Thanks are extended to Brother Mick Walker R.O.H.
for the submission of this page
Brother Thomas Walter Boden, R.O.H.
It is difficult for the present day member of Grand Lodge to find the stimulus which prompted his predecessors of fifty and sixty years ago to make the many sacrifices typical of our early history. Grand Lodge was almost as intimate a body as a modern Minor Lodge. Every member knew every other member with a knowledge which bred jealousy just as frequently as it produced harmony. In many ways, the story of the years 1895 to 1910 is the record of group antagonisms through which the leaders of the various cliques obtained national recognition.
From the early days of the Grand Primo Lodge formed in 1866, Lancashire, and in particular the city of Manchester, had been recognised as a stronghold of Buffaloism. Home of the Shakespeare Lodge, the so called Mother Lodge of the North, it had vied with London for leadership. Perhaps it was this feeling of pride of position and place which inspired brethren like John Archdeacon and Thomas Walter Boden to devote their time and ability to the Grand Lodge meetings, at first fortnightly and then monthly, at Birmingham in the years 1898 to 1901, and in the following years at Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. The meeting on March 1st, 1899, may have been typical of those held during this period. Brother George Loxton of Dudley had resigned his office as Grand Secretary. Brothers R. Wilson Marsh, Thomas W. Boden and William Evetts were nominated as candidates for the vacancy. In the first round of voting Brothers Wilson Marsh and Boden each received seventeen votes against sixteen for Brother Evetts. Brother Wilson Marsh was elected on the second ballot receiving twenty nine votes against the twenty recorded for Brother Boden. This result may have been the spark which ignited the fires of conflict so quickly to arise. In June 1900, Grand Lodge, by resolution called for a cessation of the attacks on the Grand Secretary. On September 19th 1900, Brother Thomas Walter Boden was expelled for failing to conform with the decision taken in June. The resolution was carried by twenty-one votes to one, the only dissentient being Brother John Archdeacon.
In the case of an ordinary man this expulsion would have rung down the curtain on the career which began with Brother Boden’s initiation into the Mentone Lodge of Bournemouth on February 14th, 1890, just before his 30th birthday, which had continued with his raising to the Second Degree in the Royal Bournemouth Lodge on March 31st, 1892, and which reached the first of its peaks when he was raised by Brother John Archdeacon to the Third Degree in the Humphrey Chetham Lodge of Manchester on March 31st 1898. Thomas Walter Boden was, however, no ordinary man. He then began a campaign of “picketing” the succeeding Grand Lodge meetings, at which he distributed pamphlets stating his case. It may have been as a result of this campaign. Alternatively it may have been the desire of Grand Lodge to bring an end to a quarrel within the family. Whichever it was, the final outcome was the removal of the expulsion by a further decision of Grand Lodge on July 2nd, 1902.
This action received its triumphant vindication at the Worcester Convention in the following year when Brother Boden was elected as a member of the Rules Revision Committee. It is evident that he also became immediately a member of the Grand Certifying Council, since in the year 1905 he served both as Deputy Grand Primo and as President of the Certifying Council. His election as Grand Primo of 1906 was challenged by the nomination of Brother A. G. Beacon, but the voting was 2,307 for Brother Boden against 1,476 for his opponent. Thus the position arose that the Brother who had been expelled in 1900 was, as a result of his own pertinacity and strength of character, serving as Grand Primo and President of the Hull Convention of 1906. He was elected Grand Trustee by this Convention and held the position until his death in 1926. The Portsmouth Convention of 1909, the first to be held during the period in which Brother W. H. Rose was Grand Secretary, found Brother T. W. Boden serving as Assistant Secretary to Brother Rose. Immediately following that he became Secretary of the Grand Certifying Council, an office which he served for the next 14 years.
In those early years the Grand Certifying Council was of very great importance. Not only did it issue warrants or dispensations to the Provincial Certifying Councils, who met under the authority of such warrants, but it also provided the only final check on the integrity and competence of the Grand Secretary. Grand Lodge recognised this fact by limiting the ability of their executive officer to make purchases above a very moderate maximum without the counter signature of the Council Secretary. Such was the position at the time Brother Boden’s election as Secretary, but the tremendous progress of the years following the first world war made such a system cumbrous. On Brother Boden’s resignation in 1924 Brother W. H. Rose was elected Secretary of the Council, and from that date until its abolition by the Jersey Convention of 1955, the Grand Secretary has held the secretaryship of that and all other committees of Grand Lodge.
Grand Lodge has since 1900 been entitled to four delegates only at each triennial Convention. In late years the rules have permitted these to be the three executive members with one other to be elected by Grand Lodge itself. The Swansea Convention of 1915 decided on the appointment of an Executive for Grand Lodge, and the Grand Lodge Delegates to the Swansea Convention were Brothers John Wilson, T. W. Boden, Lionel Jacobs and Sam Hunt. Grand Lodge Executive was first elected, therefore, in 1916.
It is rather strange that Brother Boden did not become one of the original executive members — maybe the war or business reasons of some kind restricted his activities for a brief period — but from the date of his election in 1919 he remained a member until his death on June 5th, 1926.
In all these years his services to the Order were almost beyond comparison. Brother W. H. Rose used these words when reporting his death, “He was an arresting personality, would give an anecdote, render harmony or accompany an artist. He was a member who was always at the disposal of the Order in anything conducive to its welfare and interests”. A Past Grand Primo has written these words, “My recollections of Brother Boden were more connected with the social evenings which he promoted after the Grand Lodge meetings and at which he excelled”. On one occasion when the present Grand Secretary had given the monologue “Lasca” at the twenty first birthday party of a P.G. Secretary’s daughter, the late Brother John Wilson who was also present commented “That was Tommy Boden’s favourite monologue”. Business activity as a commercial traveller, intensive activity as a member of the Order, and a dominant personality in both services complete the picture of the brother for whom a Memorial Service was held in St. Andrew’s, Holborn Circus, on Saturday, July 31st, 1926. There the Order said farewell to the brother who was perhaps the bonniest fighter of them all. His active participation in the struggle on behalf of the Provinces in the 1890’s was only the precursor of the continual fight which he had to put up for his own position in the new Grand Lodge which he helped to create. In the long years which followed he was always in office — as Grand Primo, as President or Secretary of some active Committee, as Trustee and finally as a member of Grand Lodge Executive. The small star which was born in the South Country in 1860 developed into a blazing sun before it was extinguished in the cooler North sixty six years later. During the passage to its zenith, the Order received warmth and courage from its glow, and, in the years that have followed, the inspiration that can be left by the memory of a great man.