MILL BOY TO PROFESSOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 80, 25 June 1927, Page 10

MILL BOY TO PROFESSOR

NEVER HAD SCHOOLING There was recently hung in t|ie Council School at Thackley, Bradford, a portrait of a man who as a boy worked in a Yorkshire mill for 3s 6d a week, and who has now a world reputation as the author of the classic English Dialect Dictionary. The famous man is Dr. Joseph Wright, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford. The small boys who will look upon his picture to-day are more fortunate than the little boy who is now able to write after his name a long list of University distinctions.

For Joseph Wright never had a whole day’s schooling; until he was 15 he was unable either to read or write.

To-day he is one of the most honoured men in Oxford, and certainly the most interesting. Born in a one-room cottage at Thackley, near Bradford, Dr. Wiight now lives in a beautiful house with a fine garden and on the gate is its name—“Thackley”—in honour of his native place.

“Look at the roof,” Dr. Wright exclaimed, as he showed an English journalist his garden. “The flatstones came from the moors near my old home.” In the study Dr. Wright recalled some of the incidents of his romantic life

“My father died early,” he said, “and my mother was left with four children. For several months we lived in Clayton Workhouse. When I was six I went to work in a quarry; my job was to go to and from the blacksmith’s with the men’s tools in a donkey-cart. The quarry-owner gave me Is 6d a week, and each of the labourers a penny, and, working ten hours a day, I kept this job for a year. “My mother then took me to Sir Titus Salt’s mill at Saltaire, where I became a ‘doffer,’ and all the schooling I ever had was at the mill school provided by the owner.” It was during the Franco-German War that Joseph Wright taught himself to read; his text-books were the Bible and “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Later, he taught himself French, German, Latin and Greek, and at the age of 20 he began to teach others. “In the one bedroom of our cottage at Windhill I taught reading and arithmetic every evening for 2d a week per pupil; there was only one chair and the class sat on the bed. “By the time I was 21 I had saved £4O, and with this I attended a 14weeks’ course at Heidelberg University. “Then I returned to England, passed the London Matriculation, went on teaching, and in time saved enough to return to Germany, where I studied for six years.” Eventually Dr. Wright found in Oxford a lectureship—and a wife. “My wife was one of my students. She has helped me enormously with my work. We are almost inseparable Only twice in the whole of our married life have w'e ever been apart, and that was when the death of a relative called us away.” Dr. Wright’s great dictionary was begun in 1895 and completed ten years later. It contains 100,000 dialect words. At the end of the ten years there were two million separate slips in the workroom which the University I ress provided for his staff of trained assistants. Dr. Wright undertook this gigantic work at his own risk, but when the parts began t 6 appear honours v* ere showered upon him, and in 1899 he was granted a Civil Life Pension of £2OO a year in recognition of his work