Freemasons and questions to answer

This section was setup in August 2018 in order to move the existing related discussions from other sections into this new section to group them together, and separate from the other CH-related topics.

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
J.R.
Forum Moderator
Posts: 15835
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:53 pm
Real Name: John Rutley
Location: Dorking, Surrey

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by J.R. »

Spoonbill wrote: Wed Jul 25, 2018 1:18 pm :lol: I bet you still wear your orange sash and your Union Jack underpants though.
.... whilst listening to my Ian Paisley LP's. :oops:
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
User avatar
jtaylor
Forum Administrator
Posts: 1880
Joined: Sat Jun 05, 2004 12:32 am
Real Name: Julian Taylor
Location: Wantage, OXON
Contact:

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by jtaylor »

(I've removed the links to the unfinished separate website which a user had linked here, having taken some advice from RichardB re some of the content on that site, and based on past history of that organisation. Not sure about who the organisation comprises, or whether it's one person's opinion or what. Not convinced it adds to the discussion here, so keen to avoid red-herrings or side-tracking.
Hope that's OK with everyone - we're being careful to keep things on track!

J
)
Julian Taylor-Gadd
Leigh Hunt 1985-1992
Image
Founder of The Unofficial CH Forum
https://www.grovegeeks.co.uk - IT Support and website design for home, small businesses and charities.
User avatar
J.R.
Forum Moderator
Posts: 15835
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:53 pm
Real Name: John Rutley
Location: Dorking, Surrey

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by J.R. »

jtaylor wrote: Sat Jul 28, 2018 10:20 pm (I've removed the links to the unfinished separate website which a user had linked here, having taken some advice from RichardB re some of the content on that site, and based on past history of that organisation. Not sure about who the organisation comprises, or whether it's one person's opinion or what. Not convinced it adds to the discussion here, so keen to avoid red-herrings or side-tracking.
Hope that's OK with everyone - we're being careful to keep things on track!

J
)
Shame the nations rail service isn't !!!! :oops:
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
RusticationPhil
2nd Former
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2016 4:07 pm
Real Name: Philip Harrison

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by RusticationPhil »

The freemasons got me a place at CH. I passed the entrance exam (scraped in maybe), but needed an Oliver Whitby foundation scholarship to help my parents pay the fees, as my results were not good enough for as full scholarship. The year I applied they had 2 kids from the Chichester region (catchment for Oliver Whitby scholarships) who passed the exam. So the Oliver Whitby foundation, set up an interview with each of us, to choose which to fund. They (perhaps wisely as I didnt get on all that well at CH) chose the other guy.

My brother was already at CH, and he had a friend in his house who had a "guardian" (now deceased I believe), who was somehow involved with sending disadvantaged kids from London to CH. Anyway, this guardian was a well known free-mason, and well connected at CH. My parents knew this guardian through interactions with my brother's buddy. So they rung him up and told them that Oliver Whitby werent going to give me a scholarship. He said dont worry, I will have a word with Bob (Silett) about it. A couple of weeks later we got a letter from the Oliver Whitby foundation saying they had had a change of heart and decided to fund both applications this year. So off I went to CH, and had to war a silver badge thing on my coat to show I was funded by Oliver Whitby. Cheers freemasons- I guess.
Fidésien
2nd Former
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:09 pm
Real Name: Chris Martin

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by Fidésien »

Forgive my coming belatedly to the conversation, on a very occasional visit to the Forum. I've never been very interested in the Masons; it always seems to me to be a self-help organisation linked to a load of syncretist twaddle. But with 60 years of hindsight I realise that AL Johnstone, 'Johnny', my not greatly loved housemaster in Lamb A in the 1950s-60s, was a mason. Or at least he had photos of the Royal Masonic School, Bushey (and of Downing College, Cambridge) on his study wall; and I think that the knocker on his study door was the crossed compasses. Again with hindsight, as a bachelor with no visible family and few friends, he might well have been an obvious candidate for this kind of thing.
michael scuffil
Button Grecian
Posts: 1612
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:53 pm
Real Name: michael scuffil
Location: germany

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by michael scuffil »

I didn't know that Johnny was a Mason. The only staff member who I knew for certain was one was Dr Scott, because his son (who was in ThB) used to regale us with tales of the various altars he would set up. Was Rae a Mason? I ask because he, like Johnny, was one of those who carried Mrs Scott's coffin at her funeral.
Th.B. 27 1955-63
Fidésien
2nd Former
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:09 pm
Real Name: Chris Martin

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by Fidésien »

I don't know is the answer. But sometime in the very late 1950s/early 1960s Johnny bought a new car, which occasioned some envious comments from elsewhere along the Avenue. And Johnny and Bob Rae went off together on a continental 'motoring holiday'. Along with a third person, a Prep master whose name I can't remember, who was said to be "OC Culture"; and responsible for telling them what churches/buildings/paintings to look at. I don't know whether it was a masonic sortie. Or just three school-masters having fun together.
dsmg
UF (Upper Fourth)
Posts: 90
Joined: Wed Jul 07, 2010 2:55 pm
Real Name: daniel

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by dsmg »

It's funny how when you are young certain schoolmasters made you quake in your boots every time you saw them. Johnny Stein was one of those for me.
Play up Pompey!
michael scuffil
Button Grecian
Posts: 1612
Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:53 pm
Real Name: michael scuffil
Location: germany

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by michael scuffil »

There are numerous anecdotes about Johnny and I'd imagined they'd all been told on this forum by now, but this is a new one.

Johnny clearly got lumbered with some unpopular jobs. He was master i/c chair-shifting (!) and master i/c welcoming new boys and their parents. I was for a time his grecian sidekick in both functions. I found it a bit odd being welcomed by him and two grecians in 1955, and performing the same function myself (still with him) in 1962.
Th.B. 27 1955-63
MrEd
GE (Great Erasmus)
Posts: 124
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:29 pm
Real Name: Ed McFarlane

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by MrEd »

RDTS was an open Mason, I noted that he greeted parents with what we assumed to be a Masonic 'sign', IIRC, a sort of heel click and a raised palm. I was led to understand that he was, in the early 1980s, in the same Lodge as the Chief Constable of Sussex Police, and after Sir Barnes Wallis's Memorial Service at St Paul's, which the entire school attended by a chartered train, many rumours swirled that the police had done a drugs sweep of the School when all the pupils were away, and this was understood to have been arranged at an opportune moment. I am reporting that this happened, but that it was what was current as a rumour. RDTS also had some tales to tell about the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry, and other police tales, which he recounted to the Upper Dorm (2nd and 3rd Form) as comforting bed time tales of an evening. I have nothing to suggest that he or any other Mason on CH staff (or non-Mason) was in any way complicit in suppressing any enquiries into abuse, others may have information on the relevant steps taken and how Webb in particular was permitted to leave sharpish without the Fuzz on his trail for some decades.

Doubtless those in charge at the relevant time thought that Edward VI, the Wests and Sir Barnes Wallis et alia would have approved of their foundation/donations respectively being protected from any scandal, rather than the children being protected from abuse.
Pe.A
Deputy Grecian
Posts: 440
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:05 pm
Real Name: RTroni

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by Pe.A »

DazedandConfused wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:36 pm I can’t think who else taught Maths- Sprosen, O’Boyle and a very young teacher who can’t have been more than about 23? To say he had crowd control problems would be putting it mildly.
Carey...? Others included Tamvakis, O Meara and i think McLean...?
peter2095
GE (Great Erasmus)
Posts: 196
Joined: Sun Jan 09, 2005 9:58 pm
Real Name: Peter

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by peter2095 »

MrEd wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2019 10:04 pm RDTS was an open Mason, I noted that he greeted parents with what we assumed to be a Masonic 'sign', IIRC, a sort of heel click and a raised palm. I was led to understand that he was, in the early 1980s, in the same Lodge as the Chief Constable of Sussex Police,
I'm not sure that there is a masonic heel click and raised palm. It would be more than likely the way he shook a hand.

I also love how much power people think that the masons have and the conspiracies that they are involved in.
If it takes 87 muscles to frown, if i frown throughout the day, can that count towards my daily work out?
DazedandConfused
Deputy Grecian
Posts: 274
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2018 7:20 pm
Real Name: J

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by DazedandConfused »

Pe.A wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:34 pm
DazedandConfused wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:36 pm I can’t think who else taught Maths- Sprosen, O’Boyle and a very young teacher who can’t have been more than about 23? To say he had crowd control problems would be putting it mildly.
Carey...? Others included Tamvakis, O Meara and i think McLean...?
Carey! That was it. I remember during one of his lessons someone throwing a book out of the window and, when told to go and get it, then climbing out of the window after it.
Pe.A
Deputy Grecian
Posts: 440
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:05 pm
Real Name: RTroni

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by Pe.A »

DazedandConfused wrote: Sat Apr 06, 2019 7:56 am
Pe.A wrote: Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:34 pm
DazedandConfused wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:36 pm I can’t think who else taught Maths- Sprosen, O’Boyle and a very young teacher who can’t have been more than about 23? To say he had crowd control problems would be putting it mildly.
Carey...? Others included Tamvakis, O Meara and i think McLean...?
Carey! That was it. I remember during one of his lessons someone throwing a book out of the window and, when told to go and get it, then climbing out of the window after it.
Lol. think i was told that by someone at the time. Rings a bell. To be fair, he wasnt the only one. Some of the stuff some of the teachers had to put up with was bad...
LHA
Deputy Grecian
Posts: 239
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:35 pm
Real Name: Charles Henry

Re: Freemasons and questions to answer

Post by LHA »

I think a worse fate befell Mr Carey's head of department than befell Mr Carey whatever his crowd control problems were!
Post Reply