Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Almond, Hely Hutchinson
ALMOND, HELY HUTCHINSON (1832–1903), headmaster of Loretto school, born in Glasgow on 12 Aug. 1832, was second son of George Almond, incumbent of St. Mary's Episcopal Chapel, Glasgow, by his second wife, Christiana Georgina, eldest daughter of Thomas Smith, barrister, of London. His paternal great-grandfather was headmaster of Derby school, and his maternal great-grandfather was John Hely-Hutchinson [q. v.], provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Precociously clever, he began to learn his letters at sixteen months, and at three years was struggling with the multiplication table. After attending the collegiate school, Glasgow, he entered in 1845 the University of Glasgow. At the end of the session he gained the Cowan gold medal in the Blackstone Latin examination, and he also specially distinguished himself in the Greek, mathematics and logic classes. Having been elected in 1850 to a Snell exhibition, he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. Here, contrary to the expectations of his tutors, who had the poorest opinions of his chances, he, in 1853, obtained a first class both in classical and mathematical moderations (a record for Balliol College); but, owing to ill-health and other causes, only a second in the final schools. Although he delighted in boating and won a place in the Balliol eight, he found little that was congenial in undergraduate life. In his later years he wrote, 'there is hardly a period of my life (since Oxford, which I hated) I would not gladly live over again.' He graduated B.A. in 1855 and M.A. in 1862. In 1855 he left Oxford for Torquay, where his father was living in retirement; and having failed to pass into the Indian civil service, he was induced by a friend, who had fallen ill, to assist him in his tutorial establishment. This led him to conceive a liking for teaching, and in 1857 he accepted the office of tutor in Loretto school, Musselburgh, then merely a preparatory for the English public schools. In the following year he became second master at Merchiston school, Edinburgh, where he took an active part in Rugby football, and did his utmost to foster a love of cricket, introducing an English professional to instruct the boys in the game. Already he had begun the strenuous advocacy of systematic physical exercise in schools, and of the cultivation of hardiness as essential to a thoroughly healthy boyhood, and of prime importance in the formation of proper habits of mind. These and other educational ideas he found opportunity to put into fuller practice, when, in 1862, he became proprietor of Loretto school so called from its contiguity to the site of the old chapel and hermitage dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto.
Here he began with only fourteen boys, supplemented for the first two or three years with a few university pupils; and, as he himself put it, gradually built up a school out of nothing, though the numbers never reached 150. His early, almost insuperable, difficulties he met with perfect gaiety; and he was accustomed to refer to this period of his life as 'the happy early days when I was nearly bankrupt.' He closely pursued a special educational aim. The first duty of a headmaster he conceived to be the direction of a school so as to accomplish the purpose of training the individual character. It was his leading maxim to rule by persuasion, not by force, and to secure what he called 'behind-back obedience.' 'Relations between master and boys were thus unusually sincere, and the place had rather the aspect of a family than of a school' (Mackenzie's Almond of Loretto, p. 160). So far also as he could he sought to develop an independent interest in study and to diminish the evils of cram and competition, although hampering outside influences interfered here seriously with his ideals. But the main feature in which he may justly be regarded as a pioneer was 'the application of the best knowledge to the physical nurture of the young; the total elimination from our practice with regard to this nurture, of convention, tradition and rule of thumb' (ib. p. 391). He attached a cardinal importance to fresh air, personal cleanliness, proper and regular diet with the abolition of 'grubbing,' the regulation of the hours of sleep and study, physical exercise in all weathers, and the disuse 'of linen shirts and collars and suits of close material for ordinary school wear, in favour of tweed knickerbocker suits of loose texture and flannel shirts worn open at the neck without neckties'; with 'the practice of changing into flannels for all forms of violent exercise.' In regard to the question of fresh air he anticipated the methods 'now employed as a preventative and cure of consumption; and the coatless, flannelled, bare-headed athlete was also largely his creation. That the stamina of Loretto boys greatly exceeded the average was manifested, year by year, by the large proportion of them who won athletic distinction at the English universities; but the result was attained by a proper attention to physical health, not an over attention to physical exercise. Almond did not a little to revolutionise the school methods of Scotland.
After showing for a few years signs of failing health, he died of a bronchial affection on 7 March 1903. He was buried in Inveresk churchyard. He married in 1876 Eleanor Frances, daughter of Canon Tristram of Durham [q. v. Suppl. II], and had issue three sons and three daughters.
Besides various contributions to reviews and magazines, in which he expounded his educational principles, he was author of: 1. 'Health Lectures,' 1884. 2. 'Sermons by a Lay Head Master,' 2 series, Edinburgh, 1886 and 1892. 3. 'English Prose Extracts,' Edinburgh, 1895. 4. 'Christ the Protestant, and other Sermons,' Edinburgh, 1899.
[R. J. Mackenzie's Almond of Loretto, 1905; H. B. Tristram's Loretto School Past and Present, 1911.]