Reginald Myrie Murray was born in March 1883, the son of Dr W. Clarke Murray, D.D., and Sarah Parsons Murray. The 1929 Wolmer’s souvenir locates the birth “at York Castle High School, St. Ann.” He was educated at York Castle (1892–1900) and then at the Jamaica High School and University College, Jamaica (1901–04). He was not a Wolmer’s boy. He later headed Wolmer’s.

In 1904 he became Jamaica’s first Rhodes Scholar. He read mathematics at Worcester College, Oxford. Jamaica College’s scholarship register dates his death 10 October 1963. He taught at Jamaica College from 1907 to 1917, interrupted by war service as a lieutenant in the 3rd British West Indies Regiment. The 1929 souvenir and the JC register both give the M.B.E. as Military Division.

He returned to JC in 1919–20, then became headmaster of Wolmer’s in 1920. In 1916 he had married Marion Costa of Orange Valley, St Ann. D. T. Girvan’s 1929 pupil memoir describes a Jamaican head who taught mathematics, scripture and English, climbed, shot for the island rifle eight, and published light verse (Pepperpot, with C. Thornley Stewart).

He was still Wolmer’s head when the souvenir went to press. Jamaica College records him as that school’s headmaster 1933–42. The Observer (2016) and Public Opinion (2020) repeat the 1904 “first Jamaica Rhodes” fact.

Sources

Sources: Wolmer’s School Bi-Centennial Booklet, 1929; Jamaica College, JC Scholarships, updated 17 February 2019; Jamaica Observer, Ten Interesting Facts about Jamaica College, 7 June 2016.