Archibald MacLaren

Archibald MacLaren (29 January 1820 – 19 February 1884) or Maclaren was a Scottish fencing master, gymnast, educator and author His training scheme was also later adopted by several British public schools including Rugby School in 1872 and universities. He wrote a number of books on physical training theory and practice.

Early life MacLaren depicted in the novel The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green by Cuthbert M. Bede (1850s) MacLaren was born in 1820 at Alloa, Clackmannanshire in Scotland, the son of Jean née Stewart (born 1769) and Archibald MacLaren (born 1771). Brought up as a Presbyterian, he was educated at Dollar Academy until aged about 16 when he travelled to Paris where he studied fencing, gymnastics and medicine. While in Paris he also developed an interest in physical training and on returning to Britain he was listed in about 1840 as a fencing master in Oxford where he equipped rooms to teach fencing and gymnastics. Later that year in London he quietly married 18 year-old Gertrude Isabel Frances Talboys (1833–1896), a classics scholar and teacher - and his late wife's younger sister. During this period it was illegal for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister. The couple had three daughters and two sons: Gertrude Elizabeth (1852–1854); Mabel (1855–1952); Alexander Mitchell Archibald McLaren (1856–1858); Margaret (1859–1938), and John Wallace Hozier MacLaren (1861–1915).

In 1857 MacLaren published The Fairy Family, A Series of Ballads & Metrical Tales, Designed by William Wilkinson, here MacLaren taught fencing and gymnastics to William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones among other prominent Oxford residents of the day as well as to the general public. MacLaren devised a system of regularly measuring his clients, regardless of age or sex, to determine the best exercise regime to develop their physical well-being.

A description of the gymnasium in The Illustrated London News in 1859 stated:

The physical condition of every pupil, child or adult, on his first entrance to the gymnasium, is carefully examined, and his height and weight, &c., carefully compared with his size, condition, and conformation of body, so that his exercises may be adapted to that part which is defective. Among other machines employed for this purpose is one invented by Mr. McLaren by which he can measure the depth and width of the chest at any point. and was fitted with the latest gymnastic equipment of the day including a central mast or pole 60 feet tall in the atrium for climbing. The gymnasium's floor was made from a "carefully constructed padding, soft, thick and elastic."

The Oxford Gymnasium operated over two floors, with the top floor divided into two rooms - a fencing salon and a room for "modified exercises for young or delicate pupils." An additional one-storey building attached to the main building was added in 1861 to provide a private gymnasium for children. Women were also admitted.

The building survives today, having been renamed Blue Boar Court in 1989. Since 2017 it has been the base for the Oxford property management firm Locale. Investigations after the War decided that so many had died owing to their poor physical condition, resulting in their inability to fight off the effects of the diseases. In 1859 the War Office commissioned a report into the physical training systems in the armies of France and German. The final report stated that the French army had had a gymnastic physical training regime since the 1840s, with a central gymnastics training school founded in 1852; while the Prussian army had introduced military gymnastics training in 1842. Colonel Hamilton firmly advised that the War Office should institute a similar system of gymnastics training for the British Army.

Major Frederick Hammersley and twelve carefully selected non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were put through a twelve month course of physical training in Oxford under MacLaren. MacLaren used the techniques he had developed in his gymnasium, charting the physical changes in the men with each of the NCO's being photographed before and after their training and regularly measured to check their development. On completing the course it was apparent that each man's physical fitness had considerably improved and they became the foundation of what was to be called the Army Gymnastic Staff (AGS). This later become the Royal Army Physical Training Corps. A gymnasium similar to MacLaren's at Oxford was built at Aldershot. and Brompton Barracks (1863).

Summerfield House School

In 1864 Maclaren and his wife Gertrude MacLaren opened a school in Oxford, Summerfield House School (which still exists today as Summer Fields School). was living at Summerfield House School with his schoolmistress wife Gertrude and their children Mabel, Margaret and John in addition to three servants and 39 boy boarders aged between 9 and 14.

Later life The author of various popular works on physical training, Archibald MacLaren's 1869 book A System of Physical Education, Theoretical and Practical was reviewed in Macmillan's Magazine:

It will be no news to the readers of this Magazine to tell them that to Mr. MacLaren of Oxford, more than to any other man living, is the cause of physical education indebted for the rapid strides it has of late effected in this country. His magnificent Gymnasium at the University, and the marvellous results there produced, constitute only a small portion of the work he has been for many years accomplishing. The British Army is now trained on his principles, and in Gymnasia invented by him. His last effort is worthy to be placed on a level with any of his former achievements. It is a little book, but it contains the refined wisdom and experience of a quarter of a century; it throws open to all the world the knowledge obtained in endless studies, experiments, and meditation. and was buried in the cemetery in Summertown, Oxford. He left an estate valued at £13,649 4s 6d.

Selected bibliography The Fairy Family: A Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe, Longman & Co., London (1857) Training, in Theory and Practice Macmillan and Co. (1866) A Military System of Gymnastic Exercises and a System of Fencing, HMSO (1868) A System of Physical Education, Theoretical and Practical, Clarendon Press (1869)