1930: Basil Bentham Dickinson

Updated August 2021

As I created this blog certain names kept recurring in the documents I was reading from the time.

One person who finally became President in 1930 but was a supporter of the Geographical Association from its origination, perhaps even its 'prime' instigator was B B Dickinson.

This coincided with a change in the way that GA Presidents were chosen: from high profile figures who might be champions of the subject towards acknowledging the long-term service of key officers of the Association.

Dickinson's name was on the bottom of the letter which announced the meeting in Oxford where the GA was founded.

Interestingly, H. J. Fleure, in his look back at the GA, talks about the fact that after a decade or so of appointing high profile Presidents it now "felt strong enough during the decade 1930-40 to choose presidents belonging to its inner circle from time to time".

Basil Bentham Dickinson was a master at Rugby School, at a time when it was Independent schools that were at the forefront of keeping the flame of Geography alight in schools, and looking to support the subject as an academic discipline.

He worked for many years in the classroom, and was also connected with the RGS. He was the Honorary Secretary of the GA from 1893 (when it was founded) until 1900.

He then had to wait 30 years before he became the President.

The year before he had been unwell, and 'Geography' had a piece explaining that he had recovered his health enough to take up the offer of being the President.

Following the Association's founding, Dickinson spent a lot of time working on a geography syllabus that could be the basis for improving school geography, and worked tirelessly for the Association in a number of different roles for the next few decades. Some of these are outlined in this description below, taken from a book on 'Modern Geography' by Gary Dunbar, where he is described as a "prime mover" in the formation of the Association.




1930, when Dickinson finally took office, was a year of great change in the Association, as outlined in Fleure's retrospective of the first 60 years of the Association, and Balchin's Centenary History.

The Honorary Secretary (H. J. Fleure) was appointed to a post at Manchester University (which meant another change in the location of Fleure's Library as space was offered by Spurley Hey.)
When I was a schoolboy, there was a school in Sheffield called Spurley Hey, and it seems there may have been several as he was the Chief Education Officer of the city at the time.
The printing of the GA's journals was also transferred to a new printer at this time: to Percy Brothers in Manchester. The building where they operated, later known as Hotspur Press is still standing, just behind Oxford Street station, where I usually alight when visiting the GA Conference.

There was also the start of some changes to the Primary curriculum in 1930. In several areas, Primary schools which had formerly dealt with pupils up to the age of 14 were made into junior schools for pupils up to the age of 11.

In 1930, his Presidential Address was called 'Reminiscences' and looked back at his time working with the GA, and his thoughts on how geography had developed. He referenced many previous Presidents.

Dickinson died in 1941.

In this obituary, printed in 'Geography' in 1941, he was remembered therefore (quite rightly) as someone without whom the GA may not even exist.




References
DICKINSON, B. BENTHAM. “B. BENTHAM DICKINSON.” Geography, vol. 26, no. 1, 1941, pp. 39–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40489910.

Fleure's 60th piece reference

Fleure, H.J. (1953) "Sixty years of geography and education", Geography, vol.38, pp.231-264

FRESHFIELD, DOUGLAS W. “VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 6, no. 1, 1911, pp. 5–9. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40554086.

https://rsgs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RSGS-The-Geographer-Spring-2018.pdf - RSGS journal article on the 125th Anniversary of the GA

Image: Copyright - Royal Geographical Society - taken from Balchin's Centenary of the Royal Geographical Society.

If you know more about B B Dickinson and his work for the GA, please get in touch. I'm sure there is more to discover about him.

Updated August 2021

I discovered his first name was Basil not Brian as I had thought.

His death was announced in the Rugby School Digital Archive in 'The Meteor' in 1941.