INTRODUCTION

Summary

The following pages contain the results of an enquiry into the after health of University Oars, which has been carried out with more or less interruption during the last four years. It was commenced in the spring of the year 1869. I then hoped to obtain the information which I needed in the course of twelve or eighteen months, but I soon found that the labour which I had undertaken was likely to prove more arduous and more tedious than I had anticipated. A certain portion of the rowers still retained their names on the College Books; but many (39) were dead, and a still larger number had disappeared, and whither they had directed their steps it was no easy matter to ascertain. When, therefore, I had applied to all their surviving fellow-Oarsmen without avail, and when also I had written to many of their College contemporaries without discovering any trace of their habitation, I had no resource left but to search the different town and county Directories. Twenty-seven of the Oars had, however, gone abroad, or emigrated, and were either residing in our Colonies or in other parts of the world, and the only method I could discover of obtaining information regarding several of them, was to write to persons bearing the same name in this country. Moreover when I had actually succeeded in obtaining the addresses of those who were missing it was not always easy to extract a reply to my troublesome enquiries. That such should be the case was nothing more than might be anticipated, as questions respecting health, proceeding from a complete stranger, must always be looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion.