DR JOHN F McCaffrey, former head of the Scottish history department at Glasgow University who helped pioneer the study of modern Scottish history, has died suddenly after a short illness.
Born in 1933 the eldest of three brothers, he was brought up in Rutherglen, educated in Rutherglen and at St Aloysius's College, Glasgow, and later at Glasgow University. On leaving school he worked in the Glasgow office of the registrar of births, marriages, and deaths before his two years' national service mainly at Padgate in northern England. He then returned to his previous post before being persuaded to go up to Glasgow University under a Lanarkshire Council scheme to recruit more teachers.
After graduating with distinction in honours history in 1962, he was appointed the following year an assistant lecturer in Scottish history. He married Caroline, a fellow student, in 1964. He subsequently completed his doctorate and then served as a member of the Scottish history department for almost 30 years until his retirement. (He was probably the first Catholic staff member of that department)
Known to generations of history students as a conscientious, meticulous adviser of studies over many years, he was also an occasional lecturer in adult and continuing education classes from Dunoon to Kilmarnock and Glasgow. His quiet but incisive observation nurtured numerous students in pioneering research into the then unfashionable modern Scottish history.
His views, like those of his contemporaries in Glasgow University modern history department, the late great Dr Jim Tumelty and the recently deceased Professor Peter J Parish, were the result of calm reflection, judicious assessment, and vast reading: his judgments invariably won respect from all shades of opinion. Self-serving sensationalism, slogans, shortcuts or simplistic analysis were not his style.
Shortly before his retirement he served as head of the Scottish history department in his inimitable quiet effective manner and presided over an ever increasing numbers of students. An unobtrusive, genuine, caring man he was devoid of any abrasive edge in debate. In his diffidence he did not have to assert loudly his genius, his quiet wisdom had done that already. Pretension evaporated with his gentle pinprick. He queried and challenged received historical wisdom and in the process encouraged many young scholars to follow in his footsteps. His was a genuine Christian concern for truth at
all costs.
His deep faith informed but never distorted. He was an authority on the Irish in Scotland, the modern Scottish Catholic experience, and the reforming Rev Dr Thomas Chalmers, the founding father of the Free Church and an early supporter of Catholic schools. He edited a reprint of Shadow's Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs, a classic mid-nineteeenth
century Glasgow social investigation. His book, Scotland in the Nineteenth Century (1998), was a subtle appreciation of the complexity of life, of analytical judgment, and a characteristic quiet rebuttal of simplistic partisan approaches.
His numerous shrewd contributions to The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, to a major volume on Chalmers, to Sheridan Gilley's edited study of The Irish in Britain, the Scottish Historical Review, Studies in Church History, Innes Review, Scottish Church History Society Records, opened up many topics to a wider audience.
A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he served on the committee of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association for many years and during the 1980s almost single-handedly saved the Innes Review from a serious and possibly fatal crisis. He also served as president of the Scottish Church History Society, one of the first Catholics to do so, in his typical efficient and ecumenical manner.
Visits to relatives in America and Australia seemed the beginnings of a well-earned retirement. His outside interests and devoted activities in the local parish and community were many, varied, and unadvertised. Unfortunately a few weeks ago he was diagnosed with cancer of the lung and brain. It was a dreadful, shocking blow which he bore with tremendous Christian resignation to his death.
For all students of modern Scottish history and, in particular, of Scottish Catholic history his death leaves a great void. He was a man of the word, the written word and his word.
He is survived by his wife, Caroline, for many years a mathematics treacher at Trinity High School, Cambuslang, their daughter, Christine, and sons, David and Michael.
Dr John McCaffrey, historian; born July 1933, died July 19, 2002.
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