A suburban runner
This photograph shows Alan Turing (on the bus steps) with
other members of the Walton Athletic Club, an amateur club
based in Walton, Surrey, an outer suburb of south-west
London.
Walton was not far from the National Physical Laboratory
where Turing was working from 1945 to 1947 as the world
pioneer of the computer (see this
Scrapbook page.) Alan Turing never got the computer up and
running, but he himself was running with tremendous energy and
speed.
The club members were probably on their way to a race
meeting on a Saturday in 1946. The location is identifiable as
Hersham Road, Walton.
I owe this photograph to the initiative of Mr Pat Butcher,
who in 1999 did something I had omitted to do in writing my
book, and contacted Mr J. F. 'Peter' Harding who has the
records of the Walton Athletic Club. Pat Butcher has published
two articles including anecdotes from Mr Harding, one in the
(London) Financial Times, 15 May 1999, and one in
Runners World, September 1999.
Here are the anecdotes:
The invitationAlan Turing was invited to join the
club after he was spotted running by himself in the local area
(probably in late 1945). 'We heard him rather than saw him,'
Mr Harding says, 'He made a terrible grunting noise when he
was running, but before we could say anything to him, he was
past us like a shot out of a gun. A couple of nights later we
caught up with him long enough for me to ask who he ran for.
When he said nobody, we invited him to join Walton. He did,
and immediately became our best runner.'
Out with the boys (1)'He was very popular with
the boys, but he wasn't one of them. He was a strange
character, a very reserved sort, but he mixed in with
everybody quite well; he was even a member of our
committee.
We had no idea what he did. We didn't even know where
he worked until he asked us if Walton would have a match
with NPL.
Another time, we went on our first-ever foreign trup,
to Nijmegen in Holland. He couldn't come, but he gave me
five pounds, which was a lot of money in those days, and
said, " Buy the boys a drink for me." ' |
Ivy House, Hampton, where Alan
Turing lodged in this period.
(Photograph taken in
1990.)
Streetmap here. |
Mrs Rosemary Hill and myself,
unveiling the blue plaque on her house,
2
December 2001 |
Out with the boys (2)'We never had any
indication whatsoever [of his being gay.] There was our
dressing room, with 20 or 30 young men, running around
naked, darting in and out of the showers. He never
approached one of them, invited them out for a drink or
anything. But... we used to go on trips to London. We
booked a show at the Prince of Wales theatre. There were
dancing girls... Of course, the boys in the club, their
eyes were bobbling out of their heads; they were all
young lads. I looked across at Alan, and he was asleep.'
|
The stress'I asked him one day why he punished
himself so much in training. He told me, " I have such a
stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is
by running hard." '
The successAlan Turing achieved world-class Marathon
standards. His best time of 2 hours, 46 minutes, 3 seconds,
was only 11 minutes slower than the winner in the 1948 Olympic
Games. In a 1948 cross-country race he finished ahead of Tom
Richards who was to win the silver medal in the Olympics.
|
