Obituaries
Angela, Christopher and Nicola. In 1968, Beryl suddenly collapsed and died in his arms at home from a heart attack at the age of only 46. He was devastated by her death and struggled for two years to come to terms with the loss. A friend introduced him to Pamela Gray, a widow who also had three children, and a relationship blossomed, culminating in their marriage. In August 2013 they celebrated 43 years of married life. The year after he retired, Tony and Pammoved from Surrey to Devizes in Wiltshire. Blessed with good physical health and an active mind, he had a very busy retirement. Their home had a formal garden, but also eight acres of woodland and grass pasture, and he loved to tend the garden and potter in his greenhouse. He was chairman of the Devizes and District Gardening Club and during that time he would organise club coach trips to gardens all over the country. He also loved to play golf and was an active member of the North Wiltshire Golf Club and still played twice a week at the age of 88. He was a member of Probus and all its charitable activities, and he volunteered for a couple of hours each week to welcome visitors to the Wiltshire Heritage Museum. In November 2012, Tony celebrated his 90th birthday. He was a consummate host and gave a speech standing in front of the assembled family and friends without notes. Only a few months later, it became evident that motor neurone disease was increasingly robbing him of his physical faculties. He died peacefully at home with his wife, Pam, and son, Chris, at his bedside. His son Chris said, ‘Even in his final days, he was considerate to nurses and carers and his smile could still light up the room. He is survived by his wife, three children, 13 grandchildren and one great grandchild. An obituary was published in the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald on which this obituary is based. Francis Theodore Constan Sanson (1936-41) 13.11.1924 – 11.02.2013 Francis Sanson was the younger of two Anglo-Greek brothers who went to Dulwich College. The family lived in Maida Vale, northwest London, for a short while before moving southeast in stages to Sydenham and then on to Beckenham. He came to Dulwich on a scholarship from Adamsrill Road Primary School in Sydenham. He excelled at the College, being a member of the boxing club, playing the violin and also playing hooker for the 1st XV, as well as playing for the Combined London Old Boys team. He also had a talent for languages, was fluent in Greek and French, and also had a good working knowledge of Turkish. When he left the College, Francis went to Battersea Polytechnic to study Aeronautical Engineering. He could have gone to Oxford or Cambridge but because of the Second World War, he chose to stay closer to his parents. After graduating during wartime with a qualification in Aeronautical Engineering, he got a reserved occupation job testing aero engines at D Napier & Son. At the end of the war, he decided to join his mother’s business which specialised in oriental rugs. He already had a good knowledge of rugs, having
seen them from a very early age, and over the next 60 years he was to become a real authority on them. In the 1950s he expanded into commercial flooring, and then set up his own company in 1968. Francis, although known to most of his friends as Sammy, had many hobbies, including woodworking and painting. He was a gifted artist producing some wonderful technical drawings and cartoons, and painting very successfully in both watercolours and oils. Because of his love for Dulwich, there are a number of paintings where the College crest has been incorporated somewhere into the painting. He also joined the OA Football Club and continued to play as the hooker, starting in the 1st XV and working his way down the lower teams before finally hanging up his rugby boots in his late thirties. He was a keen mountaineer, climbing in Scotland and the Alps before he got married. Despite never sailing, he was a member of the Alleynian Sailing Society (The Asses), attending as many meetings as he could. His son, Costa, also an OA, took over the business (and contributed this obituary) but Francis never really retired, still coming in to work every day and still selling oriental carpets. Peter Shaw came to the College from the Prep. He enjoyed his time at the College and joined the CCF but his main interest was playing squash. He was in the school squash team in his final year and gained his Colours for his performances. Having left Dulwich, he went to Guy’s Hospital to study Medicine, and also played squash for both the hospital and for the University of London, gaining a ‘blue’. After qualifying for his MB BS, Peter was one of the last conscripts to have to do National Service. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps on a three year short service commission as Lieutenant. He served all of his three year stint at the Royal Herbert Hospital in Woolwich and left the Army as a Captain. He met Angela, a nurse at Guy’s Hospital, in 1957. They married in 1958 and had two children. He gained his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) in 1965, was appointed as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Farnborough Hospital in 1969, and appointed as Teacher of Orthopaedics by the University of London in 1983. He continued to play squash regularly, including playing for the OAs in the Londonderry Cup, until 1995, when he took up tennis instead. He was a good and keen landscape painter and the family home is full of his paintings. He was also an enthusiastic scuba diver and had a large collection of his own underwater photographs, being a comprehensive record of most sea creatures. He retired from the NHS in 1999 and enjoyed his retirement with tennis, painting, gardening, horseriding and going to concerts. In January 2012 Peter Cosmo Shaw (1945-52) 24.02.1934 – 12.04.2012
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