FAMOUS LONDONERS - KYNASTON STUDD
W. Bro Gordon Davie, PSGD, gives arena readers another of his excellent and informative articles on a London-based brother of whom not many will have heard…
three brothers all of whom went to Eton and Cambridge. He was a noted cricketer and played at Cambridge being Captain of the Cambridge side which inflicted the only defeat the Australian tourists suffered on their tour in 1882. He also played cricket for Middlesex. John wasn’t however as good a cricketer as his brothers, George and Charles, who were chosen for the 1882/1883 MCC tour of Australia. His family was extremely wealthy, but at the same time, deeply religious and when he left Cambridge he embarked on a "career" in public service becoming Honorary Secretary of the Regent Street Polytechnic in 1884 at the behest of its founder, Quintin Hogg, and served in that post for almost twenty years becoming Chairman and President in 1903. It was whilst he was at the
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Polytechnic that he became introduced to Freemasonry and he was Initiated into the Polytechnic Lodge No. 2847 in January of 1902, his profession on his initiation form being given as “Gentleman”. Whilst he was deeply religious and very keen on missionary work, he did not find Freemasonry inimical to his faith. Freemasonry was to him "religious but not a religion, being rather a rule of conduct founded on principles accepted by all". Once Initiated, he seems to have caught the Masonic bug and was Exalted the following year into the Fulham Chapter, No. 2512 and then he really took off! He became a founder member of the Robert Mitchell Lodge, No. 2956 in London in 1903, which met at The Polytechnic, becoming Master in 1907. He then became a serial founder of lodges, his second being the Old Quintinians Lodge, No. 3307, in 1908 also meeting there. He was also a founder of Old Etonian Lodge
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ohn Kynaston Studd was born on 26 July 1858 and was the oldest of
No. 4500 and Athlon Lodge No. 4674. He was also a founder of Quintinian Chapter, No. 2956, in 1907, where he served as each of the Principals. He seemed to have boundless
energy, because he then became involved in the 1908 Olympic Games and helped organise the track and field events. The Regent Street Polytechnic had, from its inception, always encouraged athletics in keeping with the 'muscular' Christianity movement popular at the start of the twentieth Century. As a reward he was selected to carry the flag for Great Britain. He was the only non-Olympian athlete to carry the Union Flag at an Olympic ceremony, his sole athletic prowess being a Cambridge Blue in cricket, which was not an Olympic sport! Needless to say, his high profile came to the attention of Grand Lodge and he was appointed Senior Grand Deacon in 1910. He was also appointed to the Board of General Purposes - not too bad for a chap who had only been in the Craft for eight years and a PM for just over a year! He remained on the Board for almost twenty years and only came off when he was appointed President of the Board of Benevolence in 1929. He became a joining member of the
Lodge of Antiquity No.2 in 1912 and was elected Worshipful Master in 1917, but he never actually became WM as he persuaded the then Grand Master the Duke of Connaught to become the permanent Master of No. 2, so that Kynaston Studd and his successors bore the title of Worshipful Deputy Master until the Duke's death in 1942. After he left the Chair he became the Secretary of the Lodge a post he held for over twenty-six years, which was not uncommon in those days. So not only did the Lodge have a permanent Master, it also had a 'permanent' Secretary!
It was in this period that he took an
interest in the City of London when one of his Board of Governors at the Polytechnic introduced him to the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers, thus launching him on a career in the City. He soon afterwards became Master of the Company, and he then joined the Merchant Taylors Company. He was appointed one of the Aldermanic Sheriffs in September 1922, and knighted the following year for his services to the City of London. A real high flyer, he was elected Lord Mayor of the City of London in 1928 and as result of his success in this office, he was awarded a Baronetcy. Needless to say he entered into City Freemasonry with the same enthusiasm that he gave to everything he did.He joined the Farringdon Without Lodge, No. 1745 and Guildhall Lodge, No. 3116, in 1924, (WM, 1929) and City of London National Guard Lodge, No. 3757, in 1928, (WM, 1929). His profession had, by this time, changed and when he joined the latter Lodge he gave his profession as "Lord Mayor." I am not so sure that it would be accepted today as a profession! By 1927 he was a 'full-time Mason'
being a member of no less than ten Lodges, Secretary of one and a long time member of the Board of General Purposes. Apart from all that he accompanied the Deputy Grand Master, Lord Cornwallis, on his tour of India which encompassed 26,000 miles of travel and visiting some forty-eight lodges. He must have had a very good staff and organisation to be able to travel abroad for such an extended tour as he was now almost seventy years old and at the very zenith of his Masonic career. In the year after his election as Lord Mayor of London he was appointed Junior Grand Warden. In 1929 he retired from the Board of General Purposes
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