Characters in Rutherford's life
Eileen Rutherford (1901-1930)
Born on the 30th of march in 1901 in Montreal, Eileen Rutherford was the daughter of Ernest Rutherford and Mary (aka May) Newton (both from New Zealand).
In addition, I had the idea of interviewing the librarians of the different schools she had been likely to attend ( Lady Barn House School, Bedales , Withington Girls School, Newnham College ). I discovered admirable people, helpful, enthusiastic about my project and just as passionate as I am by this kind of journey in the labyrinth of archival documents. Surely the work for which they provided me their help is the exact definition of the sentence "looking for a needle in a haystack".
I want to thank them all but I cannot cite their name here (but if I get to the end of my project, they will feature prominently in the acknowledgments page!)
Other than these few chronological and geographic data (and the date of her death), I don't know much about Eileen.
However, I have investigated, gone through all the books I have, rummaged through heaps of online archives, consulted the autobiographies of some of her friends who subsequently became famous (Alice Hopkinson or Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin ).
She followed her parents to Manchester, England in 1907, accompanied them when they moved to Cambridge in 1919, and married Ralph Fowler , a colleague of her father, in 1921.
Eileen and Ralph had four children, including Ruth.
Thanks to these librairans, I obtained confirmations, dates and even, in some cases, school reports (old school reports from Lady Barn House School from the years 1907 to 1913: what a wonder!)
I also learned a bit more about Ernest Rutherford's beliefs. It is probably not trivial to send his daughter to non-denominational schools and practicing an educational principle rather revolutionary for the time: the co-education of girls and boys.
(The only exception is Withington Girls School, but Eileen was only there for a week.)
However, despite the invaluable help of the people who answered me, some gray areas remain. I still try to enlighten them.
In addition to all these figures or texts, archives, memories, reports, bulletins, the other precious elements are the photographs (and this concerns all the "supporting characters" in my novel).
In Eileen's case, images are scarce.
So how satisfying it was to come across, a few months ago, the photo reproduced here! What an emotion to discover the radiant smile of this ten-year-old girl, who has been gone for nearly a century.
I suddenly feel like I know her a little better.
Image source: Robin Marshall, Manchester Particle Physics Group, http://www.hep.manchester.ac.uk/u/robin/former.html
Original title: "Picture A5 Holiday in Scotland".
The date is not indicated but in a letter of 1911, Ernest Rutherford indicates that he will spend the month of August in Scotland and that it will be the first time that he will go there. And Eileen seems to be ten years old here.
First row: Otto Darbishire (lecturer in botany) Eileen Rutherford, Cary Schuster (wife of Arthur Schuster ), Sybil Schuster (daughter of the previous one), Ernest Rutherford.
Second row, just behind Eileen: Norah Schuster , another daughter of Cary and Arthur Schuster, who would become just as famous as her father. The other two young ladies are not identified.
Another image of Eileen, a little older, appeared to me when I began to consult the documents made available on the website of the archives ofBedales School.
Eileen entered this boarding school in January 1915. She is therefore present in this photo dating from June 1915, that is to say 3 months after her fourteenth birthday.
The only question is where she is among all these students.
In the same bulletin, the following two pages give the list of students.
Eileen Rutherford appears in the first column of page 58 (orange frame in the image opposite).
I obviously looked to see if there were any connections between Eileen and others on this list, but couldn't find any.
The only links that I have been able to clearly identify are represented by double dotted arrows, as in the case of Julia Strachey and Margaret Leathes.
These two teenagers will also become known personalities. This is why their biographies are available on Wikipedia.
​
Besides, the online encyclopedia offers a list of celebrities who have passed through Bedales School.
After eliminating the names corresponding to other eras, then numbering each line of this list, I took these numbers to show them next to each name of the list from Bedales Archives.
I just added Julia Strachey, who was not in the Wikipedia list.
​
The list is reproduced below. Simply click on each name to access the Wikipedia entry for each personality.
​
Looking at these names, we find a certain number of artists, writers, statesmen, captains of industry, but also scientists.
​
In this last category, I will highlight two names:
Camilla Wedgwood, anthropologist, born in 1901 as Eileen Rutherford, from the great Wedgwood-Darwin family, and whose father, Labor MP close to Ramsay MacDonald, also had the particularity of being a very distant cousin of Charles Galton Darwin, a mathematician attached to Ernest Rutherford's laboratory until 1914.
By the way, Ramsay MacDonald's son, named Malcolm, also appears on this list of Bedales School.
​
Douglas Hartree, mathematician and physicist, four years older than Eileen, whose thesis supervisor at Cambridge will be Ernest Rutherford.
Furthermore, Douglas Hartree married Elaine Charlton, two years his junior, who also appears in the 1915 list of students of Bedales School (middle column, green cross)
1.Marjory Allen, Lady Allen of Hurtwood (1897–1976), landscape architect and child welfare promoter (née Gill)
2.Stephen Bone (1904–1958), artist
3.Tom Conway (1904–1967), actor
4.Yolande Du Bois (1900–1961), teacher and activist
5.Margaret Gardiner (1904–2005), artist and philanthropist
6.Rolf Gardiner (1902–1971), ecological campaigner, youth leader and Nazi sympathiser
7.Barbara Greg (1900–1983), artist
8.Douglas Hartree (1897–1958), Prof U MCR (Applied Maths 29–37; Theo Physics 37–45), U CAM (Mathtical Phys, 46–58)
9.Robin Hill (1899–1991), plant biochemist
10.Malcolm MacDonald (1901–1981), Sec. of State Dominion Affairs, 1935–39, Minister of Health, 1940–41, [High Commissioner Canada, 41–46, Gov-Gal Malaya, 46–55, High Com. India, 55–60, Gov. Kenya, 63–64, H.Com Kenya, 64–65
11.Joan Malleson (1899–1956), physician (née Billson)
12.Frances Partridge (1900–2004), writer and diarist (née Marshall) friend with Julia Strachey (but arrived in 1915)
13.Lettice Ramsey (1898–1985), (née Baker) psychologist and photographer (Ramsey and Muspratt, Cambridge)
14.Eric M. Rogers (1902–1990), physicist
15.Sir John Rothenstein (1901–1992), art historian, and Director, Tate Gallery, 1938–1964
16.Samuel Isidore Salmon (1900–1980), chairman of J. Lyons and Co., member of Members of the Greater London Council
17.Julia Strachey (14/08/1901-1979), English writer (does not appear on the Wikipedia list)
18.Camilla Wedgwood (1901–1955), anthropologist[12]
19.Josiah Wedgwood V (1899–1968), managing director, Wedgwoods, 1930–1961
Here is the list of personalities who may have rubbed shoulders with Eileen Rutherford during her schooling at Bedales School.
Some people weren't famous, but I still found information about them. It also emerged that they could be linked to other former students of Bedales School. This is the case of Elaine Charlton, mentioned above.
I added colored crosses in front of these names.
Additional information concerning these people is included in the document below (as it is an image, the links are not clickable and the text cannot be automatically translated).
To be continued....