Robert Francis St John Reade (1889-1965)

Reade was the son of the Reverend Robert Charles Lewin Reade (1849–1916), Rector of Charlecombe, Somerset, although during Reade’s formative years his father had been Vicar of St Mary’s, Somers Town, just behind Euston Station (1887–97), a poor, overcrowded parish, as confirmed by one of Charles Booth’s (1840–1916) surveys. Reade was educated at Radley College, and matriculated in 1912 at Magdalen, where he remained until 1914 when he was appointed to the staff at Radley to cover for a teacher who had enlisted. In 1914, he first went to France with the Cavendish Association,[1] and then, according to his entry in the College Record of 1922,[2] from 1917 to 1918 he was there with the Young Men’s Christian Association (Recreation), for which he became the Director of Entertainments in France and Germany (1919). After the war he returned to Magdalen to take his BA and MA in 1920.

In 1921, Reade was appointed a teacher of Modern Languages at Clifton College, and unusually for a Magdalen man or a master at Clifton, he publicly supported a Labour candidate in a local election in 1924. As a result, he was asked to stand as the Labour candidate for Exeter in 1925 and also as a municipal candidate for Labour in one of the Bristol wards. Although the Clifton College council objected to his standing as a parliamentary candidate, they did not oppose his candidature in local elections over the next decade. But “people in good position in Bristol” complained about one of Clifton’s masters standing as a Socialist, and after much argument and discussion Reade was given notice; he left the College in 1934.[3]

Thereafter Reade was very active in local politics and was, with one brief interval, a member of Bristol City Council from 1936 until his death. His particular interest was education, and he was keen on the equality of opportunities offered by the comprehensive system.[4] Given this background, it would not be surprising if Reade were a pacifist and possibly a conscientious objector, depending on whether or not his work in France for the Cavendish Association was accepted as non-combatant work. In 1965 Reade committed suicide, and the Coroner decided that his failing eyesight had been the stimulus: “He wanted to avoid this blindness and becoming a nuisance to other people.”[5] As his eyesight had been poor throughout his life, it is possible that he had been unfit to serve in the war, regardless of his views. This is confirmed by letters that he wrote to President Warren in 1915. For example, when, on 5 September 1915, he wrote to Warren from Magdalen House, the College Mission near his father’s old parish in Somers Town, he said: “I have heard that there are many public school masters who want to go to the war, but are prevented by School Authorities so I thought that although I cannot enlist myself I might take one of their places for a term or two.”[6] And on 23 September, again in a letter to Warren, he said: “I have passed the tests for the Special Interpreters branch for the Intelligence Department and as I got ‘Good’ for both French and German [I] am hoping to get off, with a motorcycle, at any moment.” Reade ended the letter by saying: “I am still doing some work for Sir Gilbert Parker and am most interested in it.”[7] Sir Gilbert Parker (1860–1932) was a Canadian novelist and politician who was the Unionist MP for Gravesend between 1900 and 1918. One can only speculate on what work Reade was doing for Sir Gilbert, but “Parker was appointed after the 2 September meeting of the group of authors at Wellington House [home of Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau] to direct the section of Wellington House set up by Masterman [8] to coordinate official propaganda in the U.S.”[9] This evidence suggests that Reade contributed to the war effort, indirectly by releasing a school master for service, or directly by working for a propaganda unit, and so was unlikely to have been a pacifist.

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[1] Victor Christian William Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, The Cavendish Association: To Interest and Educate Men of the Public School and University Type in Some Active Form of National, Municipal, and Social Service, and to Bear Witness to the Christian Spirit as the Motive Force and Object of All Such Service (London: John Murray, 1913).

[2] Magdalen College Record (1922), p. 185.

[3] Derek Winterbottom, Clifton after Percival: A Public School in the Twentieth Century (Bristol: Redcliffe, 1990), pp. 107–9.

[4] [Anon.], Bristol Evening Post (16 August 1965); Medal Card, WO 372/2/150619 (National Archives).

[5] ibid.

[6] Magdalen College Archives: PR32/C/3/989.

[7] Magdalen College Archives: PR32/C/3/992.

[8] Charles Masterman (1873–1927) was the head of the British War Propaganda Bureau.

[9] Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 59.