Thomas Henry Havelock, 1877 - 1968

Abstract

Thomas Henry Havelock was born in Newcastle upon Tyne on 24 June 1877, the son of Michael and Elizabeth Burn Havelock Bell). In addition to two who died in infancy there were four children, two boys and two girls. The father Michael was a staunch Church of England man and a Conservative. His wife Eliza was a Presbyterian, and the family became members of John Knox Church in the west end of Newcastle, although Michael sometimes strayed to the parish church on his own. She seems to have introduced a gentle left-wing strain with her presbyterianism for the family were all Liberals before 1914. It was a fairly intellectual family, well read and musicloving, but there was a ‘no nonsense’ trait which made them regard such things as genealogy with suspicion. Thomas’s elder sister M ary Elizabeth married William Marchbank, a coal exporter, who collected first editions and paintings; and the Marchbank family tree, which starts in 1490, was regarded with ironic amusement by the Havelocks. Apart from Thomas’s scientific travels, the family rarely ventured abroad and were deeply rooted in the north-east, where another branch long resided at Riding Mill. The men were either farmers or engaged in commerce in Newcastle, except for Michael who was a marine engineer; the women rarely married. Most lived to a ripe old age. Thomas remained a bachelor, but his outstanding talents seemed to have been passed on to his great-nephew, A. M. Carrick, a Wykehamist, who before his death at the age of seventeen in a holiday accident in Switzerland had already been elected to a major history scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge.