MOUNTAIN TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 22457, 30 September 1936, Page 3

MOUNTAIN TRAGEDY

SCHOOLBOYS SEE MASTER DIE While tramping across rugged Seawfell recently with a party of happy schoolboys one of the masters in charge suddenly tripped, somersaulted several times, and crashed to death down the mountainside. He was Air Frank Allen, aged 30, classics master at Wirral Grammar School, Bebington, who lived at Leicester. At the inquest, held in a remote farm hojise in the Eskdale Valley, a verdict of “ accidental death ” was returned. Air George R. Carpenter, of London, a master, described how the party climbed to the top of Scawfell. “ There was heavy mist and rain, and and wc had gone only a few hundred feet on our downward journey,” related Air Carpenter, “ when Air Allen called to me to go slowly as a small boy had hurt his ankle.” Shortly afterward he heard a boy cry out that Mr Allen had fallen. He wfiit back, and found Air Allen lying unconscious and bleeding. Air Carpenter put forward the theory that Air Allen possibly slipped, got into a headlong run, and in attempting to stop himself, fell among loose boulders. In reply to the coroner Air Carpenter declared that none of the boys had been “up to any tricks.” Their behaviour both before and after the accident had been superb. A native of Leicester. Air Allen had been at Wirral Grammar School since it was opened in 1931. He was educated at University College, Nottingham, and took his B.A. with honours. He went to Wirral from Alaidstono Grammar School,