Curates of Christ
Church Watney Street (1841 – 1951)
Henry Berkeley Jones (1846)
was born at Mangro Grove, Mauritius in 1813, where his father had gone
the previous year as a military chaplain (at £300 a year, speaking
fluent French and learning Creole - but passed over for promotion as
senior chaplain, and dying there in 1837). He was sent to England in
1826 (the painting right is from that year) and attended Charterhouse and St John's College Cambridge. Ordained in1844, he was
perpetual curate of St John Werneth, in Oldham (then still part of
Chester diocese) before his time here, and later curate of
Belgrave Chapel. In 1852 he was sent by the Colonial Land Emigration
Board with a party of 280 'bounty emigrants' to Moreton Bay,
Queensland; his spontaneous writings about this experience - currente calamo, as reviewers put it - were published as Adventures in Australia, 1852 & 1853 (Richard Bentley 1853): The Critic said that he
aims rather at usefulness than at brilliancy. He looks at facts as they
are and reports them with a sort of photographic truth. His outlines
are good - his details accurate, we have no doubt; but the scene, as he
presents it, is wanting in light and play, colour and motion. The
artist, the man of fancy, will learn nothing from Mr. Jones's
adventures. Indeed, it is an abuse of terms to call such commonplace
experiences of men and things, 'adventures'.The emigrant, however, will
find in this record of personal observation hints for his guidance of
no small value. He
was appointed a Special Justice, under the 1834 Apprenticeship Act for
New South Wales which made arrangements for former slaves, and
supported Indian immigration to Australia, reflecting in his book (p80): Coolies from India would have been more extensively introduced [to
Australia] had the Indian government permitted it. Such as have been
got, about two hundred, have given satisfaction ...They are patient, diligent and
provident. A boon is conferred on them by removing them from India,
where they are suffering much from a crowded population ...| Erected to the memory of the Rev. George Mockler M.A., formerly Curate of this church and later Chaplain attached to Third Division of the British Army in alliance with France and Turkey engaged against Russia in actual warfare. He had endeared himself during a ministry of 7 years to his late Congregation who have raised this memorial of their attachment and esteem. The zeal evinced by him for the welfare of the dying, sick and wounded after the battle of the Alma so enervated his physical energies that he sank under the heavy labour imposed upon his exhausted nature. He died on the 2nd day of October 1854, in the 34th year of his age. His remains were interred upon the heights of Sebastopol. |
| Violent gymnastics, like violent muscular exertion of every kind, are most injurious. As a Cambridge man, I have had many opportunities of observing this; and it is well known that those who in early manhood were distinguished for their skill in athletic sports, too frequently pay the penalty for their disregard of the laws of health, by premature loss of vigour. I am acquainted with a large public school in Ireland, in which violent games were at one time very much in vogue; but it was observed that diseases of the heart became prevalent among the boys; and the result was, that the authorities had to prohibit the objectionable sports..... This system, therefore, deserves the serious consideration of all teachers, as it appears to afford ample scope for the due exercise of the muscles, without the risk of producing any of the evils to which other plans often gave rise. |
| neo-Malthusianism [one of the influences on the COS] is the only means of preventing the alarming increase of pauperism, sickness, crime and immorality, and, from a Christian point of view, is perfectly lawful... I say it becomes the duty of every thoughtful man and woman to think out some plan to stop, or even check, the advancing tide of desolation; and the only plan, to my thinking, that is at all workable, is artificial prevention of childbirth .... Immorality would largely diasppear, and the Christian ideal of marriage be raised. |
John
Henry Bovill (1888-90)
whose Cambridge studies were based at Ayerst Hall, a short-lived
private hostel for less-wealthy students, in Queen Anne's Terrace. He
later became a missionary in Lebombo, Rector of the Cathedral
at Lourenço Marques
[now Maputo], and Her Majesty's
Acting Consul there; he wrote Natives under the Transvaal Flag (Simkin Marshall 1900) and was an
early writer on the evils of racism.
Edward Frith
Everett
(1890-92), born in Stamford (his family had been millers in Norfolk),
he began his ministry here after Pembroke
College Cambridge; after two other London curacies and a third at St
Lawrence Northampton, and 15 years at Little Bowden (Market Harborough)
- the final one as Vicar - he returned to St Lawrence Northampton as
incumbent in 1921 - pictured right - until his death in 1933; he is remembered by the
Guild of All Souls on 9 August.
Hugh Randolph
Cavendish Smith-Marriott (1897-99),
of Magdalen
College, Cambridge. In 1825 the Rev William Marriott Smith-Marriott
inherited a baronetcy and a 116-acre estate at Horsmonden in Kent, with
a house (now Grade II*) incorporating 15th and 16th century features
and a grand Georgian wing to which many Victorian additions inside and
outside were made. Hugh served curacies in Swindon and Dover before
coming here, and returned to Horsmonden (in Rochester diocese) as
curate from 1905, and Vicar from 1922, until his death in 1944 (having
briefly become the 9th Caronet Smith-Marriott of Sydling St Nicholas),
when the estate was sold.
John Phillips Milne (1907-08)
was an Australian, born in Adelaide in 1877 and trained at St Barnabas
College there, serving curacies at Christ Church Mount Gambier, St
Bede's Semaphore in that diocese and then, in 1903, at St Andrew Middle
Brighton in Melbourne; he was also for a time tutor to the sons of Lord
Tennyson, Governor of South Australia. He visited England briefly, where he did much slum work with distinct success, as his obituary in the Adelaide Register (3 September 1924) put it. Similarly, at St James Sydney he did duty among the lower classes of the community in that State. His
ambition was to study at Cambridge, and he graduated from St John's
College - spending some time at the college's Lady Margaret Mission in
Walworth (begun in 1883, the first London mission of a Camridge
college), and as The Eagle of 1908 reported, speaking at college meetings about the mission as one outside the parish, and able to compare it with the part of London in which he is now working (namely, this parish). He did not return to Australia, and died (after an operation) in 1924, leaving an estate of £1600.
Edwin
Castledine (1911-12) - pictured
-
born 1885, he too trained at King's (AKC) and was ordained in 1908, serving
curacies at Haverstock Hill and Dulwich before coming here; after a
further curacy in Southend (during which his American fiancée cancelled their wedding plans because of the war - see story right from the Berkeley Daily Gazette), he moved to Sheffield diocese as Vicar of
St Margaret Brightside from 1917-20, before spending four years in
California, where he gained a BD at the Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley
(publishing a monograph Jesus or Paul?
in 1925). He returned to Sheffield as Vicar of Balby from 1926-31 (in
which year the parish boundaries were altered), returned to California
for a time (serving at St Peter Redwood City, The Good Shepherd Belmont
and elsehwere), and from 1935-37 was curate-in-charge of the mission
church
of St Cuthbert Herringthorpe, built the previous year, and then Vicar
of the ancient parish of Thorne. He then returned to California,
serving in various parishes including Our Saviour, Placerville and St
Luke Auburn, and died in
1969.| On Sunday René de Naurois, his decorations a splash of colour on a white surplice, said Mass for three hundred men kneeling on the grass. At the Interdenominational Church Parade a favourite hymn, that has since become our own, was sung with feeling: Eternal Father, strong to save, O hear us when we cry to thee, For those in peril on the sea. It goes well with male voices, but the new padre preached a rotten sermon about death and destruction which caused surprise. There are few atheists to be found before a battle, or later in shell-holes. Tension was building up, and charity perhaps a trifle thin on the ground. There were a number of complaints; the cleric was suspended and told to return from whence he came. Poor fellow! A spark can cause the prairie fire! It was mistaken zeal from a man, lacking combat experience, who did not know his congregation, and doubly unfortunate in that it conflicted with my own 'God speed' before departure. The incident was forgotten but the dismissal was taken badly. On the last day in camp the unfortunate man took his own life. A sad business, with barely time for regrets, for troops were belting up amid the dust and shouting as embarkation transport came grinding in to Southampton to take us away. Max, a most humane officer and the soundest of administrators, cleared up the pitiful remains. The padre was put down as a "battle casualty". |
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