Walter Empson

[1] Empson was educated at Charterhouse before entering Trinity College, Oxford, where he gained a second-class honours degree, graduating in 1880.

After a brief period with a survey party at Patea he worked on sheep stations in Canterbury, including his brother Arthur's farm on Rangitata Island.

Known to his students simply as 'The Man', he combined a spirit of camaraderie with strict discipline (corporal punishment was meted out with a fives bat for maximum sound and moral effect).

Sport became an organised element of the curriculum, for Empson saw it as an important medium for the development of loyalty, physical potential and personal and team skills.

[1] A wiry man with straw-coloured hair, Empson had become well known in Christchurch in his early years as he went about wearing riding breeches, a loud checked coat and a monocle, with a bulldog always at his heels.

Former students subscribed several hundred pounds to enable Empson, his wife and daughter to take an overseas holiday at the end of that year.

[1] After visiting their son in India and Walter's brother in Mexico, the Empsons returned to England about 1914–15 to live in quiet retirement.