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  • The English Garden

    The Forgotten Man

    Jan 27, 2021 5 minutes

    William Purdom, who died suddenly in Peking 100 years ago this November, packed a great deal into his short life. A head gardener’s son from Westmoreland (now Cumbria) he trained at Kew where he was elected Secretary of the Kew Employees Union. In 1905, aged just 25, he lobbied the Board of Agriculture for better pay and conditions at Kew and was promptly sacked for “agitation” by the director, William Thiselton-Dyer. Labour Members of Parliament protested that civil servants were entitled to join a union and Thiselton-Dyer was ordered to reinstate Will. Faced with this humiliating public reversal, he resigned – an extraordinary outcome to a David-and-Goliath dispute between the director and a ‘student gardener’, the most junior grade of Kew employee.

    In 1907, Will led the only ever strike by Kew student

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