The contingent career path of the young George O. May

George Oliver May (1875–1961), Devon born and bred, was a hugely influential accountant in the United States, one of only four recipients of the highest awards of both his professional body (the American Institute of Accountants, now the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) and of academe (the Accounting Hall of Fame at Ohio State University). He was not only the senior partner of Price, Waterhouse & Co. (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) in the United States but also the author of over 100 articles and of a classic work on financial accounting published in 1943. Stephen Zeff has written that May ‘played an indispensable role in raising the standards of accounting and auditing practice [in the United States] in the critical decade of the 1930s, and he was one of the most incisive and most perceptive commentators on accounting principles during the first half of the twentieth century’ (Zeff, 1987: 49). According to the authors of the history of Price Waterhouse in the United States, ‘His unparalleled expertise in accounting and tax matters allowed May to play a leading role as spokesman and theorist for the accounting profession as a whole’ (Allen and McDermott, 1993: 28). He is the only British accountant included in Zeff's ‘fourteen who made a difference’ in the first hundred years of the American profession. At the end of his long career he was regarded as literally the GOM (grand old man) of American accountancy. But grand old men were once ambitious young men. May's career in the United States is well attested by Zeff and others. This essay looks instead at the young May's career in Devon (Teignmouth, Tiverton and Exeter) and asks how and why he was able to qualify as an English chartered accountant in Exeter, why he left Devon, why he migrated to the United States, and to what extent he maintained ties with Devon.

The main source of information for May's life in Devon is the first two chapters of his memoirs. These were written when May was in his eighties and published posthumously in 1962 by the Ronald Press in New York, edited by his friend and Price Waterhouse partner Paul Grady. The memoirs are illuminating but lack detail. In particular, May tells us little about his extended family (grandparents, parents, siblings, uncles and aunts) and does not name people and institutions unless he has something complimentary to say about them. Grady was a conscientious editor who added some information about May's brothers and sisters, but he lacked local knowledge. He made mistakes in the transcription of personal names: Westron becomes Westrom and Wilfred Drake becomes Wilford Drake. This article uses other sources (trade directories, censuses, parish registers, civil registration certificates, professional membership lists, and school archives) to fill in the details, give names and provide a context.

May's opportunity to pursue a successful career as an accountant in the United States was contingent on a number of pre-conditions. The first was that of class: being born into a family from which one could rise through the English class system, at a time when most Devonians were born into rural poverty. George Oliver May was born on 22 May 1875, at 6 Somerset Place in West Teignmouth, then as now in its central shopping area. Both his father (George England May, 1845–1927) and paternal grandfather (Benjamin Oliver May, c1823–1890) were grocers. George Oliver was the second of six children borne by his mother Bessie (née Goodland, the daughter of a butcher, born in Tiverton c1846, died 1933). Round the corner at 3 Bank Street was another family business, a bookseller and stationers run by a Miss E.J. May. This all amounted to a respectable petit bourgeois background (shared by many English accountants, including Lord Plender, the first chartered accountant to be awarded a peerage), from which a clever hard-working boy could make his way into a profession.

The second pre-condition was a compound one of gender, ethnicity and religion: that May be born male, white and Protestant. In the late nineteenth century, most women in Devon, and the United Kingdom generally (as May himself comments in his memoirs in relation to his wife), had little opportunity of a good education. The professions were not readily open to them. There were no female chartered accountants (as distinct from bookkeepers) until after the First World War. This is not to say that there were no women in employment in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but most of them were ‘in [domestic] service’ (including the servants employed in the May household in Somerset Place), working as shop assistants, or working on the land, especially in rural counties such as Devon.

Not only was May male, he was also, to use a North American expression that he would not have been familiar with when growing up in Devon, a WASP (a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). So, of course, were most of his fellow Devonians and Englishmen during this period. Overt racism was common and Catholics and Jews still found some professions difficult to enter in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Although there is little evidence that religion played an important role in May's life, he was baptised, confirmed (in Blundell's School chapel by the Bishop of Exeter in March 1891) and married (January 1, 1902) in the Church of England, and was educated at an Anglican school (see below) to whose chapel he donated a sixteenth century silver chalice (known as the ‘May chalice’) in 1951 (Noon, 2002: 88).

The third pre-condition was the opportunity of a decent education. The standard of schools in late nineteenth century Devon was very variable and there were no universities (Sellman, 1967). What May called his ‘first real school’ was run by Thomas Sandercock at Orchard House in Teignmouth. May does not name the school or its headmaster but he describes the latter as a ‘charlatan’. He is scathing about the staff with the exception of an inspiring mathematics teacher, a Mr Partridge, who was possibly related to William Partridge, the Tiverton solicitor who played an important role in the 1870s in ensuring a future for Blundell's School. In spring 1889, May successfully competed for an entrance scholarship to Blundell's, which he entered in the Lower Fifth form in September 1889 as a boarder, aged fourteen. The 1891 census return shows him in Westlake house, whose housemaster was a Mr Rooper (not mentioned by May). Noon's history of Blundell's includes an 1888 photograph of Rooper and his wife and what Noon calls ‘some rather hard-boiled looking boys’ (Noon, 2002: 86). At the date of the 1891 census there were 13 scholarship boys and ten students boarding in the house. May had the good fortune to enter Blundell's when it was undoubtedly the best school in Devon and one of the best in England. May played rugby, won prizes in divinity and history, and was a member of the Sixth form debating society. The memoirs do not mention the new buildings (opened in 1882) or Blundell's most famous headmaster (A.L. Francis, from 1874 to 1917) but May pays tribute to the inspiring and highly successful mathematics master, J.M. Thornton, whose many distinguished pupils included (after May's time at the school) the Nobel Prize winner, A.V. Hill (Noon, 2002). May does not mention that Blundell's was located in Tiverton, where two of his maternal uncles ran butchers’ shops.

May was well aware of the debt that he owed to Blundell's and showed his appreciation of the education that he received there by a number of donations (not mentioned in his memoirs). Apart from the chalice already referred to, he donated £1000 in May 1912, expressing the wish that the money be used to found a scholarship named after Thornton (Sampson, 2004: 287–8). The donation demonstrates his desire to help boys such as himself to get a good education. In March 1914, the new playing ground at the School was designated the ‘Mayfield’. He also donated money to set up a fund for the sons of Old Blundellians who had died in the First World War (Noon, 2002: 105). In 1948, he donated £1000 in memory of his mother.

The fourth pre-condition was choosing the right career, from those open to him. He tells us that his family dissuaded him from an early interest in the Indian Civil Service. In December 1891 (aged 16), he was in the happy position of both being in line for the captaincy of the school Rugby First XV and being given the chance to work for a scholarship to read mathematics at Cambridge, followed by a career in mathematics, possibly as an actuary. By a combination of chance and financial exigency, neither eventuated. The chance was a visit to Teignmouth by John Milton Criddle, the son of a Somerset grocer and a relative on his mother's side, who had moved to Newcastle upon Tyne and been admitted as a solicitor in 1881. Criddle was accompanied by an (unnamed) chartered accountant. Criddle persuaded May of the advantages of accountancy to a boy who was both numerate and literate. To become a chartered accountant, one had to serve an apprenticeship under ‘articles’: five years for a non-graduate; three years for a university graduate. Non-graduate entry was the norm. Moreover, three years at Cambridge, followed by three years’ articles was apparently regarded by the May family as not financially feasible. It was, however, as May would have been aware when he wrote his memoirs, the option that Arthur Lowes Dickinson, the son of a London portrait painter who became May's boss in the United States and a leader of the profession in both the United States and the United Kingdom, was able to follow. Dickinson was educated at Charterhouse and King's College, Cambridge, obtaining first class honours in mathematics and qualifying also as an actuary.

The fifth pre-condition therefore was to find a principal in a firm of chartered accountants who would be willing to take May as an articled clerk for five years. There was little choice, if May was not to work a long way from home. Although by 1892 the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales had a national membership of 1,876, most of them worked in London and the big industrial towns. There were no chartered accountants in Teignmouth or Tiverton. The obvious place to look was Exeter, roughly halfway between the two. Exeter was a cathedral city and county town, and the seat of the county court. It was still comparatively small, with a population of less than 50,000, and in 1892 had only two chartered accountants, Thomas Andrew and Charles Henry Fulford (Parker, 2004). Since Fulford was Andrew's clerk, Andrew was the only possible choice. May's father paid a premium of 100 guineas (£105) and May began his apprenticeship on 15 February 1892. He presumably commuted by train from Teignmouth to Exeter.

The choice of Andrew (1831–1902) meant that May was articled to one of the leading men in Exeter. By 1892, Andrew was well established and close to retirement. Born in the Cornish mining village of Illogan, he came to Exeter in the 1850s, became a Methodist preacher in 1855 at the age of 24 and continued to preach for nearly fifty years (Chick, 1907: 120, 137). He obtained work as deputy chief clerk and later chief clerk to the registrar of the county court. In 1862 he became High Bailiff, at the same time practising as an accountant, and was one of the two elective city auditors from 1870 to 1878. He was mayor in 1881, certainly Exeter's first Methodist mayor and perhaps the first chartered accountant to be mayor of an English city. Active in the Devonshire Association, in whose Transactions his obituary was published in 1903, he left a lasting physical mark on Exeter when in 1878 he and Thomas Rowe bought five old houses in Fore Street on behalf of the Mint Methodist church in order that they could be demolished (Chick, 1907: 91; Le Mesurier, 1962: 27, 28, 31). By the time May was articled to him, Andrew was living at 18 Southernhay West, one of the best addresses in the city, and had an office in Bedford Circus, the centre of professional life in nineteenth century Exeter.

Andrew's accountancy practice was adversely affected by the Bankruptcy Act of 1883 under which government officials took over a large part of the work previously carried out by private individuals. This Act, associated with Joseph Chamberlain the trade minister, was not popular with the accountancy profession. Andrew was, however, appointed one of the new Official Receivers. May thus received a very good grounding in bankruptcy work (which helped him to obtain first place in his final examinations) but little practical experience of areas of accounting work such as auditing, investigations and taxation. Fortunately, his bankruptcy skills were not completely wasted: an ability to apply figures to legal problems is transferable to many areas of accountancy.

Very important to May's subsequent career was his friendship with his fellow articled clerk, Charles William Westron, the son of an Exeter tea merchant. Westron set an example to May in three ways: by being placed fifth in the 1894 final examinations; by being the first person from Exeter to qualify as a chartered accountant by examination (Andrew and others had been admitted on experience alone); and by moving to London after qualification. May was the second person from Exeter to qualify by examination, surpassed Westron by coming first equal in his intermediate and first in his final and followed Westron to London. There were no other prizewinners from Exeter until the 1940s.

Both Andrew and Westron were committed writers, as May was to be. Andrew (1875) was the author of Geological and Archaeological Papers, published in 1875. Westron became a contributor to Punch and the author of four works of fiction set in Devon (Salty, 1919; Combe Hamlet, 1923; More Salty, 1924; Salty Ashore, 1929), plus a technical work entitled The Bed-Rock of Double-Entry Book-keeping (1924).

May and Westron shared their leisure as well as their work. Within easy walking distance of Bedford Circus, on the corner of Barnfield Road and Southernhay East, was Barnfield House, the recently acquired home of the Exeter Literary Society. The Society played an important part in the continuing education of the young George May. As a still existing inscription announces, the foundation stone of a new lecture hall was laid on 15 October 1890; and the hall was officially opened on July 23, 1891. The Society was at the height of its influence during May's five years in Exeter (Hawkins, 1920).

The sixth pre-condition was choosing the right firm after qualification. May tells us that his first intention was to spend two or three years in a larger city gaining experience and then to return to Devon to open his own practice. Criddle obtained for him a favourable offer from a firm in Newcastle but May preferred London. Westron, who had joined the leading firm of Cooper Bros. in London in 1895, provided him with a list of suitable firms. Price Waterhouse was at the top of the list and after interview he was offered a job and started work on 15 February 1898 at a salary of £120 per annum. Westron, claimed May in the dedication to his memoirs, had led him in ‘the only path that could have brought me to America’. He had been at Price Waterhouse for only five months when he was offered and accepted a post with Price Waterhouse's agents in New York, Jones, Caesar & Co. He sailed to America, reporting for work in New York on 28 July 1897. He was admitted as a partner in the American firm of Price Waterhouse in 1902 and became senior partner in 1911.

Although the 1890s was a top decade for emigration from the United Kingdom, especially to North America, May's move overseas was not typical of English chartered accountants at that time. In 1898, only 66 (less than 3 per cent) of English chartered accountants were working outside the United Kingdom: 24 in the United States, 11 in India, 10 in Australia, 10 in South Africa, two in Canada, two in the Isle of Man and seven elsewhere. The attractions of the United States were the British investments in need of audit and its relative closeness to Britain. Until 1891, India had been the most favoured overseas destination for English chartered accountants.

The seventh pre-condition was not to have one's career disrupted or terminated by injury or death in war. May was born in 1875, in what he called a ‘placid era’. The many colonial wars, even those in South Africa at the turn of the century, were fought mainly by regular soldiers. May was old enough not to be called upon to fight in the First World War, although he registered for the United States draft in 1918 and worked for the United States Treasury. His family was not unaffected, however. According to Grady, May's younger brother Frank (who was about 25 years old in 1914) was seriously injured in the War.

May's eminent career as an American accountant was thus contingent on many things. In his memoirs, he puts it in terms of people: Partridge in Teignmouth, Thornton at Blundell's, Westron in Exeter, Dickinson in the US. He does not mention that he, like them, was male and white. Protestantism was important but not its form: Blundell's was Anglican, Andrew was Methodist, and Price Waterhouse a firm founded by Quakers. It was May's good fortune that his part of Devon possessed a good school. Blundell's gave him not only a good education but also increased his social status. He and his parents were right to favour a profession which, unlike the Indian Civil Service, readily accepted the sons of shopkeepers, which was experiencing rapid growth, and which rewarded numeracy as well as literacy. Not going to university was not a handicap. Accountancy at this date was overwhelmingly a profession for non-graduates. It was fortunate that there was a firm of accountants in Exeter which, although narrow in its work experience, provided an encouraging environment and a colleague who acted as a role model. The move to London was perhaps inevitable, given the peripheral position of Devon in the British economy (Havinden et al., 1991) but the choice of Price Waterhouse was inspired. All this said, May would still not have achieved his success as an accountant in the United States without his own considerable intellect, personality, and ambition.

Many emigrants from England in the 1890s did not expect, or even sometimes greatly wish, to see their home country again. As a well-paid professional, May was able to make frequent return visits to Devon and to maintain his strong family connections. He was back in England as early as December 1898 to January 1899, attending the wedding of his brother Henry (b.1873) to a local girl. May himself married Edith Mary Slocombe, the daughter of a retired builder, in Teignmouth on New Year's Day 1902, the same day on which he formally became a partner in the United States firm. His parents and siblings did not venture far from Teignmouth. After their marriage (in Bristol), his parents lived in Teignmouth for the rest of their lives, latterly in Powderham Terrace. May's father died in 1927, leaving his estate to his wife. She died in 1933, dividing her residual estate among her surviving children, but bequeathing her jewellery to her daughters, and to George such furniture as he wished to take. George and the three of his siblings who married (Henry, Frank and Winifred) all found their spouses in Teignmouth. Henry moved to Exeter where the trade directories record him as a hosier, hatter, and glover at 1b High Street near the Eastgate, and later to Lymington in Hampshire, where he ran a shipbuilding yard. Frank (b.c1882), who married Florence Isabella H. Coe in 1905, became a hotel proprietor at the Rock House in Chudleigh. Winifred (b.c1878) married Wilfred Drake (b.c1880, a glass painter) in 1905, moving to Exeter with her husband. Wilfred and his elder brother Frederick Morris Drake (b.c1876) carried on their business at Three Gables in Cathedral Yard. They were the authors and illustrators in 1912 and 1916 of books on stained glass and heraldry (Drake, 1912; Drake and Drake, 1916). Frederick Morris wrote in 1913 a brief centenary history of the Devon and Exeter Institution in Cathedral Close (Drake, 1913). He was also, under the name of Maurice Drake, a successful popular novelist.

What sort of man was the young George May? Arthur Lowes Dickinson (1859–1935), himself a leading English chartered accountant, sixteen years older than May, wrote from New York in October 1902 to a London partner of Price Waterhouse that May ‘was a very clever fellow & we all like him personally, but he has too high a opinion of himself at present and is very young’ (Allen and McDermott, 1993: 49). Eighty years later, another of Zeff's fourteen who made a difference to the history of the accountancy profession in the United States, Professor William Paton, who had grown up as a farm boy of Scottish descent in Michigan, recalled that he also had found May likeable but described him as ‘a very conceited Englishman’ (even though May had been an American citizen since 1909). At the same time, in Paton's view, he was ‘a man of great courage, determination, and loyalty to his firm and his profession’ (Paton, 1981: 91, 94). May was also loyal to Devon, even if that county was not a place where he could have become a professional man of world-wide reputation.