Figure 1.6 A family picnic. From left to right, my brother Jack, his wife Gladys, Joyce with her husband Alfred, and cousin Vera.
Figure 1.7 Uncle Jack and my father bringing tea from a local house to the rest of us picnicking at Happy Valley.
My father also inherited some money, but here Uncle Willy's meanness was catastrophic. To save money, he had not employed an attorney to help him write his will. Instead he had purchased a form for sixpence. The will said that his money was to be divided into six parts, one of which was to a charity. On the strength of this, my father bought the house for which we had previously been paying rent. However, one of the intended recipients of the proceeds of the will had died and the lawyer for the charity disputed the will. The lawyers for the various parties argued about this until most of the money was gone, leaving my father a debt that was a great worry to him.
In England, an elementary education was available to all but you were taught very little—mostly how to read and write and to do simple arithmetic. The classes were very large, and you left when you were 14 years old, usually to get a menial job. There was no possibility of escape unless your parents could pay for you to go to a grammar or secondary school, which of course mine couldn't. It was possible to get a scholarship, but there weren't very many of these. The class system based on money was heavily entrenched.
Mr. Spencer, the headmaster of the elementary school I attended, by some means or other, became aware of a poem I had written. To check me out, he told me to sit at a table next to his desk and write poetry. I wrote four poems. After this, he had me stay after school to prepare under his guidance for the scholarship examination.
I remember that during the oral exam I happened to say the word “chimney,” which I pronounced “chimley.” The examiner asked, “How do you spell chimley?” I spelled it correctly, so he said, “Well why do you say chimley?” I passed, and soon after I went to the new school, which was called the County School for Boys. I started in the second form, at age ten (Figure 1.8). There was another boy of about my age whose name was also Box (Ronald Box). He was on his bicycle when, unfortunately, he was hit by a truck and killed. The whole school of about 500 boys gathered together in the auditorium each morning with the youngest boys at the back. The headmaster announced from the platform that I had been killed. This, I think, was the only time that he said nice things about me. I am told that I walked all the way from the back to just below the platform and said, “Please, Sir, I'm not dead.”
Figure 1.8 Second form at Gravesend County School. I am the first left in the back row.
My brother Jack and I were among the very few scholarship boys in the school. Although almost all of the students came from families that had more money than mine did, I made friends. But there was one student whose mother would not allow me in the family home when her son and I played together. By contrast, the mother of my friend, “Ginger” Harris, thought I was a good influence on her son. I was never particularly strong, but I made up for my lack of physical prowess by inventing games that the other boys enjoyed.
The second form started immediately with French, Latin, English grammar, English literature, physics, and chemistry. We also began mathematics—first algebra and then geometry—and we began calculus in the upper fourth form. My first math teacher nobody liked. He was sarcastic and unresponsive to questions. But later we had a different math teacher, Mr. Marshall, who for some obscure reason was nicknamed “Banners.” He was genuinely anxious that everyone in the class understand the lessons, and he was tireless in explaining difficult points. With his guidance, I quickly moved ahead in the class.
I remember one incident with Banners when one of the boys had brought his pet mouse to school in a little box. During class he was showing his mouse to a friend when it jumped loose and started to run about in the front of the room. Banners pursued it with the pointer, and after a number of near misses, the mouse took refuge under a radiator. The little boy who was owner of the mouse remarked, “Please, Sir: that's my mouse!” Banners replied very apologetically, “Oh I beg your pardon. I didn't know it was a private mouse.”
Unfortunately, before I could go to the new grammar school, I had been subjected to a “health examination” and it was decided (on what grounds I never understood) that I had to have drops in my eyes for six months. As a result, for much of the first year, I couldn't see what was written on the blackboard and had difficulty reading the printed page. I missed such things as the beginning of French, algebra, and English grammar. My father did his best to help and wrote out my homework for me as I dictated. It took a very long time to catch up with my studies, so whereas in elementary school I had been close to the top of my class, at the new school, I had to get used to being close to the bottom. By age 16, when one or two of the boys got to go to a university, I was not among them.
During all this time, Mr. Spencer from the elementary school remained my friend. He was also head of the Sunday school, and our house was on the way to his, so each week after Sunday school, we would walk home together and we discussed just about everything.
One thing I made which was a success was what was called a shocking coil, which was a watered down version of an induction coil. This consisted of a core, which was made of slives of iron wire, and this was wrapped with primary and secondary insulated copper wires.
Each year at our school there was a “prep fair” that raised money for the town hospital. My project for the fair was to make a shocking coil. The coil had two handles, one of which was in a tub of water. The other handle was held by the “client” who was visiting the fair. The client paid sixpence, which was dropped into a locked box. At the bottom of the tub were coins.
The client would reach into the tank to pickup some of the coins, but I had a dial under the table that was connected to a rheostat, and as the customer grasped for the coins, I turned up the dial which gave the person a substantial shock. No one managed to get any of the money until this woman came along, and when it was her turn to reach into the tank, I turned up the dial as usual, but she wasn't the least affected by the shock.
She took all of my coins and she deposited these into the locked hospital box. This left me with no coins with which to lose more clients. Finally Banners, the math master, gave me some money so that I could continue.
I wasn't much good at learning French, but a boy in my class called Newton was, and he wrote a play in French. The French teacher liked it and decided that we should put it on in the school auditorium with parents invited. I had a small part as an “Englishman who didn't know much French,” which suited me very well. The French teacher and his wife were very kind, and while rehearsing the play, we had refreshments at their house.
Because my lack of French limited my participation as an actor, I wanted to help all I could in other ways. For example, in the play, someone got shot. I found a realistic-looking toy gun for the actor to flourish, and after much experimentation, I found that a hollow pencil box struck against a plywood panel sounded very much like a pistol shot. I had to watch carefully to synchronize it with what was happening on stage to make it sound genuine.
There was one scene where people were sitting around a table having dinner. To make this look real, I persuaded my brother Jack to ride his bicycle to get six helpings of fish and chips. He arrived a bit early, and the intense smell of the fish and chips was evident for a long time in the theater before and after the actual scene.
Later I had a small part in a school play, Shakespeare's Macbeth. This was a much more serious affair. My scene occurred at night inside the gates of Macbeth's castle. The audience knows that Duncan, the king, has been murdered, but this is not known to Macduff and Lennox, who are outside the gate knocking to gain admittance. I played the part of the porter who, instead of opening the gate, engages in a long drunken harangue in which he imagines himself porter at the gates of hell. He admits a series of imaginary visitors—a farmer who hanged himself in the expectation of plenty, and so on. Fi
nally he opens the gates to Macduff and Lennox, but the action is further held up when the porter gossips, humorously, with Macduff, a device that effectively increases the tension. At one point Macduff asks the porter, “What three things does drink especially provoke?” to which I replied:
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Leachery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with leachery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.3
I was keen on chemistry, and when I left school at 16, I got a job as an assistant to a chemist who managed the sewage treatment plant at Gravesend. I became very interested in the activated sludge process responsible for producing a clean effluent that would not pollute the river, and the first article I ever published was about this topic.4 While at the plant, my goal was to get an external degree in chemistry from London University. I wasn't paid much, but I was allowed two free afternoons a week to go to Gillingham Technical College where I could attend the necessary courses.
To get to Gillingham, if I had the money, I sometimes took the train, but most often I rode my bike 12 miles along the hilly and busy road that passed through Stroud, Chatham, Rochester, and Gillingham. One day my plans almost came to a sudden end when a truck driver's error sent my bicycle and me skidding under his vehicle. His back wheel just missed my head, and my bicycle was a wreck I spent about eight months writing to his insurance company trying to get them to pay to replace it. After months of arguing, they finally did.
To get an external degree in science at London University, you had first to pass the Intermediate Science Exam. After that, with a year or two of further study, you could attempt the Bachelor of Science degree exam itself. I had to go to London to take the intermediate exam, which included a two-day practical exam as well as a week-long written part. My subjects were pure and applied mathematics, physics (heat, light and sound, electricity, and magnetism), and chemistry (organic and inorganic). These were the most difficult exams I ever took, but I passed and they helped me get a grounding in science that has been invaluable ever since.
I believe that it was this basic scientific knowledge that helped me later on to come up with ideas in the development of statistics. It would, I think, be tremendously helpful if, before taking a degree in statistics, there was a requirement to pass a similar preliminary exam in science. A serious mistake has been made in classifying statistics as part of the mathematical sciences. Rather it should be regarded as a catalyst to scientific method itself. Proper preparation for a degree in statistics should be like that for the intermediate science exam described above, which would include running real experiments.
1 All quotations appearing above chapter titles are from Lewis Caroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, originally published in 1865 by Macmillan.
2 Alfred P. Morgan, The Boy Electrician, Lathrop, Lee & Shepard, 1913
3 William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Vol. 2, Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., nd, p. 799.
4 Ronald Hicks and G.E. Pelham Box, “Rate of Solution of Air and Rate of Transfer for Sewage Treatment by Activated Sludge Process,” Sewage Purification, Land Drainage, Water and River Engineering, Vol. 1, June 1939, pp. 271–278. Hicks was my supervisor but did not take part in writing the article.
“Contrarywise, if it was so, it might be: and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”
Chapter Two
Army Life
At home in Gravesend, my family congregated for meals and other activities in the basement kitchen. When it had become clear that war was inevitable, my father, who had experienced the First World War, went to the wood yard and bought a number of very large wooden beams with sections of about 8 inches by 8 inches. With these he fortified the walls and ceiling of the downstairs kitchen so that in an air raid we were less vulnerable.
For many months before war was declared in 1939, people in Britain had been warned what to expect: raids of hundreds of enemy planes dropping bombs and poison gas. Everyone had been issued a gas mask that was carried in a cardboard box. At 11 a.m. on September 3, 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced on the radio that we were at war with Germany. Almost immediately the air raid sirens blew, so my family went to the downstairs kitchen, but once there, we realized that we might be short of drinking water. In the kitchen was our zinc bathtub in which each family member took a weekly bath. We hoisted the tub onto the sink and filled it with water from the tap, forgetting how heavy it would become. In our attempt to lift it down, most of the water spilled onto the floor, so apart from everything else, we had a small flood. After about three quarters of an hour, we heard the “all clear” siren. Our first air raid warning had in fact been a false alarm. This was the beginning of the “Phoney War,” a period of about eight months when neither side did very much, at least in terms of a land war.1
As a teenager in the 1930s, I was interested in politics. I was particularly angry at the British government because it seemed they had done nothing to stop Adolph Hitler. His aggressions and absorption of one country after another clearly pointed to a plan for world domination. Six weeks after the war began, I turned 20, the age required at that time for enlistment into the Army. I stopped working on my chemistry degree, went to the nearest enlistment office, which was in Chatham, and joined up.
During my first week in the Army, I was told to read Company Orders each day and to perform any duties required of me. Sure enough, on a long list outside the Company Office, I found my name, and next to it were the words “key man.” I asked somebody what I was supposed to do as the key man, and they explained that at some time during the evening, the bugler would sound the “Buckshee Fire Call.” (This was the fire call followed by two Gs, which meant it was not for a real fire.) When you heard this, you ran down to the Company Office, and when they called your name, you shouted “present.” So I did that, but then I wondered what I was supposed to do as the key man. I asked a junior NCO.2 He said, “When you hear the Buckshee Fire Call you run down to the Company Office and answer your name.” “But,” I persisted,” What am I supposed to do?” (After all, “key man” sounded rather special.) He said, “I've already told you. When you hear the Buckshee Fire Call, you answer your name at the Company Office.”
I made myself a nuisance, and my enquiry eventually got as far as the Sergeant Major who went through the same routine. So I said, “But in a real emergency what does the key man do?” This stumped him completely. He asked me to come and see him tomorrow. By this time I was a marked man—a raw recruit making all this trouble! But after a great deal of research, they discovered that the “key” was a spigot that was used to turn on the water in case of a fire. So I asked where it was. Again this caused much consternation, and for a long time, they couldn't find it. Fortunately, there never was a real fire while I was the key man, but I had learned an important lesson about how things “worked” in the Army.
At the beginning of the war, my company was busy erecting barrack huts. These came in prefabricated sections—walls, roofs, doors, windows, stoves, and so on.3 We had to go some distance in our trucks to collect these sections from a different branch of the army called the Service Corps. When we weren't building barrack huts, we were frequently on guard duty. This meant lots of “spit and polish” to pass inspection, and staying up all night. It was winter, and the “guard room” consisted of a tent that, especially when it rained or snowed, was cold and miserable. It occurred to us that we might just as well steal the necessary prefabricated sections and build ourselves a guard room with a roof and a stove. One dark night we did just that.
I am quite sure that our commanding officer, a very cheerful major, was aware that a new building had suddenly popped up; guard rooms didn'
t appear overnight. I'm even fairly sure that he approved of our initiative, but that, of course, was unofficial. Meanwhile the Service Corps sergeant had noticed that some prefabricated sections were unaccounted for. He was suspicious and therefore loath to give us any further supplies, so my little group couldn't get on with our work. I was a only a lance corporal, so to outrank the Service Corps sergeant, I went to my commissioned officer who was a brand new second lieutenant even younger than me. I told him about our difficulties with the sergeant, and he sighed and said, “Yes, I know. He won't even speak to me.”
When I first joined the army, there were all kinds of guys from different parts of Britain. They had very different backgrounds and accents, but we got along well together. In the next bed to mine, there was a coal miner. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble with a letter he was writing. When he showed it to me, I realized that someone was trying to extract money from his wife for some furniture she had bought on an installment plan. I knew that Parliament had passed a law stating that you could not do this to people serving in the armed forces. So I wrote a letter for him spelling this out and he was very grateful. A few weeks later, we all had to dig a slit trench six feet long by six feet deep. I was not very strong and hadn't got very far when he had already finished. He came over and said, “Get out of there!” and he quickly dug my trench for me.
Slit trenches would plague me in other ways. We had dug a number of these near the barracks and the sergeants' mess. On one occasion, it had been raining for a number of days, but finally it had cleared. Later in the evening, I thought it might be pleasant to take a walk outside with a good-looking young lady. It was pitch black out, and we hadn't gotten very far with our walk when we both fell into the same trench, which was full of water. We both got soaked, and explanations were difficult.
An Accidental Statistician Page 3