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An important figure to
arrive at The Southport School was Maurice Delpratt
who would become the first housemaster of Delpratt
House. Delpratt was himself still a young man when
he was appointed to the school, having only recently
completed his own studies. He became well known,
respected and loved, embodying as he did the
sporting spirit of the school. He was a keen cricket
and tennis player, was active in rowing and was
second in command of the cadet corps. Maurice
Delpratt first came to the school as a pupil in 1902
and was therefore among its earliest students. He
saw the first cricket practice on the site that
later became the site of the dining hall and the
headmaster's house. He won the Courier Medal for dux
of the school in 1903 and the E.I. Stevens Athletic
Sports Medal in 1905. Maurice Delpratt captained the
first cricket X1 and held that position until 1910.
He resigned from the school in 1910 and took up
pastoral interests in the west. Upon the outbreak of
war in 1914 Maurice Delpratt volunteered for the 5th
Light Horse Regiment, was sent to Egypt with his
battalion for training and fought at Gallipoli where
he was taken prisoner on 28 June, 1915. He was
officially listed as missing in action and his
family was informed of this status in July that
year. A letter to his family from his brother,
Bertram, who was also serving in the 5th Light
Horse, held out little hope of Maurice having
survived the recent fighting. |
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Cadet officers M.
Delpratt & Rev. H. H. Dixon at
The Southport School, 1907 |
Maurice Delpratt remained
a prisoner-of-war for the duration of hostilities
and was transported to various parts of Asia Minor
until January 1916 when he was sent to the Taurus
Mountains to work on the Baghdad railway
construction. He was released after the armistice of
November 1918 and after a brief leave in England was
repatriated to Australia.
One of his students,
George Johnson, later described Delpratt as, (... A
lean-waisted hawk-faced personage ... with a quick
tongue and a quicker eye.
George Johnson claimed
that Delpratt was faced with many difficulties in
teaching those early classes. In those days there
was no strict grading of school boys according to
age. Some of the students who came to The Southport
School had received little or no previous education,
despite their sometimes quite advanced ages, and so
the classes were mixed with boys frequently ranging
in age from eleven to sixteen years. Some of his
students were, in fact, only a few years younger
than Delpratt himself, but if any familiarity was
occasioned by this close age relationship, Maurice
Delpratt was quick to rebuke those older boys who
became too familiar.
Delpratt spent six years
at Tamborine and later became involved in fruit
growing at Palmwoods. He worked for a while at the
Warwick post office. He died at Warwick, where he
had been living for a number of years, aged
sixty-eight, on 8 March, 1957, his funeral taking
place at the Brisbane Crematorium following a
service at St Mark's Church of England, Warwick.
Delpratt's wife, who had also been heavily involved
with the school, died in 1979, having maintained an
active interest in the school during all those
years. |
