Cecil Allison Scutt ca 1889-1961

[Cambridge Independent Press, Friday 20 June 1913. Fitzwilliam Hall. Scholarships. The George Charles Winter Warr Scholarship for Classical Research is awarded to Cecil Allison Scutt, B.A., Clare.] [The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.: 1848-1956) Wednesday 20 June 1928 p15 Article - Social Events. The colours of Newman College Club handsome combination of red blue and black formed the basis of the decorative scheme which transformed the St Kilda Town Hall into a ballroom for the annual at home given hot evening by the students of Newman College. As the special guests arrived .... Professor and Mrs Scutt .... Mrs. Scutt's frock of shot deep cyclamen mauve taffetas was made with a full skirt.] [Outward bound passenger lists for London in December 1928 as follows, Professor Cecil Scutt age 39, Mrs. Lillian Scutt home duties age 36, Master Robert Scutt age 8, Master Phillip Scutt age 3.] [The Register News-Pictorial - Adelaide, SA :Monday 27 January 1930 p7. Prof. C. A. Scutt, of Melbourne University, and Mrs. Scutt, are returning from a holiday trip to Europe by the Runic, which reached Outer Harbour on Saturday.] [Argus - Melbourne Wednesday 18 May 1938. Commenting on a request by the Universities' Bureau of the British Empire for assistance for the British schools at Rome and Athens, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Professor of Classics at the University of Melbourne (Professor C. A. Scutt), who spent some time at the Athens school as a research scholar after he left Cambridge, said yesterday that both schools had been doing very valuable work over a period of about 50 years. Money for excavation work, he said, was the principal need of the Athens school. A small grant from each of the universities of the Empire each year would do a great deal to assist the work.] [C A S - 72yr.] [He was a classical scholar, and was educated at Wakefield Grammar School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated (B.A., 1911; M.A., 1915) with first-class honours in the classical tripos and second-class in the medieval and modern languages tripos. With the aid of a Prendergast studentship (1912, 1914) and a Warr research scholarship in 1913, he engaged in excavation and philological research in Southern Italy and Greece and published 'The Tsakonian dialect' in the Annual of the British School at Athens (volumes 19-20, 1912-13, 1913-14). During World War I, when the allied forces started operations in the Balkans, Scutt, a fluent speaker of modern Greek, commanded a mixed band of Macedonian irregulars for outpost and intelligence work. Returning to England he became a teacher at Repton School, Derbyshire, in 1918 at Mirfield, Yorkshire, married Lilian Buckley with Congregational forms. Appointed to the chair of classical philology at the University of Melbourne in October 1919, Scutt did not maintain the prominent reputation of his department established by his brilliant predecessor T. G. Tucker. But his skill and dedication as a teacher were appreciated; he practised traditional methods of teaching, relying less on formal lectures than on individual tuition. He taught a final-year course in comparative philology and, as local research opportunities were limited, assisted his best graduates to obtain scholarships to Cambridge and Oxford. Scutt, who had a ruddy, cheerful face and broad Yorkshire accent, was an active member of the academic community. He was dean of the faculty of arts in 1925-28 and 1938, and a member of the board of management of the university press, of the general library committee and the faculty of education. From 1920 to 1953 he served almost continuously as a member of the schools board. Although little involved in the wider community, he was patron of the Classical Association of Victoria in 1920-25. A socialist in his youth, a staunch conservative in later life, raised as a Nonconformist but later agnostic, Scutt believed in 'the culture of ancient Athens and the best of English traditions, but little else'. Retiring in 1955, he returned to Cambridge in 1961 and died there on 26 March. His wife and two sons survived him. Apart from his academic reputation, contemporaries remembered him with affection for his integrity, geniality and common sense, for his 'instinct for the just cause' and 'for the light of interest in his eyes at the mere mention of cricket' ~ Diane Langmore, "Scutt, Cecil Allison (1889-1961)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp.558-559.] [C A S - 72yr., residence:Toorak, Australia, cremated: 30 Mar 1961 Cambridge Crematorium (Cambridge).]