William Stallybrass

William Teulon Swan Stallybrass (formerly William Teulon Swan Sonnenschein; 22 November 1883 – 28 October 1948) was a barrister, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1936, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from October 1947 until his death.[1]

He was the son of the publisher William Swan Sonnenschein and the nephew of the classical scholar Edward Adolf Sonnenschein,[1] and was colloquially known at Oxford as "Sonners" for his former surname;[2] in 1917, together with his father, he took the surname of his great-grandfather, the Reverend Edward Stallybrass.[3][4]

As an undergraduate at Brasenose, he played cricket; he served as treasurer of the Oxford University Cricket Club from 1914 to 1946.[1] He was a barrister when he was asked in 1912 to return to his college as a fellow, where he specialised in criminal law[4] and became Master of the college in 1936.[5] He was elected Vice-Chancellor of the university in October 1947.[4]

He died a year later in a railway accident when he stepped out of a moving train near Iver station in Buckinghamshire, the first death of an Oxford vice-chancellor while in office.[6] He was almost blind at the time.[2]

  1. ^ a b c H. G. Hanbury, rev. H. G. Judge, "Stallybrass, William Teulon Swan (1883–1948)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, September 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36235
  2. ^ a b "Milestones, Nov. 8, 1948", Time, 8 November 1948. Archived from the original on 1 February 2011.
  3. ^ "Stallybrass, William Teulon Swan (1883–1948)", The Encyclopaedia of Oxford, ed. Christopher and Edward Hibbert, London: Macmillan, 1988, ISBN 9780333486146, p. 440.
  4. ^ a b c "Oxford's Stallybrass", Time, 13 October 1947.
  5. ^ "Principals — list of past and present", Brasenose College, Oxford, retrieved 10 April 2021.
  6. ^ "Dr. William Stallybrass", The Law Times, 1948, p. 280.