Part 1: Background and Early Career
By Wendy Slaninka (Granddaughter of James Leslie Starkey & Marjorie Starkey by their daughter Mary)

This is my fourth article for the Filming Antiquity Blog regarding Harding’s archaeology footage and links in with my first, second and third articles, ’Olive Starkey – Lady of Lachish’ (Leslie’s sister), ‘Living at Lachish – Life in Camp’, and ‘First Lady of Lachish – Marjorie Starkey and her family’, where there is other information and photos of Leslie.   All the Photos in this article are from the family collection unless otherwise stated. 
 
It has struck me in writing my three previous articles that I really ought to put something on the blog about the main man himself - James Leslie Starkey! There is already some family background on him and photographs in Olive Starkey’s article, and other general bits and pieces in the others but I thought it would be nice to write a short piece about his career leading up to Lachish, and about him.  His life and career is well documented and known but just the same I may have something of interest or new to say!  
 
I am sorry I never knew my Grandfather but I think his son John, my Uncle, takes after him in many ways and I take a sense of his persona from him.  Olive, Starkey’s sister, introduced John to her friend Margaret Howard and she also must have sensed this too as she later wrote to Olive ‘having met his son I can now well realise the charm that Leslie must have had and his great grasp of so many subjects’.  His children’s few memories of him are of a loving family man, willing to get down on the floor and play with them, carrying them round on his shoulders, and John particularly remembers him taking them to London Zoo and the cinema.

​In addition to the family background given in the article on his sister Olive, Leslie’s grandfather, James Starkey the builder, was married to Elisabeth Hoare, descended from a line of Hoares boasting three Sir Richards and a Sir Henry (including, we believe, Sir Richard Colt Hoare - distinguished archaeologist in Wiltshire who excavated Stonehenge and who has a monument in Salisbury Cathedral).  Elisabeth’s father was born at Hever Castle - country home of Henry VIII.
 
As a rather delicate child Leslie missed out on a lot of formal education (similar to Sir Flinders Petrie whom he later worked for), but his interest and passion for antiquity was fostered by books, particularly by Layard’s Nineveh,  a Victorian sensation, which he had asked for as a birthday present.  When he was 15 he worked for an Antique Dealer in London where he handled fine things and speculated about their origins. The premises were very close to the British Museum and he spent his spare time reading and visiting London galleries, including the British Museum and its Reading Room.

During World War I he served in the Royal Navy Air Service for three years as a Fitter/Air Mechanic, moving between several postings on home shores (thankfully), and earning a campaign medal – the British War medal.  

A postcard home to his sister Olive from Portsmouth mentions his passing through Southampton with 60 transporters and ships in the harbour filled with troops and horses, the common itself a mass of tents with soldiers waiting to embark. In another from Southsea he wrote that the searchlights at night were wonderful to behold.   At one time he was posted to a lighthouse for some months on coastal reconnaissance, and in those lonely hours he laid the foundations of his archaeological knowledge by reading text books which he had sent out to him.  
 
After the war – between 1919 and 1922 - he attended evening classes in Egyptology at University College, London where he came in contact with Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray, studying hieroglyphs with the latter.   Throughout this time he also attended UCL lectures when he could for the degree course in Egyptian History.  Dr Samuel Yievin, whom Starkey later worked with, was on the same course and mentions his attendance in his obituary on him. 

In 1922 he abandoned a promising business career and became a ‘Petrie Pup’ committing himself to an archaeological career working with Flinders Petrie, who apparently had immediately detected great promise in him.   ‘Petrie Pup’ was a term applied to those people selected by Flinders Petrie (later Sir) to act as his assistants in the field, a miscellaneous lot, culled from different professions, having aptitudes and skills in no way connected with Egyptology.  Indeed academic knowledge was a definite bar to employment with this pioneer, himself a sickly young man, too fragile to attend school and self-educated by wandering around the British Museum, who preferred people who came to him without preconceived ideas or training.   The exception to the rule was made in favour of those who had joined Dr Margaret Murray’s evening classes in elementary hieroglyphs and her sharp eye soon divided the sheep from the goats. Gerald Lankester Harding had also attended her classes.
 
His first assignment was at Qau with Guy Brunton (Petrie’s Chief Assistant), for the British School of Archaeology in Egypt (BSAE). Qau (Qau el Kebir) is situated on the east bank of the Nile, in Middle Egypt – north of Karnak and Luxor.  Obviously excited by his first trip to Egypt he sent Madge (his fiancée) a flurry of daily postcards describing their journey to the site, the site itself, their cave bedrooms, what they did each day, what they ate etc. – they make fascinating reading.  The food seemed to be variations on the following theme: bread, boiled rice, hard-boiled eggs, oranges, grapes, nuts, milk, chutney, jam tart and invariably tinned pilchards or tongue! (tinned fish seemed to be Petrie’s stock in trade fare) – and ‘not forgetting coffee’. 

It was at Qau that Starkey recognised the peculiarities of Baderian pottery (seen but not noted by other excavators – red pottery with black glazed tops and patterning) and helped to establish recognition of the very early Baderian civilisation on the east bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt (that it was his discovery is corroborated by both Harding and Margaret Murray who states ‘he never rested until he had persuaded Petrie to let Gertrude Caton Thompson to dig the mound where the pottery was found’ and Gertrude herself states in her Memoirs that it was Leslie’s ‘sharp eyes’ that had first noticed them).   

​Later back home Starkey proudly named their new home ‘Badari’.  And it was also here, in March 1923, that he also brought to light one of the very earliest copies of the Gospel according to St. John by insisting on emptying the sand from about 2,000 pots which were blank apart from this priceless 4th century Coptic papyrus manuscript, dated at approximately 400 AD, and a hoard of gold coins in another!  They had lain undiscovered for 13 centuries.  The manuscripts are described in detail in The Expositor, April 1924, and are now stored in the University of Cambridge Library.
 
He also helped with the distribution of Petrie’s excavations from Abydos – The Tombs of the Courtiers, back in the UK and in particular he visited Bexhill Museum and liaised with the Curator to fill gaps in their collection.  He himself even donated 1 guinea to this end!

​After two years with Petrie, his amazing quickness, his visual memory, his attention to detail, and a flair for objects (amounting to genius according to Margaret Murray) led him, in 1924, to being appointed Field Director of the Michigan University Expedition to Karanis ‘The Lord’s town’ – fifty miles south of Cairo, the modern Kom Washim in the Fayum, which threw more light on an obscure period.   Karanis was one of the largest Greco-Roman cities in the Fayoum dating back to the third century BC – a prosperous Egyptian town in Roman times.  The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology in Michigan hold the finds from this site.

Starkey married Madge in 1925, and she joined him for the second season.
 
His notebooks of progress in the field, and records of finds and observations illuminating the daily lives of these ancient people, the mound surveyed and subdivided into areas and sub areas, and the drawings and plans within this framework, were to prove invaluable to those who continued the excavations after him as the structures throughout the site could be traced in detail.*  

He also regularly sent back textiles to the Bolton Museum of Textiles, and textile fragments which apparently are catalogued under ‘S’ for Starkey!  Guy Brunton had also sent Bolton Museum textiles from Qau and Badari too.  Although he was by then Director of Karanis, Starkey also returned to Qau in Spring 1925 to help the Bruntons close the season as Guy Brunton was ill and had been taken to hospital.

​Between May and June 1926 Starkey re-registered with UCL and attended Petrie’s lectures in Egyptology, for the princely sum of £1 1/-.​ However, when the BSAE transferred their work to Palestine in 1926, Starkey rejoined Petrie as his first assistant at Wadi Ghazzeh and Tell Jemmeh, near Gaza – an ancient fortress along the course of the Wadi Ghazzeh.  Together with Harding, he was the backbone of the Petrie expeditions at Tell Jemmeh (1926-27), Tell el Fara (1928-29) and Tell el Ajjul (1930 onwards) – all in roughly the same area -  excavating three of the great fortified mounds of the ancient Syro-Egyptian frontier, and leading the first and final season at Tell el Fara (also known as Beth Pelet) in Petrie’s absence.    By now his son John had arrived (born 1929) and he accompanied his parents on the expeditions.  His daughter Mary was born in October 1931 so Lachish was her first outing.

At Wadi Ghazzeh, Starkey revived the wartime cannalisation of the Wadi which effectively removed the risk of malaria which was rife when they got there.  He was considered a magician by the amazed riverside dwellers who now had a quietly flowing stream leaving their fields rich in minerals allowing them to farm once again.   He himself fell victim to Malaria in November 1930 when he was at Tell el Ajjul and had to be carted off to the hospital in Gaza for 10 days, and was hospitalised again for it in 1931.  He also had Jaundice in December 1927 whilst at Tell Jemmeh.
 
In 1927 he was elected to the Royal Anthropological Institute. This interesting poster is of a lecture he gave in 1928 to a Masonic Lodge – the title is certainly attractive and I especially like the last line ‘Ladies are specially invited’, presumably meaning the content and nature of the lecture would be suitable for ladies to attend!  After the lecture the Lodge wrote enthusiastically thanking him for ‘such an intellectual treat’.  Starkey’s father in law was a Masonic Lodge Master and Starkey himself became a Mason in 1929.  

In 1932 the BSAE jointly published Beth Pelet II: Prehistoric Fara written by Eann Macdonald and in the same edition, a rather substantial Beth Pelet Cemetery co-authored by Starkey and Gerald Lankester Harding - describing in great detail the excavations, the tombs and layout of the cemeteries, and the finds, including bedrooms and a wine store.   Starkey had also contributed to its forerunner Beth Pelet I – Tel Fara in 1930, and in the same year to its supplementary publication written by J. Garrow Duncan, entitled Corpus of dated Palestinian pottery.  This included the section ‘Beads of Beth Pelet’ which was dated and arranged by Starkey.
 
Whilst at Tell el-Fara Starkey discovered the Bronze Bear, from the reign of David or Solomon – originally loaned to the Victoria and Albert Museum from the Institute of Archaeology.  Now back in their possession it is affectionately known as the ‘Starkey Bear’.  I have a V&A postcard of the Bronze Bear which Olga Tufnell sent Mary saying ‘Your father found this’!

At Tell el Ajjul, a site of 33 acres four miles south of Gaza, at an inconspicuous mound shrouded in sand next to the estuary ‘Hill of the Calves’, Starkey’s intuition led to excavation of a site that revealed treasures rich enough to compare with the hoards of Troy, Ras Shamra and Enkomi.   Many of these findings formed the nucleus of the Palestinian collection of the Institute of Archaeology, London and in the seasons that followed, the reliability of his judgement has been amply shown.  
 
In 1932 Starkey parted company with Petrie and struck out on his own, as Director of the Wellcome-Marston research expedition to the Near East, to excavate Lachish.  Sadly for Petrie, Olga Tufnell and Lankester Harding went wih him.  Even Petrie’s Cook, Mohammed Kreti, who had been with the Petries since a boy, followed suit.

In 1933 Prof. Flinders Petrie retired from the University College London and spent his remaining years excavating near Gaza. He died in Jerusalem in 1942 at the age of 89.

TO BE CONTINUED, with a further article on Lachish.

Sources/Further Reading/Research:
 
BSAE, 1923, The Gospel of St. John, Sir Herbert Thompson
BSAE, 1923, Qua and Badari I, Guy Brunton
BSAE, 1924, The Badarian Civilisation, Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton Thompson
The Expositor, April 1924 No.4, R Kilgour, Hodder & Stoughton
Cambridge University Library, the Coptic Scripts
University of Michigan, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology 
Bolton Museum of Textiles – textiles sent by Starkey from Karanis
Petrie Museum, University of London Institute of Archaeology
Qualley Log:  Diary of Karanis 1924-1925: https://www.luther.edu/archives/assets/Qualley_Log_1924_25.pdf
BSAE, Beth Pelet I, 1930, Flinders Petrie, including contribution by James Starkey
BSAE, 1930, Corpus of dated Palestinian Pottery, J. Garrow Duncan, including Beads of Beth Pelet by James Starkey
BSAE, 1932, Beth Pelet II: Prehistoric Fara, E McDonald, including Beth Pelet Cemetery by Lankaster.Harding and James.Starkey
An Appreciation, PEQ, 1938, Olga Tufnell
Petrie in the Wadi Ghazzeh and at Gaza: Harris Colt’s Candid Camera, PEQ, 1979, Francis W. James
Reminiscences of a Petrie Pup, PEQ, 1982, Olga Tufnell
 
*The old black and white photos of the excavations at this time were used in the making of the Indiana Jones film The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

By Wendy Slaninka (Granddaughter of James Leslie Starkey & Marjorie Starkey by their daughter Mary)

This is my third article for the Filming Antiquity  blog regarding Harding’s archaeology footage and links in with my first and second articles ‘Living at Lachish – Life in Camp’ and ’Olive Starkey – Lady of Lachish’, where there is other information and photos.  There are a couple of references to James Leslie Starkey's wife Marjorie (known as Madge) in the Living at Lachish article too. All the Photos in this article are from the family collection unless otherwise stated. 
 
There is brief footage of Madge and the children on Harding films, and the official Lachish promotional film used in the 1930s, but as yet the extracts posted on the site only include shots of Leslie.
 
James Leslie Starkey was my Grandfather, my Mother Mary’s Father, but he died before I was born so I never knew him.  In fact he died while his children, John, Mary and Jane, were still very young so to a great extent neither did they.  However their Mother, Marjorie ‘Madge’ Starkey (my Grandmother) put together a scrapbook for each of them so that they should know something of him and about him and of his work when they were old enough to understand.  So it is only owing to her careful preservation of the records, photographs, publications and many, many newspaper articles etc. that I am able to reproduce some of it in my articles.  Unfortunately Grandmother also died before I was born so I never knew her either but I know lots about her from my mother Mary and my uncle John.

​Marjorie Rosaline Rice was born in 1899 in Chislehurst, Kent, a pleasant well-knit community, the daughter of Arthur Alfred Rice – a Master Cycle Maker and Garage and Hire Car owner, and his wife Jessie Eliza (nee Chatfield).  Later on Arthur was also well known for work on behalf of St. Margaret’s Philanthropic Society and was on the Board of Governors at St. John’s Hospital.

​Madge was the youngest of five siblings – four sisters and a brother. She was an intelligent, articulate young lady who wrote beautiful letters, liked to read and listen to the radio.  She had a warm, sociable and outgoing personality, and had a good sense of fun. At school she had been very athletic, earning the nickname ‘Samson’!  She enjoyed going to the cinema and liked to knit and like a lot of girls at the time had been brought up by her mother to be a good homemaker, but she definitely also had a mind of her own.

After leaving school she worked as a driver for her father in his garage business, which I presume was fairly uncommon for a lady at that time, and during WW1 was on call for local Doctors on emergency callouts, and during the blitz actually saw two zeppelins shot down in flames.  After she married Leslie she also chauffered for a local Doctor when back in England ‘out of season’.  Later, during WWII she voluntarily worked for ‘British Restaurants’ (workers’ canteens).[1]

​She met James Leslie Starkey (known as Leslie) when she was about 18.  He was in the Royal Naval Air Service at that time and happened to stroll past her father’s garage.  He spotted her in the forecourt and winked at her, and they got chatting. Later they met up as a foursome with her sister ‘Ting’ and his cousin Eddie and it wasn’t long before they were engaged (and Ting to Eddie too!) 

They had quite a long courtship and engagement, and Madge was beginning to despair they would ever be able to afford to get married on Leslie’s meagre salary as a Petrie Pup.  It wasn’t until 1925, soon after Starkey was appointed as Director of the archaeological site at Karanis, Egypt, that at last they were able to marry and moved into their first home in Walton on Thames, which they named ‘Badari’. This was after the Badari civilisation identified by Starkey while he was working with Petrie in Qau, Egypt (1922-1924).  ​

​Madge travelled out with him for the season there in 1925 and was hooked. How exotic and exciting it must have been to arrive in the Egypt after living in England all her life – with the colourful and vibrant bazaars and suks, men in turbans and headdresses, women in veils, camels, mosques, all the sights, sounds and smells.  

​However this post was not to last and Starkey rejoined Petrie in Palestine in 1926 and Madge accompanied him every year after that: Wadi Ghazzeh, Tell Jemmeh, Tell el-Fara, Tell Ajjul, and finally to Lachish, under Starkey’s directorship.  

​Their journey out every season, which typically ran from October/November to March/April, was quite epic in itself.  They went by boat and steamship across the Mediterranean, and train, ferry, car and lorry across England, Europe and the Middle East.  An old collection of postcards from that time from Leslie to Madge when they were engaged and from Madge to her parents after they married depict typical local scenes and tourist spots – others showed girls and women in costume and going about their daily life as well scenes of sites of archaeological interest. Postmarks were from ports of call and towns, from Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Aden, Egypt, and Palestine.  

​The messages from Leslie were often in diary form recounting the travels and day to day activities. He also described his passage through other places such as the Straits of Corinth where he commented the ship only just squeezed through and, on another, passing Stromboli, with lava and smoke belching out of the volcano, pretty white walled houses in villages along the shores, looking out for the lighthouse at Alexandria, and at Cyprus they couldn’t land because of troubles – the Governor’s house had just been burned down - though they did take on 240 head of cattle which were stowed in the hold bound for Jaffa.  
 
Those from Madge include ‘My dearest Mother’ or ‘Dear Ma and Pa’ from the Shepherd’s Hotel, Cairo (a fashionable hotel founded in 1845) where they honeymooned! – her first trip abroad on the way to Karanis – ‘Here we are - We arrived last night – have been round the town – its so hot – am enjoying every moment’.  Another was from Naples - ‘the weather is glorious – went to Pompeii yesterday – twas all wonderful and Naples! – well you should come and see it.  Vesuvius smokes steadily away – at night one can see the red fire’.  They were staying in Bertolini’s Palace Hotel which commanded a grand view of Vesuvius, Naples and the Bay – it is still there today.  

One after a day touring Paris ‘just had supper – not frogs! – charabang round the shops – Oh! The exquisite handbags here! Another from Rome ‘had a good day sightseeing – Oh what a lot I’ve seen – all beautiful’. Another from Switzerland written on board the train ‘just passing through Switzerland – finished breakfast – excellent coffee’¸and from Tel Aviv ‘we are in a hotel right on the seafront – bathe and make sandpies all day – rather hot but very lovely – all very brown already’.  Many ended with her customery sign-off ‘Luck and Love’

​The cards describe the sights en route as well gales and choppy seas with bad crossings, the food they ate, travelling companions, the lack of sleep owing to crowded carriages in trains and the views from the window, people they met and places and hotels in which they stayed. Son John particularly remembers the journey out on the steamship ‘RMS Strathmore’ in 1935  They had gone tourist class, Madge, Jane and Mary in one cabin, he and his father and two other men in another.  There were several Australian families on board and when they disembarked at Port Said he remembers with embarrassment the boys ribbing him about his sailor suit that Madge had dressed him in which was all the rage at the time.

Madge had three children with Leslie -  John in 1928, Mary in 1931 and Jane in 1935 and the expanding family travelled out with Leslie every season they could.  She bore up well in the desert heat as an expectant mother with John in 1928 at Tell Fara and travelled out again with him at 5 months old the next season later that year.

​She would have missed the October 1931 season as that was when Mary was born so she and the children would not have gone out til the October 1932 season, with Mary aged 1 year. 

Leslie missed his family that season and sent Mary a pretty little string of beads for her bonnet made by one of young girls working on the dig together with some money for sweets ’which she was to share with her brother’ with a charming note‘from your loving Daddy’telling her he would be home ‘when the bluebells are just about to blossom’. Many of his cards and letters to Madge contained cartoons drawn by him and little quips and fun-filled comments and terms of endearment. His Christmas card to Madge, contained real pressed flowers from the Holy Land, and also had a little verse at the back and a cute sketch aimed at Madge:  ‘When gloating over the Xmas fare – Don’t Forget!! The more you eat the fatter you’ll get !!!

And Jane too was only 5 months old when they sailed out after she was born in 1935. Travelling with young children and babies on the journeys they undertook to get to the digs could not have been easy, although once at the dig sites Madge had a willing supply of nannies to help with the children.

​Madge was a very organised and capable person and her son John remembers her taking charge of all the necessary packing and planning, and the shutting up of the house in England for the season.  The only times she didn’t accompany Leslie was if she had just had - or was about to have - a new baby.  

​In 1937 they moved to their second home in St.Margaret’s, Twickenham, to be nearer to Madge’s family home  - a lovely settlement of homes, the back gardens of which encircled their own private lake with woods and gardens (Madge’s father lived the other side of the lake and the children would cross the little bridge on the lake to visit him).  Leslie also arranged for a daily maid to help Madge with the upkeep of the much bigger house and the three children.
 
Whilst Madge’s role was as a Wife and Mother, and did not have any particular interest in the archaeology side of things, she did support Leslie in his work as the Director’s wife and would help out where she could; and also had the rather gruesome task of packing away skulls at Lachish for despatch to England, after they had been cleaned and waxed!  Madge loved the Bedouins too, immersing herself in their culture and language, which she learnt, and their dress and music, even learning how to drum.  One season Madge taught everyone how to knit, men and women alike, both the members of the team and the Bedouins, who begged to be taught – it was quite a craze and everyone was at it, knitting stockings and jumpers.  Olga commented that it was so funny watching the houseboys with their big hands trying to weald the needles  [see also ‘Camp Capers’ photo in ‘Life in Camp’ article with Madge in Fancy Dress]. All the time Madge was in Palestine she collected folk costumes, embroideries, jewellery, fabrics, textiles,  etc.  After her death Olga Tufnell arranged for Madge’s collection to be donated to the Palestine Heritage Museum in Jerusalem, where it is on display today.  

 
She also helped Leslie in the preparations that had to be planned for camp visitors, and the stream of people who undertook field work and helped out in many ways over the years.  As I mentioned earlier, her mother had made sure all her daughters were well groomed in homemaking skills and Madge was an excellent cook and hostess, as well as a wonderful, generous and loving wife to Leslie and mother to her children.   

Madge did not accompany Leslie on that last tragic season in 1938 because they both decided the childrens’ education was suffering and it was about time they attended school properly.  She and the children were never to see their beloved Leslie again.
 
TO BE CONTINUED, with a further article on the tragedy and its aftermath.