Caldecott, Alfred

Person

Caldecott, Alfred

1850 - 1936

Professor Revd. Alfred Caldecott was born in Chester on 9 November 1850. His father, John Caldecott was a hatter and founder of the Institute of Accountants. Caldecott was his sixth child by his first wife Mary Dinah (née Brookes). His older brother Randolph was an English artist and illustrator. In 1860 the family moved to Boughton, Cheshire and he spent the last five years of his schooling at The King Henry VIII School in Chester. He then attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1876. He read the Moral Sciences Tripos and he took First Class honours in 1880. He was then elected to a Fellowship at St John's. He was one of the founders of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club and the first meeting took place on 19 October 1878 in his rooms at St John's.
Caldecott joined King's College London in 1891 as Professor of Logic, Mental and Moral Philosophy. He developed a syllabus with a renewed emphasis on theological issues. He was a lecturer of Logic, Ethics and Psychology to the King’s College London Ladies Department. He became the Boyle Lecturer in 1913 and was Dean of King's College from 1913–17.
In his religious life Caldecott took Holy Orders and became the curate of Stafford from 1880-82, then he was Vicar of Horningsea, Cambridgeshire from 1883-84. He was the Select Preacher at Cambridge University for many individual years between 1884 and 1916. He was the Rector of North and South Topham in Norfolk from 1895-1898 and then the Rector of Frating with Thorington in Essex from 1898-1906. He became Prebendary of St Paul's from 1915 to 1935 and the Rector of Great Oakley in Essex from 1917-1925.
Caldecott was a regular contributor to 'Cambridge Theological Essays' and to the 'University of London Theological Essays'. He wrote several books on philosophical, historical and religious subjects including: 'English Colonialism and the Empire' (1891), ‘The Church in the West Indies’ (1898) and 'The Philosophy of Religion in England and America' (1901). He contributed a paper in 1908 to the Pan-Anglican Congress on Christian Philosophy in contrast with Pantheism, Christian Science, and Agnosticism. He also collaborated with his brother Randolph on the book 'Aesop's Fables' (1883) which contained his translation of Aesop from the original Greek.
In 1910 he made up a deputation with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Louisa Garrett Anderson who were allowed to put forward the case, for women to have the vote, to the Prime Minister.
He died on 8 February 1936, aged 85, in Upton-upon-Severn in Worcestershire. A portrait of Alfred painted by his brother Randolph Caldecott hangs in the Liverpool Academy of Arts.

King's College London website - 'King's Collections: Victorian Lives'.