MEN WHO HAVE PLAYED AN IMPORTANT PART IN THE BUILDING UP OF A LIVING BROTHERHOOD

Thanks are extended to Bro Mick Walker for the submission of this article

BROTHER ROBERT WILSON-MARSH, R.O.H.

    There are many men who made some contribution to the development of the Order but in spite of the unhappy nature of his ending I would say that Bro. Wilson Marsh was outstanding.

    He really came to prominence as an administrator as President of the Cardiff Convention in 1897: a Convention charged with the emotional resistance of the Metropolitan section who were still smarting under their defeat in 1895 when the right of the London Minor Lodges to be represented at Grand Lodge was ended, and in ending brought the power of London, wielded without a break for 29 years, to an end.

    He took Convention through a long agenda, an agenda with its full share of controversial and debatable subjects, including the inflammable proposal to remove Grand Lodge from London, and although there was at times a little disturbance on the face of the waters it never rose to the dignity of a ripple and most of this was due to his first class ability to blow out incipient flames before any real damage was done, and before you accuse me of mixing my metaphor read on to the end for you will find that Bro. Wilson Marsh could handle both elements with the skill of an expert.

    That he was a good Grand Primo and President of Convention was admitted even by those who for years opposed everything that had his mark upon it. That he was a good secretary can be seen in the records.

    He came into the Order in 1887 and was one of the leaders of the general reform movement leading up to the 1895 changes in Grand Lodge representation. After his years of office as Deputy Grand Primo and Grand Primo he continued to impress his personality on Grand Lodge and in 1899 he was elected Grand Secretary of England.

    His extremely tidy mind revolted at muddle be it in thought, in planning, or in act and he neither asked for or gave quarter to the rather large percentage of Grand Lodge habitués who were unable to distinguish between talking and saying something: and he made enemies in many influential quarters. The records are full of the attacks both important and unimportant made upon him and no subject was too trivial for his tormentors to hang a jibe or an innuendo on. As the years went by suspicion was added to unreasoning dislike and during the last two or three years of his office he was continually under fire but no one could shoot such an elusive target down even after it became evident that all was not well with our finances. Who but Wilson Marsh could have held on to office for more than eighteen months without producing balance sheets for three successive periods? His very intransigence in the face of obvious defeat seemed to endear him to many people and it is a tribute to his dominant character that even at the point where no one could but admit his defalcations when the final vote on his deposition was taken there were 29 votes recorded against the action.

    No one but Wilson Marsh ever knew just at what point he went wrong, what small act pushed him off the straight and narrow path. His ability in every office he held was beyond question. He was a fine orator and administrator and his probity was never in doubt for the first fifteen years of his service with the Order. He performed an amount of propaganda work all over the country that can be fairly described as massive; the number of lodges were more than doubled during his term of office as secretary, the salary paid him was disgraceful even for that time in history and the persistent refusal of Grand Lodge to provide him with assistance as the work piled up would have broken most men.

    His trial at Leeds on May 28th, 1908, proved beyond question that he had used the funds of the Order for his own purpose but oddly enough no one attempted to prove or even suggest that he was guilty of extravagant living, of gambling, or speculation or that his life in any other respect was other than that of a good citizen.

    He had clearly known for at least two years that he could not recover from the small lapses in financial probity that must have been present in his earlier record as Grand Secretary but even so the total defalcations charged against him was less than £300. A fair guess is that he hoped against hope that the attempts to increase his salary or to provide extra assistance would be successful and that he might go on to recover from that point.

    It was not to be, and Wilson Marsh, for twenty years a figure to be reckoned with in every unit of buffaloism, was found guilty and sentenced to two months imprisonment, a sentence worse than death to a man of his calibre for in that day it automatically threw him into the gutter. In these more enlightened days the Stipendiary would have given us a ticking off for using slave labour and have bound him over or, even more likely have given him an unconditional discharge.

    The sentence undoubtedly broke him in body and in spirit, and he never recovered from the disgrace and obscurity his action entailed in 1908.

        In this series of essays, constant reference has been made to the Cardiff Convention of 1897 when the provincial representatives broke the metropolitan domination of Grand Lodge and to the fortnightly Grand Lodge meetings which followed that Convention. These culminated in the stormy meeting held on November 4th in London and the first meeting in the provinces held on November 19th in Birmingham. The year 1897 was remarkable because the Grand Primo for that year, Robert Wilson-Marsh, was the first provincial brother to hold that office.

    In private life a Managing Clerk for a firm of Solicitors, he had represented the Portsmouth Province in the Grand Lodge meetings. He was P.G.P., Portsmouth, in 1891 92. As so often occurs in a man with a natural flair for the law, he is reputed to have been fertile in argument and almost unequalled in debate. He naturally took the side against London in the controversy which resulted in Grand Lodge leaving the metropolis, and presided at the second session of the Grand Lodge meeting of November 4th, 1897, where the provincials gained their Pyrrhic victory (In 280 B.C. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, and one of the greatest generals of the ancient world, defeated the Roman Army under the consul Laevinus at Heraclea but with such heavy losses that the phrase, a Pyrrhic victory has become proverbial). and decided henceforward to remove the meeting place of Grand Lodge to the provinces.

    It is recorded that the only property the victorious provincials brought away from the meeting was the Grand Primos collar, worn by Brother Wilson-Marsh, although rumour states that had they looked into the top of the piano in the meeting room, the Minute Books and other records would have fallen as prizes of war into their victorious hands. After November 4th he completed his term of office with the meetings in Birmingham.

    For the year 1898, Brother John Archdeacon was the elected Grand Primo, Brother Carter of Poulton le-Fylde Province was the Deputy Grand Primo, Brother George Loxton of Dudley was the Grand Secretary and Brother William Butler of Birmingham was the Grand Treasurer. Brother Wilson-Marsh, of course, being the Immediate Past Grand Primo.

    The new Grand Lodge was naturally penniless, but not bankrupt. Brother Carter presented items of Grand Lodge regalia in May, 1898, and Brother William Butler loaned £50 to ease the birth pangs of the new governmental body of the Order. The £50 was not needed and was returned very quickly to the lender, but the ability of the young Grand Secretary, Brother George Loxton, so impressed the Grand Treasurer that he was found a job with Messrs. Mitchells & Butlers Ltd., the famous Birmingham brewery of which the Grand Treasurer was a principal. This caused a vacancy in the Grand Secretaryship, and Brother Robert Wilson-Marsh was elected to fill that vacancy at the meeting of Grand Lodge on March 1st, 1899. There were three candidates for the office, Brothers Wm. Evetts and T. W. Boden being the unsuccessful contestants. Before that event he had carried out an amount of secretarial work for the Order.

    At the height of the bitter quarrel between London and the Provinces, one of the first decisions was to re number the lodges loyal to the Convention decision for a movable Grand Lodge, and to eliminate from the sequence both the lodges which had become defunct and the lodges which remained with the Limited banner in London. Thus the Albion Lodge, Liverpool, originally No. 14 inaugurated on 18th December, 1867, became No.1 in the new sequence, the Royal Victoria Lodge, Longton, originally No. 21 became No.2, the Royal Alhambra Lodge, Wakefield, originally No.27 became No.3 and so on. This task was carried out by Brother Wilson-Marsh during 1898 with meticulous accuracy. His personally written record of that date remains the pattern of our system of recording new lodges today, and stands as the first Rolls Book of the Grand Lodge.

    Brother Wilson-Marsh was Secretary of three Conventions at Middlesbrough in 1900, Worcester in 1903 and Hull in 1906. One of our prized records is his hand written minutes of the Hull Convention.

    There did not exist sixty years ago the speedy communications of our day, and this slowness of contact was accompanied by the absence of provincial and minor lodge organisation in many parts of the country.

    As has previously been stated in this series, the total number of Minor Lodges giving allegiance to the new Grand Lodge was 322 under twenty three district or provincial lodges. These factors prevented the Grand Lodge from exercising the national control to which we are now accustomed. An example is to be found in the creation of the Grand Middlesex Banner.

    The West Middlesex Province of G.L.E. was in dispute with Brother Penny, its Provincial Grand Primo, and another Brother Penny, its Provincial Grand Secretary. (These brothers were not related). The assistance of Grand Lodge was sought to settle the dispute, but no assistance was forthcoming. The Middlesex brethren very naturally said that if their requests were ignored, they could do equally well on their own.

    At first they described themselves as the Grand Lodge of England, Middlesex Division, but subsequently changed their name to the Grand Middlesex Banner. A number of lodges in Kent threw in their lot with the Middlesex brethren, but after some years there was a further breakaway, most of the dissident Kentish lodges combining to establish the Royal Kentish Banner. This section, therefore, is a breakaway from the Grand Middlesex Banner not a split from G.L.E. direct.

    The loss of the Middlesex and Kentish brethren was, in the years to come, more serious than the split between London and the provinces. The latter resulted in the formation of two Grand Lodges, G.L.E. and G.L.E. Ltd., both similar in their methods, both using similar emblems and parchments and both claiming direct descent from the original Grand Lodge of 1866.

    The early years of their divergence may have resembled the brotherly spirit of Cain and Abel more than that of the Bedser twins but, all through the years, the disagreements and the associations were those to be expected within a family group. The Middlesex Banner, however, cut clean away from the old tradition and determined to found a banner complete in itself, restricted to the metropolitan area in its organisation, but of exceptionally high standard in its ceremonial and benevolent work. In this they were successful. While it was comparatively easy in recent years to obtain an inter affiliation agreement between G.L.E. and G.L.E. Limited, it required much patient planning and the observance of much brotherly toleration to secure agreement between G.M.B. and the other signatories to the inter affiliation agreement.

    A corollary to the G.M.B. story is to, be found within G.L.E. itself, in the same manner in which past Grand Secretaries have had to rely on their immediate predecessors. For an estimate of Brother Robert Wilson-Marsh, the conversations of the late Brother John Wilson illuminated other dark corners of our history and progress. Any organisation such as ours which aspires to national status must find its strongholds in the districts where heavy industry produces sufficient density of population to provide the recruiting ground for our membership. Manchester and South Staffordshire (with Birmingham) led the revolt against London in 1897, but the Order in the North East was equally strong although unable to send delegates to the fortnightly meetings in London and was consequently less vocal.

    This led them to develop their own methods of organisation remote from Grand Lodge, to use their own printed forms rather than the official forms, to pay dues intermittently if at all and to carry on without guidance from the centre. Brother Wilson was of the opinion that it was the most fortunate thing in the world that a separate banner was not formed in those years on Tyneside along the River Wear and round the estuary of the Tees.

    No proper understanding of the position of the Grand Lodge of Brother Wilson-Marshs day can be obtained without an appreciation of the fact that our Order was then, despite the growth of the early provinces, an intimate body wherein Grand Lodge dealt direct with problems of the Minor Lodges in their various districts. Degree raisings, observance of rule or ceremony, the behaviour of individual members, these and many similar items provided the well debated business of the fortnightly Grand Lodge meetings.

    In our evolution the successive steps which have enabled G.L.E. to become different from all other sections of the Order have been first the Orphanage as pioneered by Brother Leonard Aulton and followed up by the Grand Lodge of 1926 which bought Grove House, next the spread of the Order overseas fostered by Brother Ord Hume and inspired by Brother Billy Rose, then the foundation of the War Memorial Annuity Scheme for which Brothers John Wilson and Lionel Jacobs were so very largely responsible, followed by our National Convalescent Scheme and finally the co ordination of all our benevolent activities in line with the development of the Welfare State for which credit must be given to Brother Mervyn Payne who was for so long the primus inter pares as No.1 of our national executive.

    Bro. Wilson-Marsh whose proposals for a compulsory Benevolent scheme had not been approved was uncomplimentary about the position which then existed as a result of failure to produce something solid at Grand Lodge level. Appeals to the Order all of which found their way to the Minor Lodges were in his view driving brethren away from Minor Lodges, would have been unnecessary if adequate organised funds had been made available to meet the needs out of which these appeals arose. The voluntary fund was little more than a farce, of 57 Provincial Grand and District Primo Lodges only 24 were in compliance and whilst many of them were undoubtedly relying on their own Widows and Orphan funds to the exclusion of the national fund the net result was that instead of being able to offer Philanthropy as a right we could only offer an uncertain and often a deplorable charity.

    What really annoyed him, and I think events proved him to be right, was that he believed that if all lodges participated in the Grand Lodge Benevolent Fund, so far from it injuring the local Benevolent and Widows and Orphan funds, it would actually have assisted them for the brethren, assured of a grant in time of need from a well founded and established central fund would have attended their lodges more regularly because of the attendance qualifications and would therefore have been of assistance to the local funds which came partly from the registration fees.

    Grand Lodge was thus given national and international problems to handle. The administration of our Minor Lodges was handed over to the provinces to provide them with the responsibility of and equality with the many other sections or banners of the Order.

    Brother Wilson-Marsh flourished before these things came to pass. His was the foundation work of the Grand Lodge. He recorded the loyal lodges; he endeavoured to protect the provincial interest against the metropolitan group; he arranged the provision of official stationery, of regular rule books, directories and other requirements. He made these tasks his full time occupation. As chairman of the Rules Revision Committee which sat almost continuously through 1897 and 1898, he played the major part in setting up the new rule book required after the split.

    Inevitably he had his critics. Many brethren of less ability believed (and believed correctly) that the salary paid to him was insufficient to justify his full time work for the Order. Their suspicions were true. He was eventually found to be in default with a small item of Grand Lodge registration dues. A charge was made and he was sentenced to a short period of imprisonment in 1908. The only other record we have is a report at the Grand Lodge meeting in November, 1911, that Brother Wilson Marsh had passed away at Fulham Infirmary.

    What can one say of human frailty?     The immortal words of John Bunyon spring to the lips     There but for the Grace of God go I. When the final record is completed, it will still be possible to say Thank you to Robert Wilson-Marsh. His contribution to buffaloism was infinitely greater than any wrong which he did. From clay we were created, to the mother clay he has returned. May we, his successors, be given his ability and courage.

    Apologies are given for the poor quality of the pictures, but they are the only ones available to me at the present time.