To publicise our event Calculating Kindness: Chasing George Price, to be held Tuesday, 10th May, 6.30 – 8.00 pm at the British Library, we are republishing an edited version of Laura Farnworth’s post on the development of  Undercurrent’s production, Calculating Kindness, using archives held at the British Library.

Adam Burton as George Price. Copyright Richard Davenport/Undercurrent.

I first stumbled across George Price in a Readers Digest article in 2011. Struck by his extraordinary story, which illuminates important questions about who we are, I was compelled to find out more. This led me to the British Library where his manuscripts are held, together with those of his colleague, evolutionary biologist William Hamilton.

Neal Craig as William Hamilton, Adam Burton as George Price. Copyright Richard Davenport/Undercurrent.

Price was an eccentric American who arrived in London in 1968. He spent weeks going to libraries, until he discovered a paper by Hamilton.  One of the key ideas in Hamilton’s paper was that people are genetically predisposed to be kindest to kin. George found the idea bleak. Did real selfless kindness exist?

In an attempt to prove the idea wrong, George formulated an equation widely acknowledged as the mathematical explanation for the evolution of altruism. The Price Equation proved Hamilton right and was so extraordinary that University College London gave George an honorary position within eighty minutes of him walking in off the street.

George had been a militant atheist, but writing the equation had a strange effect on him. He began to calculate the probabilities of coincidences in his life, including the probability of him being the man to write the equation. The outcome was so remote, George decided the equation was a gift from God and converted to fundamental Christianity overnight.

Adam Burton as George Price. Copyright Richard Davenport/Undercurrent.

George then embarked on a radical phase of altruism - helping complete strangers. He gave away everything he had and ended up homeless. In America, George had undergone an operation for thyroid cancer. Now, testing God, he had stopped his thyroid medicine, which can contribute to depression. George was pushing the extremes of survival, living on a pint of milk a day and celebrating his last 15 pence.

A few years later, Price was discovered in a squat having slit his throat. Seven men attended his funeral - five homeless and two evolutionary biologists, William Hamilton and John Maynard Smith.

‘Calculating Kindness’ weighs up the question: was Price mentally ill, or consumed by a spiritual desire to disprove his own theory: that man is kindest to his kin?

Whilst reading through his papers George began to come to life for me - with each document I got to know him a little more. I started to understand what preoccupied George and how he thought about things. This invaluable research has formed the bedrock for developing the show. It is material I keep coming back to, and as my understanding of George’s science improves, so I see new things in his writings.

Laura Farnworth
Artistic Director of Undercurrent

 

On 18 October 1914 a British officer named Lieutenant Fitzpatrick arrived at Bahrain bearing a letter marked ‘very secret’  for the Bahrain Political Agent, Captain Terence Keyes. The letter was from Keyes’ superior, Political Resident Lieutenant-Colonel Knox, and informed him that 5,000 Indian troops would be arriving in Bahrain in less than a week's time.

   

Sketch of camp, 1 mile south of Manama (Bahrain Island), IOR/R/15/2/1820, f 3. The key lists divisions that were part of Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’. 

Keyes and Fitzpatrick had just five days to select a site on Bahrain’s main island, capable of supporting a camp for 5,000 men. The two men quickly set about identifying disembarkation points in the town for the troops and livestock, routes through the town’s narrow streets to possible camping grounds, water supplies and sanitation.

On the morning of 22 October, the Ruler of Bahrain, Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifah was informed of the plans. The Shaikh’s response, Keyes later wrote to the Resident, was ‘extremely satisfactory’. Shaikh Isa did, however, raise one point: the camp site selected, close to his own fort, would prove awkward in the following June, when his ‘own people’ had arranged to encamp in the very same place.

 
Extract of a sketch map indicating disembarkation points and route through the town to camp sites. IOR/R/15/2/1820, f 14.

Shaikh Isa’s comment alludes to the fact that the Indian troops bound for Bahrain – troops that comprised part of the Indian Expeditionary Force D, and that would go on to fight against the Turkish Army in the First World War’s Eastern theatre in Mesopotamia – were not working to any fixed timetable. Their stay in Bahrain was to be open-ended, entirely dependent on events in the war.

Unsurprisingly, the arrival of the transport ships and other military vessels off the Bahrain coast on 23 October 1914 was met with excitement and unease in the streets of Manama. Even though the vessels could hardly be seen from the harbour and wharves of the town – the convoy being moored more than three miles out because of the islands’ shallow coastal waters – there was much nervousness about their presence.

In spite of the support of Bahrain’s rulers and the most prominent Arab merchants in the town, Keyes wrote that ‘several deputations of Arabs endeavoured to work the Shaikh up against the landing of the troops'. They might have been encouraged by Herr Harling, Bahrain agent for the German company Robert Wonckhaus & Company. Harling, so Keyes claimed, was stirring up anti-British feeling amongst Bahrain’s Persian inhabitants, and conniving with ‘some minor member’ of the Al Khalifah ruling family. On 28 October Keyes had Harling arrested, with orders for his internment for the duration of the war.

   
Extract of a letter sent by the Political Agent at Bahrain, Captain Terence Keys, to the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, 4 November 1914, describing the German Herr Harling’s activities at Bahrain. IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

Meanwhile, the ladies of the American Mission were sent out on a charm offensive to allay the fears of the female inhabitants of Manama. In spite of all efforts though, Keyes had to concede that there was a growing sense of uneasiness and objection to the anticipated presence of the troops, in spite of all his efforts to dispel any concerns. Rumours abounding (reported by Harling in a letter sent to the German Consul at Bushire) that a further 15,000 troops were on their way to join the 5,000 already arrived at Bahrain doubtless did little to help matters.

 

Extract of a letter sent by the Political Agent at Bahrain, Captain Terence Keys, to the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, 4 November 1914. IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

 

Ultimately, the 5,000 troops that anchored off the coast of Bahrain did not set foot in Bahrain. They remained on their vessels until 2 November, when they sailed to the Shatt-al-Arab, in response to Turkish hostilities against the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

 

Extract of a translation of a letter written by Herr Harling to the Imperial German Consulate in Bushire, 24 October 1914. IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Further reading:

‘Campsites in Bahrain’ IOR/R/15/2/1820

‘Bahrain: arrival of Expeditionary Force D; state of feeling on the island; intrigues of Messrs Wonckhaus, and his deportation’ IOR/L/PS/11/86, P 4923/1914.

‘Correspondence of Wonckhaus agent at Bahrein’ IOR/L/PS/11/91, P 1203/1915.

‘File 8/16 Bahrain Intelligence Reports’ IOR/R/15/2/314

‘Naval Staff monographs (historical) vol 4 no 15 - Naval operations in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf’ IOR/L/MIL/17/15/73

‘Report by Brigadier W. S. Delamain, C.B., D.S.O., on the operations of the Indian Expeditionary Force "D" up to 14th November 1914' IOR/L/MIL/17/15/88

‘Critical Study of the Campaign in Mesopotamia up to April 1917: Part I – Report’ IOR/L/MIL/17/15/72/1

Paul Knight, The British Army in Mesopotamia 1914-1918 (London: McFarland & Company, 2013)