A FAMOUS FIGHT

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XVIII, Issue XVIII, 30 November 1912, Page 9

A FAMOUS FIGHT

It tho age of 8 the Rev. Augustus Orlebar, for 54 years vicar of Wellington, Beds, and the original Tom Brown in "Tom Brown's School-days, " passed away on Monday afternoon. It is not claimed that Mr Orlebar represented Tom Brown in any other respect save that of the opponent of "Slogger Williams" in the Homeric combat which took place behind the school chapel, but he was also the Rugby, boy who caught out the redoubtable batsman in the match with the Marylebone Club, as narrated in the same tale. Thomas Hughes, afterwards Queenss Council and County Court judge, the author of iho story was captain of the eleven when he put Orlebar into the team, and Orlebar himself was captain when Dr Arnold, the famous headmaster, died in 1842. Augustus Orlebar entered Rugby School at the age of 14, in 1838. and was put into the lowest form. Dr Arnold was then headmaster. Under his regime, the boys of Rugby shared'the somewhat Spartan conditions of life which were common in the public schools of that era. Only last year Mr Orlebar was recorded as saying ,"No man who was at Rugby in my day knows what it is to feel cold. A fire at -each end of the long corridor was all the heat provided for the studies that lay betoveen, and early roll-call by candlelight in winoer was a fitting preparation for an Artie journey. At first boys used to swoon, before they got used to it."

Mr Orlebar clearly recalled his fight with "Slogger Williams." The original of the latter combatant is the Rev. Bulkeley Owen Jones, Chancellor of the diocese of St. Asaph and a Justice of the Peace for Denbigshire, who is living in retirement at West Barnham, near Bognor. Like Orlebar, he went to Oxford, and the tAvo took Holy Orders, in the same year.