Neil Wynes Morse has been looking for a missing paper written by a giant in Masonic scholarship during the first half of the 20th Century but that was, nonetheless, rejected for publication shortly before the author’s death.
He’s not the only one looking. However, Morse is one of the world’s leading experts in Masonic ritual development, President of the Australia and New Zealand Masonic Research Council and is scarily good at finding things others likely give up for lost. If he can’t find it, the paper likely won’t turn up in any obvious place.
The paper’s title is known, “Dr. Anderson and the Charges of a Freemason,” and it was written by noted economist and Masonic scholar Douglas Knoop. It was rejected for publication after receiving a thumbs down by a high ranking officer of the United Grand Lodge of England shortly before Knoop died in the fall of 1948.
Douglas Knoop, from the frontispiece of vol 48 of Ars Quatuor Coronaturum
Among the last people, then, to know where the paper was were members of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research (MAMR). “It sounds as if the chaps in Manchester know about the document,” Morse told me during an online interview. “And with the number of people who’ve looked at the Knoop papers over the years, I’m surprised it hasn’t seen the light of day, assuming that it exists.”
Like any wise Masonic scholar, Knoop had a good day job. He was an economist by profession, being appointed an assistant lecturer at Manchester University shortly after he graduated there and in 1910 he was put in charge of the Economics department at the at The University of Sheffield, where he became a professor in 1920 and worked until shortly before he died in 1948. He also served on various trade boards and, during World War II, he worked at the Ministry of Munitions. He wrote extensively about his field in economics. The annual “Knoop Lecture,” “Knoop Prize” and the “Knoop Centre” in the Economics Department at The University of Sheffield are named after him.
He became a Freemason in December 1921 when he joined University Lodge No. 3911 at Sheffield and for almost three decades pursued an impressive Masonic career, during one period simultaneously occupying the chair in five different Masonic bodies. As a scholar, he was a regular contributor to Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076’s annual Ars Quatuor Coronaturum (AQC), the world’s longest continuously running and arguably most prestigious Masonic research journal.
He was a Prestonian Lecturer who at times teamed up with fellow scholar G.P. Jones to produce a fairly vast number of papers and books. The best known of his books in Masonic scholars include “The Genesis of Freemasonry,” “Early Masonic Pamphlets,” “Early Masonic Catechisms” and “The Medieval Mason: An Economic History of English Stone Building in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.” One would be very hard pressed to find a good modern work on Masonic scholarship that doesn’t include Knoop’s work in its bibliography.
He certainly was influential in Masonic research circles during his time, so it’s a bit surprising to turn up the story about his final paper, as Morse did earlier this year when he came upon a mention of it in the MAMR Transactions for 1948[1]. Further information came to light about the paper when a later published history of MAMR was consulted and there Morse came upon what little is definitively known about Knoop’s final paper[2]:
“An unusual fate befell one paper this year. WBro Professor Douglas Knoop PAGDC paid what proved to be his farewell visit to Manchester, when he read a paper entitled ‘Dr. Anderson and the Charges of a Freemason’. His paper was controversial and he submitted a copy to the Grand Secretary [of the UGLE], who requested that it not be published.”
That’s all, no explanation of why it was controversial and why the Grand Secretary of the UGLE, Sir Sidney White, asked for it not to be published. The paper’s name doesn’t sound especially controversial, so the idea that it was is quite intriguing, no less so considering Knoop died at age 65 on 21 October 1948, shortly after his last paper was rejected.
Morse went on a search to find the paper, searching for clues in such places as Knoop’s obituary in the AQC and in Colin Dyer’s “History of the First 100 years of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076,” as well as online searches and queries to other scholars.
Morse soon discovered that R.A. Gilbert, co-author with John Hamill of “World Freemasonry: And Illustrated History” and other significant works, had made an attempt to find the paper but had not succeeded. Gilbert did, however, turn up the additional tidbit that “only his death shortly afterwards prevented a first class row”[3].
Morse also contacted the UGLE’s Museum and Library in London as the Grand Secretary in 1948 did have a copy and the library still holds some correspondence about the paper[4]. Unfortunately, the staff reported there was no copy of the paper there, though they wish there was; that searches have been made in the past but those searches were not successful.
The library does have Knoop’s letter to the Grand Secretary, dated 21 June 1948, with a penciled note by QC member John Dashwood stapled to the back, and White’s reply dated the following 26 July[5].
Knoop’s letter indicates the MAMR had a copy of the paper but that he, Knoop, wanted it back if it could not be published. It was, after all, the era before word processors and printers, when full manuscripts were very precious things, so Knoop’s paper might have been returned to him. There also is the very real possibility that, because the paper was controversial, it was destroyed.
The trail of the paper goes cold from there and Morse presently knows of nowhere else to look. “That’s not to say that a copy exist doesn’t somewhere,” Morse said. “It seems to me possible that a copy may be included in a file of various bits and bobs called ‘Knoop papers NES’ or similar – and not necessarily in either London or Manchester.”
“I remain optimistic that the paper will surface at some stage. But I won’t be holding my breath.”
[1] MAMR Transactions, Vol XXXVIII, state on page 161 ‘Unfortunately, this is unavailable for publication in the Transaction’.
[2] Specifically, “More Masonry Into Men: the Story of Manchester Lodge and Association for Masonic Research With Suggestion for a Course of Masonic Reading and An Index to the First Forty Volumes of the Transactions (1909-1950)” by Fred L Pick, printed for the MAMR in 1951 (page 56).
[3] (AQC 107, 1995, p.4)
[4] AQC v107, p4 and fn 28 on p7. The material is not catalogued online.
[5] All of which is under copyright, so anyone who wants to see it has to visit the library and inquire.
