Arthur James Ewins, 1882-1958

Arthur James Ewins was born in Norwood in 1882, his father being a signalman on what was then the South Eastern Railway. The increasing value of the estate of the old Dulwich College (‘Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift’) had enabled its Governors to found, in addition, a modern secondary school, Alleyn’s School, in that neighbourhood. Ewins obtained his first important educational opportunity by winning a scholarship giving him entry to this school, at a time when its Headmaster was Dr H. B. Baker, F.R.S., who later became Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the University of Oxford. By the time Ewins left school, therefore, in 1899, he had had a better opportunity than most lads of 17 in those days, to obtain a good grounding in chemistry, making him ready for a career in that subject. He left school, in fact, to accept such an opportunity at The Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, which had then recently been established in that part of London, at Brockwell Hall—a former manor house of which most of the estate had already become the public Brockwell Park, leaving the house and a few acres of land available to the Wellcome Laboratories for the remaining years of the lease.