John Henry Pyle Pafford

Obituary: ‘John Pafford’ by George Kane, Independent 26 March 1996;

‘Jack’ Pafford ‒ ‘a leading international figure in the advancement of library science’[1] ‒ had a distinguished middle age and later life. In 1993, at the age of 93, he completed his last book, John Clavell, 1601–43: highwayman, author, lawyer, doctor . He was Goldsmiths’ Librarian, University of London for 27 years, having begun as pupil-teacher at Trowbridge Elementary School.

Milne: Prefatory memoir by A. T. Milne, ‘Dr J H P Pafford’ in Librarianship and Literature: Essays in honour of Jack Pafford, ed. A. T. Milne [for Pafford’s 70th birthday], London 1970.

Pafford’s army days were a quarter of a century behind him when he retired from his post at University College, with honour – and the affection of his colleagues. He was presented with a volume of essays, mainly on library themes. It includes a check list of his own publications up to 1970, including the mischievous retention of a small piece from The Field dating from 1943: ‘Hare shooting with a .22.’

There are also editorial works, including the Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (Methuen 1963/1965); and, for example, Accounts of the parliamentary garrisons of Great Chalfield and Malmesbury, 1645-6I (Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 1940).

In fact, Pafford left the project on 12 October 1945, two months after the surrender of Japan – with barely half of the library books distributed. Long drawn-out hostilities with Japan, and a gradual release of service personnel – which had seemed probable – would have stood the librarians’ plans in better stead. 4.3 million servicemen and women had already been demobilised by the spring of 1946. The army was not in the mood for reading, for the thoughtful process of preparing for civilian life. There was rioting by impatient conscripts (Pafford left the day after the number of titles ‘distributed to the Army’ moved from 200 to 280, Milne, p. 39).

Pafford: Books and Army Education, 1944–1946: Preparation and supply, by J. H. P. Pafford, London 1946;

After a short period conferring with civilian institutions which had offered part-time adult education, such as ‘night schools’, Pafford and Mainwood set to work. The complex process of selection, prioritising, improvising, and ordering was completed in a little over two years: by seven soldier-librarians (and one civilian), from March 1944 to June 1946.

Pafford provides a brief explanation of how the 400 key books were chosen, and how to extract other information from his alphabetical lists. On this basis, Donald Measham reconstructs the Standard Unit Library’s Initial order of 24 August 1944 and discusses the balance and purposes of the library as a whole. The list is reproduced below. The typography of the original is retained: that was probably standard format for army requisitions.

In 1943, seconded to Southern Command, and promoted Major, he began long discussions with fellow professional librarian Captain Mainwood of the Army Education Corps (AEC). The two librarians came up with a radical idea: ‘The Standard Army Unit Library’. It was to be complete, in place, available to all ranks, and in all army locations by the end of the war ‒ preferably before the end of the war; re-settlement into civilian life being a priority. It would provide purposeful leisure reading and a measure of self-education through real books, written by acknowledged practitioners or experts. It would also furnish an introduction to literature and the other arts. And the project went beyond self-education: its devisers saw the library as a resource for group-teaching and correspondence courses. The standard library stock would be augmented as required, from regional ‘Command libraries’.

In 1941 he, as a serving army officer, had married Elizabeth Ford ‘from a family with a long Quaker Tradition.’ The sudden end to World War II would have done more than disrupt Pafford’s publication schedule. The means of its achievement, through the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would have put Major Pafford and his Quaker wife in a difficult position. There is no direct mention of pacifism in the obituaries, or in Milne’s tribute. However, his concluding remark about the crack shot’s disengagement from weaponry is gently set in a Quaker context.

In September 1940 was recalled by the Wiltshire Regiment, though once more confined to the Home Front on account of ‘imperfect hearing’ . Promoted Captain, he commanded a company, becoming adjutant of the Wiltshire’s training battalion. He continued to find connections between the lives of his men and our literary heritage, even during army exercises (Pafford observed that his men – singing as they marched – were doing so to a variation on the ancient ‘Lord Randall’. Having discussed this matter with them, he wrote to the English Folk Song Society about this interesting survival)..

He acted as an editor of The Year’s Work in Librarianship from 1939–1950. He worked as an editor of literary texts, including the Arden edition of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

In the Inter-War Years Pafford proved himself to be an enthusiastic European: his Library Cooperation in Europe, 1935, continuing to be a valued work of reference (according to George Kane, in 1996). He played a major part in evacuating the National Central Library from London.

He did not see active service in the World War of 1914–1918 ‒ was demobilised five months after the armistice on his nineteenth birthday. An ex-service grant enabled him to enter University College London. After voluntary teaching at the Working Men’s College in Camden, he went on to take a London MA under R. W. Chambers, editing seventeenth-century texts.

John Henry Pyle Pafford (6 March 1900 – 11 March 1996) was an English librarian of the University of London Library from 1945 to 1967 and – as Major J H Pafford, the Wiltshire Regiment ‒ joint Instigator and team Leader of The Army Standard Unit Library Project of the AEC, later the Royal Army Educational Corps, from 1942 to 1945.