The Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford
http://trushare.com/97jun03/JU03GARD.htm 
This museum is the result of one man�s love and labour. The Higgins family owned a successful brewery, now the Bedford Museum, and the Higgins Museum is housed in the handsome Victorian house close by, which was built by his grandfather, and left by Cecil Higgins, with his collection, to the citizens of Bedford

The museum has an exceptional collection of British watercolours. As these are fragile and are never displayed for long, the exhibitions change every six months. They are beautifully hung in a purpose-built gallery, with useful information and magnifying-glasses available. It is very exciting to be able to look at Turner, Blake, Rowlandson and Gilray for as long and as closely as you like.

The main part of the house has been furnished as the home of a well-to-do Victorian family There are clothes, boots, toys, buttonhooks, alarmingly lethal chemical fire-extinguishers, a delightful nursery and a varied selection of grand contemporary and earlier furniture and pictures � a convincing mixture of inherited and newly acquired possessions. William Burgess was an architect of the high Victorian Gothic style and his bedroom has been reconstructed here. The ceiling is dark green scattered with golden stars, the catafalque of a bed and huge cupboards alive with mediaeval figures and lively animals on a gold and red background.

Bedford was a busy lacemaking centre and much fine lace is on display, both British and European with explanations of their history and design.

Cecil Higgins had a special love for glass and china and bought pieces of outstanding quality. The displays are breathtaking � Chelsea, Stafford, Meissen, Art Nouveau, William de Morgan china, mediaeval slipware, and glass � engraved glass, painted glass, coloured glass, slender Jacobite wine glasses with spun twists in their stems, early glass from the pioneering Ravenscroft works, lovely innovative glass from Whitefriars who were making exquisite pieces at the turn of this century. It is a treasure trove of beautiful things and a place to learn more about them.

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29 May 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1235115,00.html  
Obituary 
Christopher Longuet-Higgins 

Cognitive scientist with a flair for chemistry 

Chris Darwin
Thursday June 10, 2004 The Guardian 

Christopher Longuet-Higgins, who has died aged 80, was not only a brilliant scientist in two distinct areas - theoretical chemistry and cognitive science - but also a gifted amateur musician, keen to advance the scientific understanding of the art. 
Born in the vicarage in Lenham, Kent, he was the second of the parish priest's three children. He joined The Pilgrim's school, Winchester, in 1932 and became a senior chorister at the cathedral. Three years later, he won the top entrance scholarship to Winchester College, where his precocious talents in mathematics and music flourished. 

In 1941, he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, to read chemistry, but at the end of his first year also took part one of the music tripos, and was appointed Balliol organ scholar. In his second year, Christopher performed what Dr John Jones has described as "probably the greatest intellectual feat by a Balliol undergraduate ever": he proposed, with
convincing arguments, the correct structure of the chemical compound diborane (B2H6) - a compound that defied contemporary chemical valency principles. Christopher's solution - pace the eminent Linus Pauling, who favoured a different structure - used a novel kind of chemical bond, and in 1943, before the end of his second undergraduate year, he published
with his tutor RP Bell in the Journal of the Chemical Society what was to become a landmark paper in theoretical chemistry. 

Christopher went on to use mathematical analysis, and in particular statistical mechanics, to predict a wide variety of chemical structures and phenomena. One particular triumph was his use of molecular orbital theory to predict that the aromatic compound cyclobutadiene, which was too unstable to synthesize, should be stable when linked to a transition metal. Three years later, a compound was indeed synthesised in this way.  

By the age of 29, Christopher was professor of theoretical physics at King's College London, and in 1954 became professor of theoretical chemistry at Cambridge, and a fellow of Corpus Christi College. 

In 1967, as a result of a growing interest in the brain and the new field of artificial intelligence, Christopher made a dramatic change in direction and moved to Edinburgh to co-found the department of machine intelligence and perception, together with Richard Gregory and Donald Michie. It was Christopher who, in 1973, was the first to name this field more broadly as "cognitive science". 

In this new field, his approach to problems was essentially analytic, as it had been in his chemical work. The computer, equipped with the powerful new symbolic programming language POP, he saw as an indispensable tool for testing the algorithms which he would derive from fundamental analyses of the problems at hand. He excelled at posing fruitful questions, and his and his students' work on such diverse topics as language production, the perception of musical structure, the derivation of 3-D information from binocular images, and the way memories are stored in neural networks has had a lasting impact on cognitive science.  

As time went on, tensions arose between the founding members of the department at Edinburgh - partly a reflection of intellectual differences regarding the future direction of artificial intelligence - which resulted in a contentious review of the field by
Christopher's old Wykehamist colleague Sir James Lighthill. At the instigation of Stuart Sutherland, Christopher made the decision to move to the experimental psychology department at Sussex University. There, he continued his work in cognitive science and made major contributions in vision, language production and music perception. 

Christopher was unfailingly rigorous in his work, taking nothing for granted, and expected of others the standards he required uncompromisingly of himself. Although he was perhaps unfortunate not to receive the Nobel prize for his work in theoretical chemistry, his contributions to both chemistry and to cognitive science were recognised by the award of five honorary degrees; he was made a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Arts, and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He also served as a governor of the BBC from 1979 to 1984.  

Music was a life-long love - he was a pianist, conductor and composer. After retirement in 1988, he returned to a problem that was close to his heart: how to generate automatically from a score a performance that would sound musical. Although impressive demonstrations of this work were frequently audible to those passing his office, the work was never written
up, and awaits reconstruction from his meticulously kept notebooks. 

He is survived by his brother Michael, a distinguished professor of fluid mechanics. 

 Hugh Christopher Longuet-Higgins, scientist, born April 11 1923; died March 27 2004 

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Source 
Bob Higgins 
(Filed: 01/08/2002)

Bob Higgins, who has died aged 98, spent 32 years in the Metropolitan Police, ending his career as a Chief Detective Superintendent; between 1925 and 1957 he encountered some of the most ruthless, and colourful, villains London had to offer. 
For much of his time Higgins was in charge of CID at Tottenham Court Road, where he dealt with everyone from pickpockets to a serial killer. Throughout it all, Higgins maintained a very British dignity and sang-froid. On one occasion, in April 1945, he was called to the Lyons Corner House in Oxford Street. A man called Jack Tratsart had invited five members of his family to afternoon tea, then pulled out a revolver and shot three of them across the table, killing his father and one of his sisters, and wounding his younger brother. 

Arriving at this scene of carnage, Higgins did not hesitate to approach the perpetrator: "I wanted to make sure he was disarmed," he wrote later. "So I went over, introduced myself, and asked him gently for his gun." 

When a French Resistance hero, who had followed his lover to London, attempted to murder her in Piccadilly, Higgins commented: "It was obviously a crime passionel, the more explicable as it involved two foreigners."

Robert Mold Higgins, the seventh of 13 children, was born on July 22 1903 near Oakham, in Rutland. His father had been stud groom for Sir Charles Fitzwilliam, Master of the Horse to George V. From an early age Bob wanted to join the police; concerned that he would not reach the minimum height, he performed exercises to elongate his frame.

His parents, however, were not keen on his ambition and, after leaving school in Oakham, Bob began work at the age of 15 at an auctioneers' office in the town.

Unable to join the police until he was 20, he instead signed up in the TA (Leicestershire Yeomanry); when he was 19 he moved to Guildford, Surrey, to another auctioneering firm, then applied to Scotland Yard. 

After a period as a probationary constable at Peel House Training School in Victoria, Higgins spent three years on the beat as a Pc with S Division, which covered a large area of north London. 

On New Year's Day 1926, while he was still a raw recruit, he discovered the body of a strangled 17-year-old girl in the bedroom of a house at Camden Town. Despite his inexperience, he remembered to disturb nothing at the scene of the crime.

Higgins was soon assigned to CID, and in 1934 joined the Flying Squad. He was never again in uniform, and over the years pitted his wits against criminals with sobriquets such as "Dodger", "Old Legs", "Blue-Eyed Webbie", "The Bobbed Hair Bandit" and "Peter the
Plotter". 

In his autobiography, In the Name of the Law, published in 1958, Higgins revealed himself as an uncompromising enemy of the wrongdoer: "I had very little time for the pickpocket," he declared. "He was usually a snivelling, treacherous specimen." A prostitute he found murdered near Broadcasting House was "a person of low moral calibre".

At the same time he was fair-minded, and could have a certain regard for some members of the criminal fraternity. Of one London gang leader, who had said that he had developed "a high respect" for the police, Higgins noted: "I could hardly describe myself as an admirer of this man, but it is comforting to know that even the most hardened criminals sometimes have their codes of honour and retain a healthy respect for the CID . . . 

"Had the occasion arisen, I would have hounded him to the ends of the country in the interests of justice. Yet if I happened to meet him casually in a pub when the heat was off, I would cheerfully have stood him a drink."

Anyone who believes that London, during the war years, was relatively crime-free would be disabused by a look at Higgins's career. Heroin was already enough of a problem by 1938 that the Flying Squad was asked to launch a drive to eradicate it.

Posted to Tottenham Court Road as a detective inspector in 1941 - his "patch" included part of Soho - Higgins had constantly to deal with pickpockets in pubs who relieved American servicemen of their wallets, and with burglars and other malefactors who took advantage of the cover of the black-out.

Another who took advantage of the black-out was Gordon Cummins, an RAF trainee, who revived memories of Jack the Ripper when he brutally murdered four women in early 1942. Higgins led the investigation which, through meticulous police work, caught and convicted Cummins; he was hanged. Higgins viewed him as "by far the most vicious killer I encountered, or, in fact, ever heard about during the whole of my police career".

In 1940 Higgins helped to recapture Ruby Sparks, the cracksman who had famously escaped from Dartmoor. Seven years later Higgins was in charge of the (ultimately unsuccessful) hunt for the killer of "Black Rita", a dark-haired, 6 ft tall prostitute who operated from a room near Piccadilly Circus.

Also in 1947, he led the investigation into the murder of Alec de Antiquis, a respectable 34-year-old motor mechanic who was shot by fleeing jewellery thieves as he rode his motorcycle down a street in Soho. Higgins and his team solved this case in only 20 days, thanks to the manufacturer's stock label on a discarded Macintosh; two men were hanged for the crime. 

Throughout his career Higgins worked punishing hours, at a time when overtime was unheard of, and rest days non-existent. His experiences moved him to strong opinions. He believed that policemen should be better paid, to prevent them succumbing to the temptations of corruption; and he disapproved of early retirement, by which the force lost "leading officers at a time when they have reached the peak of their efficiency".

Higgins himself retired in his mid-fifties. Opportunities for further promotion were limited, since "the ruling posts are occupied almost exclusively by those who get them through distinction or influence in other spheres". He also knew that he could command a well-paid job outside the police force, and became head of security for the catering firm, J Lyons, a post he held for 10 years.

Despite a career in which he dealt with the worst manifestations of human nature, Higgins never allowed himself to become disillusioned or cynical. He was a keen golfer, playing until he was 90, and for many years he served as secretary of the Medical Golfing Society; he also, in his younger days, played cricket for the Metropolitan Police.

Bob Higgins died on June 29. He married, in 1928, Jean Richmond. She and their three children survive him. � Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005 

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from United Kingdom Genealogy Site 
   http://www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/
 
Underlined links take you to their site for additional information
   The following Links were not operating May 2005

Cecil William Higgins  
         (31 DEC 1894 - 1917 )
Claude Edwin Higgins 
         (1878 - )
David Emery Higgins 
          (20 OCT 1890 - 2 JUL 1975 )
Edward Higgins 
          ( - )
Hannah Higgins 
          (7 JAN 1850 - 14 FEB 1887 )
Hughie Ernest Higgins 
          (9 MAY 1897 - 23 JAN 1979 )
Ida Elsie Higgins 
          (22 OCT 1892 - 9 SEP 1948 )
Joan Gertrude Higgins 
          ( - )
Laila Bertha Higgins 
          (14 MAR 1899 - 6 OCT 1959 )
Sarah Grace Higgins 
          (18 FEB 1888 - 8 OCT 1968 )
Sir Thomas Higgins Of London 
          ( - )
Sydney Emery Higgins 
          (11 JAN 1861 - 7 MAY 1928 )
Sydney George Higgins 
          (14 DEC 1902 - 13 DEC 1970 )
Vere O. Higgins 
          (1876 - )

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LONDON