Bicester - Famous Bicestrians

As I was reading about Bicester for our second -cester walk, I decided to do some research into famous people who were born in Bicester.  Britain has contributed a lot to the world in terms of the sports, sciences, politics and the arts and one can only presume that each small town in the UK will have it's own celebrities, sons and daughters who left their town or village behind and went on to greater things.  Amidst the usual plethora of sports' stars and entrepreneurs, I've chosen three famous Bicestrians, who interested me, for one reason or another.

The Muse

Being a 19th-century artist's model doesn't really guarantee you any fame these days and, compared to the overpaid supermodels of the 20th century, Maud Franklin ended her career in relative obscurity having been, for a time, the mistress and muse of the famous American painter James McNeill Whistler.  Whistler was somewhat of an eccentric character, travelling to Russia and Chile, studying art in Paris, living with Maud in Venice but ending his years in England.  By all accounts he didn't treat Maud particularly well.  She had two children by him, but he never married her, eventually ditching her for a young woman called Beatrix Godwin, the widow of his friend and architect, Edward Godwin. 

It is said that Maud was so loved by Whistler because she was the only woman who could put up with the demanding sittings his portraiture required.  After her relationship with Whistler ended, she moved to Paris and, later Cannes, where she died sometime around 1942.

The Doctor

Another interesting Bicestrian was the 19th century doctor and obstetrician, Albert Freeman Africanus King.  King owes his unusual name to his father's obsession with Africa.  The family moved from rural Oxfordshire to the USA when King was ten years old and King followed his father into the medical profession, graduating from the Columbia Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania.

King is famous for two things - being one of the physicians on hand, at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and being one of the first doctors to suggest a connection between mosquitoes and malaria.  People thought he was joking at first, when he suggested that there might be a connection between the presence of mosquitoes and incidences of the disease and it was not until 1898 that the British Indian doctor, Ronald Ross, proved that this was indeed the case. 

The Modern Major-General

George Rose was an actor, remembered primarily for his comedic roles and his interpretation of, what must be, one of the hardest songs in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.  Although he acted in quite a few movies, Rose was better known as a stage actor, both at the Old Vic in London and later in Broadway, where he first graced the boards in 1946. 

More controversial than his life, was Rose's death in 1988, in mysterious circumstances in the Dominican Republic.  Rose bought a house in the Dominican resort town Sosua in 1984, where he'd seemed very happy, with his coterie of animals and 17,000 jazz records.  Being gay and childless, Rose had taken in a 14-year old boy in 1984, who he later adopted and had intended as his heir.  What was first reported to have been a terrible car accident in May 1988, turned out to be something more sinister and Rose is believe to have been brutally beaten and killed by his adopted son and his son's real father. 

The boy claimed to have been Rose's lover and, by all accounts, was worried that Rose was going to disown him because they hadn't been getting on very well.  Rose's friends insist that his relationship with the young man was purely a father-son bond.  The case, which remains unsolved, certainly exposed the press's homophobia in their attitude towards Rose, as well as the Domincan Republic's desire to make as little fuss about Rose's death as possible, not wanting to discourage the lucrative stream of British tourists visiting the island.  It's very much a story of its time and I can't help thinking that if this had happened ten or twenty years later, Rose's killers would have got the punishment that they truly deserved.

Whether ending their days in Cannes, Pennsylvania or the Dominican Republic, these famous Bicestrians certainly led interesting lives, leaving the town of their birth far behind, in their pursuit of fame and glory, whether on the canvas, in the medical world or on stage. 

I'm going to leave you with a Youtube video, showing George Rose as the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance. 



Credits

The images of Albert Freeman and Whistler's Arrangement in White in Black are in the public domain and (therefore) copyright free. 

The photo of Sosua, Dominican Republic was taken by flickruser Eaulive, a lighting designer from Montreal, Canada, who currently lives in DR.  Thanks Eaulive for sharing this image with us, using the Creative Commons License.  If you'd like to see more of Eaulive's photos, check out his photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/eaulive/

The photo of the sign in Bicester was taken by me. 

A lot of the information I've used came from Wikipedia.  I've also referenced an article on the death of George Rose, which was written by investigative journalist Alix Kirsta and first appeared in the Sunday Times on the 25th of May 1997.  You can see the full article at http://www.alixkirsta.com/articles/georgerose/index.htm