Patrick Alfred Buxton, 1892-1955

Abstract

Patrick Alfred Buxton was born in Hyde Park Street, Paddington, on 24 March 1892, and died at his home in Gerrards Cross, Bucks on 13 December 1955. His father was Alfred Fowell Buxton, a busy banker and one time chairman of the London County Council, his mother was Violet Jex-Blake. His father’s family was part of that immense group of Buxtons, Gurneys, Barclays, Hammonds, Hoares, many of them resident in Norfolk and many of them Quakers, whose names appear in the annals of business in this country, in banking, in brewing, in the wool trade and so on, over many centuries. This reputation for acumen in business was often combined with a most practical interest in philanthropy and in political or social reform. One may recall the active part played by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton in association with Wilberforce in the abolition of the slave trade; and the part played by his sister-in-law Elizabeth Fry in prison reform, and of his grandson Sydney Charles Buxton who sponsored the Wild Birds Protection Act of 1902 and did much to improve conditions of employment. Some branches of the group, for example Hambury the gardener and Francis Galton, were prominent in science—but to trace a connexion between Patrick Buxton and Galton one would have to go back five or six generations to David Barclay, son of Robert Barclay ‘the Quaker apologist’. Among the distinctions of these ramifying families literature is hardly represented and the arts not at all—most were country gentlemen, good naturalists, and strongly averse to things academic. His mother’s family was not numerous; they were mostly farmers and landowners in West Norfolk. His grandfather on his mother’s side, Thomas William Jex-Blake, was a classical scholar, Headmaster of Cheltenham and Rugby schools and then dean of Wells—with a strong antipathy to biology and the sciences in general. He married a Cordery and had a large family, several of them very able, among whom one might mention Kathleen Jex-Blake, classical scholar and Mistress of Girton, Cambridge, Henrietta JexBlake, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and Arthur Jex-Blake an able scholarly medical man.