Updated: August 2022
On the
4th of April, 1893, a letter was sent to a number of geography educators informing them of a meeting which was to be held in Oxford.
It was signed by a number of prominent geographers of the time.
Image: Copyright Geographical Association
A room was found by
Halford Mackinder, who was
Reader in Geography at the University of Oxford, and the group met in the new Common Room at Christ Church college.
The meeting was held on the 20th of May, 1893, and during that meeting the
Geographical Association was founded.
More can be read in
an article written by Peter Jackson in 2018.
For the next four years of the Association, there was no President however, with an Honorary Secretary and various committees running the Association as it found its feet and started to attract members.
The original ideas of sharing resources started to develop in this early meeting, lantern slides in particular were part of what was called the
'pictorial method'.
Between 1893 and 1897 there was no GA President as the post didn't exist.
B.Bentham Dickinson (of whom more to come in a future post) was Honorary Secretary (1893-1900)
He had collected over 230 catalogued lantern slides to start the process of sharing these, along with lesson notes.
The first AGM was held at the Colonial Institute in London in December 1894, by which time membership stood at 50. These meetings weren't helping Grammar schools become aware of the existence of the Association, which needed to become more active in this area. As Dickinson was a working teacher, an extra pair of hands were needed. An assistant was appointed in 1895 in the shape of
J.S Masterman, who had retired from teaching at University College School helped out until 1900, when Masterman became Treasurer.
At this time, when there was no President, there were
4 questions which drove a lot of the activity and discussions of Association members and officers:
Balchin, in his Centenary history of the Association lists them:
1. Should examination papers in geography be prepared and/or reviewed by experts?
2. Should a knowledge of physical geography be an essential feature in a course in Geography and in any subsequent examination, and if so what should be the syllabus?
3. Should one ask for a knowledge of the whole world in general or for a more detailed knowledge of a continent or region?
4. Should geography be a compulsory subject for some competitive examinations?
You can perhaps guess what the answers to the consultation were...
A number of specimen schemes were published by the Association, who also requested that geography form part of what we might now call the Common Entrance Exam (although the request was turned down initially)
Dr Hugh Robert Mill (who will also get his own entry in due course), published a very useful compilation called
'Hints to Teachers of Geography on the Choice of Books for Research and Reading'
This can be
read on this Internet Archive entry along with other of Hugh Robert Mill's books. This was an interesting observation from the footnote of the introduction. It gives the address of the RGS at the time, on Savile Row, and also the correspondence address for the Secretary's assistant Mr. Masterman.
It is also interesting to read some of Hugh Robert Mill's thoughts in the book.
Read more about the initial meeting here, in a piece by Alan Kinder and Nick Lapthorn (the latter will have his own entry on this blog in due course as a Past President)
In 2018, a group of Geographers was invited to a
special meal at the venue where the Association was founded.
Images from that event can be seen here.
Here is the CEO, Alan Kinder in the same room where the association was founded, during the 125th Anniversary year.
Image copyright: Geographical Association / Bryan Ledgard
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/972/41597586484_9f605f41b7_b.jpg
References
W.G.V Balchin: 'The Geographical Association, The first Hundred Years' (GA, 1993)
Update (June 2019)
Perhaps the definitive account of this period of the GA was written by H. J. Fleure, and can be read on the JSTOR by subscribers to 'Geography'
Access it here.
Update
Brian Bentham Dickinson shared his reminiscences of this period later (in 1931)
It can be read here.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40557794
He described the first meetings of the Association, including the initial founding meeting in
Oxford.
The first formal meeting of the GA was held on
August 3rd 1893 at University College School, then at 16 Gower Street, with the Headmaster
M. H. W. Eve in the Chair.
Venue is shown below on Google Earth - near the British Library / Bloomsbury.
I found some letters in Hugh Robert Mill's archive relating to this period and they have been posted separately.
