the Newcastle Herald. Particular points may easily be followed up in Hansard using the indexes of the speeches of members. The dates of newspaper references are included in the text.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks John Price, the last member for Griffith’s seat of Waratah (1984–1999) before it was abolished after redistribution and member for Maitland (1999–2007) when he retired, for introducing him to Griffith. He thanks also Mrs Anne Needham, related by marriage to Griffith’s daughter, Mrs Christian Needham, who was living in Toowoomba, Queensland. Anne’s link came out by chance at a meeting of a book club to which she and the author belonged at the University and All Schools Club. Christian turned out to be a great source of family information and artefacts. The author was given access to the records of Griffith and his family at Scotch College, Melbourne, the archives of the University of Melbourne, and the archives of Sydney Grammar School. The author’s research was assisted by the Australian National Library, the Parliamentary Library of NSW, the State Library of NSW, and the Newcastle Regional Library. As ever, he thanks his wife Laurel for her editing and presentation skills as well as her encouragement.

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Biographer

Preface

A Note on Presentation

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introducing Arthur Griffith

Chapter 2. Apprentice MP

Chapter 3. Support for Concessions

Chapter 4. The Politics of Commonwealth and Empire

Chapter 5. Labor in Opposition

Chapter 6. Labor in Power

Chapter 7. More Brickbats than Bouquets

Chapter 8. The Medlow Scandal

Chapter 9. Bright Prospects Dashed

Chapter 10. Minister for Education

Chapter 11. Counted Out

Chapter 12. Hanging In

About the Author

Chapter 1. Introducing Arthur Griffith

An all-round sportsman, Arthur Hill Griffith won a place in the political history of New South Wales (NSW) from a standing start, not arriving in Sydney until 1883, aged 21. The Australian Dictionary of Biography gives his birth year as 1861 and the Biographical Register of the New South Wales Parliament 1901–1970 as 1863, but the records of Scotch College and the University of Melbourne show 1862. He was the ninth child and the seventh son in what he described as ‘a strong Tory family’ of 11 children, born to Arthur Hill Griffith, a solicitor who styled himself ‘gentleman’ and his wife, neé Hannah Cottingham, who had colonial vice-regal relatives, at Gortmore Hall in a 488 acre (195 ha) leased property in county Westmeath, Ireland.

They took their Welsh heritage seriously. Originally from Penrhyn, Carnarvonshire, the family, whose name had been anglicised from Gruffydd to Griffith, had settled in Ireland in the reign of James I (1603–25). They were not Welsh chapel but establishment Church of England among the Irish peasantry which they looked down on. Though young Arthur claimed that as a child he was on good terms with the local children, his family had the words of anti-Catholic chants he could quote.

Young Arthur’s ancestors had qualities that he connected to in his public and private life. His great-great grandfather Richard Griffith (1714–88) ‘though ill-educated’ was intelligent and well-read, styling himself as ‘an honorable libertine’ with ‘a strong physical need for women that he did not hide from his wife’. His grandfather, Richard Griffith (1752–1820) made a fortune, which he later lost, as a young official in the East India Company in India. He became a member of the Irish parliament, described in a dossier on members as ‘a well meaning young man but usually in opposition to Government … hot and impetuous … speaks very often’ . He was made a freeman of Dublin for his spirited defence in parliament of the Dubliners’ rights and privileges.

Richard married twice, the first marriage producing a son, who became Sir Richard Griffith (1794–1878), later baronet. Sir Richard, geologist and civil engineer, made his name as Commissioner of Valuation of the estates of Ireland and Chairman of the Irish Board of Works.

The second marriage was to the daughter of Walter Hussey, who added the name de Burgh after receiving half the estate of a maternal cousin. Hussey de Burgh was a member of the Irish parliament for whom ‘patriotism was much stronger than his love of peace or love of office’. Offspring of this marriage were Arthur’s family line.

Family myth and history did not leave later generations untouched. The de Burgh name was sprinkled about at christenings, Arthur himself bestowing it on his first son as a second given name. Arthur was well aware of his ancestry with its links to political careers, defending the right, and a sense of public duty and private non-conformity.

His father, as well as being a solicitor, was a land agent, managing county estates. When one of the estates met financial difficulties linked to a loan that he had arranged for the owner, Griffith resigned the agency. At the age of 60 in 1870 he decided to win his fortune in the colonies, as his father had done, taking his family to New Zealand. There Arthur Griffith took up land, grew flax and milled it. Unfortunately, the flax boom collapsed. Griffith moved in 1873 to Melbourne where he returned to the law, not as a registered solicitor in either Victoria or NSW, but attending to matters for banks in country districts. He died suddenly in Blayney NSW in 1881, presumably on bank service.

Young Arthur and four of his brothers went to school at Scotch College, Melbourne’s oldest private school. The college magazine, The Victorian, showed in 1876 that he had come second in the under-14 ‘long leap running’. In the same year in the upper division he won the prize for knowledge of the Bible with 900 marks and got honourable mention in English (770), Latin (852), Mathematics (765) and French (685). In the lower division he won the prize for Animal Physiology (800) and Astronomy (900). They were the only references to Arthur at Scotch. The college records are silent on when he left. Three of his brothers, however, left Scotch and enrolled in Wesley College between 1878 and 1880, according to the Scotch records. Melbourne University records show that Arthur applied to take the matriculation examination in February 1879. His ‘Last Place of Education’ was not given as Scotch or Wesley but James Clegy, Esq., MA, a private tutor.

Why did he leave Scotch in 1877? He gave a possible clue in 1905, in the NSW Parliament during a debate on the restriction of firearms. As ‘a little boy’ he bought a revolver for 3s 6d, half a day’s pay for a labourer at the time, a purchase his father did not know about for two years. He did not shoot anybody – ‘by good luck’. Bringing it to school would explain his sudden, unexpected departure from Scotch as well as any other school’s unwillingness to accept him.

In the Matriculation examination Arthur sat for seven subjects, Latin, English, Arithmetic, Algebra, Euclid, History and Geography and passed all of them, a much better result than most of those around him on the results sheet. He then enrolled at the University of Melbourne but thereafter his record is a blank. He never attended a single lecture. Years later, he said that he enrolled in an Arts degree at Sydney University as an evening student in 1884, the first-year evening lectures were available, but abandoned that to do a barrister’s course through the Supreme Court, which once again he did not complete. In self-justification in 1896 he spoke scornfully in Parliament of the quality of university education which ‘devoted almost the whole of its power to teaching the dead lore of the past … instead of turning out ‘men able to write coherent English … write reasonable English essays … [and] conversant with Classics.’ Despite this contempt, he never tried to correct the public impression that he was a ‘university-bred man’.

Figure 1. From University of Melbourne matriculation results, 1879

Griffith indicated in a letter dated 17 December 1889 to the Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School that he had had four years’ business experience, including ‘for two years the entire management of the Melbourne branch of a New Zealand grain shipping firm, and that on the business being sold my principals shewed their appreciation of my management of their affairs by making me a present of half a year’s salary.’

His young life was, however, centred on sport. He told Parliament that he had spent hours at a time at the St Kilda baths becoming a champion swimmer and played Australian Rules football in Melbourne with the Melbourne Football Club. A press clipping in his scrapbook, without source or date, told that the committee that chose the best individual in the intercolonial football match for the President’s Award, could not separate three players, including Griffith.

Griffith trained regularly in the National Gymnasium. His family were not impressed when carters and other lower-class gym companions greeted him in passing with ‘Good day, Griff’, or ‘Hullo, Art’. Another clipping described Griffith’s boxing victory in the final of the heavyweight division of the Amateur Belt. His opponent was six years Griffith’s senior, stood over six feet (1.8 m) and weighed 13 stone 6 pounds (85.5 kg). Griffith was ‘only a boy, still under twenty, turning the scales at 12 st. (76 kg), but magnificently developed’. After taking heavy blows for most of three rounds, Griffith fought back in the fourth round to win by sending his opponent ‘to the tan with a thud like the falling of a bag of wheat’. The report concluded:

‘There was very little skill shown by the winner, but he can take punishment with a smile, it merely stimulates him, and he can hit with either hand like the piston rod of a steam engine. He will never win a boxing match on points, but judging from last night’s performance, it isn’t likely that there are many amateurs in Australia to-day who would stay with young Arthur Griffith for six rounds in a twenty-four foot ring.’

Fearlessly fighting above his weight, hitting back when attacked, was the metaphor he would apply to himself throughout his public life.

The young Griffith that Melburnians saw was an orange-haired, blue-eyed athlete, not tall but strongly built, a model of fitness, smartly dressed, looking like a winner and confidently ready to make his way in the world. It is not clear why he decided to leave Marvellous Melbourne to make a life in Sydney. It may have been linked to his father’s death. There was never any mention of escaping a troublesome feminine connection, though he found women attractive, as his willingness to maintain a brace of them later demonstrated. Perhaps it was the lure of the surfing beaches of Sydney, for he settled in Manly and swam in the ocean daily, when the law forbade swimming in the surf after seven o’clock in the morning. But leave he did. The Australian Dictionary of Biography gives 1880 as the date Griffith came to Sydney, but the boxing match seems to have been held in 1882 and it is likely that he did not leave the family circle before he had reached his majority.

Whatever other jobs he had on first coming to NSW, he worked for six or eight months in 1884 as a shoveller on the railway line under construction between Michelago and Cooma. Not wanting the noble name of Griffith in a worklist of shovellers he quirkily called himself Arthur Pendragon, confident that no railway clerk or labourer would recognise the name of King Arthur of the Round Table. A family story is that he befriended another railway worker, a Dutchman, and protected him from being bullied. In return the Dutchman did his washing and cooking. It was not a long-term position. In July 1884 he returned to Sydney to take up a teaching position on probation for three months at Sydney Grammar School for £150 per annum.

The celebrated headmaster of Grammar, Albert Bythesea Weigall, MA, wanted teachers educated at good quality English public schools with honours degrees from English universities. In NSW he had to make do with what was available but Griffith was beyond his acceptable minimum. As the need was urgent and Griffith cut a good figure, Weigall took him.

Griffith’s noteworthy impact on the school was in its sporting life, as recorded in the school magazine, the Sydneian. He played in the cricket matches between masters and the school teams. In a match in 1885 he took four wickets with big leg breaks, but in the last mention of him as a cricketer in 1893 his bowling had been ‘mercilessly punished’.

Not much older than the most senior boys when he started at Grammar, Griffith and other younger staff were drafted into the school rugby football teams when they were short of numbers. In a letter to the headmaster Griffith stressed the contribution he had made to the school’s sporting program, by giving up all his Saturdays, ‘picking, organising and playing with the team, [helping] them very materially to score the first successful season for some years’. Griffith was also an officer in the school's cadet corps.

There were two athletic achievements by Griffith in 1892 that were not recorded in the school magazine. On 21 November The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Griffith had won the 220 yards (200 m) championship at the Manly Swimming Club’s annual tournament, when breaststroke was the usual stroke. As in the boxing contest, his opponent was ‘the bigger man of the two with a great reach and a powerful stroke’. In the last lap ‘Griffith, swimming almost submerged, shot through the water like a shark’ and won comfortably in club record time. A few weeks later, Griffith rescued a man who was carried out in a rip in heavy seas off Manly. There were no lifelines in those days and Griffith hauled him in by the wrist to the first line of waiting men where rescued and rescuer collapsed. For this action Griffith was awarded the Medal of the National Shipwreck Society of NSW. Away from the water, and also unmentioned in the Sydneian, Griffith was Secretary of the NSW Lawn Tennis Association from its foundation in 1890 until 1893. There is no mention of Griffith as a tennis player but there was a family connection. His first wife’s niece, Daphne Akhurst, was part of a strong tennis family and the trophy for the Australian women’s singles championship is a memorial to her.

What can be learnt of Griffith inside the classroom at Grammar comes from a handful of revealing letters in the school’s archives. They are early evidence of him as the compulsive letter writer that he became in his public life. He made his points strongly and eloquently in handwriting that would interest a graphologist. The large letter forms and thick, bold downstrokes matched the confident, aggressive manner that Griffith became known for. But while he paid proper deference to the headmaster and the Board of Trustees, he concluded his letters ‘Yours faithfully’, with no mention of being the ‘obedient servant’ that was common practice at the time.

Though he had no university qualifications Griffith brought a strong physical presence to the difficult forms he taught, consisting of boys ‘both ignorant and idle’. He had no disciplinary problems and taught himself about teaching as he drove his classes to learn. His work must have been satisfactory because Weigall confirmed his appointment. He gained a salary increase in 1885 to £200 per annum, a further increase of £25 in 1887 and another in 1891 to take him to £250 from a Board of Trustees more likely to defer than to grant.

Griffith was prepared to advance his own cause with the headmaster and the trustees. Seeking a salary increase he reminded Weigall that his class had won the Arithmetic Handicap the previous Easter ‘and that out of fourteen boys in the whole of the Upper school who scored over 75 per cent nine were from [his] division’. Griffith was as competitive in the classroom as he was on the sporting field. He wanted to win in arithmetic as much as he wanted to win at cricket or football.

His teaching space was an area shared with another class and also used as a general thoroughfare. Constant interruptions made teaching and learning ‘physically impossible’. He repeated a request made the previous year for a heavy cloth curtain to separate the classes ‘composed principally of big, ignorant boys [who] require a greater degree of restraint, driving and individual attention’ with strict discipline and close supervision. The board postponed consideration of the request, which received no further mention.

Griffith had become a certificated teacher of shorthand and had set up an after-school class at a quarterly charge of one guinea (£1 1s). In 1890, a new section, the Commercial School, would be established and Griffith applied for the position of second master, asking for a salary of £300 because under the new arrangements he would lose most or all of his shorthand fees of £100 a year. His application was unsuccessful.

By 1891, as Griffith’s teaching success failed to be recognised, his sense of injustice grew. As new members of staff were given the better forms he felt himself being shuffled further back in staff status. He had ‘faithful and successful work … rewarded with demotion’. He continued to smart at a prospect of nothing but ‘perpetual humiliation’.

By this time severe drought was crippling the economy of NSW and Sydney Grammar was not spared its damaging effects. Enrolments dropped and in April 1893 the Minister for Public Instruction demanded that Grammar, which received a government yearly grant of £1,200, become self-supporting.

After making what savings it could Grammar needed to make more. Weigall recommended to the board on 4 October that, due to the decrease in the numbers in the Commercial School, Griffith’s services be dispensed with. The board meeting on 1 November considered a letter from Griffith acknowledging his ‘formal notice of dismissal’ at the end of term. He drew the board’s attention to the ‘peculiar circumstances’ of his dismissal and asked that his case should be treated as ‘an exceptional one’. Because of his length of service and the recognition that he had taught ‘conscientiously and satisfactorily’ he requested the same terms that government departments were applying to retrenched staff: one month’s salary for every year of service. He had a special reason for this request apart from ‘abstract justice’. Thinking that his place at Grammar, ‘if poorly paid was at any rate secure’ he had borrowed £100 from a friend to pay ‘pressing liabilities’ that were not, he hastened to inform the board, ‘personal expenses’. He faced the prospect of not only leaving Grammar ‘penniless (Which I don’t very much mind)’ but in debt. The situation was ‘of