Frederic CHAPPLE

CHAPPLE, FREDERIC (b. London, England, 12 Oct 1845; d. Norwood, SA, 29 Feb 1924). Headmaster, Prince Alfred College.

Frederic Chapple, whose Presbyterian parents were John Chapple, a mason, and Louisa, was sent to a Wesleyan day school at the age of eleven. He experienced religious conversion during a mission of the Rev John Smith. Class meetings intensified his faith. In his fourteenth year he became a pupil teacher at the day school, and began work in Sunday and Ragged schools. He served in several positions at Westminster Chapel. He headed each year of his course at Westminster Training College, London, taught at a practising school, and completed arts and science degrees at London University.

Accepting the headmastership of Prince Alfred College, Chapple arrived in Adelaide in April 1876 with his wife Elizabeth (née Hunter) and family. Much of his abundant energy was then spent in setting Prince Alfred College on a firmer course. The school, begun in 1869, had the backing of SA's strong Wesleyan community; in a long headmastership, extending to the end of 1914, Chapple developed the school along English public school lines. Its academic and sporting successes gave it preeminence, at least for a time, while its rivalry with the Anglican St Peter's College became a feature of SA life. A practical man, and holding the contemporary faith in 'muscular Christianity', Chapple had expressed his beliefs that moral training was paramount and that scriptural authority was more necessary and directly applicable than philosophical reasoning. He told a meeting of 650 young Methodists in 1885 that there was too much preaching and that the bulk of Christians listened too much, carried out too little, and often stood idly by. As if to demonstrate another belief - that religion had little to fear from science - he lessened the traditional emphasis on classics and quickly expanded science teaching in the school, which had the first chemical laboratory and physical science classroom in SA. A study of science rather than the ancient authors, he thought, was of more value in a utilitarian age.

Chapple's strong religious faith, expressed in daily services and in Bible lessons to boarders, was undoubted. He took part in a 'Bible in state schools campaign' early in his SA career. His biblical scholarship was evident: a boarder, recalling Chapple's Greek and English Bibles, said that Chapple apparently understood the Greek as clearly as the English. He heavily annotated his copy of an RV Bible, shading verses in different colours to illustrate many themes. Speaking at a meeting of the BFBS, he declared his only criticism of South Australians was that they did not love their Bibles as they should. In 1894 Chapple spoke of a personal spiritual quickening he experienced during the Rev Thomas Cook's mission in Adelaide in that year.

Outside the school Chapple was prominent in educational and Methodist circles and in youth affairs. He was a Council member of the University of Adelaide and president of the Collegiate Schools' Association; he held office as a Methodist circuit steward, editor of the Methodist Journal and president of the Council of Churches, and was active in the development of the YMCA and Our Boy's Institute. Above all, however, he remained dedicated to his duties at Prince Alfred College, revealing his belief in a practical Christianity, his wish to prepare boys fully for life in an industrialising world, and his confidence in what a community of present and past scholars could achieve. He also found much satisfaction in the many successes of his eight surviving children.

ADB 7; Australian Christian Commonwealth 12 June 1908, 24 March 1911; Eighty-fifth Annual Report of the Wesleyan Committee of Education 1924-25 (Somerset, 1925); R M Gibbs, A History of Prince Alfred College (Adelaide, 1984); Methodist Journal 10 March 1876

R M GIBBS