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Obituaries Jeffrey James North (1920–2016)

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Obituaries Jeffrey James North (1920–2016) OBITUARIES JEFFREY JAMES NORTH (1920–2016) Arma virumque cano Virgil, Aeneid, 1.1 JEFFREY JAMES NORTH, an eminent contemporary and close friend of Peter Woodhead (q.v.) passed away peacefully in Worthing on 31 March 2016 at the age of 96. Jeffrey was born in Brighton, Sussex, on 27 January 1920 and won a scholarship to Varndean Boys’ Grammar School, passing his Matriculation in 1937. His father was a bookbinder but on leaving school he chose to join Barclays Bank in Brighton. After the outbreak of the Second World War he was conscripted into the army in June 1940, and commissioned in 1942, at the age of twenty-two. Later that year he joined the Tunisian campaign, where he was mentioned in dispatches, on one occasion leading his men back to safety from behind enemy lines. Whilst serving in Algeria he met his first wife, Janine, whom he married in 1944. Their son Andrew, an accomplished linguist, survives Jeffrey. Following a bout of illness Jeffrey was withdrawn from active service and served in a liaison role with the Allied Forces H.Q., Italy, for the remainder of the War. Following discharge in June 1946, he resumed his career with Barclays. With typical modesty he always protested that he was ‘no banker’, but nevertheless rose to become the manager at Hove and subsequently at the important branch in Portslade. His practical and sharp intelligence, and his firmness of resolve allied to a fair and compassionate nature, ensured that he was universally respected and admired by his staff, his customers and his wider social acquaintance. Jeffrey retired from the bank in 1979 at the age of fifty-nine. This enabled him to devote more time and energy to his favourite pursuit, the collection and study of coins. Like so many of his generation he acquired an interest in numismatics in his boyhood. Living in Brighton he was able to develop his eye for a bargain in the ‘Lanes’ where, in those halcyon days, an Anglo-Saxon penny could often be bought for as little as a few old pence. By 1957 he had already become a serious student of English hammered coinage up to 1660 and joined the British Numismatic Society in September of that year. At this period he received formative encouragement from such distinguished numismatists as Michael Dolley and Christopher Blunt. Jeffrey’s contribution in his chosen field is nowhere more eloquently demonstrated than in the bibliography of his published writings below, compiled by Robert Thompson. For short notes his preferred vehicle was the Spink Numismatic Circular, to which he contributed seven- ty-six entries between 1959 and 1996. He also collaborated in 1984 with Peter Preston Morley for volume 33 in the Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles (SCBI) series, entitled The John G. Brooker collection: Coins of Charles I (1625−1649) and with Ian (now Lord) Stewartby − another mentor − on ‘The classification of the single-cross sterlings of Alexander III’, published in BNJ in 1990. His main claim to lasting recognition, however, rests upon two outstanding monographs. The first of these was his two volumes onEnglish Hammered Coinage, the first covering the period from c.600 to 1272 and the second from 1272 to 1662. Jeffrey took these through three editions between 1960 and 1994, recognised by his being awarded the Lhotka Memorial Prize of the Royal Numismatic Society. Their clarity and precision brought him world-wide acclaim, and it is to be hoped that further editions of this essential work will be entertained by the publishers to ensure their lasting utility and to form a fitting tribute to Jeffrey’s achievement. The second monograph was his Sylloge, SCBI 39, entitled the J.J. North collection: Edwardian Obituary, ‘Jeffrey James North (1920–2016)’, British Numismatic Journal 86 (2016), 283–89. ISSN 0143–8956. © British Numismatic Society. 284 OBITUARY Silver Coins 1279−1351, published by the British Academy in 1989. This consummate analysis of a challenging series had been foreshadowed by his booklet in 1968, entitled The Coinages of Edward I and II. The author of this obituary was able to apply Jeffrey’s detailed classifica- tion without difficulty when cataloguing approximately 2,500 Edwardian sterlings struck at the mint of Bury St Edmunds. The Sylloge, written at the request of the Academy, was an eloquent testimonial to his academic standing. In spite of his prominence in the British series Jeffrey never took office in this Society, but in 1993 he was granted its most prestigious award, the Sanford Saltus Medal. In 2006 he donated a generous capital sum to enable the Society to set up in his honour the biennial North Book Prize and the Jeffrey North Medal for Services to Numismatics, intended to celebrate its unsung heroes. After publication of his Sylloge, Jeffrey disposed of his Edwardian sterlings by private treaty and, with typical adventurousness, formed a collection of Chinese cast copper coins. This was donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge shortly before his death. Jeffrey’s home in Shoreham-by-Sea, which he shared with his second wife, Shirley, until her untimely death in 2000, appeared from the outside to be a typical detached house of the 1920s. But inside it was furnished and equipped with the choicest of objects, ranging from Georgian furniture and silver-gilt cutlery, to stump-work pictures, Chinese ceramics and figures and, latterly, Barr, Flight and Barr Worcester porcelain painted in exquisite shell and feather designs. Eventually Sotheby illustrated such an inkstand owned by Jeffrey on the front cover of one of its auction catalogues. Shirley shared his enthusiasms and assembled her own remarkable collection of silhouettes. On leaving the house by the back door the visitor was further spellbound by the sight of a tastefully laid out and maintained garden. Jeffrey North was a courteous and loyal friend, always enthusiastic and entertaining, and interested in everyone and everything around him. He bore the partial amputation of one leg soon after the loss of Shirley with great fortitude. His intellectual acumen remained undimin- ished until the very end of his long life. The present writer recalls visiting him when he was approaching his nineties to be told that he was amusing himself by re-reading the Aeneid in its original language. Andrew has related that if it became apparent that conversation with his father during their weekly luncheon engagement was being listened to by other diners, they would switch to French and even, for greater privacy, to Latin. It is impossible to feel sad given Jeffrey’s long and fulfilling life and the cherished memories of those who were fortunate enough to have known him. It is also a happy circumstance that Jeffrey had, to his delight, been told before his death that the Society had decided to dedicate this volume of BNJ to him. ROBIN EAGLEN PUBLICATIONS OF JEFFREY JAMES NORTH 1959 ‘The countermarked shillings of Edward VI’, NCirc 67, 52. 1960a English Hammered Coinage, Volume 2: Edward I to Charles II, 1272−1662 (London). 1960b ‘An unpublished penny of Henry I [Dover mint, Manwine]’, NCirc 68, 261. 1961a ‘A fictitious moneyer of the Southwark mint of Henry I [Manwine]’,NCirc 69, 87. 1961b Review: Commentationes de Nummis saeculorum IX−XI in Suecia repertis, Part I’, NCirc 69, 143. 1961c Review: Anglo-Saxon Coins, ed. R.H.M. Dolley, NCirc 69, 193−4. 1961d ‘The coinage of Berhtwulf of Mercia (840−852)’, NCirc 69, 213−15. 1962a ‘English Hammered Coinage, Volume 2: addenda and corrigenda’, NCirc 70, 136. 1962b Review: Coins, by R.A.G. Carson, NCirc 70, 230. 1963a English Hammered Coinage, Volume 1: Early Anglo-Saxon–Henry III, c.650−1272 (London). 1964 Review: Anglo-Saxon Pennies, by Michael Dolley, NCirc 72, 81. 1965a Review: SCBI National Museum, Copenhagen, Part I, by Georg Galster, NCirc 73, 9. 1965b English Hammered Coinage, Part 1 [i.e. Vol. 1]: addenda and corrigenda, NCirc 73, 155−6. 1966a ‘The Broughton hoard’, BNJ 35, 120−7. 1966b Review: [SCBI] The Hiberno-Norse Coins in the British Museum, by R.H.M. Dolley, NCirc 74, 212−13. 1966c Review: [SCBI] The Royal Collection of Coins and Medals, National Museum, Copenhagen, Part II: Anglo-Saxon Coins: Æthelred II, by Georg Galster, NCirc 74, 283. OBITUARY 285 1967 Review: SCBI National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh, Part I: Anglo-Saxon Coins, by Robert B.K. Stevenson, NCirc 75, 8−9. 1968a The Coinages of Edward I & II (London). 1968b Review: SCBI Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Anglo-Saxon Pennies, by J.D.A. Thompson, NCirc 76 (1968), 160. 1970 ‘An unpublished coin of the Hastings mint’, Coins and Antiquities Fixed Price List 5. 1973a ‘A fictitious variety of the mint of Bury St Edmunds’,NCirc 81, 428. 1973b−c ‘A very rare variety of class IXb’ [and] ‘A trial obverse inscription in class X’, NCirc 81, 472. 1974a ‘The anomolous variety of class “Xb”’, NCirc 82, 10−11. 1974b−c ‘A “mysterious” mark on the pence of Edward II’ [and] ‘A class XII penny of the Durham mint’, NCirc 82, 146−7. 1974d ‘Punctuation marks on the pence of Edward II’, NCirc 82, 193−4. 1974e ‘A die-link and mule of the Berwick-on-Tweed mint’, NCirc 82, 239−40. 1974f Review: Medieval English Jetons, by George Berry, NCirc 82, 431. 1975a English Hammered Coinage, Volume 2: Edward I to Charles II, 1272−1662, 2nd edn. (London). 1975b ‘An unpublished halfpenny of the Berwick-on-Tweed mint’, NCirc 83, 56−7. 1975c ‘A Tudor gaming piece’, NCirc 83, 149. 1975d Review: Quinquagesimo Anno, by Arnold Mallinson, NCirc 83, 156. 1975e ‘Contemporary forgeries of Edwardian pence’, NCirc 83, 194−5.
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