Stead Francis Bernard

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Biografie:
Francis Bernard Stead (1873 - 1954)
Francis Bernard Stead was the son of the Ven. Samuel Stead, sometime Archdeacon of Bombay, and was educated at Clifton and King's College, Cambridge (Scholar), obtaining a Ist Class in Part I (1894) and Part II (1895) of the Natural Science Tripos. After working as a naturalist in the Plymouth and Naples Zoological stations, he became (1899) an assistant master at Aldenham School, Herts, but returned to Clifton in 1901, where he remained till 1908, when he became a staff inspector of Secondary Schools under the Board of Education, rising to Chief Inspector of Secondary Schools (1926-33). During the first War he was secretary of the Prime Minister's Committee on the Teaching of Science. He was made a C.B.E. in 1931. From 1944 to 1948 he was Chairman of the Girls' Public School Trust. He became a Fellow of the Chemical Society in 1902.
Stead was elected to the Alpine Club in December, 1900, having been climbing since 1894, though he had been on walking tours in the Alps and Dolomites before that. One of his principal climbing companions was J. H. Doncaster, whose obituary he wrote for the ALPINE Journal (vol. 56, p. 272). They visited Norway in 1894 and climbed on and off together until 1910 : records are incomplete, but to list Stead's climbs would hardly be appropriate, for he had a certain contempt for peak-bagging and preferred, rather, to explore new ground and was as ready to cross a grass pass as to climb a stiff mountain. A traverse of the Meije he regarded as his most arduous climb, but the Saas-Zermatt region was, perhaps, his favourite haunt.
The first War, and family responsibilities, interfered with his climbing, but in 1930 he began to revisit the Alps and showed himself a very vigorous goer still. After the second War he took several more holidays in Switzerland; in 1947, at the age of 74, he was still able to walk up to the Lötschenlücke and back, from Fafler Alp, and he paid his last visit to Saas Fee in 1953, within a few months of what proved to be his final illness.
Conservative in his tastes, he looked the veteran he was, with his old-fashioned, rather long ice-axe, knickerbocker suit and broadbrimmed hat. He set great store by his mountaineering friendships and acquaintanceships and was an occasional visitor ·to the Club to within the last year or two.
He married in 1912 Rachel Elizabeth, daughter of Canon Bell, Master of Marlborough, and it was a great satisfaction to him that his wife, though not an active climber herself, shared his love of the Alps and came with him on many of his lesser expeditions. To her, and to his sons and daughters (some of whom, at least, had accompanied him on climbs) we express the sorrow we feel at the loss of one who, during his fifty-four years of membership, so well fulfilled the second rule of the Club, of promoting good fellowship among mountaineers .
T. S. Blakeney
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 60. Nr. 290, 1955, Seite 160-161


Geboren am:
1873
Gestorben am:
1954