Alexander Gustavus Skardon Douglas was a schoolmaster who gained an MA from Keble College, Oxford, in 1928. The previous year he had changed his name from 'Douglas' to 'Skardon Douglas'. He was probably a great-grandson of John White Abbott, as one of two sons of Gustavus and Fanny Douglas, Fanny being the daughter of White Abbott's son Rev John White Abbott by his fourth wife Jane Skardon.