Sir William Osler (1849–1919) and God’s House in Ewelme

Abstract

When William Osler was appointed Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford he also became, ex officio, Master of the Almshouse at Ewelme in Oxfordshire. The link with the Almshouse, its inmates and the villagers of Ewelme gave great pleasure to both Osler and his wife, who spent much time there. This paper explores reasons why Osler found the position so attractive and rewarding.

Keywords

Alice de la Pole (née Chaucer)Almshouse Ewelme Regius Professor Sir William Osler

Introduction

When ill health obliged Sir John Burdon Sanderson (1828–1905) to announce his premature retirement from the Regius Chair of Medicine in Oxford in late 1903 the medical profession was unable to agree on a successor. This led to some trepidation within the profession because Regius professorships are Crown appointments in the hands of the Prime Minister, and there was concern that what some might regard as an unsuitable or inappropriate appointment could be forced upon them. Sanderson therefore wrote promptly to sound out Osler when the latter’s name was mentioned as a possible candidate. As the best known and probably the most revered physician in the English-speaking world, it is perhaps surprising that Sanderson had not already considered his former pupil. Perhaps he thought him too well established at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and he would also have known that Osler had declined to let his name go forward for the Regius Chair in Edinburgh.¹

Osler was initially uncertain whether he wished to be considered for the Oxford post and asked for time to consider. Although he enjoyed excellent facilities and had many friends in Baltimore, he had accumulated an excessive workload and later wrote to a former student that, if he had stayed, there “could only have been one end - a breakdown”.² The Oxford post, although immensely prestigious, did have some downsides. It was relatively poorly paid, though this was not a major consideration for Osler because the immense success of his textbook of medicine had given him a measure of financial independence. More importantly, and although Oxford had an excellent preclinical school of medicine, it still had no clinical school; but Osler thrived on bedside teaching and it was on this that much of his outstanding reputation had been built. On the other hand, the move would provide an honourable escape from the administrative treadmill in Baltimore and allow time for him to pursue his academic interests. His wife, Grace Revere Osler (1854–1928), was in no doubt, writing that:

As I read the letter [from Sanderson] I felt a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders as I had become very anxious about the danger of his keeping on at the pace he had been going for several years in Baltimore.³

Oxford also gave Osler access to medical opportunities and contacts in London, notably at the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine. His evidence was influential in persuading the Haldane Commission to establish full time chairs of medicine in the University of London and he was prominent in founding the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland and the Quarterly Journal of Medicine.⁴

As Osler was to say to an American friend after 10 years in England “… there is no place like Oxford for a man who has passed his most strenuous years and wants to combine occupation with enjoyment”.⁵ Before taking up his post he had received offers of fellowships from Oriel College, Lincoln College and New College but chose a Professorial Studentship at Christ Church College where it gave him great pleasure to imagine that his rooms may have been those occupied by two of his favourite authors, John Locke (1632–1704) and Robert Burton (1577–1640).⁶ Two ex officio posts associated with the Regius Chair would have held particular appeal for Osler. The first was as a Curator of the Bodleian Library to whose important Standing Committee he was soon elected.⁷ The second was the Mastership of God’s House in Ewelme, an almshouse in a village 14 miles south-east of Oxford. Osler may well have known about the first appointment before accepting the post of Regius but it is quite possible that the first intimation of the Mastership came in a letter from Sanderson written on 2 May 1905, less than a month before Osler’s arrival in Oxford, in which Sanderson wrote that his only remaining duty was to bid farewell to “the old men in the Almshouse at Ewelme”.⁸ Both the Bodleian and the Almshouse were to feature prominently in Osler’s life during his time in Oxford.

God’s House in Ewelme

In 1437, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (1396–1450), and his wife Alice (1404–1475), daughter of Thomas Chaucer (1367–1434) of Ewelme and grand-daughter of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400, author of The Canterbury Tales), were granted a licence by King Henry VI (1421–1471) to found an almshouse and a school at Ewelme. Both foundations still fulfil their original functions, adjacent to the church where Alice is buried in an exceptionally fine tomb which is a unique surviving example of a woman’s cadaver tomb and the only cadaver tomb in England which is executed in alabaster.⁹ Alice had been twice widowed before marrying William. He was already a Knight of the Order of the Garter¹⁰ and Alice was granted Garter robes in 1432, 1434–1436 and 1448–1449. A Knight of the Garter wears the honour on his left calf but a Lady member wears it on the left fore-arm, as depicted on the effigy on her tomb (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Effigy of Lady Alice de la Pole showing the Order of the Garter on her left forearm.

Ewelme Foundation School claims to be the oldest English church school now incorporated into the State system of education and still in its original building, though there has been at least one occasion when it ceased to function as a school for several decades (Figure 2).^11,12

Figure 2.

Ewelme in the snow showing, from left to right, School, Almshouses and Church. Courtesy of Mrs Carol Sawbridge.

However, it is the Almshouse element of Alice’s foundation (for it was surely her personal project, founded in her home village and on land inherited from her father) with which this paper is concerned. The building has been known since its inception as “God’s House in Ewelme” or the “House of Alms” and the former name remains the legal name of the charity. Originally, it consisted of 13 houses around a square courtyard (Figure 3).^13,14 The top floor on the east side contains the Muniment Room, where the Foundation Deed is kept, and the living room of the Master’s Lodging. The original Statutes provided for a Corporation of two Chaplains each receiving 10 pounds annually and 13 Poor Men each of whom received three pounds six shillings and eight pence (one quarter of a mark) annually. One of the chaplains acted as Master of the Almshouse and the other as Master of the School. Originally, the Almsmen were required to wear black gowns and tabards, each with a red cross on the breast and to attend Mass and the Hours Services (matins, prime, terce, sext, nones, vespers and compline) every day in the Hospital Chapel of St John in the church. When entering the church they also wore a hood.¹⁵

Figure 3.

Inside the Almshouse Cloister.

The founding statutes ordained that “no leper, madman nor any other infected and in the grip of intolerable sickness” was to be admitted, and any who became so afflicted after admission was to be

moved and translated to any behoveful place, receive during his life for his sustenance, of the provenance of the said almshouse, the portion of the poor man afore assigned, so that notwithstanding such said sickness we will that he be taken and counted one of the number of the said poor men and of the said almshouse, during his life.

These regulations also applied to the Master.¹⁶ Alice and William required a household capable of engaging in meaningful prayer but they recognised their obligations to the physically and mentally sick.

There are still 13 alms men and women but, following internal alterations and modernisation, only eight now live in the cloister with the others in a modern building nearby.¹⁷ Since about 1900, they no longer wear the uniform and now attend church only once a day but, as described later, they continue to pray for the souls of the founders as required by the Statutes.¹⁸ Wives of Almsmen were admitted by 1699 and possibly earlier but were obliged to leave on their husband’s death though were sometimes known, by a happy compromise, to marry the incoming man! The first Almswomen appointed in her own right was admitted in 1976.¹⁹

In 1617, King James I (1566–1625) “added to the emoluments of the Regius Chair of Medicine in Oxford by annexing thereto the Mastership of the Hospital of Ewelme for the Professor’s sustenation even though he be a mere layman and have not taken holy orders”.²⁰ The professorial stipend was thereby increased from £40 to £50 annually and then eventually to £250 in 1860 but was withdrawn in the early twentieth century.²¹ However, the association with the Regius Chair has continued to this day and hence Osler’s connection with Ewelme.

The Oslers at Ewelme

The Oslers arrived in Oxford on the evening of 27 May 1905, Osler writing later that “I was thoroughly worn out and it was six weeks or more before I felt myself”. And yet, despite the upheaval of the move, the introduction to the social life of Oxford during “Eights Week”, the first sitting with Halsted, Welch and Kelly for the well-known “Four Doctors” portrait by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), his first meeting as a Curator of the Bodleian and his matriculation and the conferring of the Oxford degree D.M., he and Grace still found time to visit what she described as the “much-talked-of Almshouse at Ewelme” on June 19, less than a month after their arrival.²² Clearly, Osler had been intrigued by this unusual adjunct to his duties, and he was not to be disappointed.

Ewelme retains a strong sense of identity and community spirit but, as in so many English villages, the Ewelme which Osler knew between his arrival in 1905 and his death 14 years later was a very different village from the one we see today. The population has more than doubled from 479 in 1911 to 1048 in 2011, but the numbers of children in the village school have remained in the mid-eighties and the increase has come from an influx of retirees and those of working age who find employment outside the village. Some of the farms are now managed from outside the parish. The watercress beds survive in the stream that runs through the village but are now managed by a nature conservancy trust rather than as a commercial enterprise. Where there were two public houses and a beer-seller, there is now just the one pub. The pub and a community-run village store provide services to local people but other businesses depend on a more specialist clientele; and the blacksmith, wheelwright and carpenter, baker, two grocers, shoe shop, cobbler, nurseryman, post office and two Methodist chapels are long gone.²³

It is evident that both William and Grace had made an early decision to become involved in the life of both the almshouse and the village, having arrived with tobacco and illustrated newspapers for the Almsmen. Grace felt sure that “Willie will make them all fond of him and be good to them”. The Master’s rooms had been altered and Grace thought them “frightfully modern” but by September work was in hand to put them in order so that the Oslers could stay whenever they wished.²⁴ Osler paid for the new furnishings.²⁵ Cushing wrote that by July 1906 “for the first time in man’s memory the Master’s rooms were occupied by their rightful owner”.²⁶ This may have been a slight exaggeration because, although most Masters had taken little interest in the Almshouse, the rooms had been modified and Sir Henry Acland, Sanderson’s predecessor, had certainly taken an active interest in the welfare of tenants on the Trust’s estates.²⁷ However, Sanderson was criticised by the Rector for not visiting the Almsmen more than three times during the tenure of his office as Master.²⁸ The arrival of the motor car during Osler’s tenure had certainly made it easier to reach Ewelme from Oxford, though Grace did not enjoy motor travel.²⁹

The famously hospitable Oslers (Osler nicknamed their Oxford home The Open Arms) not only stayed there themselves but also used the Master’s rooms to entertain guests and even offered it to a former pupil as a honeymoon destination!³⁰ When John Brett Langstaff (1889–1985), the son of a former school friend of Osler and later Rector of St Edmund’s New York, came to study in Oxford, the Oslers installed him there for the whole of the summer while he wrote his thesis.³¹

At other times, the Oslers spent happy days there alone “in quiet seclusion”³² and AT Hadley (1856–1930), President of Yale, told how the ancient buildings, books and manuscripts with their Royal seals afforded “never-ending delight” to Osler. These manuscripts had been re-discovered by Osler himself. In one of the Master’s rooms was an old safe, so rusted that it could not be opened. Chubb’s, the London locksmith’s, sent a man to open it which he did on 28 July 1906. It must have been a red letter day in Osler’s life because inside were many old manuscripts, among which was the original charter, adorned with the great seal of Henry VI, for the founding of the almshouses.³³ It is probable that they had not been seen since they had been catalogued 26 years earlier by the then Rector of Ewelme, the Rev. William Wigan Harvey (1810–1883).³⁴ Osler described how the interior of the chest “was coated uniformly with mould & the documents were reeking with damp”. They were dried in the churchyard by Dr WW Francis (1878–1959), later the first librarian of the Osler Library at McGill,³⁵ and then sent to be restored by the University’s binder. After their return to Ewelme, many visitors came to see them and, in 1909, Osler hosted a meeting of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society in the Almshouses to discuss them. The following year he extended a similar invitation to historians from London and on this occasion the Oslers entertained 120 of the visitors to tea.³⁶

Also in 1910, Osler “again showed his goodwill [to the village] by giving a varied selection of books to start the Library” in the new Reading room.³⁷ Hadley noted that Osler took his duties as Master seriously, “visiting perhaps one day each week; and by so doing won … great affection from the old men after whose welfare he looked”.³⁸ Langstaff wrote that he “treated the 13 inmates as his personal patients and established a trained nurse in a nearby cottage to care for their immediate needs”.³⁹ In fact money had been set aside to employ a nurse in the late 1890s⁴⁰ and a full time nurse was employed from 1901, four years before Osler’s arrival.⁴¹ The American author Caroline Ticknor (1866–1937), who visited Ewelme with Lady Osler when the latter opened the village fête in 1924, implies that he improved sanitary arrangements in the Almshouses,⁴² though electricity was not introduced until the 1930s and mains water probably not until the 1950s.⁴³

However, Osler’s care was not unconditional. Cushing describes, without giving his sources, how Osler had once chided the Almsmen for neglecting their statutory duty to attend the daily service in which they prayed for the souls of William and Alice de Pole to whom they owed so much.⁴⁴ Ticknor, who probably obtained her information from Grace, wrote that Osler “summoned them into his presence, presiding over them in solemn dignity arrayed in his University cap and gown”. He then suggested “that they were not sufficiently grateful for their blessings or they would be glad to give daily thanks for them”. According to Ticknor, Osler asked the Bishop of Oxford to write a special prayer to be used for this purpose at the daily service and that, thereafter, the previously gloomy morale was “transformed from one of general dissatisfaction to one of grateful appreciation”.⁴⁵ Whether it was this single act which lifted morale or the presence of a committed Master who took a wider interest in the Almsmen’s welfare is perhaps open to question. The bishop may simply have approved the prayer rather than written it because the daughter (variously described as Emily Maude or Maud Mary Cruttwell, 1886–1968) of the Rector of Ewelme at the time, The Reverend Canon CT Cruttwell (1847–1911), recorded that the names of the founders “were restored in a prayer for daily use under the joint influence of my father when Rector, and Sir William Osler, the Master of the Almshouses” and that the prayer was taken “from a similar foundation at Lambourn”.⁴⁶

Maud described how Osler “was kindness itself” to the old Almsmen and how he and his wife “visited the old men in their homes and entertained them regally once or twice yearly, and altogether concerned themselves with their welfare”. She also tells us something about the Almsmen who the Oslers would have known. Septimus Garlick, the self-appointed but unofficial spokesman in the Almshouses, would certainly have told Osler, and would probably have given him a sample, of his herbal ointment which was made from a secret family recipe and which was a certain cure for “all the ills that flesh is heir to”. Former soldier Sam Walklin, who had served in five campaigns and who always wore his medals, would have regaled the Canadian Osler with his experiences during the extremely arduous Red River Campaign of 1870 in what is now Manitoba. Osler would have met the illiterate but charming William and Martha Tanner who had never been parted during their 50 years of marriage. They died, both aged 71, on the same day and had a double funeral so that, like Saul and Jonathan, even “in death they were not divided”. James Betterton, whose hobby was the making of sloe gin, would have invited his guests to sample his latest vintage. Unfortunately, he did not bother with glasses and always took a preliminary swig before passing the bottle on. Osler might have been unperturbed but Grace might have felt more comfortable when visiting the former butler, George Crowdy, whose favourite occupations were embroidery and the making of wedding cakes!

Like so many others, Maud came under the spell of Osler’s magnetic personality, writing that “I shall always remember the impression he made on me as a girl of being a man of power; his dark searching eyes seemed to penetrate one’s inner being. Deceit would be impossible with such a man”. The reference to his eyes echoes that of Maude Abbott, a pathology fellow at McGill: “I shall never forget him as I saw him walking down the old Museum towards me with his great dark burning eyes fixed full upon me”.⁴⁷

The Oslers extended their hospitality beyond the Almsmen to the wider village. On at least one occasion they hosted a party for the Almsmen and the village children together with their parents. Osler was famous for his ability to establish a rapport with children⁴⁸ and, on this occasion, a worried mother found her missing 10-year-old daughter wandering happily hand in hand with an unknown man who she called “William”. He had bought her a new doll.⁴⁹ A note in the Ewelme Village Archives records that “William” became a “beloved friend” of the village school children.⁵⁰

Maud was not the only Ewelme resident to confirm Osler’s diligence in attending to his duties as Master. Her father’s successor as Rector, the Rev. JA Dodd, wrote that Osler’s death “was universally and deeply regretted. Probably no Master ever took a keener interest in the welfare of the house than this world-famous physician”.⁵¹

In the 1970s, there began a reaction to the perceived dangers of “Oslerolatry”, as described by Bryan and Toodayan in a Guest Editorial in this issue of the Journal.⁵² Even AW Franklin (1905–1984), a warm admirer of Osler, suggested that he

had a kindly regard for the less privileged person but, [as] a man of his time, he had no general sympathy for the poor who are always with us, to excite pity and solicitude but not to be inspirers of social action.⁵³

However, the testimony of those who knew of Osler’s work in the Ewelme Almshouse does not accord with Franklin’s suggestion, and while Patrick Mallam (1900–1973), son of one of Osler’s colleagues at the Radcliffe Infirmary, may have been correct when he wrote that the Regius, “as titular landlord”, regarded the two Almshouse families with Friedreich’s Ataxia and Alkaptonuria “kindly and almost as a collection of esoteric incunabulae to show his medical friends”, Osler was, as Franklin acknowledged, a man of his time and such attitudes remained common throughout much of the twentieth century. When speaking of Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), Osler himself reminded his audience that “… a man must be judged by his times and his surroundings”.⁵⁴ The testimony of two Oxford medical students provides strong evidence of Osler’s Humanitas towards the charitably funded poor patients in the Radcliffe Infirmary. AD Gardner (1884–1978), himself a later Oxford Regius, recalled how Osler claimed that, in his behaviour towards patients, he made “no difference whatever between the high and the low, between a duchess and a cook”. Gardner wrote that

In England at that time there was, in fact, a considerable difference between cooks and duchesses, and most of us were inclined to treat them quite differently; so Sir William’s principle in practice struck us as excitingly enlightened and humane.⁵⁵

That Osler lived up to his claim in practice is confirmed by Frederick Hobson (1891–1961), also later a physician at the Radcliffe Infirmary, who described how Osler’s handling of patients was the ideal to which he and most of his colleagues aspired, and which he contrasted with “the nearly complete absence of humanity” in some of the major London hospitals which was “a cruel contrast to the medicine I had seen practised in Oxford”.⁵⁶ Osler certainly lived up to the second of his Three Ideals, “to act The Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, towards my professional brethren and towards the patients committed to my care”.⁵⁷

What did Ewelme mean to Osler?

The past is always with us, never to be escaped; it alone is enduring; but, amidst the changes and the chances which succeed one another so rapidly in this life, we are apt to live too much for the present and too much in the future … [On occasion] … it is good to hark back to the olden days and gratefully to recall the men whose labours in the past have made the present possible.⁵⁸

Ewelme offered Osler ample opportunity to “hark back to the olden days” and to imbibe the past, a world away from the immediacy of his duties in cosmopolitan Oxford and metropolitan London. In Ewelme, he was enveloped in history and living beside old manuscripts which he himself had been instrumental in rescuing and preserving. He must have been in his element, the ideal environment in which to replenish the inner aequanimitas which furnished his customary outward imperturbability and somewhere in which he could relax. But did Osler ever really relax? Could a man for whom The Master-Word was Work,⁵⁹ and who was so “fearfully conscious” of the passing of time that he played golf “almost literally on the run”, ever hold back? Bliss was surely right when he suggested that, in this phase of his life, Osler’s idea of leisure was to have time to write.⁶⁰ He certainly thought Ewelme was the ideal place for the young Langstaff to write his thesis and so he probably wrote there too.

Bliss surmised that Osler was sometimes melancholic and Cushing recorded a rare episode of depression,⁶¹ for both of which Ewelme might have provided the conditions necessary to restore his Aequanimitas.

The Great War

Such leisure as Osler did find was completely dissipated by the advent of the Great War, which was to prove a very sore trial for the Oslers. Both threw themselves into the war effort with characteristic energy. In May 1915, at the age of 66, Osler described “one of the busiest ten days I ever had”, having travelled 1260 miles on official business and seeing patients. He worked himself, quite literally, to the bone and, by the end of the war, had lost 21 pounds (9.5 kg), which represented 13% of his body weight. On 19 August 1917, Grace wrote to their close friend, the American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing (1869–1939), that “Poor W.O. is almost a skeleton and keeps busy every moment but sometimes can’t sleep and it makes one very anxious”.⁶²

Eleven days later came the telegram that every war-time parent dreaded but half-expected, with the news that their only child, Edward Revere Osler (1895–1917) had been seriously wounded near Ypres. In fact, Revere had already died by the time his parents received the telegram.⁶³ Osler took the loss particularly hard. His former colleague at Johns Hopkins, Harvey Cushing who, fortuitously, had been present during Revere’s final hours, described Osler “as a shadow of his former self”. In public, Osler usually managed to maintain much of his former imperturbability and optimism, saying that he and Grace were “taking the only medicine for sorrow - time and hard work”.⁶⁴ But Grace described him as “wrecked and heart-broken … sighing and sobbing his heart out at night …”. By the autumn of 1919 he had regained his former weight and apparently much of his old energy and bonhomie, so that William Francis was adamant that he had recovered fully, but Grace wrote that “… the tragic end and sorrow have told upon him”⁶⁵ and Caroline Ticknor that Revere’s death was “a blow from which he never recovered”.⁶⁶ He died on 29 December 1919 from pneumonia complicated by empyema and pulmonary abscesses, perhaps triggered by an initial episode of the influenza pandemic of that year.

Envoi

Ewelme was not one of Arthur Mee’s “Thankful Villages” from which all the men who served in the Great War later returned home.⁶⁷ When the Oslers attended church in Ewelme on Sunday 23 August 1914, less than three weeks after Britain had declared war on Germany, 30 of its men had already enlisted and there were hardly any male voices left in the choir.⁶⁸ In total, 108 Ewelme men with 57 different family names served King and Country. Twenty did not return.⁶⁹ There were many among the Oslers’ wide circle of friends who had lost one or more sons, some of them an only son like their own. But these friends were scattered around the globe. In Ewelme, where the Oslers were loved and respected, they would have been part of, and would have felt the support of, an entire community, a village which grieved as one, united by its common losses.

The Osler family’s association with Ewelme and its Almshouse did not end with Osler’s death in 1919 because, a few years later, the Board of Trustees of the Almshouse elected Grace as the first lady Trustee, a position which she held until her death in 1928.⁷⁰ The Osler connection is still visible on a plaque placed in the church by the Trustees and on which are recorded the names of William, Grace and Revere (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Memorial in Ewelme Church to William, Grace and Revere Osler. Courtesy of Dr Charles Ambrose.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to Mrs Carol Sawbridge, Ewelme Village Archivist, for so willingly providing information from the Village Archive and for Figure 2 and to Dr Charles Ambrose for providing .

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Henry Connor, MD FRCP is a retired physician who is now a volunteer guide and gardener at Hereford Cathedral. He holds an Honorary Research Fellowship in the History of Medicine at the University of Birmingham and is particularly interested in 19th century medicine.

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34.

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35.

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. Osler transmitted – a study in humanism. Medical History 1972; 16: 99–112.

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Osler W. Sir Thomas Browne. In: An Alabama medical student and other biographical essays. London: Oxford University Press (American Branch, New York), 1908, pp.248–277, quotation on p.276.

55.

Gardner

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56.

Hobson

Sir William Osler, Bart. In: Dewhurst

(ed). Oxford medicine: essays on the evolution of the Oxford Clinical School to commemorate the bicentary [sic] of the Radcliffe Infirmary, 1770–1970, Oxford: Sandford Publications, 1970, pp. 88–93.

57.

Osler W. Aequanimitas with other addresses to medical students, nurses and practitioners of medicine. 2nd ed., 3rd impression. London: HK Lewis, 1914, p.473. ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’ Holy Bible (King James Version) Matthew 7:12, p.12.

58.

Osler, Aequanimitas, ref. 57, p.9.

59.

Osler, Aequanimitas, ref. 57, p.363–388.

60.

Bliss, ref. 47, p.275, 346, 502.

61.

Bliss, ref. 47, p.197; Cushing, ref. 1, p.1225.

62.

Bliss, ref. 47, pp.413–414, 437–438, 467.

63.

Bliss, ref. 47, pp.439–440. Revere was named after a paternal great-great grandfather, the American patriot Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith, who rode all night to warn of the approach of the British during the American Revolution in 1775.

64.

Bliss, ref. 47, p.445, 447.

65.

Bliss, ref. 47, p.448, 458, 460.

66.

Ticknor, ref. 25.

67.

Johnson B., www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Thankful-Villages/ (accessed 3 July 2019)

68.

Cushing, ref. 1, pp.1111–1112.

69.

Ewelme Village Archive. Roll of service 1914–1918.

70.

The late Lady Osler. The Times, 4 September 1928, p.7.