Philip Howson Guy ["Phil"] Pye-Smith

• Matriculated: 1914

• Born: 21 March 1896

• Died: 15 May 1917

• Regiment: King's (Liverpool) Regiment

• Grave/Memorial: Tilloy British Cemetery: III.E.1

Family background

b. 21 March 1896, as the only child of Dr Philip Henry Pye-Smith, BA, MB, MD, FRCP, FRS (1839–1914) and Emily Gertrude Pye-Smith (née Foulger) (1860–1923) (m. 1894). Philip Henry had practices in Finsbury Square, then at 56 and subsequently 54 Harley Street, and in 1901 and 1911 he and his family were living at 48 Brook Street, London (seven servants). By 1914, Philip Howson and his mother were living at 26 Hyde Park Square, London W, which an Oxford friend would describe as:

a well run English home. It is one of those typical Georgian houses at the end of a tree-lined square with seven servants and a hostess as comfortably informal as my own mother. “Mrs Pye” […] is a widow, short, stout and active. Kindly humour marks her spirit to which is added a lot of common sense. She lives for her only son, and fortunately he is the sort of man who doesn’t spoil. Picture her in a large square drawing-room behind a temptingly laden tea table. The floor is centred with a great rug of royal purple standing out against the white painted floor boards on all sides. Long windows face the square and the other sides are hung with heavily framed paintings.

Parents and antecedents

Pye-Smith’s paternal great-grandfather was the Reverend John Pye-Smith, DD, FRS (1774–1851), a well-known Congregationalist teacher and divine, and anti-slavery campaigner. He was appointed tutor at Homerton Academy in 1800 and remained there until his stroke in 1849. While there he taught philosophy, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, physics, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and in 1806 he was additionally appointed Theological Tutor. In The Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some Parts of Geological Science (1839) he was a revolutionary, not subscribing to the generally accepted “recent creation of the earth, or to a universal flood”. He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1836 and the Royal Society in 1840, the first nonconformist to be so honoured.

Pye-Smith’s grandfather was Ebenezer Pye-Smith, FRCS (1807–85), who studied at Guy’s Hospital and in Paris, a surgeon with a large practice in Hackney. He married Mary Anne Lydia Foulger (1812–1898) (see below).

Pye-Smith’s father began his scholarly career by reading Classics at University College, London, and then studied Medicine at Guy’s Hospital (1859–63), where he distinguished himself as a student. When he took his MB in 1861, he won the exhibition and gold medals in Physiology, Histology and Comparative Anatomy; when he graduated in 1863, he was awarded gold medals in Medicine and Surgery, first-class honours in Obstetric Medicine, and honours in Forensic Medicine; and when he took the MD in 1864, he came first and earned yet another gold medal. After spending time studying Medicine in Vienna and Berlin, where he became acquainted with Professor Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902), known as “the father of modern pathology” and a pioneer of cell theory, he returned to Guy’s Hospital in October 1865 as a Lecturer in Comparative Anatomy and Zoology, and he taught there in various capacities for the rest of his professional life. From 1866 to 1870 he was the Demonstrator of Anatomy; he became a Medical Registrar in 1870; he became an Assistant Physician to the Hospital in 1871 (Physician in 1883, Senior Physician in 1890, and Consulting Physician after his retirement in 1899); he was a Lecturer in Physiology from 1873 to 1880, moving to the Department of Skin Diseases in 1877; and from 1884 to 1899 he was a Lecturer in Medicine.

 

Philip Henry was, for his time, a prolific publisher of learned papers in a variety of areas of medicine and contributed especially to the papers of the Hunterian and Pathological Societies. He was highly esteemed for the breadth of his erudition by Professor T.H. Huxley (1825–95), one of the foremost advocates of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and his most important books were the Catalogue of the Preparations of Comparative Anatomy in the Museum of Guy’s Hospital (1874), his edition of Fagge’s Principles and Practice of Medicine (1888; four editions by 1901/02), the Lumleian Lectures on the Aetiology of Disease (1892), and An Introduction to the Study of Diseases of the Skin (1893). He became an FRCP in 1870 and represented the College on the Senate of the University of London from 1902 to 1908; between 1899 and 1909 he served two periods on the General Medical Council; he became an FRS in 1886; and was awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of Berlin, Dublin and Paris. Together with the Conservative politician Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845–1937), he represented Britain at the Berlin Congress on the Prevention of Tuberculosis in 1899; and he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1903 to 1905. Besides having a small private practice where he specialized in Dermatology, he was an acknowledged authority on life assurance. Although Medicine was his life, causing him to remain a bachelor until he was five years away from retirement, his obituarist in the BMJ leaves us with a broader picture of him:

Throughout [his] life he was a man of many interests, always keeping in touch with fellow workers in the subjects of zoology, physiology, medicine, and medical education. He was extremely methodical and orderly in his habits. He devoted much of his life to the interests of his hospital, invariably attending punctually and devoting a considerable amount of time to his duties. His lectures in medicine, carefully prepared as they were, and illustrated by many tables, proved of great value to his audience. He was an accomplished scholar, with a well-stored mind and an accurate memory. His library was his great hobby, and he delighted to regale himself with old and favourite authors. He was very proud of his books, and he dearly loved to bring out for the admiration of his friends some old volume finely bound and tooled. He was insistent on the superior beauties of the old, and had the greatest contempt and severity for anything that savoured of frivolity or inaccuracy. He considered the time devoted to reading the daily newspapers as worse than wasted. His interest in the history of medical knowledge led him to urge his students to make themselves familiar with the lives and works of men great in the annals of medicine. In the wards he devoted much time to the teaching of a systematic and thorough examination of the patients, and dwelt upon the bearing and the significance of the various signs. He used to lay great stress on the typical physical signs and symptoms of the various diseases, and all those who worked with him were thoroughly trained in the foundations of their profession. In treatment he advised the use of simple prescriptions, and was not in the habit of employing many drugs. He did not fail, however, to impress upon his students the utility of all the really valuable preparations, and when he thought it was indicated he was always willing to push the use of any particular drug to its maximum.

Pye-Smith’s maternal great-grandparents were John Foulger (1785–1850) and Dorothea Rutherford (1787–1852). John was a Cape Merchant much interested in missionary work. They were both Congregationalists and their home in Walthamstow was an open house for missionaries of all denominations. Dorothea was instrumental in the founding of Walthamstow Hall in 1838 as a school for the daughters of missionaries. Today it is one of the oldest all-girl independent schools in the country. Both John and Dorothea were involved in the foundation Eltham College, a school for the sons of missionaries, which today is an independent school.

Pye-Smith’s maternal grandfather was Arthur Foulger (1815–87), an oil and colour merchant. He was the brother of Mary Anne Lydia Pye-Smith (see above), and so Pye-Smith’s mother and father were first cousins.

Education

Pye-Smith attended Mr Egerton’s Preparatory School in London and Mr Percy Christopherson’s Preparatory School in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, before studying at Eton College from 1909 to 1914. He then matriculated as a Commoner at Magdalen on 13 October 1914, having been exempted from Responsions as he had an Oxford & Cambridge Certificate. In his first term at Magdalen, i.e. Michaelmas Term 1914, he became a close friend of the visiting American B. Litt. student J(ohn) Brett Langstaff (later Revd Dr) (1889–1985), who mentions him 30 times in his memoirs of Magdalen and left us the following description of him:

The fact that I was to have the chance of getting to know Philip Pye-Smith better by spending two weeks with him in London [over the Christmas vacation] meant a lot to me at the time. I did not think to analyze what it was that made him so attractive. He was not tall nor remarkably short. As far as I knew he had not excelled in any sport but seemed in all acceptable. His great shock of black hair was groomed only on occasions, and yet he had a trim stance which kept one aware of his alert mind. The clear brown eyes looking frankly at you beneath heavily marked eyebrows were a further indication of this. Not too large a nose but a generous mouth and well defined. In his prominent chin a dimple. Yet the personality of this lad of nineteen years was not fully written in his face. He was the sort of man one could love without becoming sentimental or queer, and apparently he had an affectionate regard for me who was almost six years his senior. […] He is a fascinating little fellow […], whom I hope I can keep on knowing for a long time.

During the same term he also took the Preliminary Examination in History, but then left without a degree at the end of the term to join the Army, having been a member of the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps. He was also in the team that won the Victoria Cup and Warren wrote of him posthumously:

He soon made his mark as a truly “gentle,” dutiful, singularly amiable yet thoroughly manly and chivalrous nature; but only those who knew him very well, and even they not altogether, realized what a true Galahad he was to prove.

His Eton obituarist recorded that “he made many friends, by reason of his unselfishness and absolute honesty of purpose, and he showed decided promise in his work, which began to be fulfilled in his only term at Oxford”.

War service

On 22 December 1914, soon after leaving Magdalen, Pye-Smith was gazetted Temporary Second Lieutenant at Farnham, Surrey, with the 11th (Service) Battalion (Pioneers), the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment (London Gazette, no. 29,015, 22 December 1914, p. 10,930), the Regiment in which his maternal great-grandfather, an uncle and a cousin had also served and in which H. Brereton had been commissioned Second Lieutenant on 16 October 1914. On 1 February 1915 Pye-Smith joined the Battalion, became an officer in ‘A’ Company and rapidly gained a reputation for reliability. At that time, not long after it had been designated as the Pioneer Battalion of the 14th (Light) Division, the Battalion was stationed at Farnham, Surrey. So Pye-Smith’s mother rented a house nearby, arranged for her son and some of his brother officers to be billeted on her, and rapidly became known as “the mother of the Regiment” because of her efforts to raise money in order to buy comforts for the men (such as warm socks). On 23 March 1915 the Battalion went into camp at Watts Common, Farnborough, Surrey, and on 19 May 1915 it marched away “into the sunset with the Band playing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”. Two days later it disembarked at Boulogne and was immediately sent north-eastwards to the Ypres Salient, via Rubrouck, about half-way between St-Omer and Bergues, and finally arrived at Vlamertinghe, west of Ypres, on 26 May 1915.

The 11th Battalion experienced 11 months of hard physical work and fighting in the Ypres Salient. They improved defences until 11 June 1915, and then spent 15–19 June in billets in Ypres while working on nearby trenches, taking several casualties from shell-fire as they did so. Pye-Smith nearly became one of the casualties, and after his death, in June 1917, one of his men recalled the incident as follows:

He was leading his platoon about three weeks after we got out […] when a shell came and burst about thirty yards in front. We thought t’lad would not face it, but he never faltered, just turned his head and smiled at us, and we … well, would follow him and die for him. […] He did his duty steadily and with a smile.

The above pattern of work continued in the same general area until 24 October 1915, when the Battalion began a period of training in Watou, five miles west of Poperinghe on the Franco-Belgian border. After that it served at various places in and around Ypres until 13 January 1916, when it left for a month’s rest and training in billets in Ledringhem, about nine miles to the west across the border in France. After leaving Ledringhem on 19 February 1916, the Battalion moved south by train to Villers-Bocage, c.12 miles south of Doullens, where it spent a week (21–28 February), before moving c.22 miles north-eastwards to Fosseux, where it spent another week (28 February–5 March). It then marched around seven miles eastwards to Dainville, a western suburb of Arras, which it used as a base in order to work on nearby trenches until 11 March, when it moved into Arras itself to work on the defences there until 27 July. On Good Friday, 21 April 1916, Pye-Smith, who had been appointed as the Battalion Bombing Officer after performing well on two courses, was in charge of a squad at Dainville that was learning how to use hand grenades (Mills Bombs). But at 15.30 hours a grenade exploded prematurely just after it had been thrown by Private Dawber, the man under instruction, and the blast fractured Dawber’s skull and wounded Pye-Smith in eight places. A Court of Inquiry in the Field that was convened on 24 April 1916 concluded that no blame attached to anyone who was involved in the accident. So on 26 April Pye-Smith was sent to hospital at Le Tréport, on the French coast north of Dieppe, and on 3 May he landed in England from the hospital ship HS Dieppe (1905, struck a mine off Tobruk on 18 March 1941 and sank with the loss of 78 lives).

Although Pye-Smith’s wounds were superficial, they did not completely heal until late July 1916 and Pye-Smith, who was sent on medical leave for three months with effect from 24 May 1916, was not declared fit for home service until 25 August 1916 and not completely fit until 25 September 1916. He then spent the best part of three months at Prees Heath in the 15th (Reserve) Battalion, the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, which, on 1 September 1916, the day when Pye-Smith was promoted (London Gazette, no. 29,879, 23 December 1916, p. 12,571), became the 49th (Training) Battalion. So as a result of the bombing accident, he missed several months of heavy-duty work improving trenches and repairing roads to the south-west of Albert; he also missed Brereton’s departure for the Royal Flying Corps.

Pye-Smith had just come southwards to Reading, Berkshire, in order to take a pioneering course, when, on Christmas Day 1916, he was returned to France and rejoined his Battalion soon after that, probably when it was stationed at Berneville, near Arras – though his arrival is not recorded in the War Diary. From January 1917 to 11 April, the Battalion worked on roads in the Arras area, before moving to billets in Grand-Rullecourt, about ten miles north-east of Doullens, on 14 April, where it stayed for about two weeks. On 30 April 1917 the Battalion was working on roads on Telegraph Hill, east of Arras between Tilloy-lès-Mofflaines and Neuville-Vitasse, just to the south-west. The 14th Division had captured the Hill from the Germans on 9 April 1917; the work there was hard and dirty; and because the Germans were well-informed about their former positions, its new occupants had to take a lot of casualties from accurate artillery fire. On 15 May 1917, Pye-Smith was killed in action, aged 21, in his dug-out by a German shell which also killed another officer (Major Guy Spencer Mitchell, 1884–1917), mortally wounded a second (Second Lieutenant George Frederick Maynard Thomson, 1895–1917), and shell-shocked an OR (other rank).

Pye-Smith was buried first on the battlefield at Telegraph Hill, where his carefully marked grave was hedged with chains and planted with forget-me-nots, and then, in late 1919, his remains, together with those of many other men, were transferred to the British Cemetery, Tilloy-les-Mofflaines (south-east of Arras). His grave, III.E.1, is inscribed: “He being made perfect in a short time fulfilled a long time” (The Wisdom of Solomon, 4:13); Major Mitchell is buried in Grave III.E.3 and Second Lieutenant Thomson is buried in Bucquoy Road Cemetery, Grave I.G.18. Pye-Smith’s Eton obituary concludes: “His life was one of the truest, bravest and most lovable that has been given for the cause of righteousness.” He is commemorated on his parents’ grave in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington. He left £372 5s. 2d.

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

Special acknowlegdements:

*[Anon.], ‘Philip Henry Pye-Smith, MD, FRCP, FRS’ [obituary], BMJ, 1, no. 2,787 (30 May 1914), pp. 1215–16.

Printed sources: 

[Anon.], Ebenezer Pye-Smith F.R.C.S.(Obituary), BMJ, 1, no. 1,263 (14 March 1885), p. 566.

[Anon.], ‘Dr P.H. Pye-Smith’ [obituary], The Times, no. 40,535 (28 May 1914), p. 12.

[Anon.], ‘Lieutenant Philip Houson [sic] Guy Pye-Smith’ [obituary], The Times, no. 41,484 (22 May 1917), p. 9.

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 35, no. 22 (8 June 1917), pp. 296–7.

[Anon.], ‘In Memoriam: Lieut. Philip Howson Pye-Smith’, The Eton College Chronicle, no. 1,619 (12 July 1917), p. 260.

Wyrall, Everard, The History of The King’s Regiment (Liverpool), 1914–1919, 3 vols (London: Edward Arnold & Co. Ltd., 1928–35), ii (1930), p. 426.

Langstaff (1965), passim, but esp. pp.65–6, 69–70, 71, 74, 109, 121.

Archival sources:

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 3.

MCA: PR 32/C/3/979–982 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to P.H.G. Pye-Smith [1917]).

OUA: UR 2/1/88.

WO95/1890.

WO339/17518.

Online sources: 

R. Tudur Jones, ‘Smith, John Pye, 1774–1851’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=smith%2C+JOhn+Pye&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true (accessed 23 October 2019).

L.E. Lauer, ‘Foulger (née Rutherford) Dorothea (1787–1852)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

https://www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=Foulger+%28n%C3%A9e+Rutherford%29+Dorothea%E2%80%99&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true (accessed 23 October 2019).