Category Archives: Meeting report

October 2019 meeting: Olive Gibbs, councillor and peace campaigner

On 14 October, noted Oxford historian Liz Woolley expounded highlights from the life of Olive Gibbs (1918-1995). Olive was born in a tenement block in Osney Lane, Oxford. In her autobiography Our Olive she described her father’s violent tyranny, and her childhood grudge that their flat had no upstairs: in stories, children always went to bed upstairs. According to her sons Andrew and Simon, Olive was ‘five foot cubed’. She won a scholarship to Milham Ford school, and achieved an excellent School Certificate. She wanted to become a journalist, but that was considered unsuitable for a woman. Instead, she became a librarian. Her boss thought she ‘had presence’. She thought him a ‘pompous ass’.

Olive’s political career began with a campaign against a planned wholesale closure of nursery schools. She was a city councillor for 30 years, and also a county councillor. She rebelled against the domination of politics by men who seemed ‘older than God’, and overcame bouts of depression and anxiety. In 1959, she refused to follow the local Labour party line, and opposed the plan to build a road through Christ Church Meadow. She and her husband Edmund Gibbs led the campaign for the demolition of the infamous Cutteslowe walls. Olive drove the successful opposition to the demolition of the Jericho quarter of Oxford. She championed wide educational opportunities at the (then) Oxford College of Further Education and Oxford Polytechnic.

At an RAF dance in August 1945, there were cheers for the bombing of Hiroshima. Olive wrote that she ‘alone remained slumped in my seat, pale and trembling’. She became a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and its chair 1964-1967. Andrew Smith, MP for East Oxford 1987-2017, once commented that he learnt from Olive all the good arguments against nuclear weapons.

A member’s comment after Liz Woolley’s talk noted the universal respect for Olive Gibbs, even among supporters of other parties.

This was the History Club’s first meeting in the parish church. The sound system worked notably well. The heating had failed, but the church is confident it will work properly for the next meeting: 7.30 pm on 11 November, a talk by Richard Dudding on ‘Radley Large Wood: monks, deer, riots, canal and bluebells’.

September 2019 meeting: Hanging and escapes at Oxford Castle

On 9 September, after Radley History Club’s usual brisk annual general meeting, Oxford historian and narrow-boat resident Mark Davies narrated gruesome tales about crimes and punishments at Oxford castle and prison.

In the 17th century, the gaolers ran the prison as a money-making family business, and you could be imprisoned for making ‘saucy and rash comparisons’ between your wife and ‘the best wives in the town’. In 1650, Anne Green was hanged, falsely accused of killing her stillborn child. As usual, her body was cut down to be used by medical students. They noticed she wasn’t dead. She revived and lived on until 1662.

Jack Ketch – the brutal executioner of Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth – was so infamous that he figured in Punch and Judy shows. Mr Punch protested that if he, Punch, was cruel to have murdered, then Ketch would be cruel to hang him; and then tricked Ketch to put his head in the noose.

In 1752 Mary Blandy was hanged for poisoning her father with arsenic. She claimed to have trusted her suitor that the powder was a love potion to make her father less hostile towards the intended marriage. In 1761 they hanged Isaac Darkin, a handsome and silver-tongued highwayman whose ‘sufferings made a deep impression on the tender hearts of the ladies’. In 1776 rewards were offered for the apprehension of two young women who had escaped from the by then dilapidated prison.

From 1787 Daniel Harris began an enlightened policy aimed at rehabilitating the prisoners, putting them to work in the prison, and helping build the Oxford Canal. Harris went on to become the architect of Abingdon gaol.

Responding to a question after his talk, Mark Davies confirmed that, according to at least one source, in 1142 Empress Matilda escaped from a snow-bound Oxford Castle camouflaged in a white cloak.

All these stories and many more are in Mark’s book, Stories of Oxford Castle.

The Club’s next meeting will be a talk by Liz Woolley on ‘Olive Gibbs, Oxford politician and peace campaigner’, at 7.30 pm on Monday 14 October, at Radley Church – the Club’s new venue for its speaker meetings. The church’s sound system has a hearing loop, and there is step-free access.

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