FOREVER: KEELE - Keele University

Hume’s
Heroes
Coming up for Air
“I hope you’ll do some more research and
writing when you have a chance to come
up for air.” Said with a twinkle in her eye,
these were the last words I heard from my
PhD supervisor, Marjorie Cruickshank.
That was in 1982 when I was just about to
take up my first teaching post in a wideability
secondary school in Kent.
Perkin Warbeck
(c. 1474 – 1499)
Thomas Crapper
(c. 1836 – 1910)
Gretel Bergmann
(c. 1914 – )
Warbeck was a pretender to the throne
of England in the time of Henry VII. He
claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury,
Duke of York, one of the Princes in the
Tower allegedly killed by Richard III. As
the death of the Princes had never been
confirmed, Warbeck was able to gather
support for his claim, whether due to a
genuine belief in his case, or because of
a desire to overthrow Henry and the new
Tudor dynasty.
Warbeck remains a man of mystery, with
numerous conflicting stories as to his true
Disappointingly, Thomas Crapper did not,
as is widely believed, invent the toilet.
Nor did his name give rise to a popular
word for faeces. He was however, a
hugely influential inventor and did make
a number of important advances in the
manufacture of sanitary ware, including
the invention of the ballcock. All in all, he
held nine patents.
Crapper was a plumber by trade, whose
company was known for the quality of its
products. He had several Royal Warrants,
one of which was for fitting out the
Gretel Bergmann was a German high
jumper whose dream of competing in the
1936 Berlin Olympics was destroyed by
the Nazi regime on the basis that she
was Jewish.
Bergmann prepared for the Berlin
Olympics and one month before the
Games were to begin, she tied the German
record with a jump of 1.60m. But two
weeks before the start of the Games, she
was expelled (having already been
expelled once previously, in 1933) and her
German record was expunged from the
record books. The excuse given was that
background. It is generally now believed
that he was a convincing imposter, though
not everyone agrees. What is known is
that he undertook a number of attempts
to overthrow Henry, backed variously
by Margaret of Burgundy, James IV of
Scotland and even the people of Cornwall!
Warbeck’s quest ultimately ended in failure
and he was hanged at Tyburn, London
in 1499.
plumbing at Sandringham House, at the
behest of Prince Edward (later Edward
VII). He also worked for George V.
Crapper was also a pioneering
businessman. He owned the world’s first
bath, toilet and sink showroom, which was
on the King’s Road in London, and he did
much to promote sanitary plumbing and
make conversations around bathroom
fittings more commonplace.
she was being removed due to
‘under-performance’.
Bergmann emigrated to the United States
in 1937, vowing never to set foot on
German soil again. She won the US
Championships in 1938 and 1939, also
winning the Shot Put in 1938.
More recently, Germany has acknowledged
her achievements, with a variety of
honours. Her records have been reinstated,
and she even attended a ceremony in her
home town of Laupheim, where the local
stadium was named after her.
What a baptism by fire that was into the
teaching profession, as I tried to prepare to
teach four subjects: history, local studies,
religious studies and Special Needs Maths
(it had been my Statistics subsidy that
had got me the position!).
I learned (a bit) from my mistakes, changed
school twice and was not bad at my job (I
even received a teaching award one year).
But I found myself completely bogged
down and exhausted by the preparation
and piles of lower school exercise books
to mark. As for research and writing, I did
very little for the next ten years.
Thanks to the Schools’ History Project I
was at least able to introduce my students
to what I most enjoyed from my research
days – using historical sources to carry
out investigations, evaluate evidence
and form interpretations. My favourite
booklet was the ‘Mystery of the Princes
in the Tower’, and this gave me the idea
of writing something on Perkin Warbeck
who claimed to be the younger of the
two princes. How serious a threat was
he to King Henry VII? From my research
into Perkin’s life I wrote a historical novel
called Ruling Ambition, an article for the
brand new BBC History Magazine and a
children’s book The Boy who would be
King for Short Books.
I have now written about a dozen books
and lots of articles for magazines and
newspapers. Of special interest to me
are individuals who have been left on the
sidelines of history and, I feel, deserve
to receive more credit. It has led to me
writing on an eclectic range of subjects –
almost as wide-ranging as the Foundation
Year. I am particularly interested in writing
fast-moving short narratives for the 12-16
age range, a kind of advanced version of
the old Ladybird series I enjoyed as a boy.
Hooked by a BBC2 series called ‘The
Murder Rooms’, I went up to Edinburgh
one summer holiday to research the life
of Dr Joseph Bell who I was intrigued
to find had inspired Arthur Conan Doyle
with the character of Sherlock Holmes.
Back in my home town of Broadstairs, I
paced up and down the seafront dressed
in a deerstalker and sporting a Sherlock
Holmes pipe, during the annual Dickens
Festival in 2005.
To coincide with the bicentenary of Britain
abolishing the slave trade, in 2007 I wrote
a short biography of Olaudah Equiano,
a slave who became an abolitionist.
Traditionally, William Wilberforce has
received nearly all the attention because
of his work in Parliament. I was interested
to see what black people were doing for
themselves to abolish the trade, and found
that Equiano had started campaigning and
touring Britain making speeches several
years before Wilberforce. BBC South East
Today came into school and filmed my
Year 9 students reading passages from
the book: that evening they were TV stars.
After writing about two men I thought
I ought to research a woman next, and
I chose Mary Shelley. In many respects
her itinerant and tragic life has been
overshadowed by that of her more famous
husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
One writer has recently suggested that
she did not have the ability to write, and
that Frankenstein was in fact the work of
her husband. The book has been bought
by school libraries and some English
departments studying Frankenstein
for GCSE.
In 2010 a book to commemorate the
centenary of the death of the Victorian
sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper proved
irresistible. Very quickly I found out that
Thomas Crapper did not invent the flushing
toilet as is often still assumed (Thomas
Harrington did that in Queen Elizabeth
I’s time). But Crapper, who is buried in
the same cemetery as my grandparents
in Beckenham, did make important
improvements to it. Out of the research
came Thomas Crapper: Lavatory Legend,
fully illustrated, with a very silly multiple
choice quiz at the back, together with a
list of euphemisms meaning to go to the
toilet. My Year 7 students spent a term of
lunchtimes helping to make a giant toilet
out of papier mâché and were thrilled
to demonstrate it on TV on the day of
the anniversary.
My brother suggested I write my most
recent book. On the way to work in
London he spotted a paragraph in the
Metro about a Jewish high-jumper called
Gretel Bergmann who had finally had her
record of 1936 reinstated by the German
Athletics Association. Her life is a tale of
injustice. Shunned by her former friends,
thrown out of her sports club and banned
from taking part in the Olympics, she had
no choice but to go to the USA to begin
a new life.
Although by now I had almost thirty years’
experience of teaching and had quite a
stock of lessons prepared, the research
for all these books had mostly to be done
in the summer holidays. In term time I was
increasingly being ground down by targetsetting,
assessment, lesson observation
after lesson observation, OFSTED – and
even mock OFSTED! About three years
ago I decided that I had had enough and
took early retirement.
Nowadays I spend most of my time
travelling, and writing (mainly lighthearted)
articles with a historical
connection for newspapers and magazines.
So, I did “come up for air” – well, eventually.
I only wish I had done so sooner.
Robert Hume (1978 History & Psychology)
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