George Cecil Jones, Jr.

Born:  10 January 1873 in Croyden, South London, England.

Died:  30 October 1960 in Hastings, England.

George Cecil Jones (who was called Cecil, not George) was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn at its Isis-Urania temple in London on 12 July 1895. He chose the Latin motto ‘Volo noscere’. He did the work necessary to reach the inner, 2nd Order quickly—he almost certainly knew a great deal of it already—and was initiated into the 2nd Order on 11 January 1897. It’s not clear from the Golden Dawn records that have survived but it’s likely that he dropped out of the Golden Dawn after MacGregor Mathers was expelled from the Golden Dawn in May 1900.

Early Life:

George Cecil Jones, was born in Croydon on 10 January 1873.

Education:

He attended the City of London School, run by the Corporation of London for the sons of men in business and the professions. The school assumed that pupils could already read and write; it concentrated on adding to the basics with a broad and in-depth preparation for a life in work. English, Latin, French, Greek, German, even Sanskrit were taught; and elocution lessons were available to rid pupils of accents that might restrict the range of jobs open to them. The school offered a wide range of science subjects: maths, arithmetic, drawing, basic chemistry and natural philosophy. For this, the pupils’ parents had to find fees of 10 guineas per year although several scholarships were available. It was an education better than could be had at many public schools.

One of Cecil Jones’ fellow pupils at City of London School was Julian L. Baker, the son of another man who worked in a bank. Cecil and Julian were exactly the same age and perhaps in the same class, and shared some interests; they formed a friendship which lasted the rest of their lives.

Working Life:

Cecil Jones and Julian Baker had both decided that they were going to be chemists by the time they left City of London School; and for them that didn’t mean training to be a pharmacist, it meant chemistry in its modern sense, which is based on laboratory analysis of substances to assess their constituent elements and their properties. Modern chemistry was still in its infancy and was a very fast-moving field at that time: anyone working in it would be breaking new ground on a regular basis. And at the same time, more jobs for chemists were being created in local government, by new legislation, and also in industry, by the need to understand and control industrial processes: a new profession was in the process of being created. Living in London was again an advantage: they were both able to get one of the best specialist educations in chemistry available in the UK, though not at the same institution. While Julian Baker trained at the Finsbury Technical College, from 1889 to 1893, Cecil Jones did City and Guilds exams at the Central Technical College of the London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education, one of the myriad and diverse colleges that (by 1900) were making up the University of London.

Leaving college well qualified, Cecil Jones went to work for Heinrich Bernhard Helbing and Francis William Passmore, who were in partnership as analytical chemists. After 18 months working for the Helbing and Passmore partnership, Cecil Jones left London in 1894 and moved to Hampshire. In July 1895, when he was initiated into the Golden Dawn, he was living in Vyne Road Basingstoke, a few minutes’ walk from his new workplace. He had taken a job with a firm which seems to have gone quickly through a number of names, but which in 1910 was called Dowson Economic Gas and Power Co Ltd.

In 1884, the Dowson firm’s headquarters were at Great Queen Street, Westminster. On the 1901 census, Cecil Jones is described not as a chemist but as a chemical engineer. In 1901 he wrote a paper on The Need for Greater Care in Introducing Gas-firing into Small Gasworks. By the day of the 1901 census, he had moved a little way out of town and was living at 57 Waterloo House, Cliddesden Road in the Greenbank district of Basingstoke, an address shared by Arley Short although Short and his family kept a separate household.

In 1902, Cecil Jones changed employers again. However, this latest move was also a promotion, to a post as managing chemist, perhaps in charge of a department and taking decisions on policy and development. The move he made was from Hampshire to Essex and from gas power to brewing. Cecil Jones’ new employer was the very rapidly expanding firm of Free, Rodwell and Co Ltd, whose maltings were at Mistley on the River Stour in Essex, below the house owned by Robert Free, one of the company’s founders.

Early in 1905, George Cecil Jones married Julian Baker’s sister Ethel Melinda. He continued to work for Free, Rodwell and Co for two more years. He and Ethel lived in Mistley and their daughter Eileen was born there late in 1905. However, in 1907, Cecil Jones resigned from his job, and the family moved back to London.

He continued to keep his name in the profession’s public eye until the mid-1920s with a series of publications, mostly on aspects of brewing chemistry, some written on his own and some with co-authors including A R Ling, who had been Julian Baker’s boss in the laboratory of the London Beetroot Sugar Association in the 1890s. He and Julian Baker prepared a series of tables on specific gravities, for use by the brewing industry.

Between 1910 and 1920, Cecil Jones did some work for Julian Baker, reading long and complex articles on chemistry and reducing them to a quickly-read abstract for publication in the magazine Julian was editing at the time, The Analyst. Cecil Jones’ last published article, asking Is Forced Malt Objectionable in the Brewery? was published in 1925 in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing.

On the day of the 1911 census, Cecil, Ethel Melinda, their daughter Eileen and their son George Alan (born in 1910) were living at 41d London Road Forest Hill, a small flat in a converted suburban villa. It was near Ethel’s family, however; south of the worst of the London smog; and convenient for Forest Hill station and trains into the City, where Cecil Jones’ business was based in rooms on the top floor of 43-45 Great Tower Street.

The day chosen for the 1911 census was a few weeks before the libel case Jones v. The Looking Glass and others, which ended the association for which Cecil Jones is most famous: his magical friendship with Aleister Crowley.

Cecil Jones and the Golden Dawn:

Either Allan Bennett or Julian Baker could have recommended Cecil Jones to the Golden Dawn hierarchy as a candidate for initiation: they were both already members when Cecil Jones was initiated. All three spent their working days doing modern chemistry.

During the time that he was a member of the Golden Dawn, Cecil Jones was living and working outside London. The number of rituals and meetings he could attend was limited. In addition, he was rather quiet and retiring by temperament, not a genial friend-to-all like Julian. So he was not as well known to other Golden Dawn members as Julian was. However, he was a much-respected member, and his help was called on by Florence Farr in March 1900 when she was facing the biggest crisis of her Golden Dawn membership—what to do about a letter she had received from Samuel Liddell Mathers claiming that all the documents on which the Golden Dawn had been founded had been faked by William Wynn Westcott. Mathers had warned Florence never to tell anyone this; but of course, she felt she really couldn’t leave such accusations just lying there unchallenged. She decided to hold a meeting on 3 March 1900, to tell a few 2nd Order members what Mathers was saying, and ask them what they should all do about it. The people she invited were a very select band, whom she knew well and trusted: Dorothea Hunter and her husband Edmund; Marcus Worsley Blackden; W.B. Yeats; Percy Bullock and Cecil Jones. Cecil Jones didn’t attend that meeting—it was probably organised at such short notice that he couldn’t make it. He was told of its outcome however: those who were there agreed that they would have to investigate the allegations. They formed themselves into a committee, and on behalf of the group Percy Bullock wrote to Mathers to explain their decision and ask him to explain further. The investigating committee met again on 10 March 1900 and this time Cecil Jones was able to go. But never again. At the 2nd Order meeting of 21 April 1900 he was replaced on the investigating committee by Charles Rosher. Cecil Jones didn’t attend that meeting. Although it was a regular 2nd Order meeting, scheduled some time before, it took place in the wake of the struggle for possession of the 2nd Order rooms at 36 Blythe Road, between supporters and opponents of Mathers’ one-man rule of the Golden Dawn.

Cecil Jones and Aleister Crowley 1898-1900:

Julian Baker introduced Aleister Crowley to Cecil Jones in October 1898 and the two men continued to do magic together, from time to time, until an incident in November 1910 brought their magical friendship to an end.

It was Cecil Jones, not Julian Baker, that recommended Crowley to the Golden Dawn hierarchy as a potential initiate.  It was also Cecil Jones who first put it to Crowley that he carry out the Abra-Melin rituals. Mathers’ translation, The Book of Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage had been published a few months before.

A distraction from the idea of the new magical order was the final collapse of the marriage of Aleister and Rose Kelly, in 1908-09. Crowley spent a lot of both those years abroad and was in North Africa in November 1909 when Rose got her divorce and custody of the marriage’s only surviving child, Lola Zaza Crowley (born 1906). As part of the divorce settlement, Crowley borrowed money against a sum of £4000 he would inherit when his mother died; the borrowed sum was put into a trust fund to provide income for Crowley himself, and Lola Zaza. Crowley’s mountaineering partner Oscar Eckenstein agreed to be one of the trust fund’s two trustees; and Cecil Jones was the other. These two were Crowley’s most trusted friends in 1909.

The staging of The Rites of Eleusis at Caxton Hall in Westminster in October and November 1910 brought the A∴A∴ a lot of newspaper coverage. The coverage included a series of articles in a racing paper called The Looking Glass, which got more and more personal about Crowley and the people he knew. As a senior member of the A∴A∴, Cecil Jones may have gone to see the Rites; but he did not appear on the stage in any of them; and Allan Bennett had left magic far behind and was now a Buddhist monk, living in Asia. Somehow, though, their names became known to The Looking Glass, with details of how close they had both been to Crowley years before. I wonder who had been talking to the press indiscreetly? In its article published on 26 November 1910, The Looking Glass named both Cecil Jones and Bennett as close friends of Crowley during 1899; and did a bit more than hint that Crowley and Bennett had had a homosexual relationship. The gist of that article was taken up by the moralist and fraudster Horatio Bottomley and published in his magazine John Bull. A lot of the legal case that followed turned on the fact that Crowley and Bennett had been given plenty of grounds to sue for libel, especially by The Looking Glass, but that neither of them had done so. But Cecil Jones did so.

Cecil Jones consulted Percy William Bullock of Bullock and Co solicitors. Percy William had been one of the most senior members of the Golden Dawn during the 1890s. Although he seemed to favour studying manuscripts rather than practical experimentation, he had always had an interest in alchemy, so he and Cecil Jones had that in common. The evidence that might come up if the case got to court might result in Crowley being arrested.

The offending paragraph in the article in The Looking Glass was worded so that Cecil Jones actually stood outside the allegations it made against Crowley and Bennett. As time went on and Crowley didn’t show any signs of suing despite having grounds, but Cecil Jones still wanted redress for the implied insult, Bullock.  It was down to Cecil Jones, as the client, to decide whether to take the next step. No doubt hoping it wouldn’t come to court, he chose to continue with the legal proceedings. Only a letter from Bullock and Co was needed to persuade Bottomley, as editor of John Bull, to publish a retraction of the article they had printed. John Bull also printed a statement saying that Cecil Jones was no longer an associate of Aleister Crowley—a statement which turned out not to be true. However, The Looking Glass’ editor and publishers wouldn’t retract what had appeared in their magazine.

Cecil Jones wouldn’t back down either, and the case reached court in April 1911. Cecil Jones had to go into the witness box and help put his own case: he was asked questions to this end by Mr. Simmons, his own barrister; and then asked more difficult ones by Mr. Schiller, barrister for The Looking Glass’ publishers.

Crowley was in court for both the days of the trial. In his memoirs he said that he went in disguise and no one recognised him, but that isn’t true. During his cross-examination Cecil Jones admitted that he could see Crowley in the court-room. The jury were probably aware that Crowley had chosen not to sue and Mr. Schiller left them wondering why Cecil Jones hadn’t asked Crowley to give evidence on his behalf. There was a moment, after Edward Berridge's evidence, when Cecil Jones’ barrister Mr. Simmons hovered on the brink of asking the judge to call Crowley as a witness; but he didn’t actually do so, and as a result, the only person who was called to speak on Cecil Jones’ side was J.F.C. Fuller.

Mr. Schiller’s summing-up on behalf of The Looking Glass’ publishers persuaded the judge (if he hadn’t made up his mind already) that, “If a man values his own reputation so cheaply that he does not mind associating with that kind of creature, he must not complain if comment is made about it”. The jury agreed as well, and decided that the offending words in The Looking Glass were fair comment, and consequently not a libel. Normally, the loser of such a case would have to pay the legal costs of both sides, so the penalty Cecil Jones might have faced would have been heavy financially as well as in terms of his reputation; though the decision about costs is up to the judge and he may not have ordered Jones to pay for all the lawyers.

A large number of papers reported on the trial. You would expect papers like the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, perhaps, to cover it, but even heavy-weight papers like the Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post published reports; and both the London papers, the Evening News and the Standard. So Cecil Jones’ clients, his acquaintances and his neighbours at work and at home would have been able to find out what was being said about him and his friends; and people learned his name who would otherwise have gone their entire lives without hearing anything about him.

Cecil Jones might have wanted to move on after the disaster of April 1911 and erase the name of Crowley from his mind, but he couldn’t do so completely. He was still a trustee of Lola Zaza Crowley’s money. He could also have refused to carry on at the task; but after the trial he probably saw more clearly than before, why trustees were needed. He did not have to meet Crowley, most of the work was done by solicitors; it was decisions about how the money in the fund should be spent that the trustees were required to make. As a trustee, Cecil Jones will have had some dealings with Rose Crowley, who had custody of Lola Zaza until she came of age in 1927; and with the artist Gerald Kelly, Rose Crowley’s brother, who seems to have done his best to act as a father-figure to Lola Zaza. Financial and legal work on the trust fund was required after the death of Lola Zaza’s grandmother, Emily Crowley, in April 1917; but again, Cecil Jones will have been dealing with Emily’s brother Tom Bond Bishop, whom Emily had named as her executor. After Cecil Jones’ first co-trustee, Oscar Eckenstein, died (in 1921) he may have been sole trustee for several years, until Gerald Yorke replaced Eckenstein in 1928. Cecil Jones might have expected to have to face some conflict between himself as an ex-friend, and Yorke as a new friend of Crowley, but Yorke took an independent and serious view of his duties as trustee. After Rose Crowley died in 1932, Crowley wrote to Yorke (but apparently not to Cecil Jones) suggesting that all the income from the trust fund be paid to him, now that Lola Zaza had inherited money from her mother; but both trustees agreed to refuse the request.

After Crowley:

He continued to run his business until he retired in 1939—and his timing in choosing that year to stop work was impeccable, because the premises he’d last been based in were destroyed soon after, in the Blitz. Cecil Jones’ daughter Eileenshe graduated in chemistry in 1926 at the University of London.

Soon after he retired, Cecil Jones and Ethel Melinda moved to Hastings, probably to 14 Elphinstone Road, his home address when he died. Cecil Jones kept active, at least during the first years of his retirement, developing new interests and keeping up old ones now he had more time. He enjoyed listening to music (both live and on the radio), corresponded with a large number of people, and continued to read widely. He kept his brain active by working on his French and Italian, and learned enough to be able to communicate in Esperanto. 1952 was a very sad year for him though: Ethel Melinda Jones died; and then an operation resulted in a restriction in his mobility, so that he could no longer dig his garden.