Mary Bolam’s Retirement and the Tragedy of Stanley Phalp

As far as we can tell from census records, Mary Ann Bolam was born in Rainton Bridge, Durham, in 1862 and was the daughter of Thomas Bolam, a wagon wright for the local colliery who later became a grocer. She had a younger sister named Susannah, a dressmaker, who was born in 1864.

We know little about Bolam’s early education but in his history of the first 50 years of Reading University, Holt (1977) points out that she was a member of Summerville College at a time when women could not be accepted to an Oxford University degree. She graduated with honours in History (4th class) and received her first degree from the University of Dublin.

There followed a Teacher’s Certificate from the Board of Education, and a Diploma in Education and Geography from the University of St Andrew’s. Before taking up her post at Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1897, she was Mistress of Method at Durham Training College and taught at a Demonstration School nearby. She moved to Reading in 1900 and remained in post until 1927.

Retirement

On her retirement in December 1927, the Reading Standard reported an official presentation to her in the University’s Buttery at London Road. It was attended by 120 of St Andrew’s Hall students, past and present. She received gifts of a silver coffee and tea service and a cheque. A framed portrait of her was presented to Mrs Childs by the chair of the St Andrew’s Students’ Committee so that it could be given a permanent place in the hall. In my previous post I mentioned that  Holt had described Bolam as a ‘living legend’, and there were many similar accolades now (‘Obstacles that would have crushed the spirit of a less brave woman seemed to make Miss Bolam grow younger.’Reading Standard, 10/12/34, p.10). Professor Childs wrote a glowing testimonial in Tamesis that concluded:

‘Her fame with us is secure ; for no one else in this University can ever do again pioneer work of the same kind.’ (Childs, 1927, p. 210).

After retiring she lived at 30a Northcourt Avenue. The house was built in 1927. It lies on the opposite side of the road from Wellington Avenue and still bears its original name: ‘Four Ways’.

sketch of
Illustration of Mary Bolam’s house by Elizabeth Heydeman (‘Northcourt Avenue: its history & people’ by Penny Kemp, p, 45)

It is said that Mary Bolam’s students presented her with a particularly fine front door, which she promised would always be open to them (Kemp, 1996). An article in the Reading Standard from 1944 in honour of her 85th birthday showed her to be still living at ‘Four Ways’. It claimed that her students had helped her to build it in gratitude for all she had done – this seems a slight exaggeration, however; the builders were J. H. Margetts & Son (Kemp, 1996).

Bolam’s great-nephew, Stanley Phalp

There are few details available about how Mary Bolam spent her retirement. At one stage, she was a member of the Governing Council of Kinmel School, Abergele, North Wales, from which she resigned in 1929 – the Council had never met and the school never drew on her expertise.

Nor do we know exactly when and why she left Reading. According to the Northampton Mercury, she died at the age of 88 in Weston Favell, Northampton, on November 30th 1949 and left the sum of £1,792 10s. 8d.

One interesting detail to emerge from newspaper articles of the time, however, is that in the 1930s she was either the tenant or owner of Pond Wood Farm, Billingsbear, near Wokingham (now replaced by housing). It seems that she had taken over the farm for the benefit of her great-nephew, Stanley Phalp,  who was given the role of manager.

Stanley had been born in 1911 and was the grandson of Mary Bolam’s sister Susannah. His father, Norman Thomas Bolam Phalp, had been incapacitated in the 1914-18 War, and from the age of seven, Stanley was in the care of his great-aunt. He was known to some Reading students from spending his summer holidays at St Andrews Hall, and in 1928 he enrolled as a student in Reading University’s Faculty of Agriculture.

Stanley’s Suicide in 1934

Stanley Phalp died on the 29 September 1934. The first press reports of the circumstances of his death appeared a few days later on 3 October.

He had been spotted in a semi-conscious state in his car on Saltpit Road, Hurst, near Reading. A doctor had been called but death could not be prevented. There was a lengthy police investigation.

Stanley’s father was interviewed, but he knew little about Stanley’s private life or finances, other than that he was in perfect health, a non-smoker and a teetotaller. The Coroner established that Stanley lived with Miss Bolam, but that he was of age and therefor not in her charge. Because a post-mortem had failed to reveal the cause of death, the Coroner adjourned the inquest and ordered a forensic examination of the organs by a county analyst.

Arsenic poisoning was confirmed – according to the Public Analyst, more than five times the fatal dose had been extracted from the stomach contents. The press revealed that police had discovered a bottle of weedkiller and a letter from a woman in London who had turned down Stanley’s proposal of marriage.

The inquest was resumed on October 13 and the jury returned a verdict of suicide. Mary Bolam gave evidence. She produced a letter from Stanley that she had found in her desk, and gave details of a phone call he had received from a Miss Joan Rich whom he had known for several years and who had been expected to come and stay. Stanley had then left in his car, presumably having already ingested the poison.

Mary Bolam said that Stanley had seemed in good spirits that day, ‘His heart and soul were in his work at the farm and he worked from morning  until night.’ (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 3 Oct 1934, p. 1).

The case was reported in detail, both locally and nationally, paying particular attention to his relationship with Miss Rich, their letters to each other, the content of the phone call, and the nature of the poisoning. Bolam had clearly been upset by being taken to view the body in the car; and she was incensed by the lurid and sensational nature of some of the newspaper coverage:

‘”I do not think it ought to be allowed in England for anyone to give such a slanderous report,” she said. “He was a fine English boy, living such a clean life.”‘ (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 3 Oct 1934, p. 1).

A sense of the tone of some of the articles can be judged from the headlines:

    • ‘Collapsed in car. Mystery of young man found dying’ (Daily Mail, 3 Oct);
    • ‘Motorist’s mystery death. Coroner orders analysis of organs to be made. Young farmer found dying in car.’ (Reading Standard, 5 Oct);
    • ‘Dying man in car. Analysis reveals arsenic. Letter from a girl’  (The Daily Telegraph, 12 Oct);
    • ‘Suicide verdict on farm manager. Girl and courtship she wished to end. Dying in car’ (Gloucestershire Echo, 13 Oct);
    • ‘Unrequited love tragedy. Suicide of young farm manager. Girl and new attachment. Farewell letter torn up unread.’ (The Sunday Times, 14 Oct);
    • ‘Arsenic in stomach. Young farm manager’s suicide. Phone “Goodbye” to girl’ (Shields Daily Gazette, 15 Oct).

I combed the University’s annual reports for the years 1928 to 1935 looking for mentions of Stanley Phalp but could find nothing about him, not even his examination results. There is, however, an obituary in this issue of the Old Students’ Magazine:

cover of OSM
Issue containing Stanley Phalp’s obituary (the cover is signed by Dr Nellie Eales, its Editor)

The text is a welcome contrast to the press accounts, with no mention of suicide, and is worth quoting in full:

‘MR. STANLEY PHALP died on September 29, 1934. Old St. Andrew’s students will remember his coming to the Hall in his school holidays. He was in the Faculty of Agriculture from 1928 to 1932, and was a member of St. David’s Hall. He was a keen Rugby player and rowed in the Eight of 1931 and 1932, gaining his colours in the former year. At Pondwood Farm, Billingsbear, Wokingham, which Miss Bolam took for him in 1933, he made a reputation in the short time for his intelligent, keen and painstaking methods.’

Thanks to:

Dr Rhianedd Smith (University Museums and Special Collections Services) for passing on material about Mary Bolam from the British Newspaper Archive and for retrieving census data.

Penny Kemp for permission to reproduce the sketch of 30a Northcourt Avenue.

Sources

Childs, W. M. (1927). Miss Bolam. Tamesis, Vol. XXV. Summer Term, No. 10, pp. 209-10.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

Kemp, P. (1996). Northcourt Avenue: its history & people. Reading: Northcourt Avenue Residents’ Association.

University of Reading. Old Students’ Association (1935). Mr. Stanley Phalp. Old Students’ Magazine, 21, p. 64.

Newspaper Articles

Arsenic in stomach. (1934, October 15). Shields Daily Gazette, p.6.

Broken romance. (1934, October 19). Western Gazette, p. 10.

Collapsed in car. (1934, October 3). Daily Mail, p. 19.

Deaths. (1934, October 6). The Times, p. 1.

Death of Miss Mary Bolam. (1949, December 9). Northampton Mercury, p. 5.

Dying man in car. (1934, October 12). The Daily Telegraph, p. 12.

Farm manager’s death (1934, October 13). Coventry Evening Telegraph, p. 1.

Found dying in car. (1934, October 3). Hartlepool Daily Mail, p. 2.

Man’s arsenic death. (1934, October 12). Daily Mail, p. 13.

Miss Bolam. (1944, October 6). Reading Standard, p. 5.

Miss Bolam and Governing Council. (1929, August 28). Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, p. 7.

Miss Bolam’s birthday. (1944, October 13). Reading Standard, p. 5.

Motorist’s mystery death. (1934, October 5). Reading Standard, p. 11.

Northampton will. (1950, March 24). Northampton Chronicle and Echo, p.8.

Reading College. (1900, September 22). Berkshire Chronicle, p. 8.

Suicide verdict on farm manager. (1934, October 13). Gloucestershire Echo, p. 1.

The death of a farm manager. (1934, October 15). The Times, p. 8.

University news. Oxford, July 22. (1896, 25 July). York Herald, p. 6.

University of Reading: Presentation to the first Warden of St. Andrew’s Hall. (1927, December 10). Reading Standard, p. 10.

Unrequited love tragedy. (1934, October 14). The Sunday Times, p. 30.

Young man’s suicide in car. (1934, October 15). The Daily Telegraph, p. 9.

 

The Young Nellie Eales and her Postcard Home

Of the many postcards produced by University College, Reading, the image below is not the most inspiring view of the London Road campus.

cloister
Used postcard, probably sent in 1907 (University of Reading, Special Collections)

It shows the east cloister looking north towards Acacias and the porters’ lodge. In the distance, behind the Botany Department, is the sign for Zoology and Machine Drawing and, behind that, the sign for Building Construction. This matches a site plan published in the Students’ Handbook in 1907; the original Physics building would have been just behind the photographer.

map
London Road Campus (Students’ Handbook 1907-08). From bottom left to right, are: Agriculture (now L14), Physics (L11), Botany (L10), Zoology & Fine Art (now combined as L4 – Art Education).

There are much better images of the cloisters from this period, but what makes this postcard particularly interesting is that the student who sent it to her mother in Gosport was the young Nellie Eales who went on to work for the College and University for 42 years (retired in 1954), and lived to reach her hundredth birthday in 1989.

pc
University of Reading, Special Collections

The message reads as follows:

‘Thanks for the chemistry apron. It will do very nicely. We shall have to get a new Strasburger [see note below] as it must be up to date. It will come to about 13/6 I expect.’

She continues:

‘Imagine having to run along 3 cloisters the length of this one when you are late. The Chemistry, Physics and Geography Halls are beyond this. The view looks towards the older part of the college. Where the posts occur on the R. hand side are gardens. There are beautiful flowers about still. We had a splendid time on Sat at the at Home. Please keep this p.c. as I want to get a collection of Reading College views.’

Written upside down in the space at the top it says: ‘Love from Nellie.’; and in very faint writing: ‘What about galoshes? It is wet here.’

Nellie Eales combined her studies in Science with Teacher Training. She passed the two-year course for Primary Education students (Class I) in July 1909 and was awarded her BSc (Hons, Pass Division II) in 1910.

Following graduation, she worked briefly for the Marine Biological Association before being appointed Curator of the Zoological Museum at University College, Reading In 1912. The museum had been founded by Professor Francis Cole in 1906. Today the Cole Museum is located in the new Health and Life Sciences Building on the Whiteknights Campus and still contains the skeleton of the circus elephant that figures prominently in the image below.

Cole
London Road Campus: the Zoological Museum (University of Reading, Special Collections, undated).

By the beginning of the academic year 1912-13, the museum’s collection had already been completely catalogued and labelled, and Eales’s duties are described in the College Review of December 1912:

‘The Curator will be employed in the first instance principally in making anatomical preparations to assist students in their routine work, and when this is accomplished she will enter upon the much larger task of making preparations illustrative of the general principles of comparative anatomy.’ (p.21)

During Professor Cole’s frequent absences on military duty between 1914 and 1919, Eales took over the Zoology Department laboratory and covered his teaching. She became Lecturer in Zoology officially in 1919, and in 1921 was the first woman at Reading to be awarded a PhD. This was followed by a DSc in 1926.

Eales
Dr Nellie Eales, left, with H. S. Cooke (Education):  Degree Congregation, October 1928 (University of Reading, Special Collections)

Dr Eales had a highly successful academic career, details of which can be found in Claire Clough’s post on the Special Collections Blog: “Guardian Angel” of the Cole Library: Dr Nellie B. Eales. The post also recounts how, following the death of Professor Cole, she arranged the transfer of his vast collection of rare volumes (The Cole Library) to the University and compiled the printed catalogue. She is also celebrated for donating a valuable Book of Hours from the early 1400s.

One thing that surprises me, given her academic standing within and beyond the University, not to mention her indispensable contribution to running the Zoology Department, is that it took until 1951, only three years before her retirement, for her to be promoted to senior lecturer.

Nellie Eales died in 1989 shortly after her 100th birthday. Her obituary was published in the Journal of Molluscan Studies.

Zoology
London Road:  The Zoology Department in 1945. Front centre is Professor O’Donoghue with Dr Eales to the left. Professor Cole had retired in 1939 (University of Reading, Special Collections)

enlarged

An online exhibition about the Cole Collections, curated by Claire Clough, can be found here.

Note

‘Strasburger’ refers to the Botany textbook by Professor Eduard Adolf Strasburger, originally published as ‘Lehrbuch der Botanik für Hochschulen’ in 1894. An English translation of 1898 was purchased by the University College library under the title ‘Text Book of Botany’ in 1903.

The wording of the postcard is ‘a new Strasburger’, which sounds as though the students had been urged to buy an updated edition. The German original had reached its 8th edition by the time Eales had sent her card, so it is likely that the English translation followed suit.

Sources

University College, Reading. Official Gazette. No. 30. Vol. II, 3rd December, 1903.

The Reading University College Review, Vol. V, No. 13, December 1912, pp. 21-2.

University College, Reading, Annual Report and Accounts, 1908-09, 1909-10.

University College, Reading. Calendar, 1910-11.

University College, Reading (1907). Students’ handbook. First issue: 1907-8. Reading: UCR.

University of Reading. Proceedings of the University, 1953-4.