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July 2014
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Keith was very much a scholar, a meticulous, careful researcher in the archives, and a writer of precise and measured prose—a historian’s historian. His major research field was post-emancipation immigration into the West Indies, and his first book, Immigration into the WI in the 19th Century, is still widely read, especially by students. Carl remembers that sentences from that short book have been endlessly quoted (and misquoted) in numberless essays by A-Level and undergraduate students over the 40-plus years since it first appeared. He is best known for his magisterial book A Question of Labour, an authoritative study of indentured Indian immigration to Trinidad and Guyana. But he also wrote an important book on Tobago between 1793 and 1815, and, of course, many articles and book chapters. Later in his life he took on the editorship of a volume of the UNECO History of the Caribbean series—a difficult assignment, as I know from personal experience, which he brought successfully to completion. As a teacher, Keith was always exceptionally well prepared, and interested in his subject; he was a knowledgeable, meticulous lecturer, tutor and examiner. I’m told he made such an impression on students at QRC, where he taught briefly before going to Mona, that more than one went as far as adopting his unmistakable, perfectly formed handwriting style. I first knew him as a teacher at Mona in 1964/65—there are several others here who were his students at Mona—and I remember how well structured his lectures and tutorials were, how carefully he marked your essays—if you got an A from Laurence you were a certified genius with bragging rights forever. Here at St Augustine, Keith taught generations of students our core Year 2 courses on West Indian history, compulsory for History Majors. They found him formidable, outwardly severe, even stern; but if they got to know him they soon found how approachable he was, how interested in their work; and they all appreciated how meticulous he was in his class preparation and his marking of essays and exam scripts. Much more than a teacher of undergraduates and postgraduates, Keith was a genuine mentor to younger colleagues and research students—something we don’t always do well at UWI. He was most definitely a wonderful, life-long mentor to me—I joined the Department the same year that he came here from Mona. Howard Johnson, who recently retired from the University of Delaware, told me that Keith had been a huge influence on his life and career path. Swithin Wilmot, current Faculty Dean at Mona, called him a warmly supportive colleague over many decades. Glenroy Taitt has told me that when he was a temporary lecturer filling in for someone on leave, Keith was the one who advised and encouraged him in his first foray into university teaching. I’ve no doubt many others here and elsewhere regarded him as a mentor and supporter. He didn’t suffer fools gladly but if he thought you were worthwhile, he was generous with his time, expertise and experience. He was a genuine role model in the academy. And he was always a genial host to Mona and Cave Hill colleagues visiting for University meetings. Indeed, Eddie Baugh wrote a charming poem celebrating evenings on the Santa Margarita verandah with Roy Augier and others. Keith was devoted to UWI and served it well. He was cross-campus Dean of the then Faculty of Arts & General Studies (1975-78), a long-serving Chair of the cross-campus Board for Examinations, and Campus Co-coordinator for Graduate Studies. (He handed over that last portfolio to Clem Sankat, who has said how much he valued Keith’s work on behalf of the graduate students). Woodville Marshall, his close friend and often sparring partner, who spoke eloquently about his life-long relationship with Keith at his 80th birthday party last year, asked me to say: “The University will always be grateful to him for the work that he did on the Board for Examinations, because he became an expert on all the rules and regulations, and was therefore the obvious port of call whenever an intricate rules/regulation issue had to be deciphered. I remember attending a meeting of the Board and looking on with awe and some amusement at how deftly he and Martin Aub, the other expert, despatched all the trifling interventions. These exchanges left Bill Mailer, whom K.O. succeeded as the Chair, bobbing his head from side to side, as though he was watching a tennis match.” In everything he did, Keith upheld the highest standards, not only in academic work but also in university administration and management. He didn’t always agree with what the University did, and successive VCs, Principals and Registrars were the recipients of robustly written letters expressing his dismay at the latest decision he disapproved of. But his loyalty to the University could never be questioned. I remember that at a function for his retirement, then VC Alister McIntyre said that as long as Keith was chair of the Board for Examinations, he knew that all UWI’s examination related matters were in safe hands. Indeed, his chosen academic discipline, history, and his University to which he dedicated all his working life, were in safe hands with him. I hope that he too is now in a place of safety and peace. |
Keith was educated at QRC—where else?—won the Modern Studies Island Scholarship, and went to Cambridge, where he took his BA and PhD degrees. Soon after he was awarded his PhD, a pioneering study of post-emancipation immigration to Trinidad and Guyana, he came to teach at what was then the UCWI, at Mona, Jamaica. He joined the first group of West Indian historians teaching there, notably Elsa Goveia, Douglas Hall and Roy Augier. Carl Campbell, then an undergraduate, remembers him at Mona driving a low, red, open-top Triumph sports car, looking “quite the dashing bachelor” (Carl’s words). Keith stayed at Mona from 1959 to 1972, and it was here that he met, courted and married KemlinChing who taught Spanish literature. In 1972 he returned to his homeland as Professor of History at St Augustine, a post he held to his retirement in 1995.