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Biography:
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Algernon (known as Algy) Whitburn worked as archaeological architect at Ur from 1925 to 1930. He had enlisted in the Surrey Yeomanry at the start of the First World War, and was gazetted a Second Lieutenant in June 1915. Badly wounded at Vimy Ridge in 1916, Whitburn spent two years in hospital, and thereafter walked with a limp. After the War, he resumed his training as an architect. He was recommended to Woolley by the head of the firm for which he worked, who was a friend of Leonard Woolley. Whitburn replaced F.G. Newton, who had been the first archaeological architect at Ur from 1922. He began work at Ur at the same time as Max Mallowan and the two men became lifelong friends. There is a copy of a letter from Mallowan to Whitburn telling him of his marriage to Agatha Christie in 1930 before it became public knowledge.
Despite his injury which caused him much discomfort, Whitburn had a great sense of humour and a store of funny stories. Woolley described him in a letter to Sir Frederic Kenyon, the Chairman of the Trustees at the British Museum, as
irrepressibly talkative, amazingly self-centred, very good-hearted with a somewhat vulgar manner
I like him and his work is really valuable. There are in the Ur archive a number of photographs of Algy Whitburn, often striking a pose or playing a joke on other members of the expedition. There is a Christmas card to Whitburn written by Katharine Woolley in 1927 and also a poem written by her on receipt of a box of marrons glacés sent by Whitburn for Christmas 1928 concluding with the stanza:
But we finished the marrons and voted them fine
And drank Whitburns health in a bottle of wine
Which the exiles agreed without any demur
Was no more than his due who sent marrons to UR.
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