Edward Battersby Bailey (1881-1965)

E B Bailey doing fieldwork (P225785)

E B Bailey was born on 1 July 1881 at Marden, Kent. In 1902 he graduated with first-class honours in geology and physics from Clare College, Cambridge. In the same year he joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain and worked in Scotland.

In 1915 Bailey joined the Royal Garrison Artillery as a subaltern. He was wounded on the Somme in September 1916 and near Ypres in 1918. These wounds resulted in the loss of an eye and a permanently damaged left arm. Bailey was awarded the Military Cross, the Croix de Guerre and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. In spite of his injuries he later wrote in Geological Survey of Great Britain (1952) "The 1914 War was a comparatively happy one for juniors on the staff..."

In 1919 Bailey became District Geologist for the West Highlands and Islands. He resigned from the Geological Survey in 1929 and took up the post of Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow. In 1937 Bailey was appointed Director of the Geological Survey after the premature death of Bernard Smith.

Bailey in Russia, 1937 (P008691)



Bailey in the Home Guard, 1944

 (GSM/DR/Sb/7/5)

During the Second World War Bailey joined the Home Guard along with several other Survey staff. He recorded in Geological Survey of Great Britain that on one occasion "...I had been temporarily buried by a V1 or Doodlebug".

Bailey was Knighted in 1945 and in April of that year retired as Director of the Survey. He continued to be active in the field of geology until shortly before his death on 19 March 1965.
 
A G MacGregor in an obituary in the Geological Society of America Bulletin described Bailey as "a very great geological leader and investigator". Rather more irreverently he was described in Down to Earth: One Hundred and Fifty Years of the British Geological Survey (1985) as "perhaps the most eccentric Director of them all".

You can find out more about the Geological Survey and the First World War in the paper "Some aspects of the British Geological Survey’s contribution to the war effort at the Western Front, 1914–1918" by D G Bate and A L Morrison. This can be downloaded here

Andrew L Morrison

Group photograph of geologists on a trip to Sweden, Norway and Lapland 1909/1910

BGS image ID: P883132

Group photograph from the Lady Rachel MacRobert collection. British Geological Survey Archives: LSA 213.  

Participants include John Horne, middle row, fourth from right (with moustache and prominent side-burns) Rachel Workman (later to become Lady Rachel MacRobert), middle row, third from right. Sir Alexander MacRobert is in the back row on the far right.  Edward Battersby Bailey, front row, second from the right (with hat)

Rachel Workman and  Sir Alexander MacRobert married in 1911. 

The photograph was possibly taken before/after a trip to Sweden, Norway and Lapland in 1909/1910. The trip included a stay with the Emperor of Lapland as well as with Dr Lundbohm, originator of the Swedish Ironworks. Rachel Workman's diary also mentions a Mr. Bailey, a young Highland surveyor, we believe Bailey is front row, second from the right (with hat).

Places mentioned in Rachel Workman's diary are Narvik and the snow mountains of Torne Trask and Gellivare. 

Many thanks to Vicky Duke of the The MacRobert Trust who supplied most of this information and the identification of Rachel Workman (Lady Rachel MacRobert).

Does any reader know any of the other participants or able to provide information about the background to the trip e.g. was the trip related to the 1910 International Geological Congress held in Sweden in 1910?

Bob McIntosh