Jack Simmons, 1915-2000

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2001 by Robbins, Michael

Jack Simmons was born at Isleworth, Middlesex, on 30 August 1915 and died in Leicester on 3 September 2000. In those eighty-five years he had been at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford; he then progressed first to be the valued assistant to Sir Reginald Coupland in completing several of his books on the British Empire in Africa. Then he established and built up at Leicester (University College, University from 1957) a school of historians who developed many areas of new, or newly perceived, interest, especially in English local history and in museum studies; he played a full part in Leicester activities, from its museums and libraries to the Archaeological and Historical Society and the shire's volumes in the Victoria County History. He was much embroiled in the administrative labours involved in the expansion of the university; and he was co-founder and regular contributor of The Journal of Transport History from 1953 until he laid down the editorship in 1973. Above all, his writings and his leadership made him the undoubted doyen of British railway historians.

Simmons was always 'Jack', never John. The story he told me was that when he was born word was sent to his father, then serving with the Royal Fusiliers in France. He was asked what name he would like the baby to have, and he went to the nearest post office to send a telegram saying that his choice was 'James'. But the local telegraph office was a civilian one and refused to transmit a wire in a foreign language, so the 'James' had to be changed to 'Jacques'. By the time it got to Isleworth this had become 'Jack'. That was his story, anyway. When he was admitted as a King's Scholar at Westminster, in the Latin form of words still then in use, he was addressed by the Dean as 'Johanniculus', but he was never any kind of 'John'.

An article by H. J. Dyos celebrating his work appeared in this journal (n.s., vol. 3, February 1976) with a comprehensive bibliography of his writings published up to that time compiled by Diana Dixon. The Times published an obituary on 15 September 2000. I was a friend of Jack Simmons ever since the evening in September 1929 when we both walked into college at Westminster as newly elected King's Scholars. He had already been in the school for a year but, by the arbitrary operation of a rule which began each school year on 1 September, although our birthdays in 1915 were only nine days apart he was in the year senior to me both at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford. The rest of this article is a somewhat anecdotal account of the points where our lives came together.

On that first evening in College, the new 'election' - as each year's crop of King's Scholars was called - began to find out something about one another. I remember this about our conversation that evening: we were both interested in railways. I came from Hampstead Garden Suburb in Middlesex, he from Carshalton in Surrey, and a few minutes' talk revealed him to be dismally ignorant (as I saw it) about affairs at King's Cross, St Pancras and Euston. We probed each other's knowledge, and he finally challenged me to say what the headcode was for South London line (Victoria to London Bridge) trains. I said it was 2 (which was right); and that, though neither of us could have known it at the time, was the beginning of a friendship that was to last for seventy-one years less one month.

We were at first on the Classical side at Westminster, though he switched to History after School Certificate (as 0 level was then called). The historians at Westminster were a small number - rather select, they thought themselves - under L. E. Tanner and John Bowle; I stuck to the more orthodox Classical side. We enjoyed talking to each other. The chance came on the coach rides between Westminster and Morden, where the playing fields were (and where the Southern Railway's new Wimbledon and Sutton line was being constructed close by). We talked about all manner of things, except games, which we hated, to the point where the other boys began to think us pretentious for talking about national politics. (This was when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister.) We followed the election results of 1931 with attention; he was for the left and I for the National Government. If he had any left-wing inclination at that time, it was not evident later in his career.

Jack went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1933; I followed him there in 1934. Christ Church was a splendid place to be in at that time: big enough to accommodate many sorts of people, where nobody was obliged to conform with sports or other activities they didn't care for. I am not sure who Jack's tutors were, except that J. C. Masterman, the Double-cross man, passionate for nineteenth-century German history, was one of them. After his first year Jack had a room on the second floor of Peckwater Quad, looking south straight at the great building of the library. It was so attractive that I put in for it when he moved out, and I got it. We levelled up again because he had to get an extension for taking his history degree - he was sick for nearly a year. So we graduated at the same time, summer 1937; and he went to live in Paris for a year to learn the language, while I went to Vienna and removed to Geneva after the events of March 1938 there made it a disagreeable place to be.