Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

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OBITUARIES
Polack’s by his sister Pat, who helped him to take care of the pupils in
his charge. Ernest and Pat lived together, both unmarried, until Pat’s death
in 1999.
Once his 15 years’ service were over, Ernest returned to Africa with Pat as
Head of the Upper International School at Dar es Salaam inTanzania.There he
pioneered a project to involve pupils in the leprosy village at Kindwiti by
doing work which residents could not manage themselves. Four years later, he
came back to England to teach in Bath as Deputy Head of King Edward’s
School, until his retirement in 1992. He retained his links with Polack’s and
was Vice-Chair of the Rufiji Leprosy Trust, helping to raise more than £1
million for Kindwiti.A dispensary for leprosy treatment was named the Polack
Pharmacy in his honour. Ernest died on 8 March 2006.
JOHN HAROLD PRIME (1948) was a bookseller whose far-left political
affiliations stood in the way of his appointment to the top job that his
abilities warranted.
John was born in Swavesey on 14 July 1928, the son of a butcher. He attended
the Cambridge and County High School and from 1946 to 1948 served with
the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the Royal Army Educational Corps. He
came up to King’s to read History, the first person from Swavesey to win an
Exhibition to Oxbridge.
Initially John applied for a municipal appointment, but the Provost, acting
as referee, warned him that his Communist Party membership could count
against him. He did not get the job. John then spent several years in Eastern
Europe and in 1953 married Maureen Condon against her parents’ wishes.
He joined Collet’s, the left-wing booksellers, who traded behind the Iron
Curtain, and took over when the General Manager went on indefinite sick
leave. By this time his belief in communism had waned, although he was
still an enthusiastic socialist. For six months he worked for the Booksellers’
Association organising the bookshop at the 1964 World Book Fair.