Red Book 1912 - W. Hall - Kyambu

Nairobi Forest Road cemetery, d.8 July 1920, aged 11

Christine Nicholls: In the early days the senior school of Nairobi School was located in the same buildings as the junior. In 1920 William Harold Hall, an eleven-year-old boy boarding at Nairobi School, was shot dead in the school dormitory by another pupil, John Kirwan. This sorry incident caused such outrage that it was reported even to Viscount Milner, Secretary of State for the Colonies. What had happened? In May 1920 the headmaster Robert Low found that several boys had water pistols in their possession. He forbade their use, but not their possession. Some of the boys, who commonly used firearms on farms, then appeared to introduce other weapons into school without permission. One day, a boy called Jack Kirwan was examining in one of the boarding houses an automatic pistol he had brought into school. The pistol then discharged accidentally and little Willie Hall was shot through the head. He died immediately.

The inquest found that Willie [quote] ‘died by misadventure, but the pitiable occurrence would not have taken place had there not been a lamentable lack of supervision by the authorities in charge of the school. It would seem incredible that firearms and with these I include airguns of any description should have been allowed on the school premises in the possession of these small boys. I consider that neglect has been shown by the school authorities who have failed in the trust imposed upon them.’ [end of quote]

There was an immediate Departmental Inquiry into what had gone wrong. The headmaster Robert Low, having gone on leave, had not been in Kenya at the time of the shooting. Mr John Twells, the acting headmaster, said that he had on one occasion seen Jack Kirwan with a heavy Service revolver. It had occurred to him that he ought to take the weapon, but he had not done so. All he did was to say that cartridges were not allowed in the school and Kirwan said he had none. Twells further said he held Mr John Spalding, in charge of Kirwan’s boarding house – known as the ‘Outboarding House’ -- responsible for supervision of the house and he should have removed the weapon.

Spalding, a former army sergeant, was the headmaster’s clerk and the school’s physical instructor. He had been in charge of the Outboarding House for 18 months. At the Enquiry he said he had never been told directly that firearms were forbidden and he thought the headmaster should have issued special instructions to that effect. For example, he said, one boy, Alan Tarlton, aged 17, openly carried about an airgun and all Headmaster Low had done was to forbid him to give it to younger boys. Whereupon Spalding had asked Tarlton if he had any pellets for the airgun and Tarlton replied that he was not using the airgun as he had a .22 Remington, which he carried openly. Spalding thought this did not call for any action as Tarlton kept the Remington in his bedroom.

Now to the night of the shooting. The previous night, before the fatal shooting, Spalding had visited the dormitory and saw the revolver used by John Kirwan for the shooting, under Kirwan’s pillow. He did not examine it and thought it was a water pistol. Spalding said some water pistols used in the school were very similar to revolvers.

The boy Alan Tarlton was also questioned at the Enquiry. He stated that his father knew that he possessed a .450 Webley revolver and had had no objection to his having firearms which he had had since he was 14. The boy said there was no definite rule about bringing firearms into the school. There had been several burglaries at the school and people had lost clothing. He himself had brought firearms to school merely as a matter of defence. He knew that they were not allowed in the school’s main site but did not think it mattered in the Outboarding House.

Another teacher, George Garton Stansfield, said at the Enquiry that a boy called Roy Brunsden had obtained a rifle from Alan Tarlton in exchange for a watch. A pupil Jack Focks had also obtained a single barrelled shotgun from Tarlton in exchange for a bicycle. Then Mrs Alberta Disney Gethin, the matron at the Outboarding House, was called to the Enquiry. She said she inspected the boys’ lockers weekly. She did not look under their pillows and the boys made their own beds. The boxes containing their clothes and possessions brought at the beginning of term, were put in a boxroom. Any boy could go out on a Saturday and bring back a revolver and conceal it in his box in the boxroom. She herself had never seen a firearm in the house but she was aware of a general lack of discipline.