Leonard Barden wrote: ↑Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:30 pm
I guess my favourable opinion of [Stammwitz] as a BCF official may have been in contrast to his successor Frank Chetwynd, the first BCF paid secretary, who was notably indolent and who was a regular drinking companion to William Winter during the BCF congress at Buxton 1950, held a few doors away from a pub.
The following is also relevant...
Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:54 pm
There's an old joke which may even go back to the 1940s which was that the BCF was unable to hold a meeting of principal officers because they were all in jail I think three were cited, a notorious jailbird (according to BH Wood), a bigamist and someone else.
Did anyone read my article on Frank Chetwynd in CHESS, October 2021, ppn 30-33? I was quite expecting someone on the forum to leap on it and quote passages from it here, but there was no reaction.
Also relevant is this...
- 1950-51-bcf-committee.jpg (187.35 KiB) Viewed 1155 times
In the above image - page 30 of the 1950/51 BCF Yearbook - I draw the forum's attention to the Laws and Rules sub-committee formed in 1951 of Messrs. J T Boyd, W Ritson Morry, A F Stammwitz and W Winter, with the Secretary (Frank Chetwynd) in attendance. Of those five, four had served prison sentences, three for serious crimes of dishonesty (those three being Morry, Stammwitz and Chetwynd: Winter's crime had "only" been sedition).
My 2021 October CHESS article revealed the fact that the BCF's first full-time Hon.Sec. Frank Ernest Chetwynd (1904-58) had served an 18-month prison sentence in 1939 for stealing £1,080 (equivalent to about £75,000 today) from his employers whilst working as a wages clerk and then going on the run. Some ten years later he wrote a jokey pen picture of his life story of his life to this point, including his exploits at university, playing rugby, cricket, honours degree in commerce, etc, and telling us that "the war stopped all this" which wasn't quite true as a Birmingham judge got there first. No mention of his conviction, naturally. Chetwynd's pen picture was published in the London Chess Bulletin, 28 January 1949, under the by-line 'an honest autobiography': the editor was Ritson Morry.
What we shall probably never know is whether any BCF officer knew of Chetwynd's criminal past in 1946 when he was appointed Hon.Sec. (for which he was paid £600pa: equivalent of around £25,000 today).
- 1939-10-03 The Scotsman - Chetwynd conviction.png (99.38 KiB) Viewed 1155 times
