Article written and researched by Caroline Wessel
This Orthopaedic Building on the proposed College site was paid for jointly in 1916 by the Duke of Rutland, Mr Alfred Corah and Mr William Curzon Herrick. It comprised a Massage Room, funded by the Duke and Mr Corah, and an Electrical Treatment Room paid for by Mr Curzon Herrick.
At a College committee planning meeting in 1919, Major Freer agreed to ask the Duke of Rutland whether he would be prepared to hand over the Orthopaedic Building for use by the new College and the reply came back as ‘yes’. On the architect’s plan (1919) it is shown as lying behind the Fielding Johnson Building, further back behind several smaller buildings.
THE DUKE OF RUTLAND (1852-1925)
Henry John Brinsley Manners, 8th duke, was Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire (1900-1925); Chairman of the University College of Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland; and served on the College Council from 1923 until his death in 1925.
From the very start of WW1 the Duchess of Rutland had shown great concern for the suffering of thousands of wounded soldiers. She had immediately turned her London mansion, Rutland House in Arlington Street, into a hospital for officers and also ran a military convalescent home for the wounded at Belvoir Castle.
MR ALFRED CORAH, JP (1850-1924)
High Sheriff of Leicestershire in 1916, Mr Corah lived at Scraptoft Hall, was on the Board of Governors of the Infirmary, was a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters, and Chairman of the very large and innovative Leicester hosiery business, N. Corah & Sons. He served on the Leicester War Hospitals Games Committee, giving many donations, and in 1916 his brother, John Arthur, donated a Soldiers’ Recreation Room to the Infirmary. During WW1, 50 % of the male staff at Corah joined the armed forces and the firm produced ten million articles of knitwear, over 70 percent for government contracts.
Two of Alfred’s sons served in WW1. Geoffrey survived, though was gassed in the trenches. He served in the Bedfordshire Regiment’s Cycling Corps, whose highly dangerous work along the trenches included security, scouting and message carrying. But Alfred’s son, Leslie, was killed at Hohenzollern in October 1915 when the death toll of the 4th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment was very high. For almost a month the Leicester Journal reported Leslie as ‘missing’ – an agonising wait for his family – but he was eventually pronounced dead, even though his body was never found. In 1919 the Corah family were invited to give a donation to the proposed new College, but on 24 October it was reported at a Finance sub-committee that the Corah directors had already put aside £20,000 in £1 shares to assist employees in distress, to serve as a Memorial to Leslie Corah and their other 39 employees who were killed in the war.
However Alfred Corah, a precociously talented organist, did fund the gift of a large concert pipe organ (constructed 1914) for Leicester’s De Montfort Hall – for decades the setting of many formal University of Leicester Graduation ceremonies. It is a particularly fine example, having 6,000 pipes, and still attracts distinguished organists for recitals. In 2014 the organ was estimated to be worth over £5 million.
Alfred’s grandson, Mr Nicholas Corah, DL (1932-2010), was a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Leicester and Chairman of its Fundraising Committee (2004-2008). He raised £14 million for the funding of the David Wilson Library (opened 2008), and the Nicholas Corah Doctoral College Reading Room on the first floor of the Library was named in his honour. Librarian Christine Fyfe said at the time, “Nicholas Corah led one of the most successful fundraising campaigns in recent times for any UK university library. His enthusiasm for the University’s vision for the Library, his enormous energy and unwavering conviction that donors would be equally eager to support this flagship project were infectious”.
Mr Corah also raised a considerable sum of money to establish the National Forest and its Conkers Visitors’ Centre.
Tragically, he was killed in a head-on car crash in 2010.
WILLIAM CURZON HERRICK (1891-1945)
In 1916 William was asked by the Duchess of Rutland whether he would give a substantial donation to fund a much needed Electrical Treatment Room at Leicester’s 5th Northern Hospital for wounded soldiers, in honour of his forthcoming marriage to Lady Kathleen Hastings, daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon. In 1911 Kathleen had done the London ‘Season’ with Diana, the Duchess’s daughter, who had subsequently trained as a WW1 nurse and worked with her mother at the hospital for wounded officers at their London home.
In 1915 the young William Curzon had inherited the vast Herrick estates at Beaumanor and beyond, and added the name ‘Herrick’ to his surname. His father, who had been treated by Dr Astley Clarke during his final illness in 1907, was the favourite godson of William Perry Herrick, the last in the blood line. During WW1 military service William had a mental break- down, suffering from the nervous illness, neurasthania, that could be improved by electrical treatment, a therapy that was also being used for the new condition of “shell shock”.
As his wedding approached, the Duchess of Rutland drew William’s attention to the urgent need for an Electrical Treatment Room at the 5th Northern Hospital, explaining that his generous gift of £500 would be sufficient to erect and equip it. The Monitor newspaper asserted that ‘a large number of cases of nerve injury, the result of wounds received in action, come to the Hospital and hitherto it has only been possible to treat them electrically on a small scale, with the patients distributed over the various wards. Henceforward the electrical work will be concentrated in one department which will be called ‘The Curzon Herrick Electrical Room’, and this centralisation will naturally reduce the strain on the masseuses and proportionately increase their efficiency’.
During July and August 1916 the Leicester Daily Post, the Leicester Mercury and the Midland Free Press newspapers all gave reports about Mr William Curzon Herrick’s generous gift, ‘which will meet a long-felt need’ and stated that ‘The Duke of Rutland, as Lord Lieutenant and Mr Alfred Corah, the current High Sheriff of the county, together have undertaken to build and equip a massage room, which will adjoin the electrical room, and the two rooms will form a most up-to-date department for the treatment of all kinds of nerve injury arising from wounds’. In due course this building, gifted by three prominent local men to assist the WW1 wounded, became part of Leicester’s new University College.
Key Sources
Wessel, C. (2018) Beaumanor War & Peace: the Curzon Herrick Years 1915-1939
Leicester Journals Oct 5 – 19 1915
Leicester Daily Post, Leicester Mercury, Midland Free Press, July/August 1916
Corah private family archives
Leicester University Minute Book ULA 1M1 24.10.1919