Agricultural History. King’s College 1950s Ag botany students.

 

Botanical memories of the Heslop Harrisons

By Clive Dalton (Kings 1952-56)

When we 1950s Agric students were doing our degrees at Kings College, Newcastle Upon Tyne, which was then a campus of the University of Durham, we didn’t know anything about John William Heslop Harrison, D.Sc. (1917), FRS. (1921), (1881-1967).

J.W. Heslop Harrison

In 1920, he left his post as Senior Science Master at Middlesbrough High School to take up a lectureship in Zoology at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne which later became King’s College of the University of Durham.

He rose to be Head of the Department of Botany in 1927 - a post which he held until his retirement in 1946.  After this he continued as Senior Research Fellow until 1949.  He died in 1967.

We saw nothing of him in our time, but he must have still been actively botanising and gardening from his home he built and named ‘Gavarnie’ in Ruskin Road, Birtley in County Durham.  Another old King’s graduate friend (Dr Pat Shannon) who left in 1947 remembers old Heslop-Harrison still giving them lectures.  Pat described him as ‘not being the most stimulating of lecturers’!   He seems to have been very active in botanising groups in Durham in his retirement where he was much revered for his knowledge and willingness to share it.

Mystery old lady

I remember in my second year (1953) regularly seeing a little old grey haired lady, always dressed in black, creeping around the Ag. Botany lab.   We never knew much about her – except that she was referred to in whispers as being famous for something to do with plant chromosomes.  She could have been a Heslop Harrison, but J.W. Heslop Harrison’s wife is recorded as having died in 1952.  Our old lady could have been her ghost!

The pure Botany Department 

Before we got into the Ag. Department, those of us who did the intermediate pure science year, did botany in the pure botany department where we met Dr W.A. (Willie) Clark.  He was a very precise Scot, and we had no problems with his botany lectures.

 He was memorable for his habit - common to many intellectual Scots, of inserting an 'aaay' between every 2-3 words in a sentence, while his brain was searching to achieve ultimate precision - which we used to mimic! For example:

'Today aaay, I would like to aaay, describe aaay, the role of the aaay, barrrl shaped parenchymatous cells.'  How could we ever forget that these cells were barrl (barrel) shaped even if we'd forgotten where they were?

His obituary in ‘The Vasculum’, Vol 69, No 1., page 1., April 1984, says that ‘he died at his home in Ryton on 19th November, 1983, aged 72. He took time to think things through and his conclusions, honestly made, were usually correct. He was generally a quiet, mild mannered man who had learned to shrug off trifling irritations, but at the same time he was not afraid to protest strongly against injustice. This he always did bluntly and never remotely underhand; with Bill Clark you knew exactly where you stood’. 

My italics for some words which make you wonder how he viewed his father-in-law’s professional antics.  Dolly died after a long illness just two months after William.

(A vasculum is a container used by botanists to keep field samples viable by maintaining a cool, humid environment. It is a typically flattened tin cylinder, carried horizontally on a strap to keep specimens flat, and lined with moistened cloth to keep them fresh.)

The Ag. Botany Department

Then when we got free of pure botany and started doing Ag. Botany, we met Mrs ‘Dolly’ Clark – who we then learned was the wife of Dr Willie Clark. 

We all loved Dolly and her lectures, because for one thing they had relevance to farming – even if her special interest was archaeology and ancient cereal grains (of which she was a noted authority).  We felt it was a bit over the top at times and not very important to our farming needs.

Ag. Entomology

We did Ag. Entomology, where we had Dr George Heslop Harrison, and he really was a problem.  He was tall with thinning hair, with the stance of a preying mantis.  He always wore a light blue, Harris Tweed sports jacket with all the four buttons done up. He had yellowing watery eyes and a chesty wheeze, which made him cough at regular intervals while talking.

It was tempting to feel sorry for him, but from his first lecture, he gave us the clear impression that he didn’t like any of us.  He probably soon picked up our vibes that the feelings were mutual!

He lectured almost with a vengeance, that learning things like the names of all the veins in a fly’s wings and other such trivia (in our view), was critical to our very survival in his class, and certainly was to pass his exams. 

To our general amazement, two in our class went on to do Honours in entomology with him, which we could never understand as they were good decent blokes!  They appeared to enjoy working in his Ag Zoology department, where he probably interacted with them with a bit more sympathy that with our whole mob. 

George’s widow (another Dollie) was librarian in the Ag. Department about 1967.  She was after our time so we have no memory of her.

The Rum affair book

A Rum Affair - a true Story of Botanical Fraud

By Karl Sabbagh 1999: Publ: Da Capo Press 2001

ISBN: 0-306-81060-3

Reprinted by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux

When only recently, one of our group of old ex King’s friends (Malcolm Tait) alerted us to ‘The Rum Affair’ book by Karl Sabbagh, things started not only to astound us, but to explain a few things about the Heslop-Harrisons that we knew – and tickle our fancies about things that we didn’t know!  And even if we had known at the time, it would have been life threatening to even whisper them in the Department.

For example we didn’t know that Dolly and George were old Heslop Harrison’s offspring, and that Willie Clark was Heslop Harrison’s son-in-law, and that there was another son John (Jack) (see note below).

Looking back now it all seemed a bit incestuous, but then in those days this was not uncommon in universities, where students stayed on to be lecturers, and then worked their way up to occupy chairs and be heads of departments.  It was not often though that you found so many members of the same family in one Department.

My musings after reading the book

To see the significance of my points left hanging below, you’ll need to read the book, and then the critique by Chris Goldthorpe, to see how you judge J.W. Heslop Harrison and his botanical antics on the island of Rum, to which he and his students has special access for many years.

• Why did Heslop Harrison feel the need to use a double-barrelled surname – sometimes hyphenated and sometimes not? From the 1920s to 1937 he was simply J.W.H. Harrison. In1938 he started using J.W. Heslop Harrison, in 1942 he was still J.W. Heslop Harrison, but in 1950 he was J.W. Heslop-Harrison. 

•  Who was he trying to impress with his name changes?  Was he embarrassed about his father being an iron foundry worker, and JW was trying to improve his social class? 

• Why did he feel the need to alter his postal address in Birtley – with the postie’s collusion presumably? Again was it because he felt guilty about his social status?  

• When suspicion was building about his plant fiddling on Rum, why did he write papers naming Dolly and then Willie as authors when they clearly didn’t do the work?  Did he think they would not be suspected of his funny business and perhaps to deflect suspicion from him? 

• Why did old HH try to pull strings with the Director of the British Museum to take son George on to do a PhD, saying that he only had a pass B.Sc. at the time, but had been working on Hemiptera and had entered for a Ph.D.  George didn’t get the job and continued at Kings until 1939 when war broke out.

•  I now feel very guilty about what we students thought of George.  According to bits from Jack’s autobiography below, George had health problems as a child.  Then after leaving Kings in 1939, he went as Director of Plant Pathology and Entomology for the Iraq government.  Iraq was not occupied by German forces but an Iraqi government which was sympathetic to the Germans came into power at that time. So for some reason in 1941, poor George instead of clearing out like everyone else, he stayed on and was not only imprisoned, but he was tortured! 

Comments (April 2013) from Sandy Main - Agriculture Lecturer during the Heslop Harrison years.
Sandy was our much loved Ag Lecturer in crop husbandry, and at time of writing is 95 years old living in South Shields.  He saw many generations of students through the old Department in his time, as well as knowing all the Heslop Harrisons.  His great love was the Kings College Agricultural Society of which he was secretary for many years. It held meetings of farmers who had been former students mixing with current students - always with a special high profile speaker.  A special event was the annual tours to different countries on the Continent.

Sandy had only recently read the Run Affair book and provided the information below in a letter to Dr Deric Charlton.
  

• George Heslop Harrison (our entomology tutor) had in fact been electrically emasculated by the Nazi sympathizers in Iraq. 
• He married a Canadian lady on his return who dedicated her life to his care, and after George's early death she returned to Canada.
• Once when Sandy called in at their home in Low Fell to take George to Harper Adams Agricultural College where they were both external examiners, George's wife asked Sandy to take care of him.  George and Sandy shared a bedroom and Sandy remembers a very disturbed night as George had nightmares, clearly triggering memories of his prison experiences. 
• George's wife offered to be the librarian in the Ag Department, but it was only on a part time and voluntary basis - mainly to keep an eye on George's welfare. 
• There was no 'incestuous business' in the appointment of George and Dolly (Helena) as referred to in Sabbagh's book. George and Dolly were appointed by Prof. J.A. Hartley in 1935 and  Professor Wheldon  re appointed George after the war to lead the Ag Zoology (entomology) Department. 
• Sandy accompanied the old J.A. Heslop Harrison and son George up to Kielder and Deadwater in the early days when the Forestry Commission were planning their first plantings. The Heslop Harrisons had the job of listing the flora and fauna of the area.  Sandy remembers the two of them in the North Tyne river shouting enthusiastically to each other at what they were finding.
• As far as the Rum affair is concerned, Sandy is willing to give Prof Heslop Harrison the benefit of the doubt over his unproven plant fiddling, as he was such as he was such a great naturalist.

John 'Jack' Heslop-Harrison

We 1950s Ag students knew nothing of Jack Heslop-Harrison, but his autobiography tells a lot about his father.   Here’s some interesting comment from his autobiography, which Malcolm Tait found on the internet. You can see from what George writes below, that didn’t have an easy life with the old man!

John (Jack) Heslop-Harrison Autobiography: Site "Origins and Ancestry"

homepage.ntlworld.com/genomes/jhhpdfs/1origins.pdf

1930-1941: Home Life

‘Although there were many enjoyable interludes, the decade 1931-1941 was not, overall, a very happy one for me. After our move to Gavarnie in 1927, my father increasingly dominated my life in one way or another.

His own boyhood had been very hard and rough, and although he had parental encouragement, especially from his mother, the financial situation of the family was such that any advance he made through the educational system of the time had to depend primarily on his own efforts in gaining bursaries and scholarships.

He had in consequence developed a rigid mental discipline so far as work was concerned, and this he sought to impose on his children, for whom both he and my mother had high academic ambitions. My sister (Dolly) accepted the challenge, and realised some of his hopes, taking a MSc and becoming Head of the Agricultural Botany Department in King's (formerly Armstrong) College.

In my father's eyes the trouble was that she was a woman, and liable to get married; which of course she did. My brother (George), who had recurrent health problems and in addition possessed something of a rebellious nature, was less than responsive as a teenager - although he, too, eventually achieved high academic distinction with his work in applied entomology, receiving a D.Sc. for his researches on Psyllideae.

As the last of the sequence, I felt pretty continuous pressure to achieve, and anything less than first position in my class in any subject (especially in science) was regarded as tantamount to failure.

To set against this less than comfortable situation was the fact that my father made determined efforts to expand my horizons, especially by taking me on his various excursions and expeditions during the summer vacations’.

Jack’s career

His father, meeting famous botanists and entomologists, took Jack all over Europe with him when travel would have been difficult and slow before the war. 

Jack went to Kings in 1938 to do Honours in botany, zoology and chemistry, and after WW11 he joined the King’s Botany Department before accepting positions at Queen’s college, Belfast, then moved to London, Wisconsin and eventually Kew after his father’s death in 1970.  Clearly he’d kept well out of the old man’s way in his career.

In his autobiography, Jack doesn’t mention any of his fathers suspected dodgy dealings on Rum, which he must have known about.

The Heslop Harrison dynasty

The Moulder's Arms in Birtley was the home of the dynasty for 50 years.  The patriarch of the family was Cuthbert Heslop who was landlord from 1840-1868, then John Harrison (son in law) from 1868-1876, then Jane Harrison (nee Heslop who was John's widow) 1876-1890.
The pub is still in good heart today.

Acknnowledgements

Thanks to Malcolm Tait for digging out much of this information.

Agricultural history. Professor Martin Jones. Lecture Notes 1

Professor Martin Jones, Kings College, Newcastle Upon Tyne

LECTURE NOTES 1

By Dr Deric Charlton

In the late 1950s I was one of those privileged to study pasture agronomy under Professor Martin Jones when he held the Chair of Agricultural Botany at Kings College, the Newcastle arm of Durham University. He inspired me to follow pasture agronomy in my career and I kept the notes I scribbled down in his lectures. Clive Dalton has asked me to transcribe them into a relevant form, so I hope you learn from them as I did.

How plants grow
All our energy needs come from green plants through oxidation of carbohydrates and proteins, with plants taking in nitrates, phosphates and other nutrients, together with more energy from the sun.

Most farmed plants are used by the farm livestock before humans obtain this energy. The animal uses three-quarters of the plant energy in digestion, the remainder being stored as meat. Meat is more suitable for Man as it supplies more energy in a short time. Besides we cannot digest the fibrous plant material whereas they can, and they return the energy they use up to the soil in manorial form. When it is oxidised by bacteria it can then be re-used by the plant.

When a seed germinates, only oxygen is needed to release energy for synthesis (building reserves). Carbon dioxide is then needed for building sugars as the seedling develops green leaves. The longer the plant remains growing in the leafy stage, the more energy it stores.

Using energy
When a plant enters its reproductive stage it uses more energy than it stores. Cereals, for example, are very rapid developers and can be harvested within a year, so are very widely grown in tropical areas where adverse conditions are more prevalent. In the temperate zones however, more energy can be obtained by keeping plants in the leafy or vegetative stage, as they are always building up energy stores and not breaking them down.

Plant behaviour
When plants are establishing from seeds much energy is used, so bigger seeds grow stronger seedlings – “well begun is half done”.

When pasture plants are in the leafy (vegetative or tillering) stage energy is being collected and stored. Tillers (branches) are produced by a grass plant when conditions prevent stem production – usually in early spring. So tillering is a means of storing energy in a pasture.

When pasture plants enter the reproductive stage (during mid-late spring) tillering stops and energy is used to develop flowering stems.

So for effective pasture management, the farmer must maintain leafy pastures and prevent them entering the reproductive stage. At the same time it is important to prevent over-grazing.

Plant types
All plants can be regarded in two forms:

• Trees, shrubs and herbs.
•  Annuals, biennials and perennials.

A plant’s growth stages are controlled from within the plant, but this control responds to external factors:

• Food supply from soil and air.
•  Water and air supply.
• Freedom from acidity.
• Light.
• Temperature.

Manurial ingredients must be in a soluble form to enable the plant take them in. Carbon dioxide is needed from the air for photosynthesis (food manufacture in plants). Water is needed for food transport through the plant but soil drainage is essential so that air can reach the roots.
Excessive acidity slows down food intake, and much lime is needed to prevent soil acid build-up (far more than is need for food).

Light is the source of energy for the plant to manufacture food. The intensity and duration of light. Intensity is more important during winter whereas duration of light in summer months allows most of the energy to be made and stored.

The critical day temperature is 5ºC as below this level the plant ceases food storage. In summer, temperatures above 40ºC are too high for food manufacture in plants, but around 25-35ºC is just right, although higher temperatures make plants age quicker.

Plant scientists use Accumulative Temperature to measure Day-degrees, the temperature quota needed for a certain growth stage. This is usually measured as the number of degrees over 20º C, so on a day that the temperature reaches 30º the AT is 10, and on a day that the temperature reaches 40º the AT is 20. Plants have different AT requirements, so if Plant A ripens before Plant B, the first plant will have reached its AT requirement before the second. For example, oats need 800 day-degrees from brading (breaking through the soil surface) to ripening, and this is the same in a hot season as it is in a cold one.

Day-degrees therefore determines whether a ryegrass is early or late-flowering. It regulates the suitability of a particular crop to a region. In Britain for example, oats grow best in the cooler regions of Scotland, whereas wheat grows better in England’s southern regions.

Temperature and pasture growth
Soil temperatures (in the top 10cm) affect pasture plant growth very much. When a farmer sows a new pasture the seeds germinate much faster in warmer soils, although perennial ryegrass and white clover will still emerge much quicker than other species, which is probably a major reason for their popularity with farmers – they are easier to manage. (NB. More drought-tolerant grasses like tall fescue and cocksfoot emerge much faster in warmer soils so are best sown earlier in autumn or later in spring than ryegrass -DC)

Leafy Growth in Grasses
The tillering (branching) process is very important in grasses. Every year a grass plant develops new tillers, so a plant may be 20 years old but is physically only a year old.

Pasture plant breeders have revolutionised their variety development by taking advantage of this feature, greatly diminishing the annual/biennial/perennial classification. For example Italian ryegrass is now available in forms that grow high yields of digestible foliage for several months, up to forms that persist several years but spread their production over these years.

The livestock farmer’s aim with pastures should be to maintain as much as possible out-of-season leafy growth, and to obtain leaf production in late spring/summer when the pastures are impelled into stem growth.

Managing the pastures using the livestock, and sometimes silage-making equipment, is the way to influence the form of pasture growth.

However farmers must realise that it is very difficult to graze off all primordia from a pasture.

A hard-grazed pasture (to remove the primordia) will just go to head if it is rested. A pasture should therefore be rested while the grasses are still in the leaf-producing stage (early spring rather than late spring). This has a bearing on what pasture species should be sown and grown.

The earliest spring-growing grass is tall fescue, closely followed by Italian ryegrass. Perennial ryegrass then starts growing as the spring develops, followed by timothy and cocksfoot, and in Britain, meadow fescue is the latest to grow, along with browntop (Agrostis).

Late-flowering perennial ryegrass types are good summer growers as they remain leafy longer, but avoid resting for a silage cut as the aftermath can become stemmy. The early-flowering perennial ryegrass types are best for aftermath growth following a silage cut, as the primordia are removed in the cut. In late summer grasses will stay leafy as conditions prevent seedhead production then (but watch out for dry/dead pasture as it can harbour fungal spores that cause animal disorders - DC).

The earliest developing grasses tend to grow later into autumn/winter. In Britain late-flowering perennial ryegrasses tend to remain more palatable to stock than the early-flowering perennial ryegrass types, because the latter tend to brown off earlier. At the Cockle Park Research Station in Northumberland grazing animals were put on two pastures – one comprising early-flowering perennial ryegrass and the other late-flowering ryegrass, and they all eventually settled on the early-flowering ryegrass sward. However, with this treatment the late-flowering ryegrass pasture would persist longer (it would be less stressed when the environment is also putting pressure on it – DC).

Exploiting the Grasses
The grazing animals on a farm must always come first – but pastures then take the second place. Remember that labour and storage charges for silage and hay treble the cost of livestock feed from pasture.

When grass growth begins in early spring, new shoot growth saps the root system, but they soon start to manufacture food for the roots, replenishing that lost. In autumn the old roots act as storage organs.

Italian ryegrass is the first main grass to wake up, in early spring as the country begins to warm up again after winter. Perennial ryegrass flows about a month later. In these grasses there is a top-to-root balance year-round, one system replenishing the other once its growth has begun. The other permanent grasses, like browntop survive for centuries because they begin their growth later in spring when grazing stock have plenty to eat, and their nutrient stocks can be replenished easily.

The earlier a grass starts growing in a grazed pasture, the more it is exploited, and the more exploitation it has, then shorter its lifespan tends to be. Early-growing grasses like Italian ryegrass should therefore be rested before late spring to let them recover for later use. A one-month rest while it is still in the leafy growth stage will enable it to rebuild its energy bank. A livestock farmer does this by managing his animals, not often realising what he is doing is benefitting his pasture as well.

However, compensating the grass exploited early in spring will only work when no later-growing grasses are present in the pasture mixture. If a farmer wants perennial ryegrass to persist, then avoid including cocksfoot in the seeds mixture. In a Cockle Park seeds mixture (ryegrass, timothy and cocksfoot with red and white clovers) the ryegrass tends to be grazed off during the first growing season, the cocksfoot is grazed off the next year and the timothy goes in the third year when meadow-grasses begin invading. Simpler seeds mixtures with one ryegrass and one clover variety, will probably resolve this sequence.

On a typical upland farm with 800ha of hills and maybe 15ha of lowland pasture a farmer will carry around 400 ewes on the hills from late spring to autumn, and then bring them down to overwinter on the lowland block. At the same time he will graze cattle on the lowland pastures to prevent seedhead development, at the same time returning droppings to the land. The block would be rested from late summer until late autumn, allowing the pasture to age a bit so that the returning sheep won’t develop bloat and replenishing root nutrient storage. Then in early spring the new tiller growth will help to feed the ewes and their lambs. This illustrates good pasture exploitation.
Two British pastures sown to cocksfoot and growing into their third year, were managed as follows:
Pasture A was grazed from March to mid-May, rested for six weeks and then cut.
Pasture B was rested until mid-May, cut and then rested for six weeks.

In Pasture A the flowering buds (primordia) that form seedheads were below the grazing level so they grew during the rest period and produced stemmy poor-quality hay.

However with Pasture B the primordia were above cutting height and were therefore removed when cut for silage. New tillers were developed in the rest period following cutting, so the “aftermath” growth was all leafy – it takes at least six weeks for a grass tiller to develop another primordium.

Deric Charlton's original lecture notes
and Parker pen