Welsh Journals

OBITUARY ARTHUR HERBERT DODD (1891-1975) THE death of Emeritus Professor Arthur Herbert Dodd on 14 May 1975 will have greatly saddened many Welsh and English historians. A. H. Dodd was a member of a notable Wrexham family, which included his brother, C. H. Dodd, the eminent New Testament scholar. One of his earliest memories was of listening to his brother telling him stories from the Bible and of teaching him to count in Welsh. Their father was headmaster of a primary school, and in the Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society (1972), A. H. Dodd wrote tenderly of him. In the same Transactions there is a good portrait of the young family. A. H. Dodd was educated at Wrexham Grammar School and at New College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished academic record. His career was interrupted by the First World War in which he served as a soldier. Two of his recollections may perhaps be noted here. The first was of Lewis Namier outside the gates of New College urging under- graduates to enlist in the great struggle against Germany. The other was of being sent to No Man's Land to rescue the wounded with inadequate equipment which had survived the Boer War. He had at first contemplated a career in the civil service, but soon resolved, doubtless wisely, that he was best suited for academic work. He joined the staff of the University College of North Wales, Bangor in 1919, and eleven years later succeeded Sir John Edward Lloyd as Professor of History. He retired in 1958, having served under three principals. His remarkable energy was for long unabated; he lectured at St. Mary's College, Bangor, for a time and he later succeeded Dr. R. T. Jenkins as Honorary Curator of the Museum of Welsh Antiquities; he became editor of the new diocesan history of Bangor and he wrote the early history of the University College of North Wales in preparation for the centenary in 1984; for several years he was a member of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire (as it was then called) and Chairman of the Council of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society. His devotion to the adult education movement, which began in R. H. Tawney's tutorial class at Wrexham in 1911, continued throughout his life. He was an active chairman of the North Wales District of the Workers' Education Association and he lectured regularly to an extra-mural class until a few months before his death. He had also been a vice-president of the Historical Association. The degree of D.Litt., honoris causa, of the University of Wales was conferred upon him, and both he and his brother, C. H. Dodd, were made freemen of Wrexham. A. H. Dodd's first major work, and perhaps his best, The Industrial Revolution in North Wales, which appeared in 1933 (reprinted 1951, 1971), was widely acclaimed as an admirable pioneer study, and whereas new sources and new perspectives have emerged in the interval, it is, neverthe- less, a volume to which succeeding generations will return with pleasure and profit. Thereafter, he became increasingly attracted to the Tudor