Obituaries

OBITUARIES MRS. DOROTHY GARDINER, 1874-1957 Members wUl have heard with sorrow of the death of Mrs. Dorothy Gardiner which occurred on January 23rd, 1957, at her home in Canterbury. Mrs. Gardiner has been a very active Member of the Society for twenty-six years, and since a valued Member of its CouncU. Dorothy Kempe completed her formal education at Lady Margaret HaU, Oxford, where she made contacts which affected her future interests and activities. Chief of these were concerned with Social Service and Education and she gave yeoman service to both causes, but her second great interest in the study and re-creation of the Past found scope in her marriage to Canon Gardiner, then Rector of Lambeth, for life in the Lambeth Rectory enabled her to produce her first book, The Story of Lambeth Palace. In 1917 her husband was appointed to a Prebendal StaU in Canterbury Cathedral and from its Precincts she played an increasingly active part in the civic and educational life of the City, and graduaUy became an acknowledged authority on its history and antiquities. Soon she became a Member of the City CouncU and from 1921 to 1950 she sat as a Justice of the Peace on the City Bench. Later she was co-opted to the Kent Education Committee and from 1926 to nearly the end of her life served on, and was Chairman of the Governing Board of the Simon Langton School. Mrs. Gardiner took an active part in 1920 in the formation of the Canterbury Archselogical Society to which she was devoted to the end of her life as Founder Member, Committee Member, Honorary Secretary, Vice-President and Chairman of Committee. In 1937 Canon Gardiner gave up his prebend and went to hve in Cogan House, where she completed her last full length work, Historic Haven : Hie History of Sandwich. Other of her works included The Oxenden Letters, 1607-1642 (1933), The Oxenden and Peyton Letters 1642- 1670 (1937), Companion into Kent (1934, 1937-49) and Canterbury (Enghsh Towns Series, 1923 and 1942), together with many-other essays in pamphlet form and various papers in Archceologia Cantiana. Her services to scholarship were recognized in 1945 when she was elected a FeUow of the Society of Antiquaries. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mrs. Gardiner for the vigilant love she bore to aU the visible symbols of our historic heritage both in the City of Canterbury and in the County, and for the preservation and restoration of which she pleaded and fought unceasingly. No threatened or neglected buUding of historic or architectural significance 237 OBITUARIES escaped her attention or faUed to enlist her militant support and in this respect the City of Canterbury owes much to her fighting spirit. H. M. RAND. F. R. J. PATEMAN Mr. F. R. J. Pateman died on August 1st, 1958, after a long and painful illness, endured with great courage, at the early age of 54. He was in recent years manager in succession of the New Bridge Street, the Southwark and the CornhUl branches of the National Provincial Bank. In earher years he devoted much of his leisure to his work as general secretary of the Central CouncU of Bank Staff Associations. Mr. Pateman hved in Otford for the past thirty years, during which he was extremely active in vUlage and parish affairs. After holding many other offices he served as churchwarden from 1951 to 1957. He founded the Otford and District Historical Society, becoming its first chairman in 1950. From this date he took up local studies with great enthusiasm, directing the excavation of Becket's Well in 1951-4. His unpubhshed papers on " The Geology of the Darent VaUey " and " The Otford Vestry and the Administration of the Poor Law in the early Nineteenth Century" were notable contributions to local history, promising much fruitful work in future years. A man of rare character, combining dynamic drive and personality with unfailing kindness, understanding and modesty, Mr. Pateman was much loved, and his death will be deeply regretted by all who knew him. R.D.C. BERNARD WINTHROP SWITHINBANK, C.B.E., M.A. The Society has lost a most devoted member of CouncU by the death of Bernard Swithinbank at the Brook Hospital, Woolwich, on Sunday, July 27th, 1958. He died at the age of 73 from injuries received in an accident when he was flung from his invalid carriage and suffered severe head wounds. This vehicle, with him seated upright in it hke a noble Roman Senator, was a familiar sight in Maidstone. He was born in 1884, the son of the Reverend H. S. Swithinbank, and educated at Eton, where 'he became friendly with John Maynard Keynes, the economist, to whom, throughout Keynes's lifetime, he was always known as " Swithin ". At BaUiol he took a first in Classical Moderations, was Craven Scholar in 1905 and took a second in Literae Humaniores. However, he was not too happy at Oxford, and at the earhest opportunity, against Keynes's wishes, entered the Indian CivU Service. He became acquainted with Flecker at Oxford, and it would be a stimulating exercise to trace what influence made one write 238 OBITUARIES the Dehan poetry of " Hassan " and the other turn to administration work for Burma for nearly forty years (1909 to 1946). Many of his early experiences are mentioned in R. F. Harrod's The Life of John Maynard Keynes, pubhshed in 1951. He was Secretary to the Burma Government in 1929-30 and in 1933 was appointed Commissioner in Pegu. He left Burma in 1942 and was then made Adviser to the Secretary of State for Burma, from which post he retired in 1946. He became a CB.E. in 1938. The Society will always remember him with gratitude for two things at leasts—the last index volume of Archceologia Cantiana, LXVII, into which he put so much work, and the impressive row of Enghsh Place Name Society's volumes in the K.A.S. Library. L.R.A.G. 239