| Sowan, Paul W (2007). Obituaries, Bull Croydon Nat Hist Sci Soc, 129: 5-9. |
Obituaries Pam Collins, née Powell, was born on 6 October 1923, and was a long-standing member of the Society, active especially in the Ornithology Section. She served as a Member of Council, and in later years very efficiently as Membership Secretary and in charge of mailings to members, in which connection she organised a team of volunteers who delivered many members’ papers by hand, thereby making a considerable saving in postage. She was made an Honorary Member in 1998 in recognition of her long record of service to the Society. Pam Collins died quite suddenly, after a short stay in hospital, on 20 October 2006. She is survived by her husband George (our longest-standing member), son Graham, and daughter. Ron Howard, although not a member at the time of his death, played a very significant part in our affairs in the 1970s. He was the inspiration and driving force behind the very successful European Architectural Heritage Year Exhibition at the Fairfield Halls in 1975. This, probably the most ambitious project of the kind with which we have been associated, was a joint venture between the Croydon College of Art and the Society, and was officially opened by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner [1902 – 1983]. The sheer scale of this Exhibition and its extensive associated programme was impressive, as was the teamwork of Society members and others who, under Ron’s direction, made it all happen. The event also saw the formation, at our instigation, of the Croydon Society as an independent organisation to deal with civic amenity and town planning issues. Ron Howard was, professionally, Head of Complementary and Adult Studies at the College, and served from 1977 to 1979 as a member of our Council. With Margaret Thompson, he established a South Croydon Heritage Group in or about 1994, and in retirement contributed a series of articles on art appreciation published in the Sanderstead Residents’ Association’s journal, Sanderstead News. Freddie Percy, as a boy a pupil at Whitgift School (then at North End, now the site of the Whitgift Centre), was appointed a teacher of English and French at that institution in 1937, shortly after it had moved to a new site and buildings at Haling Park. He served, in due course, as the School’s Archivist and Historian, and as Secretary to the Old Whitgiftians’ Association. His History of Whitgift School was published by B.T. Batsford Ltd in 1976, and re-issued in 1991 by the Whitgift Foundation. He was also the author of numerous historical notes published in The Whitgiftian. Remarkably, his last published work, What really happened in Hamlet: madness in Elsinore is sanity in Southwark, appeared (Rosmic Books of Horsted Keynes) in the year of his death. Muriel Shaw, née Draycott, was born on 18 January 1918, grew up in Leicester, qualified as an archaeologist, and worked for some years as a teacher at the Horniman Museum at Forest Hill. On moving to South Croydon in 1959 with her husband and three daughters, the entire family became members of the Society. She was to become one of our Society’s most distinguished and hard-working members, serving from time to time as Archaeology Section Secretary, member of Council, Hon. Curator, and President. She was made an Honorary Member in recognition of her services to scholarship and to the Society in 1985. Muriel researched and published extensively on, especially, local Bronze Age, Roman, and Anglo Saxon sites and finds; took an active part in archaeological excavation at, amongst other places, Croham Hurst; and did a great deal of valuable work tracking-down and documenting Croydon area finds in museum collections and in private hands all over the country, as well as biographical details of local collectors. This detective work included unravelling the fate of the Croydon archaeological material held in the sometime County Borough of Croydon Museum at Grange Wood (a mansion since demolished) at Thornton Heath, a casualty of official neglect during and after World War II. Her research papers are deposited in the Society’s archives. Her husband Bertie (Herbert Thomas Shaw [1912 – 2002]), also an active member of the Society, was a highly regarded local historian in his own right. She was described at her funeral at Exeter as ‘formidable’ and an episode on a crowded evening train back to Croydon was re-told, in which Muriel stood up and in a loud voice instructed a boisterous and noisy crowd of young male football enthusiasts to ‘Sit down, and shut up’ – which they did! She was also, however, a very human person, and firmly believed in serving refreshments at Archaeology Section meetings; no doubt, the Archaeology Section teapot survives in our Museum collections! And she enjoyed having lecturers, and other Society officers, home for dinner before meetings. Muriel and Bertie suffered the grievous loss of their daughter Amanda [1945 – 1963], who died as a result of being struck by a passing car at about 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, 24 October 1963, while crossing the Brighton Road on her way to Selhurst Grammar School for Girls, where she was Head Girl. Muriel had the strength of character to pass the exact site of this dreadful event on almost every occasion, generally at least weekly, when she caught the bus to Chipstead Valley to work at our Museum. She died at Exeter on 14 December 2006. Her other two daughters survive her. Frederick Arthur Sowan was born in Battersea on 14 December 1914 – to which latter fact he attributed his unsanguine temperament. He was educated at a series of London County Council schools, leaving the Beaufoy Technical Institute in 1931 to start a long career in the electronics industry, and a second career in scientific and technical publishing. He had distinguished himself at school only at the chess-board (he remained a good amateur player throughout his life.) His ‘university’, of which he was proud, was a combination of the Lambeth Public Libraries, the secondhand bookshops of South London, and the Workers Educational Association (he was at one time a WEA branch secretary.) It was his proud claim that his highest academic achievement was the Boys Scouts’ electricians’ badge. For many years he was employed in radio valve manufacturing quality control departments, at Mullards at Balham and later Mitcham, and at Cossors; but, becoming known as a ‘words’ man, mainly through his work on factory magazines, he was transferred in the early 1950s to the newly-formed Technical Publications Group in the Mullard Radio Valve Company. He soon became the editor-in-chief of Mullards’ technical journals, books, and other publications – a level ‘above’ which he said he never wished to rise. His final employment with Mullards was as company historian. He joined Ellis Horwood Ltd of Chichester, publishers of specialist scientific and technical books, in 1978, as that company’s first professional house editor. At the same time he ended his 15-year stint as editor of the professional journals of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators and its forerunners, and was then elected an Hon. Fellow. After an Anglo-catholic upbringing, he made the transition through agnosticism to humanism, believing that (for better or worse) mankind is the repository of the highest intelligence and the highest morality in the Universe (a discouraging but challenging faith.) He served the South Place Ethical Society in a number of ways. A deep hatred of bloodshed, tyranny, and ugliness led him into the extremest form of vegetarianism (he helped to found the Vegan Society in 1943), and (even more heretically) into opposition to private motoring (the deliberate lawlessness of which, moreover, he saw as a threat to democracy.) He was proud, as a vegan, to have set a new record for longevity in the family, long outliving well-intentioned relatives and teachers who had assured him he could never survive very long on a vegetarian or vegan diet. With left-wing tendencies but no political allegiance, he viewed all questions from ethical standpoints, describing himself as a ‘free radical.’ He was well aware of his own failings. In his latter years he became a specialist in the literature of Dartmoor, putting together a notable collection of Dartmoor books. He served the London Group of the Dartmoor Preservation Association as treasurer. He was devoted to literature, cats, and music. His principal contributions to the Society’s work, jointly with his third wife, were many hours preparing the European Architectural Heritage Year Exhibition (jointly with the Croydon College of Art), and editing the Society’s Proceedings. He served as a member of Council from 1987 to 1993. He married firstly, in 1939, Mavis Eleanor Ellis [1913 – 2003], and is survived by his two sons by this marriage, Paul and Adam; secondly, Brenda Joy Huttlestone; and thirdly Ruth Doreen Hobbs [1943 – 2006], who died on 10 September 2006. Fred Sowan died on 5 April 2006. Paul W Sowan |
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