Arbuthnot, Captain Ashley Herbert (1884-1915), cyclist

Ashley Herbert Arbuthnot was born in Paddington, London on August 21st 1884 to Herbert Robinson, a foreign banker and East India Merchant and Evelyn Mary Arbuthnot of Ockley in Surrey.

He was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. At Eton he was in the Sixth Form and rowed in the Eton eight of 1903. At Oxford he took honours in history, rowed in his college boat, which was head of the river, and only just missed his rowing Blue for the Varsity. From Oxford he went into business in the City, and in 1911 was admitted to partnership in the firm of Arbuthnot, Latham it Co.

In 1907 he threw in his lot with the Poly as guide, counsellor and friend of the Rowing Section, and most helpful was his coaching and example. When Major Hoare organised a Poly Company for the "Rangers, " it was to Captain Arbuthnot (then Second Lieutenant) and Captain Studd he turned for help as fellow officers. In 1909 the company was started, and the trio united in a labour which was to count for so much in the crisis of their nation's fate. He was promoted to Captain in August 1914.

Captain Arbuthnot, in addition to an active membership of St. Matthew's Church, Bayswater, and the Y.M.C.A. work at Tichborne Street, had his own class of young men. These met at his own house every Sunday afternoon. They were welcomed there on week evenings as well. Their welfare, temporal and spiritual, was ever present with him, and when the nation's call for men came, of the thirty-nine boys whose names were on the books, thirty responded; fifteen of these joined the " Rangers," and eight were in the Poly company with him on foreign service. On December 23rd, 1914, he accompanied the Rangers to France, and his doings in the regiment are known by the extracts from letters which have appeared in the Magazine from time to time—the extract in the May number on page 105, headed " Attack under Heavy Fire, " was from his pen. He loved his men, mourned their loss, and wrote messages of sympathy and help to the mourners at home, which will ever be prized.

On May 4th, Captain Arbuthnot was seriously wounded by a shell in the head and arm near Ypres, Belgium. Lieutenant George Rickett, on coming up to take command, found him in great pain. George, without hesitation, gave him his own morphia and called for volunteers to carry the Captain to the Ambulance Hospital, two miles distant. Four men, one of whom was one of Captain Arbuthnot's own 'boys' instantly came forward and bore him at great personal risk to safety and skilled attention. He was sent on to the third general hospital at
Le Treport, Dieppe; but in spite of the utmost that skill, care and attention could do, Captain Arbuthnot answered the call "Home" on the evening of May 15th.

He was buried with military honours on May 17th in the little cemetery for British and Canadian officers and men at Le Treport.

[Taken from the Polytechnic Magazine, June 1915]