Some others

Teilhard de Chardin was by no means the first helper in the search. Very probably the first person to hear of Dawson’s original fossil find, the piece handed to him by the labourer, was his friend of many years’ standing, Mr. Sam Woodhead, a schoolmaster at Uckfield, who combined his teaching duties with the post of Public Analyst. Woodhead had carried out the analysis of the natural gas reported by Dawson to the Geological Society in 1898. He shared the first excitement of the finds at Piltdown, and went back to Barkham Manor with Dawson a few days after the first find to look for more fragments, but, as Dawson has told us, their search was fruitless. Woodhead maintained his connection with the investigation, and it was he who carried out a chemical analysis of the skull at some time before 1912. He remained at Uckfield till 1916, the year of Dawson’s death. He was a man of considerable attainments, becoming a Doctor of Science and a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry. He became Public Analyst for Brighton and Hove, and in 1916 went to live at Barcombe, the scene of Dawson’s third discovery of human remains. He was among those who attended Dawson’s funeral in Lewes in 1916. Woodhead often spoke of his early connections with the famous event to his wife and son and to others, such as Mr. Essex, another teacher, at Uckfield. Mr. A. J. Smith of Leamington remembers in a conversation in about 1925 that, in telling of the event, Woodhead chuckled over his ‘truancy’ from school that day when he helped Mr. Dawson in the pit, as he did on subsequent occasions. These visits in 1908 are well remembered by Mrs. Sam Woodhead. During the years from 1908 to 1911 Dawson showed one or more of the thick pieces of cranium to others among his friends and colleagues. Mr. Ernest Victor Clark4 was given the privilege of a private view of the fragments when he and his wife were dining with the Dawsons in Lewes, at some time in the autumn of 1911 or early in 1912.