Henry Whitehead Moss

Henry Whitehead Moss (born June 23, 1841 in Lincoln (Lincolnshire) , † January 14, 1917 in London ) was an English school principal and was for 42 years the Shrewsbury School .

He was born the eldest of four sons of the cloth merchant Henry Moss and his wife Louisa, née Bainbridge. After attending school in his hometown, he switched to the traditional Shrewsbury School in 1857 and finally came to St John's College at Cambridge University in 1860 , where he won various prizes during his studies, such as the Porson Prize for poetry in ancient Greek . In 1864 he was elected Senior Classic due to his outstanding achievements and shortly thereafter a Fellow . But in 1866 he left Cambridge again and returned to Shrewsbury School, where - shortly before his 25th birthday - he was appointed headmaster to succeed Benjamin Hall Kennedy . In 1887 he married Mary Beaufort († 1948), the daughter of William Augustus Beaufort, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, the Egyptologist Rosalind Louisa Beaufort Moss .

Even under its two predecessors, Samuel Butler and Benjamin Hall Kennedy, the school, which had been in a very poor condition around 1800, had grown rapidly and gained importance, especially in the field of classical studies . Moss drew the necessary conclusions from this positive development and arranged for the move from the confining inner city of Shrewsbury to a 100 acre site above the Severn near Kingsland , which was decided against some opposition in 1875 and carried out in 1882. During his term of office the transition from teaching to trimesters took place . From 1899 to 1902 Moss was the Headmasters' Conference , a body of directors of major schools in the territories of the United Kingdom , from.

Among the students he was considered aloof and aloof, but was known for his hard work and his talent for conversation. Politically he was conservative and imperialist ; so he foresaw a war with the German Empire early on and reintroduced the cadet corps of the Shrewsbury School. Also very early, as early as 1873, he feared that Classical Antiquities would increasingly compete with other subject areas and lose its relative importance in the process. Overall, his school developed positively from a technical and educational point of view during his tenure, but the number of pupils decreased towards the end. In 1908, Henry Whitehead Moss retired at the age of 67 and moved to Highfield Park near Oxford . In 1917 he died in London after a stroke and was buried in Shrewsbury.

In the memoirs of his wife, one who Sermon and some Latin verses of Moss received.

literature

• JHC Leach: Moss, Henry Whitehead (1841-1917). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 39: Morant – Murray. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861389-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), Last updated: 2004, accessed December 24, 2015.
• Mary Beaufort Moss: Moss of Shrewsbury. A memoir, 1841-1917. Adnitt and Naunton, Shrewsbury 1932 (memoirs of his wife).