From Kingston to Dulwich: A Life to Remember
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“SINGULAR AND CHARACTERFUL, HE SAW HIMSELF AS A MIDDLE-CLASS
From Kingston to Dulwich: A Life to Remember In an extract from a book in progress, Sioban Whitney-Low chronicles the life of her grandfather, Ivan Owen Belgrave Shirley OA, who attended the College in the early years of the 20th century
ENGLISH GENTLEMAN, WITH BLACK AND WHITE FAMILY AND FRIENDS.”
in Peckham. By the late 1930s, commuter trains reached into Surrey, and so my grandfather began his own practice in Epsom, raising a family of four and travelling widely in France and
Ivan Owen Belgrave Shirley (known by his friends and family as IOB) was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 6 July 1895. His father, Alfred, a civil service clerk, died of tuberculosis when Ivan was only six. After Alfred’s death, a shrewd grandmother stepped in. Financially astute, Catherine Glover had profited from the building of the strategic canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Over 9,000 Jamaicans supplied the back-breaking labour required for the canal’s construction under French control and Catherine supplied the commodities the Jamaicans needed to make life bearable. With the wealth she had accumulated, Catherine enrolled IOB and his brother, Alan, at the prestigious Wolmers School in Kingston. Before Ivan left, he won the Class 2 in the 100-yard sprint. The Class 1 victor was IOB’s future friend, Norman Washington Manley MM QC, who would become Jamaica’s chief prime minister from 1959 to 1962. In 1911, IOB arrived in the UK from Jamaica during a summer of unbroken heat. He was 16 years old, a slight, young man with delicate wrists covered by long sleeves so that no one could see how thin they were. He talked later of how remarkable it was to him that the Southampton dockers were all white, and his thrill when he saw a bus heading for ‘Shirley’. That first summer, he tried out for several public schools and was rejected by them on the grounds of the colour of his skin. In July, he reached out to Dulwich College, where he knew the captain of cricket, Karl Nunes. Nunes was a Jamaican of Portuguese descent and a fellow Wolmer alumnus, who was able to vouch for IOB’s family’s solvency and integrity. IOB sat the DC entrance exams under the then Master, Arthur Gilkes, and entered the college that autumn. The authorities at DC at the time did not consider that my grandfather as a black man could behave in a way they considered civilised. So he was not put in a boarding house straight away but stayed a term with a private family. It is recorded in the December 2011 Alleynian that he was a Christmas prize-winner on the science side in his first term and in the spring of 2012 he entered Ivyholme as a boarder.
Sadly, nothing more is recorded on IOB’s running after he entered Dulwich College. His cricketing achievements, however, made family history. He was awarded his cricket colours in 1913 and 1914, (an era made famous by Arthur Gilligan) bamboozling batsman with leg breaks and an unorthodox left-arm spin. Another reputed claim to fame in the cricketing sphere, according to a story passed down within the family, was that his first victim in his first XI match was P.G. Wodehouse, who he bowled lbw for nought. Whether this is true or not, IOB’s most memorable performance was in a game against Brighton College, where he got 68 not out and a boy called Keatch got 107, the largest Public School last wicket stand, which remains the record to this day! When World War One broke out, IOB enrolled as a second Lieutenant in the British West Indies Regiment. Anecdote has it that when the British West Indies recruiting officer asked his profession, he replied ‘gentleman’ and was immediately given a commission. There is a medal card of his at the national archives, although sadly the Army Lists do not reveal which battalion he served with. IOB rarely spoke of his time at the Front except to mourn the death of his beloved brother in 1917. However, in 1963, as quoted in a Guardian letter, he told of the shameful demob arrangements he experienced after Victory. After demobilisation, IOB found teaching unfulfilling and so trained as a doctor at St Thomas’ hospital. There was much cricket playing and much night clubbing and, in the 1920s, he married for the first time and had a son, but the marriage did not last. In 1932 he qualified as a doctor and married my grandmother, Evelyn Shirley (née Menhenick). After an unhappy episode as a registrar in Kingston, Jamaica, IOB & Evelyn returned to England, where he practised medicine in London. It is believed that he worked for a time with Dr Moody
the West Indies. Shatteringly, he lost his beloved son from his first marriage on 27th April 1946. The exhaustion and grief he suffered resulted in a severe nervous breakdown. But things improved. IOB was planning to send his three sons to Epsom College, when he heard that the new Master of Dulwich College, Christopher Gilkes, whom he had known in the sixth form before the Great War, was honouring a scheme to open the school to boys able to pass the entrance examination. All three boys were, thus, entitled to an education at the largest ‘Grammar School’ in Britain, with their fees paid by the local authority. IOB is remembered by many OAs, standing in the Clump watching the 1st XI on a Saturday when his sons were playing. He was a man who emanated happiness, security and understanding. He had a subtle sense of humour, and was warm-hearted in his treatment of his fellow man (even the undeserving hypochondriacs who would become his patients). He was a man of his time, insisting on standing for the Queen’s Speech at Christmas, and for the national anthem at the conclusion of all theatrical and cinematic performances. Singular and characterful, he saw himself as a middle-class English gentleman, with black and white family and friends. He belonged to the conservative club in Epsom, though he also sympathised with Communism. He died on 23 August 1964 at 15 Stonehills Court, in a newly built apartment block behind his beloved College.
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