Carleton Allen

Sir Carleton Kemp Allen MC QC FRSL FBA (7 September 1887 – 11 December 1966) was an Australian-born professor and Warden of Rhodes House, University of Oxford.[1] Entry by his successor as Warden of Rhodes House, E.T. Williams, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [2]

Sir Carleton Kemp Allen

MC QC FRSL FBA
Allen in July 1945.
Born(1887-09-07)7 September 1887
Carlton, Victoria, Australia
Died11 December 1966(1966-12-11) (aged 79)
Oxford, England, United Kingdom
NationalityAustralian
Alma mater
OccupationProfessor
Years active1910–1952
TitleWarden of Rhodes House
Spouses
  • Dorothy Frances
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1922; died 1959)​
  • Hilda
    ​
    (m. 1962)​
Children2 (including Rosemary Dinnage)
ParentWilliam Allen

Early life and student career

Carleton Allen, or 'C.K.' as he came to be known, was born in Carlton, Victoria, the third son of William Allen, a Congregational minister and the younger brother of Leslie Holdsworth Allen. He was three when his family moved to Sydney, where he attended Newington College (1900–1906).[3] In 1903 and 1904 he was awarded the Wigram Allen Scholarship, awarded by Sir George Wigram Allen, sharing it in 1904 with Howard McKern. At the end of 1905 he was named Dux of the College and received the Schofield Scholarship.[4] At the University of Sydney he read classics and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1910.[5] Having won a scholarship to Oxford, he attended New College and studied jurisprudence under Sir Paul Vinogradoff. He took first-class honours in 1912 and was elected Eldon Law Scholar in 1913.

Military and academic career
Rhodes House, where Sir Carleton Allen was Warden from 1931 to 1952.

Allen was a captain in the 13th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, in World War I, was wounded, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1918. At the end of the war, he was elected Stowell Civil Law Fellow of University College, Oxford and he remained a fellow of that college until his death. In 1926, he spent a year as Tagore professor at the University of Calcutta and published his lectures from that time as Law in the Making in 1927. This compilation became an established classic and he completed a seventh edition in 1965.

In 1929 he was appointed Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, but in 1931 became the second warden of Rhodes House. He filled this office with great distinction and he and his wife, Dorothy Frances Allen (1896–1959), whom he had married at Oxford in 1922, won the affection and respect of generations of Rhodes scholars. Dorothy Allen's memoirs, Sunlight and Shadow (1960) (which Allen brought to publication after her death), give an account of life at Rhodes House. On his retirement in 1952 he was knighted.

He died at Oxford and was survived by his second wife, Hilda, whom he had married in 1962, and by two children of his first marriage, a son and daughter (the writer Rosemary Dinnage). A portrait of Sir Carleton Allen hangs in Rhodes House, Oxford, and images of him are held by the National Portrait Gallery, London.[6][7]

Publications
  • The Judgment of Paris: A Comedy (1924)
  • Oh! Mr Leacock (1925)
  • Law in the Making. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1927 – via Internet Archive.
  • Bureaucracy Triumphant (1931)
  • Legal Duties and other essays in Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1931. Retrieved 29 March 2023 – via Internet Archive.
  • Democracy and the Individual. New York: Books for Libraries Press. 1943. ISBN 9780836929331., reprinted 1972.
  • Law and Orders (1945)
  • The Queen's Peace (1953), his Hamlyn Lectures
  • Law and Disorders: Legal Indiscretions. London: Stevens & Sons Limited. 1954.
  • Aspects of Justice (1958); he also wrote two novels.

References
  1. Sir Carleton Kemp Allen (1887–1966) Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 7 (MUP, 1979) pp 44–46.
  2. "Allen, Sir Carleton Kemp (1887–1966), jurist and warden of Rhodes House". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30383. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Newington College Register of Past Students 1863–1998 (Syd, 1999) pp3
  4. Newington College Register of Past Students 1863-1998 (Syd, 1999) Part 2 - The Lists
  5. "Alumni Sidneienses - University Archives - The University of Sydney". Archived from the original on 18 December 2013. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
  6. "Sir Carleton Kemp Allen - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk.
  7. "Oxford Index". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30383. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Bibliography
  • David Macmillan, Newington College 1863–1963 (Sydney, 1963)
  • Peter Swain, Newington Across the Years 1893–1988 (Sydney, 1988)
  • Lord Elton, The First Fifty Years of the Rhodes Trust and the Rhodes Scholarships, 1903–1953 (Oxford, 1955)
  • Dorothy Allen, Sunlight and Shadow: An Autobiography (Oxford University Press: London, 1960)
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