IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NATIONAL LIFE STORIES AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE Professor John Dewey Interviewed by Paul Merchant C1379/83 1 John Dewey Page 2 C1379/83 The British Library National Life Stories Track 1 Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1379/83 Collection title: An Oral History of British Science Interviewee’s surname: Dewey Title: Professor Interviewee’s John Sex: Male forename: Occupation: geologist Date and place of 22 nd May 1927, birth: Woodford, Essex, UK Mother’s occupation: Housewife Father’s occupation: Various, including sign writer Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 02/08/12 (track 1-3), 03/08/12 (track 4), 27/08/12 (track 5-8), 21/09/12 (track 9-11) Location of interview: University College, Oxford; interviewee’s home in Kennington, Oxford; Natural History Museum, London Name of interviewer: Dr Paul Merchant Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661 Recording format : 661: WAV 24 bit 48kHz Total no. of tracks: 11 Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: 12:58:33 Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: The following sections are closed for 20 years or until the interviewee’s death, whichever is sooner: Track 8 [00:11:12-00:19:32] and Track 10 [00:00:00-00:23:09] © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: 2 John Dewey Page 3 C1379/83 Track 1 Track 1 Could you start by telling me when and where you were born please? Yes. I was born in a nursing home called the Hydro on the edge of Woodford in Essex. And I was brought up basically in a small village called Chingford, which is south of Epping, and into an ordinary middle class family, very nice sort of comfortable neighbourhood, very pleasant. Went to the local Church of England primary school called Kings Road, where the place was run with a rod of iron by a headmaster called Mr Swindle – Mr Swindell, I should say, and a primary school head teacher called Miss Reeder. And both were immensely encouraging. And Miss Reeder, when I was a child, recognised I painted well and got me very interested in drawing and all those kinds of things. We had slates. Didn’t see any paper and pencil until I was into the junior school and we had slates, squeaky slates and crayons and chalk and so all our sums and writing were done on the slates, which was rather nice. Save on the paper, I suppose. And went up to the junior school at the age of, I suppose eight or something like that. Mr Swindell was headmaster. Rod of iron, lots of beatings. Kids were beaten with sticks. Typical Church of England primary school, I suppose. And we were fairly scared of Mr Swindell but he was actually – a heart of gold behind it all. And when I left I got a little prize and so forth. It was lovely. Third of a pints of milks in those days. I remember sort of halfway through the afternoon and through the morning we’d get a third of pint of milk in those tiny little milk bottles and that was great fun. And again, Mr Swindell would police the thing with a stick, his cane, and say, ‘Are you going to be all day getting your milk?’ So we had to drink it fairly fast otherwise you were beaten. So you were beaten at the drop of a hat basically. And all the teachers would smack with a couple of rulers, Mr Marr and Mr Salter, Miss Theakstone, a whole – I remember, all the names flashback now. But it was actually – it sounds awful but it was an idyllic time, lovely. I enjoyed that school very, very much. Playtimes and lots of friends I made there, it was lovely. [02:20] 3 John Dewey Page 4 C1379/83 Track 1 Then at the age of, I suppose, ten, ten, eleven, I took the Eleven Plus examination and passed it. And also simultaneously took the entrance scholarship for a school in Woodford Green called Bancrofts, which I passed, so it was decided I was to go to Bancrofts. And I went to Bancrofts at the age of, I suppose, just eleven and, again, I had an idyllic, idyllic time at school. I loved sport, boxing and gymnastics and cricket and rugby and hockey and athletic. All those things I enjoyed very much until the age of sixteen. I suppose I was a poor scholar, it might be said with accuracy, a very poor scholar, who didn’t work very hard. I was obsessed with sport. I did just enough to get by, just enough to get by. And we had a housemaster called John Haywood, an amateur geologist actually, worked on the Lea Valley, the Pliocene deposits of the Lea Valley. And I went up on field trip with him and I got interested in geology that way. And he said, ‘Look, look John,’ he said, ‘You’ve got a decent brain. You’re too obsessed with sports. You’re never going to make yourself famous at any of those sports. You’re simply not good enough at any of them to become seriously good.’ So he said, ‘Why don’t you concentrate on doing a bit of work before O levels.’ It was the year before O levels came up at sixteen. And so I did start to work and I really worked at chemistry and all the usual stuff. And it was to the amazement of the school and all my friends that I passed all my O levels, all eight of them [laughs]. I’m sure they’d – I don’t know what sort of marks I got in them but anyway I passed them, which enabled me to go onto sixth form and choose what I wanted there. And I was a bit obstreperous in a way, I always was slightly obstreperous at school, and I was interested both in the sciences and the arts. So I took the A level courses in German and French and a bit of English but never took the examinations. Perhaps I should have done but anyway I didn’t because they liked people to pass examinations for which they were put in. So simultaneously I did the sciences, physics and chemistry, and also I was interested in botany, zoology and geology. I’ve always been terribly interested in natural history of various kinds. So the natural history led me to do botany and zoology and geology and I wasn’t going to do A levels in all those but I did and I passed them all, amazingly. And it was then a question what to do, you know, when it comes to eighteen. And again I was doing lots of sport and I loved the work as well. And I was gradually focusing in on either engineering or in geology, or possibly journalism. That’s the other strange thing, I actually liked writing very 4 John Dewey Page 5 C1379/83 Track 1 much. I loved writing essays and so I thought maybe I can become a journalist and that would be rather fun. And I was persuaded against that, not to do that, but almost all the masters at school. They said it’s a dreadful profession and a scurrilous profession and you don’t want to do that, why don’t you become a geologist if you like geology and the natural history side of science. So I did. So I applied to the University of London, Queen Mary College in Mile End, and that was the only place to which I applied because John Hayward, our housemaster in geology and chemistry, he took chemistry as well, he knew the professor, the reader as it was then, Jack Kirkaldy, who ran the department. He said, ‘You’ll love that department. It’s a small department, superb teaching and very friendly. You will enjoy Queen Mary College very much.’ So I applied there and it depended on getting all the A levels and I got all the A levels and it was fine. So I went to read geology at Queen Mary College. And that was really what got me going in the geological profession. But all that time I suppose, since an early childhood, I was interested in lots of other things, painting for example. Drawing and painting was always a very great sort of therapeutic satisfaction to me. My father taught me to paint and draw. He was a very good watercolourist and artist and he got me going. And I painted all through my childhood, drawing mostly in watercolours. And in fact, as I’ll tell you later, I didn’t do any oil painting until I was I think seventy-two [laughs]. I was a watercolourist all my life and I love that. So that was another strand in my interests. I love music, listening to music and particularly English music, which has been a mainstay all my life. Vaughan Williams and Delius and all the minor English – Elgar, all the minor English composers, Warlock and so forth. And I still have that as a mega hobby. I listen to music a great deal. [7:02] So here am I at the age of eighteen with a – sorry, age of twenty-one with a first class degree in geology and what to do. Natural consequence, PhD. That’s what one did in those days, you didn’t think of doing anything else because the PhD was a route to – I thought I might like to join the Geological Survey actually of Great Britain and I thought a lot about that.