removed to New South Wales, where he ultimately joined them, obtaining a civil appointment in the roads and bridges department of that state. In 1885 he obtained a lieutenancy in the New South Wales Permanent Artillery and was posted in charge of the Middle Head forts at Sydney. After a rather purposeless period, a school of gunnery was established at Middle Head, and from this point onwards Bridges’s remarkable energy found adequate outlet. He was made a captain in 1890, and served as a major in the Boer War: he was present at the relief of Kimberley (15 February 1900), and was engaged at Paardeberg (27 February), and in several other actions. On his return to Australia he joined the head-quarters staff and served successively as assistant quartermaster-general (1902), chief of intelligence (1905), chief of the general staff and Australian representative on the Imperial General Staff in London (1909), commandant, Royal Military College, Duntroon (1910), and inspector-general of the Commonwealth military forces (1914). He was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1902, colonel in 1906, and brigadier-general in 1910, and awarded the C.M.G. in 1907. With characteristic thoroughness he visited military schools in America, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany before commencing his duties at the college at Duntroon. At the outbreak of the European War (1914) he was selected to command the first Australian contingent, with the rank of major-general, and he was in command of the first Australian division on the Gallipoli Peninsula, where he was mortally wounded by a sniper 15 May 1915. He died at sea, five days later, on board a hospital ship. His body was taken back to Australia and interred in the grounds of the Military College at Duntroon.
In the foundation of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Bridges played a very prominent part, and it is in this connexion that his name will chiefly be remembered, for, under his able leadership, Duntroon ranked as one of the finest military colleges in the world. He was gazetted K.C.B. 17 May 1915, the notice appearing four days after his death. He was tall, thin, and loose-limbed, with a stoop at the shoulders which proclaimed him a student; a slow but deep thinker; so shy that he appeared to be dour and brusque in manner, a trait productive of a like nervousness in his subordinates; somewhat intolerant of opposition; a man of singularly few words; never one to seek for favours; always quietly efficient. He married in 1885 Edith Lilian, daughter of Alfred Dawson Francis, of Moruya, New South Wales. There were four children of the marriage.
[The Times, 24 May 1915; Commonwealth of Australia Official Records; Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, vol. i, 1923.]
BRIGHT, JAMES FRANCK (1832-1920), master of University College, Oxford, was born in London 29 May 1832, the second son of Richard Bright, M.D. [q.v.], the discoverer of the true causes and nature of ‘Bright’s disease’. His mother, his father’s second wife, was Eliza, daughter of Captain Benjamin Follett, of Topsham, Devon, and sister of Sir William Webb Follett [q.v.], solicitor-general in both of Sir Robert Peel’s administrations, and attorney-general in 1844. Bright went in that year to Rugby, which was then under the headmastership of Archibald Tait, the future archbishop of Canterbury, and still inspired with the traditions of Dr. Arnold. There he made some lifelong friendships with men of future mark, more especially with George Joachim Goschen (afterwards Viscount Goschen), Thomas Jex-Blake (subsequently head master of Rugby), and Horace Davey (afterwards Baron Davey of Fernhurst). In 1850 he went up to University College, Oxford, then under the mastership of Dr. Frederick Plumptre, and in December 1854 obtained a first class in the school of law and modern history. He had originally intended to follow his father’s profession of medicine, but finally decided to take holy orders. He was ordained deacon in 1856 and priest in 1876, and became B.D. and D.D. in 1884.
Meanwhile Bright had been offered a temporary post as a junior master at Marlborough College. The head master, Dr. George Cotton [q.v.], was so well pleased with his work that in 1855 he promoted him to the mastership of the modern school, which had just been started. Bright has left an account of the school when Cotton was appointed head master in 1852. ‘It was’, he wrote, ‘in a very bad state: there was a great deal of bullying of a severe character; one boy, for instance, was periodically half-hanged; another tall ruffian used to take a small boy into Savernake forest, and, giving him twelve yards’ start, proceeded to pot him with a pistol.’ There was also a fixed hostility to the masters. The organization of games was scarcely
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