Reginald William James, 1891-1964

Abstract

R. W. James, born 9 January 1891, was a Londoner born and bred. His father, William George Joseph James, was an umbrella maker and shopkeeper in Praed Street, Paddington, whose forbears had lived in Paddington or Marylebone for over a hundred years. ‘My family lived in the house over my father’s shop, and the circumstances of my boyhood were definitely urban, mitigated however by the nearness of Kensington Gardens in which much of my childhood was spent. The family business, although neither large nor very prosperous, was enough for our needs and my childhood was a very happy one. My father’s family were Baptists, and I was brought up in the non-conformist tradition, although not in the strictest one.’ In 1896, at the age of five, James went to the Infant School attached to St Michael’s Church, Paddington, and to the boys’ school two years later. In 1903 he started his secondary education at the Polytechnic Day School, Regent Street. He showed mathematical ability and it was suggested that he should take up actuarial work; with this possibility in view he passed in 1907 the first examination for the Institute of Actuaries as well as the matriculation examination for London University. But he also obtained a London County Council Scholarship which gave him two post-matriculation years at the City of London School. In December 1908 he won an Entrance Scholarship of £80 a year for Natural Science at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the next year, on leaving school, the Beaufoy Mathematical Scholarship tenable at Cambridge. He entered St John’s College as a Foundation Scholar in October 1909.