Christopher Collan Morcom (1911-1930) was born at Bromsgrove in Worcestershire on 13 July 1911 to Colonel Reginald Keble Morcom CBE (1877-1961) and Frances Isobel Morcom (née Swan) (1880-1941).
The Morcom family lived at the Clock House in Bromsgrove, a modified sixteenth century manor house, which had been the childhood home of the poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936) whose grandfather was vicar of the nearby Christ Church at Catshill. As a child, Christopher had contracted bovine tuberculosis from infected cow’s milk in consequence of which the Morcom family kept a herd of goats at the Clock House.
From 1922 to 1925 Christopher attended King’s Mead School at Seaford in Sussex. In July 1924 he took the scholarship examination for Sherborne School and, being placed fourth on the list, was awarded a scholarship at Sherborne School (Lyon House), which he joined in May 1925 and was placed in the Upper Fourth form.
Christopher’s elder brother Rupert Morcom (1906-1966) had distinguished himself at Sherborne School (Lyon House 1920-25), winning the Digby Prize for Mathematics in 1923 and the Mathematical Medal in 1923 and 1924. In 1925 Rupert was awarded a Mathematical Exhibition at Trinity College Cambridge and later studied at ETH Zurich.
Christopher and his brother shared a passion for science and mathematics, no doubt inspired by their inventor and scientist grandfather Sir Joseph Swan FRS (1828-1914). Famous for inventing the first electric light bulb (which he patented in 1879), in 1883 Swan set up ‘Ediswan’ with Thomas Edison to market their inventions. Swan’s many other inventions included photographic paper, synthetic silk, and a safety lamp for miners. In 1894 Swan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for having devoted himself ‘for many years to experimental scientific work, chiefly in relation to Electric Lighting, the Electro-deposition of Metals, and the Improvement of Photographic Processes.’ In 1898 Swan was made president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and in 1903 he was made the first president of the Faraday Society. Joseph Swan was knighted in 1904 and awarded the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal ‘for his invention of the incandescent lamp, and his other inventions and improvements in the practical applications of electricity.’
Christopher’s enquiring mind did occasionally get him into trouble. At the end of the Christmas term in 1925, when attempting to drop a stone down the funnel of steam train from the railway bridge at Castleton in Sherborne, he missed and instead hit the train driver, which resulted in an investigation by the railway police. During Christmas term in 1928, Christopher filled a large quantity of balloons with gas and fitted them with fuses made from waxed string, and, when the wind was blowing in the right direction from Lyon House, he let them go so that they would explode a quarter of a mile away over Sherborne Girls’ School! He was also very interested in photography and secretly photographed two of his favourite masters (Clephan Palmer and Donald Eperson) during lessons. On being presented by Christopher with the photograph, one master said he regarded it ‘as a tribute rather than an impudence’.
During his first year at Sherborne, Christopher had to undergo a severe operation and as a result he was absent from School for two terms, but he soon caught up with his studies and in Lent term 1927 was awarded the Plumptre Prize for Mathematics (Upper Fifth). In September 1927, Christopher was promoted to the Lower Sixth, joining Edwin Davis’s Group III (Mathematics & Science), and was awarded the form prize at the end of term. In September 1928, Alan Turing (1912-1954) joined the Lower Sixth and his brief, but important, friendship with Christopher Morcom began.
After Christopher Morcom’s death on 13 February 1930, his housemaster A.H. Trelawny-Ross spoke to Alan Turing about his friendship with Christopher, from which he wrote the following account:
‘Most of his later work in School was done with Alan Turing, a boy in another House [Westcott House]. A question about the orbits of planets brought them together, and keen though Chris was upon his games it was actually during half-term at a game of football that the discussion was resumed. They soon found much common ground and worked side by side in the Science Laboratories. Chris seems to have delighted in enlarging upon the technical beauties and value of apparatus and there was hardly a subject open to scientific investigation which did not grip him. So talk ranged from an analysis of the iodised salt prescribed for a boy in another House to the age of the stars with every imaginable sort of subject in between. Everything connected with his work, however trivial, fascinated him. He was for instance, as Turing tells me, delighted to find some fungi growing in a beaker and at once took them to Mr Davis for a thorough investigation. He was withal very practical, and when another of his masters took some of his special apparatus from his locker he said very little, but bought an extra large lock to prevent it from happening again. What impressed Alan Turing most about his work was its extreme thoroughness. Both boys were equally well supplied with ideas or they could not have worked so profitably together, but his companion found that Chris was never quite satisfied. When he had got hold of the fundamental idea of a process he was not at all content, but considered every detail of it as a separate problem in itself. Mr Andrews, who taught him most of his chemistry, tells me that the two outstanding features of Chris and his work were the modesty which I have already mentioned and his astonishing accuracy. It would be a little hard to say whether mathematics or science attracted him most. If he was always happy in the Laboratory he was equally so when doing mathematics. Mr Eperson had a great deal to do with this side of his work in the higher divisions and found him extraordinarily easy to teach with a minimum of explanation. Moreover, Chris showed none of the impatience which keen boys may feel when after hours spent on a problem a neater solution is promptly shown them.’
Alan’s nephew, Dermot Turing, described how in Christopher Alan had found a mentor, ‘somebody who didn’t think it was weird to be interested in equations and astronomy and the behaviour of sulphites.’ The two boys would meet in the School library on Wednesday afternoons to discuss their research and during the Lent and Trinity terms in 1929 they received additional tuition in organic chemistry from their science master A.J.P. Andrews.
Christopher’s interest in astronomy was evident to his contemporaries at Lyon House where he would take a telescope up to the dormitory so he could watch a certain star during the night, from which observations he constructed his own star chart. Alan Turing told A.H. Trelawny-Ross that Christopher’s favourite star was Capella (also known as the Goat Star), but other friends suggested it was Arcturus. Returning to Lyon House on a summer evening he would point out Jupiter to his friends, saying ‘Look at dear old Jupiter’. Christopher and Alan’s shared interest in astronomy was further revealed by the prize books Alan selected on Christopher’s behalf after he was posthumously awarded the School’s prestigious Digby Prize for Mathematics and Science for 1929. The books Alan chose were Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World and The Internal Constitution of the Stars and Sir James Hopwood Jeans’ Astronomy and Cosmogony and The Universe Around Us.
In December 1929, Christopher and Alan Turing went up to Trinity College Cambridge to sit the scholarship exams. Christopher was awarded an open scholarship but Alan was unsuccessful. Back at Sherborne in Lent term 1930, a concert of part-songs was given by the Salisbury Singers in the Big Schoolroom on the evening of Thursday, 6 February. Christopher loved music and had taken Alan to meetings of the Gramophone Society run by their mathematics master Donald Eperson, so it is not surprising that Christopher, Alan and other friends attended the concert. However, that night Christopher was taken ill and the next day he was moved to the Yeatman Hospital in Sherborne for observation. On Sunday 9 February Christopher was taken to London where he underwent two operations for an intestinal obstruction (a result of tuberculous peritonitis), but there were complications and he died at noon on 13 February 1930 in a nursing home at 19, Manchester Street, London.
Christopher Morcom was buried at dawn on Saturday 15 February 1930 at Christ Church in Catshill, where in 1931 a stained glass memorial window of St Christopher by Karl Parsons was installed in the Lady Chapel, with the face of Christ seated on St Christopher’s shoulder said to have been modelled on Christopher. The next day a service was held in the chapel at Sherborne School where Christopher is commemorated by a memorial pew (no.57).
In 1930, Christopher’s parents founded at Sherborne School the Christopher Morcom Prize, an annual prize for natural science ‘to be awarded, not as a result of an examination, but to the boy whose year’s work is best reported on by the science teaching staff, taking into consideration general progress, originality and understanding.’ Winners of the prize were presented with an illuminated manuscript designed by Madeline Walker and Miss E. Stiles, together with a mezzotint portrait of Christopher by the artist Norman Hirst (1862-1956). The Morcom family also presented Sherborne School with a purpose-built cabinet, made by Mr White of Bromsgrove,in which to hold the prize books and the mezzotint portraits. Mrs Morcom was a well-known sculptor and was personally involved in the design of the prize books and the cabinet.
Alan Turing was awarded the Christopher Morcom prize in 1930 (for showing originality in a paper on ‘the reaction of sulphites and iodates in acid solution’) and again in 1931 (for having been awarded an open scholarship at King’s College Cambridge). Other winners of the prize have included Christopher’s nephew John Morcom and Alan Turing’s nephew Dermot Turing.
The day after Christopher’s funeral, Alan Turing wrote to his mother saying, ‘I feel sure that I shall meet Morcom again somewhere & that there will be some work for us to do together, as I believed there was for us to do here. Now that I am left to do it alone I must not let him down but put as much energy into it, if not as much interest, as if he were still here.’
The following obituary for Christopher Morcom, written by his housemaster A.H. Trelawny-Ross, was published in the March 1930 issue of The Shirburnian:
‘CHRISTOPHER COLLAN MORCOM, born July 13th, 1911, came to Sherborne (Ross’) as a Scholar in the Summer term of 1925. He at once made his mark as a boy of outstanding intellectual gifts. He could have done well in other subjects, but Mathematics and Science attracted him most of all, and to these he added an unusual knowledge of Astronomy. He won an Open Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge last December and was to have gone into residence in October next. There is no doubt that his career would have been a brilliant one; but this was not to be. Early in February he was suddenly attacked again by an illness for which he had a severe operation three years ago. He faced the unexpected danger with the uncomplaining courage which was a part of him. He was taken to London and it was hoped that the attack would pass off. A relapse led to two operations, and this was too much for his strength. He passed away peacefully at noon six days after the blow fell.
Great as were his intellectual gifts, they were more than equalled by the charm of his nature. To know him was to love him for his modesty, his kindness, his own great love of happiness and laughter and his stainless character. Those who had the privilege of knowing him intimately will preserve a memory of even more than this with an abiding thankfulness for four or five years of friendship.
He lies near the home he loved so well in Worcestershire. It is there that in thought we breathe our “Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.” He was buried at dawn with the darkness all behind him – though there was no darkness in this life save the pain of his illness.’
Two years after Christopher’s death, while visiting the Morcom family at the Clock House, Alan Turing wrote ‘Nature of Spirit’ in which he stated his beliefs about the afterlife and the relationship between the spirit and the body.
See also:
- Christopher Morcom’s sixth form reading list
- King’s Mead School Memorials, Seaford, Sussex
- Lyon House, Sherborne School
- Alan Turing and Sherborne School
For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist
Return to the School Archives homepage