James William Stewart Callie was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in September 1892, taking the motto ‘Expertus metuit’.  Over the next three years he did the reading required of members who wanted to progress further; and was initiated into the GD’s inner, 2nd Order in February 1896 - only members of the 2nd Order were allowed to do any magic.

 

 

A WORD OF WARNING BEFORE I START: this is my biography of a member of the Golden Dawn’s Horus Temple at Bradford.  The Horus Temple had two groups of people in it: one group who actually lived in Bradford or the surrounding villages, and a second group who lived in Liverpool and Birkenhead.  I’m fairly sure that people in the two groups knew each other through the Theosophical Society.  This person was one of the Liverpool/Birkenhead group. Anyway, I could have done a much better job of this person’s biography if I lived in the Liverpool area myself and could look at local archives.    

 

 

The surname ‘Callie’ is a very rare one.  I couldn’t find much information about the name or people who had the name on the web, but it does seem to be Scottish and both James Callie’s parents told successive census officials that they had been born in Scotland.  It’s a pity they weren’t a bit more specific, but via familysearch and the web I found evidence that there were people called Callie living in the town of Kirkcudbright (in what is now the county of Dumfries and Galloway) in the early 19th-century; the significance of that being that Kirkcudbright had a regular steamship service to Liverpool.  A boy called James was born to John Callie and his wife Janet, in Kirkcudbright, in 1818 and this may be the GD member’s father.

 

James Callie’s father - I’ll call him James senior - moved with his wife from Scotland to Liverpool and went into business there as a joiner and builder.  Exactly when this happened I haven’t been able to establish for certain, but it must have been by 1852 when James Callie senior’s oldest child, Albert, was born, in Liverpool.  James William Stewart Callie was James senior and Jane’s youngest child, born in Liverpool in 1857.

 

The city of Liverpool was expanding rapidly all through the mid-19th century and a building firm must have had plenty of work.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the Callie family anywhere in the UK on the censuses of 1861 and 1871, but on the day of the 1881 census, they were living at 226 Netherfield Road in the Everton district of Liverpool.  They had moved there within the previous year, from 8 Roscommon Street.  James Callie senior’s firm was employing 18 men on that day.  I’m not sure whether the 18 includes his sons John, and James, but John was by this time his father’s partner in the business and the GD’s James was working as a joiner, presumably for the family firm.  The firm’s name was Callie and Son, not sonS, meaning that the GD’s James was an employee not a partner.  There was a good reason for this: in 1870 the firm had got into financial trouble and in 1881 James Callie senior and John Callie were still struggling with the consequences.  Money had been tight for years - in 1876 James Callie senior was struck off the list of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners because he was in arrears with his membership fees.  James junior - only a child when the trouble started - was being kept out of the mess.

 

Callie and Son, of 11-19 Sheridan Street Liverpool, was declared bankrupt on 6 August 1870.  As it was not a limited company, creditors were entitled to seize the owners’ personal assets (if they had any of course!) to pay off the money they were owed.  Henry Bolland, of accountants Gibson and Bolland, was appointed by the Liverpool courts to deal with the creditors; and he was still trying to sort the situation out 13 years later!  It wasn’t until March 1883 that a Court agreed with Bolland that he had taken the bankruptcy proceedings as far as he could, and Callie and Son was finally freed from the need to pay any more to its creditors.

 

At some point between 1881 and 1891, the GD’s James Callie left the family firm to take up a very different kind of job - a middle-class kind of job, in that it didn’t involve hard physical labour and took place mostly in offices and meeting-halls.  At least up until 1911 - and I would suppose, until he retired or died - he never worked as a joiner again.  I can’t understand how the change happened, though it could have been a consequence of his marriage.  James William Stewart Callie married Catherine Emma Lancaster in 1883.  Although Catherine Emma had worked as a school-teacher until her marriage, her father, John Lancaster, didn’t need to work for a living.  He told the 1881 census official that his income came from dividends - that is, investments.  The family was living in the middle-class Liverpool suburb of West Derby, at 20 Marmaduke Street on the day of the 1881 census.  This is pure speculation but I wonder if the GD’s James Callie got his new job through John Lancaster’s contacts.

 

All I can say for certain about the GD’s James Callie during the 1880s is that he and Catherine Emma had four, possibly five, children during those years.  Harold Stewart Callie was born in 1884 and Jean Stewart Callie in 1886.  A first daughter, Ellen, may have been born to them in 1885 but I can’t find Ellen on any census, so if she is their daughter she must have died in her infancy - though on the other hand there doesn’t seem to be a death registration for her, so that’s a mystery.  James and Catherine Emma and their children were living in the West Derby district for most of the 1880s but by 1889 they had moved across the Mersey to the new housing estates of Birkenhead, where they continued to live until at least 1911.  The death of James Callie’s mother, Jane, in 1886 may have provided an impetus for the change.  James and Catherine Emma’s son James Lancaster Callie was born in Birkenhead in 1889.

 

I think James Callie made his change of career several years before my first evidence of it; because it was not usual, in the 19th-century, to appoint as secretary to an important national organisation someone from outside it; promotion from within was the norm.  However, I can only say for certain that on the day of the 1891 census, James William Callie described his current employment as “Secretary to Financial Reform Association”.  Which makes him one of the few members of the Golden Dawn who gives any indication of being involved in contemporary politics. 

 

The Financial Reform Association was founded in April 1848.  Although there were branches in other major cities, the FRA’s headquarters was in Liverpool.  According to a document published in 1852, the FRA’s aims were economical government; abolition of customs and excise duties and their replacement by direct taxation; and freedom of trade.  One modern history describes what it was aiming for as taxation of real property - that is, land; and moving the tax burden from necessities to luxuries.  In British Society 1680-1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change, Richard Price describes the FRA as “the most extreme free traders” and says that the FRA’s emphasis on free trade was based on the Evangelical concept of self-help, and a fear of organised labour. However, I found that the modern histories tended to overlook the fact that the FRA also campaigned for more and better housing for the working-class.

 

In 1891 the Times said that a prominent FRA member had described the FRA as “a Gladstonian Association”, emphasising its links with the Liberal Party.  However it was not William Ewart Gladstone who was involved with the FRA - at least, not on a daily basis - but his brother Richard Gladstone (1805-75), who worked for the family firm in Liverpool.  Richard Gladstone was quite fanatical in his pursuit of the idea of free trade and became the FRA’s first president.

 

In an era without even radio let alone TV, publishing was a very important part of getting your message out to the people.  It was part of James Callie’s job as FRA Secretary to edit and prepare for publication the FRA’s yearly almanac and its magazine The Financial Reformer.  The FRA had always published small pamphlets arguing its case on specific issues, and James Callie was required to edit these and see them through the process of printing, publicising and selling them.  Increasingly, though, he was also expected to write them, particularly the kind of pamphlet - needed quickly, while the issue was still fresh in the public mind - which was a reply and a challenge to a pamphlet published by somebody else.

 

The passing of the very un-free trade McKinley Tariff Act in the United States in 1890 may have given the FRA renewed energy, because the consequences of the Act fell heavily on Britain’s cotton and woollen industries.  (See my biography of GD member Jeremiah Leech Atherton for its impact on one Bradford family.)  The GD’s James Callie’s first entry into the world of argument-by-pamphlet may have been a result of the FRA deciding to up its game.  Callie’s first pamphlet was issued in 1892, the nine-page Criticisms..., replying to a pamphlet entitled, “Is the Present Low Price of Agricultural Produce Beneficial to the Prosperity of the Nation?” 

 

James Callie was sometimes under pressure at times to get publications printed and distributed for particular occasions: in May 1892, the Times mentioned that the FRA had sent a circular to every MP, ready for the debate on the Budget (the Conservative Party was in power at the time).

 

For most of the 19th-century, politics had been a question of Conservative or Liberal but by the 1890s there were new players in the field; the organised labour movements which Price says the FRA was so afraid of; and socialism.  In 1895, the FRA asked James Callie to produce a series of articles for the Liverpool Post and Echo, countering a pamphlet called (with deliberate irony) Merrie England, published in 1893 by the socialist journalist Robert Blatchford.  Callie’s articles were published in pamphlet form in 1895 as John Smith’s Reply to Merrie England.  In 1901 the FRA required James Callie to produce a leaflet called Better homes for the People of Liverpool. 

 

1906 was a General Election year and as part of the FRA’s campaigning on behalf of the Liberal Party cause, James Callie was asked to write another set of articles for a local newspaper, this time for the Liverpool Post and Mercury.  These were turned into a booklet, at 94 pages the longest work Callie had yet produced: Socialism is not the best remedy - an interesting reflection of the FRA’s anxieties about the politics of that year.  After over a decade of rule by the Conservatives, in 1906 Asquith’s Liberal Party had a landslide victory.  Sensing that the time was ripe, the FRA got James Callie to write a leaflet for the Liberal Party, on financial reform.

 

By the late 1890s James Callie had sufficiently impressed his FRA employers to be entrusted with representing the organisation at meetings; and even with the task of lecturing on its aims.  In 1897 he read a paper called The Social and Economic Effects of Disarmament, at a meeting of the Liverpool and District Bankers’ Institute.  The lecture was later published by the Peace Society.  In October 1901 he may have given another talk, this time on Famines and the Famine; he was certainly at the meeting at which this paper was read but the snippet I found wasn’t clear as to whose talk it was; he may just have been in the audience.  In 1905 he attended the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation; with a General Election likely to happen soon, this was an important occasion for free traders so I am pleased the FRA wanted James Callie to be their representative at it.  And in the midst of the turbulent year 1910 he wrote for the FRA a statement (presumably of its arguments, I haven’t actually read the statement myself) which appeared in the magazine The Public: A Journal of Democracy.

 

I find it interesting that James Callie should lecture on disarmament in a decade in which the arms race began which culminated in World War 1.  He was - of course - giving the talk on behalf the FRA, but I believe that the subject was one he felt strongly about: in 1892 he had joined the Theosophical Society, whose teachings contained the idea that all humanity was one.  Each new member had to be sponsored into the TS by two people who were already members.  James Callie’s sponsors Robert Baird and Joseph Gardner, both of whom were initiated into the Golden Dawn later.

 

Baird and Gardner were actively recruiting new members as the TS underwent a rapid expansion in the early 1890s, with lodges being set up all over England.  The Liverpool Lodge met every Thursday in those years, at 62 Dale Street.  The lodge had a study group, which wrestled with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s monumental The Secret Doctrine (which even most theosophists found all-but-impenetrable).  There was also a lecture programme.  Most of the talks were given by local members but speakers from the TS headquarters in London regularly took in Liverpool on lecture tours of the north of England; usually before travelling on to Bradford.  Each lodge was run by elected officers and a committee.  In 1893 James Callie was elected Liverpool lodge’s vice-president.  During that year he gave one of the talks - on Palmistry.  So many new members had been recruited that the Lodge had had to find a bigger room to hold its meetings; they were now being held at Crossley Buildings, 18 South Castle Street.  There was also a new class on Sunday evenings, to study The Key To Theosophy.

 

I’m sure James Callie would have stayed a committed member of the TS, but the TS was torn in two in the years 1894-96, by a dispute that showed how far from the ideal of a united humanity some members of the organisation were.  I won’t go into what the dispute appeared to be about; what it was actually about was who would lead the TS now that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was dead.  James Callie’s membership record shows that he was a member of the committee formed in Liverpool to support the American James Q Judge against his opponents in TS headquarters (it was based in London) as led by Annie Besant.  When Judge was censured by the TS hierarchy, many English theosophists left the TS including all the members of his supporting committee. James Callie paid his last subscription to the TS in 1894.  However, he may have kept up informal links with those who stayed in the TS, because the TS lodge in Liverpool was a very tight-knit group and seem to have been friends as well as TS members.  The theosophists in Liverpool also had close ties with theosophists in Bradford; again based as much on friendship as membership; and that’s how the GD’s Horus Temple in Bradford came to have so many Liverpool-based initiates.  The GD also had its disputes but not until 1901 did any of them go as far as splitting the Order apart.  In the late 1890s, James Callie may have thought of it as an orderly refuge after the TS, where he could study the occult in such peace as his busy working and home life gave him.

 

 

In 1894, James and Catherine Emma’s youngest son, Douglas, was born; they had one more child, Doris, born in 1899.  At some point in the early 1890s, James Callie senior came to live with them.  He died in 1896, aged 78.  By 1901 James and Catherine Emma’s children were growing up: James junior was working and was living elsewhere.  Harold was working and Jean had also left school; both of them were still living at home.  The Callies didn’t have any live-in servants so it’s likely that Jean - who was not listed as having a paid job in 1901 - was helping her mother with the housework.  The family had moved to Wallasey.  By 1911 Harold also had left home, Douglas had started work, and James and Catherine Emma had moved again, to New Brighton.  Shortly after 1911 census day, Jean married Sydney Francis; Harold married Lilian Gillies in 1913. 

James Callie’s life had pursued more or less the same track since 1891 but the first World War made a big difference to it: all the modern works I consulted when I was researching the Financial Reform Association said that it doesn’t seem to have operated after World War 1 was over; and I certainly couldn’t find any refence to the FRA after about 1914 when looking for references to it on the web (though I realise that, as at 2012, google didn’t cover that period as well as it covered the 19th-century). Certainly, the 1920s were not a decade in which many people wanted to espouse the free trade cause; times were too uncertain.  I suppose that the FRA was wound up - in which case, what happened to James Callie?   He was 60 in 1917 so he may have just retired; if the FRA had been able to fund a pension.  Or he may have found another job until he could retire.  With a lack of sources for the 1920s, I can’t say for sure. 

 

The World War affected James and Catherine Emma in a more direct way: I found evidence that their son James Lancaster Callie was - inevitably - called up, probably in 1916.  In 1911 he was working as a chauffeur - that is, he was driving and maintaining someone’s car for a living.  The War Office decided that men with this kind of experience were what they needed in the fledgling Royal Flying Corps, so in 1917 James Lancaster Callie was transferred to the RFC probably as a mechanic but possibly as a pilot.  

 

I would have thought that Douglas Callie might have been called up too; but I couldn’t find any evidence that he was, so perhaps he worked in a protected profession.  Douglas Callie married Marjorie Massey in 1924.  I couldn’t find a marriage registration for Doris Callie - or any reference to her via the web - so I guess she remained at home caring for her aging parents.

 

James William Stewart Callie died shortly after the second World War broke out, in 1940, aged 82.

 

--

BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.

 

Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A Gilbert.  Northampton: The Aquarian Press 1986.  Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders between 1888 and 1914.  The list is based on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their initiation.  All this information had been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden.  Please note, though, that the records of the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01.  The records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have not survived beyond 1896 either, but there’s a history of the TS in Bradford on the web (though originally written in 1941) at www.ts-bradford.org.uk/theosoc/btshisto.htm in which a lot of the same people who joined the GD are mentioned; though no one who lived in Liverpool is.  After surviving some difficult times in the 1890s, Bradford TS still seems to be going strong (as at December 2012).  In April 2012 the History page was updated with the names of all the members at least up to 1941.

 

The members of the GD at its Horus Temple were rather a bolshy lot, and needed a lot of careful management!

 

Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate); findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees on the web.

 

Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even for the female members of GD.  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  Who Was Who. Times Digital Archive.

 

Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.

 

Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources.  I also used other web pages, but with some caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great deal.

 

SOURCES FOR JAMES WILLIAM STEWART CALLIE

At www.old-kirkcudbright.net reprinting of an article orig in the Kirkcudbrightshire Advertiser on 17 and 24 June 1921: Galloway 100 Years Ago, by James Affleck. 

 

J W S CALLIE’S FATHER IS A BUILDER WHO WENT BANKRUPT

 

Via the web to A Green and Co’s Directory for Liverpool and Birkenhead issue of 1870 in the Private House section p36 a James Callie of 8 Roscommon Street is the only Callie listed.

London Gazette http://www.london-gazette.co.uk9 August 1870: two notices of bankruptcy proceedings in Liverpool County Court against James Callie and John Callie, joiners and builders of 11-19 Sheridan Street Liverpool, trading as Callie and Son.  Both men were officially declared bankrupt on 6 August 1870 and ordered to produce a financial statement at a hearing to be held on 23 August 1870.

Proceedings against Callie and Son were recorded in the London Gazettes of: 6 October 1871; 17 October 1871; 11 May 1875; 29 September 1882; and 20 March 1883.

 

The 17th Annual Report of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners covering December 1875 to December 1876.  P245 James Callie in a list of members struck off f being in arrears w payts.  Google books also has other annual reports issued by the Society; no one called Callie is mentioned in any of them.

 

Proof that Callie and Sons continued in business after the bankruptcy: The Furniture Gazette issue of 1892 p162 has a reference to J Callie of 8 Roscommon Street Liverpool, still working as a joiner.

 

THE FINANCIAL REFORM ASSOCIATION

The FRA held annual conferences and representatives of it went to the meetings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science.  There were a great many references to it and its works both in contemporary sources and in modern financial/social histories of the 19th century.  

 

Blackwood’s Magazine volume 66 1849 p667 says the one of the FRA’s aims was to lower taxation.

 

The Eclectic Review volume 3 1852 couldn’t see the page number on google’s snippet: a reference to an FRA based in Edinburgh.

Report on Taxation, Direct and Indirect published by J R Williams and Co of Liverpool 1860.  This is an early FRA publication, giving its history so far and its aims, which are:

-           economical govt

-           abolition of customs and excise duties and their replacement by direct taxation

-           “perfect freedom of trade”.

Membership for one year cost 5/- so it wasn’t a working-class organisation.  The current hierarchy was:

President                      Robertson Gladstone

Vice-Presidents            Charles Holland; Lawrence Heyworth; Charles Robertson; Francis Boult; James Reddecliffe Jeffery.

Treasurer                      Edmund Knowles Muspratt

Secretary                      C E Macqueen                         Collector          W L Smith

The FRA was governed - and its employees hired - by a 16-man council.  Its office was currently at 46 Church Street Liverpool.

 

By James Callie’s time, the FRA had moved to new offices; but they were still in the centre of Liverpool.

 

Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 1864 p265 covering the Select Committee on Taxation: a quote from estimates of current tax revenue calculated by the FRA.

A contemporary history which looks at the FRA and the arguments put out against its ideas, is

The History of England from the Year 1830-1874 in 3 volumes all published 1874; by William Nassau Molesworth MA; pp144-146.

The Radical Programme by Joseph Chamberlain 1885 quotes some FRA publications, for example, on the question of reducing government spending.

 

Times Thursday 22 October 1891 p10 called the FRA “a Gladstonian Association” in a report on a Liberal Unionist conference held the previous day in the Co-operative Hall Sunderland.  The man who gave that description wasn’t named by the Times; he was answering questions from the floor.

Times Mon 16 May 1892 p6b mentioned the FRA leaflet that had been sent to all MP’s.  The leaflet pointed out that despite what the government had been saying, it had actually presided over a period of tax INCREASES. 

 

My modern references to the FRA:

An Economic History of England 1870-1939 by William Ashworth 1972.  In a footnote on p232, Ashworth mentions an FRA jubilee volume published in 1898 to celebrate 50 years since its founding.  In the main text on p232 Ashworth describes the FRA as being a pre-World War 1 organisation.

British Society 1680-1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change by Richard Price.  Cambridge University Press 1999.  On p90 in chapter called The Ambiguities of Free Trade Price gives specific dates for the existence of the FRA: formed 1848, lasted until 1914.  It advocated the abolition of import duty on the grounds that it distorted trade and encouraged tax evasion.  Further on in same chapter, on p109, Price describes the FRA as “the most extreme free traders”.  On p141 in the chapter The Reach of the State: Taxation, Price says that the FRA extended its arguments in favour of a complete abolition of tariffs, away from commodities into the labour market, thereby rendering impossible (Price says) any “meaningful connection with the organised labour movement”.  It’s Price who makes the connection between free trade and “evangelical economics” ie the self-help concept.

 

The Social Sources of Financial Power by Leonard Seabrooke 2006.  On p57 in the chapter: The Financial Reform Nexus in England, Seabrooke says that as well as its narrowly-economic aims the FRA also campaigned for more access to credit for the poor; and housing reform to address the problems of over-crowding.

 

A series of the FRA’s publications was reissued in 2008 as Tracts of the Financial Reform Assocation.

For a short while from 1862 the FRA issued a monthly magazine called The Exchange.

On the web I found the  Financial Reform Almanack issues of 1880 and other years, all published in Liverpool.  I also noticed a pamphlet The Case for Free Trade: 1910 Election Supplement of the Financial Reform Almanack and Year Book. 

The Labour Annual issue of 1971 edited by Joseph Edwards p136 mentions a different magazine issued by the FRA, the Financial Reformer described as published only “irregularly”.  When the  the Financial Reformer was published, its editor was J W S Callie.

 

CALLIE’S PAMPHLETS ON POLITICAL ISSUES, now in the British Library catalogue

1892    Criticism by Mr J W S Callie...on the Pamphlet; “Is the Present Low Price of Agricultural Produce Beneficial to the Prosperity of the Nation?”.  Also in this pamphlet was a reply to the FRA’s criticisms by the original pamphlet’s author, P H Andrew.  9 pages.

 

1895    John Smith’s Reply to “Merrie England”.  A note in the British Library catalogue says taht the pamphlet Merrie England, to which ‘John Smith’ is replying, was written by Robert Blatchford under his pseudonym Nunquam.  Callie’s own pamplet was published by Liverpool Post and Liverpool Echo office.  There’s more on the career of Robert Blatchford in wikipedia.  Merrie England was published in 1893 after originally appearing as a series of articles in The Clarion, a weekly for working people, founded and edited by Blatchford.

Other pamphlets written by James Callie but not in the BL catalogue:

 

The Reformer’s Year Book published originally in 1901 then published again in 1972 by The Harvester Press.  On p114 Callie is described as the editor of a leaflet Better homes for the People of Liverpool available from 18 Hackins Hey Liverpool

Socialism is not the best remedy published 1907 but originally a series of articles in the Liverpool Post and Mercury during 1906.  In July 2102 I found a copy of this on the web available for download.

The Public: A Journal of Democracy volume 13 1910 has the statement by James Callie as Secretary of the FRA.

 

CALLIE’S OTHER WORK FOR THE FRA

The Herald of Peace and International Arbitration published 1897 by the Peace Society.  On p152 a report that Callie had read a paper at a meeting of the Liverpool and District Bankers’ Institute on 1 November: The Social and Economic Effects of Disarmament.

Speeches and Papers on Industrial Questions 1891 and 1902 editor Romesh Chunder Dutt.  Elm Press 1902.  On p51 there’s aa reference to a speech given in Liverpool 18 October 1901: Famines and the Famine.  Callie’s name is mentioned but I couldn’t see from the snippet whether he delivered it or was just amongst the audience for it.

Proceedings in Connection with the Annual Meeting of the National Liberal Federation 1905 p46 Callie’s name is in a list, presumably of those who attended the meeting: he was there as representative of the FRA.

 

In Land and Liberty: Monthly Journal for Land Value Taxation and Free Trade published by the United Committee for the Taxation of Land Values 1939 p41 seems to be a reminiscence either including or actually by Callie.  But it says that he was first appointed Secretary of Liverpool FRA “early in 1865", which cannot possibly be true, perhaps it’s a typing error.

 

JAMES CALLIE IN THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Theosophical Society Membership Register September 1891-January 1893 p155 entry for J W S Callie.  Application dated 13 October 1892.  Subscription paid 1892-94.  Handwritten note says “Judge Society 27/4/96".  Address during the time he was a member: 11 Massey Park Liscard Birkenhead.  Member of Liverpool Lodge.  Sponsors: R B B Nisbet and J K Gardner.

 

Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine Volume XII covers March-August 1893, sole editor is Annie Besant.  Published by the Theosophical Publishing Society of 7 Duke Street Adelphi.  Volume VII no 67 issued 15 March 1893 p78 news section included an item on Liverpool Lodge sent in by its assistant secretary, Gustave E Sigley.  The lodge met on Thursdays at 62 Dale Street.  The study group was still working on The Secret Doctrine, with some discussion of Letters that Have Helped Me.  Volume XII no 69 issued 15 May 1893 p253 news section had a report on Liverpool Lodge’s annual mtg had been held at the Nisbets’ house on 1 May [1893].  Officers for the coming year included: J W S Callie as vice-president; treasurer W Ranstead; secretary J Hill; librarian T Duncan.  Lodge council members included Mrs Nisbet; Mrs Gillison; and Mr Sandham.  All the people I’ve named were initiated into the Golden Dawn.

Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine Volume XIII covering September 1893 to February 1894 with Annie Besant as sole editor. Volume XIII no 73 issued 15 September 1893 p71 item on Liverpool Lodge sent in by J Hill as its honorary secretary.  Forthcoming lectures would include, on 5 October [1893], one by J W S Callie on Palmistry.

 

 

WORLD WAR 1

London Gazette 9 June 1917 p5715 lists issued by War Office on 9 June 1917 includes one of cadets to be made temporary 2nd Lieutenants as of 17 May 1917 in the Royal Flying Corps.  James Lancaster Callie is one of those cadets. 

Via nationalarchives.org I got to a reference to there being some records of him dated 1918-19, at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.  But I couldn’t see the details on the web.

 

 

 

Copyright SALLY DAVIS

7 February 2013