We are extremely pleased that a settlement has been reached with Ms. Julia Turing (formerly known as Julia Schwinghamer) concerning the return to Sherborne School of items she removed in 1984 without permission from the archives given to the School in 1965 by the Turing family in memory of the time Alan Turing spent as a pupil here.
We would like to thank the staff of the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries for alerting us and the police to the location of the material and also to the Dept of Homeland Security Investigations for their sterling efforts in seizing the material and for instigating proceedings against Ms. Turing.
Amongst the items we are looking forward to being returned to the School are six of Alan Turing’s school reports dating from 1924 to 1931 which chart his intellectual development between the ages of 12 and 18; the OBE he was awarded in 1946 for secret war service in the Foreign Office, together with a letter from King George VI regretting that (due to ill health) he was unable to present the award in person; the Princeton University PhD certificate awarded to Alan Turing in 1938; and the portrait photographs taken of Alan Turing in 1951 when he was made a fellow of the Royal Society.
Although Sherborne School was not a party to the Settlement Agreement with Ms. Turing, it has been agreed that when Alan Turing’s Princeton PhD certificate is returned to the School a plaque will be displayed near to it stating that it was in Ms. Turing’s care from 1984-2020.
We are sorry that by removing the material from the School archives Ms. Turing has denied generations of pupils and researchers the opportunity to consult it. However, once the material is returned to the School it will be available for consultation either in person or via the Alan Turing page on the School Archives website.
Alan Turing is one of Sherborne School’s most distinguished alumni and, whilst there is no denying that he was a very individual boy, as he proved when, aged 13, during the General Strike in May 1926 he cycled the 65 miles from Southampton to Sherborne for his first day of term. In his last year at the School Alan Turing was made a School Prefect and won all the School prizes for Science and Mathematics. When he left in 1931 the Headmaster wrote on his school report: ‘A gifted and distinguished boy, whose future career we shall watch with much interest.’
During his life Alan Turing returned to Sherborne on numerous occasions to visit his former teachers, and in 1953, a year before his death, he returned to give a talk about his research into computers, or as he called them ‘The Electronic Brain’. In later years, Alan’s brother sent his son, Dermot Turing, to the School.
Read the BBC news article about the return of the Turing Archives to Sherborne School
Visit Sherborne School Archive News for more stories from the archives.
Posted 11 November 2020 by Sherborne School Archives.