Thomas Tout

Tout introduced original research into the undergraduate programme, culminating in the production of a Final Year thesis based on primary sources.[7] This horrified Oxbridge, where college tutors had little research capacity of their own and saw the undergraduate as an embryonic future gentleman, liberal connoisseur, widely read, and mainstay of country and empire in politics, commerce, army, land or church, not an apprentice to dusty, centuries-old archives, wherein no more than 1 in 100 could find even an innocuous career. In taking this view they had a fair case, given the various likelihoods and opportunities for their charges. Tout's ally C. H. Firth fought a bitter campaign to persuade Oxford to follow Manchester and introduce scientific study of sources into the History programme, but failed; there was failure too, at Cambridge. Other universities, however, followed Tout, and Oxbridge, but very slowly, had to face up to the fact, and fundamental changes to the selection of college fellows across all disciplines ensued.[8]

Tout is, moreover, also thought to be responsible for the appointment of the first female academic at Manchester University. Alice Margaret Cooke joined his department as a lecturer in 1893.[9] A sign of both Tout's interest in encouraging women to pursue academic careers and his commitment to primary research is displayed as early as 1902. In that year, with his colleague James Tait, he edited a volume of "Manchester Essays" displaying the scholarly work being done at the new university. As editors, the two men collected papers from young scholars as well as from some senior Manchester figures. They included work by several women and—in keeping with a long-term interest of Tout—they published papers on teaching history in the secondary schools. Tout's interest in how history was taught at pre-university levels is also borne out by his many years on the governing board of the Historical Association, with its dedication to bridging the gap between academic research and the teaching of history.

Tout was actively involved in the life and running of Manchester University and of the John Rylands Library where he served on the council of governors, but, apart from letters from A. W. Ward, his papers,[10] now housed in the John Rylands Library, contain more information on general academic affairs elsewhere around the country and about his own historical research than the affairs of his own University. The collection is greater in quantity than quality, and his wife's supplementary files might actually be of greater interest. Letters from former pupils serving in World War I are noteworthy, as are those from their bereaved relatives. Though we have the letters to Tout, rather than from him, in this moving correspondence with young men who went from academia to the Western Front, it shows his interest in teaching and in his students. Meanwhile, at the level of Manchester University research, a number of his students went on to become major medievalists in the years after World War I, while the Festschrift (1925) in his honor shows his standing among major historians on the Continent and in North America as well as in Great Britain.[11]

Seeking to enlarge the historical research materials available in Manchester for the benefit of its university's students he planned the ordered development of the university's library and built upon the foundation of E. A. Freeman's library (acquired in 1890). In collaboration with Henry Guppy, librarian of the John Rylands Library, archival resources for medieval England were obtained so that they could be studied without travels to other parts of the country.[12] Tout was a leading force in the creation of the Manchester University Press as it emerged as an important imprint for both medieval and modern scholarship.[13]

He married Mary Johnstone and lived at 14 Mauldeth Road, on the Fallowfield/Withington border, and later moved to 1 Oak Drive, Fallowfield. He and his wife, Mary, moved south to 3 Oak Hill Park, Hampstead, shortly before his formal retirement.[14] He was a devout Anglican[15] and died in 1929. Their daughter Margaret [Sharpe] was also an academic medieval historian, based at Bristol University. James Tait punningly said of Tout: "Tout comprendre, c'est Tout pardonner" (meaning in English: If one understands Tout one can forgive him too).[16]