TEMPORARY CLERGY
| I have no clerical assistance, having to undertake all the duties in church, which are heavy, together with the visitation of the sick and destitute. The amount of ignorance, and poverty, and iniquity, is something appalling. You may form some idea of it when I state that the parish under my charge takes in 'Ratcliff Highway', and all the courts and dens of sin adjoining. I feel, in fact, at times utterly borne down by the weight of my responsibility, and the almost hopeless task of grappling alone with such a world of darkness and sin. I do not believe there is another parish in London that stands more in need of a Reader. |
RECTORS
John
Lockhart Ross
(1863-73) was from
Oriel rather than Brasenose College
Oxford, and
an old college friend of fellow-Scot Bishop Tait. No doubt at Tait's
suggestion, he exchanged his
living at Avebury with Bryan King, who was finally able to leave the
parish. Ross was distantly descended from
Vice-Admiral Sir John Lockhart Ross of Balnagowan (1721-90), who
introduced sheep farming to Scotland and thereby led the way to the
Clearances. In the registers, he always signed his name in the old
style, with a long 's': Roſs.
|
A
note on ordination training About twenty theological colleges were established during the rest of the 19th century. But for some time, until clergy became more 'professionalised' and conscious of their role (bolstered by a range of organisations - see below, for example, on the Curates' Clerical Society), an Oxford, Cambridge or Trinity College Dublin degree continued to be regarded as sufficient training to run a parish. Bishop Blomfield (Bishop of London from 1828-56), though he was happy to appoint men of diverse backgrounds to the East End even where their theological positions were 'extreme', was reluctant in principle to ordain Dublin graduates in his diocese (even those who were highly-qualified), reasoning that Oxbridge produced more than enough candidates - though plenty of Dublin men were to serve in the district churches of our parish, along with a number of non-graduates ordained in Wales, and quite a few who were ordained, or had served, overseas in various missionary situations and brought that experience to their ministry here. Until around 1900, incumbents in all our churches, and curates at the parish church, continued to be Oxbridge graduates, without the benefit of further training. However, since Brasenose College Oxford - who had been the patrons of the parish - recruited heavily from the industrial towns of the north west (Bryan King, for instance, was born in Liverpool), many of them had a good inkling of what urban ministry involved. Others came to know the area through the college settlements in the East End, of which Toynbee Hall (1884) was the first. |
Ross wrote in 1849:
| Admirable as both our venerable and time-honoured universities are known and acknowledged to be, and have long been, still they are by no means fitted to form, by a course of training, young men who have for some years been otherwise there employed, and whose friendships and associations may in many cases disqualify them for entering on a more rigid course previous to ordination. |
While he was Rector, there were continuing problems with the Vestry. On 2 September 1872 he wrote to The Standard:
| The Vestry, who are principally Dissenters, have opposed all the Rector's efforts to resuscitate the parish and improve the social and religious interests of the people, and upwards of a year since they appointed as senior and acting churchwarden a Dissenter who, with his colleague, never previous to or since their appointment have attended Divine service, much less the Holy Communion, which is celebrated every Sunday in accordance with the time-honoured custom of this church....And it must be added with shame and regret that, though there has been, and can be, no possible charge of Ritualism on my part, such as was made the foundation of the former riots in this parish, I have received several communications acquainting me that several influential members of the parish have been using every means in their power to withdraw the usual respectable congregation and choir from renting pews (which is the practice here and in many other churches) or attending Divine service in the parish church....Such, sir, is a brief narration of the condition of St. George's-in-the-East, which, as an influential inhabitant stated a short time since, has been distinguished from all other London and other parishes for nearly a century by its normal and persistent opposition to all the rectors. The preponderance of Dissent is probably the cause of its past and present disorders and opposition to the Church. After so many years of labour, anxiety, and exile in this parish, it is sad and discouraging to have failed in, I now confess, my too ambitious and sanguine expectation of ameliorating and restoring this parish to an equal and respectable rank among the great parish or mother churches of London. As this is my first, so it will be also my last, public allusion to either the condition of St. George's or its recent proceedings, which have been only too partially referred to by your correspondent this morning. I feel, however, that I have spared no means or efforts in my power, during my lengthened incumbency, to discharge the solemn promises and vows which I took on my institution to this arduous and (as it unhappily turns out) thankless charge. |
| The church is entirely cleaned and painted; the pews altered in position and cut down, and varnished the original colour, oak; the old reading-desk is gone, and the pulpit, completely purified and beautified, has been transferred to the south side against the pillar near the robing vestry door; choir seats and clergy stalls have been erected; there are about ten choirmen and choirmaster, and as many trained boys, and the Sunday morning and evening services (not the afternoon) are choral, and perhaps as well, if not better, done than in many cathedrals. It has cost a good deal of funds, but more trouble and opposition, and the Architect and I have been left to pay the debt of £130! The Vestry are, as of old, up in arms, and last Easter appointed a Dissenter and manager of the large Wesleyan Chapel as Senior Warden, and his colleague is almost worse than himself. They presented me to the Bishop lately, but had no other charge than that I had not given them an account of the Sunday weekly offertories, which I stated were prepared annually at Avebury and St. George's, and were duly presented to the Bishop. Since their defeat (a deputation of five attended at London House) they have stopped the Church Bells on Sundays and week days, but as the Bishop is too busied to move, I take no notice of these proceedings beyond informing him that when he finds me another and more eligible position I am quite ready to resign; (the Vestry had requested the Bishop to remove me, which he begged to decline!); and so the Parish of St. George's and its affairs rest for the present, which I treat with perfect indifference and pursue steadily, as long as I am here, my own course. They are unable to find any charge against me or my doings, and I presume are sorry that they cannot charge me with Ritualism or ritualising tendencies. This is, as I have found shortly after my appointment, one of the worst parishes in England, and the people are most base, ungrateful, impracticable, and irreclaimable. I am sorry I can give you no better an account of your former flock, who seem to oppose all ecclesiastical authority. |
Harry Jones (1873-1882) – born in 1823, and the first Rector from Cambridge rather than Oxford - came to the East End from the West End (St Luke Berwick Street, Soho 1858-72 (where he abolished pew rents), and wrote extensively in popular style on the contrast between the two worlds - see his little book of 1875 EAST AND WEST LONDON. He was a Broad Churchman, in close touch with others of that ilk, and was variously described as rich and racy and bluff and hearty. To Charles Anderson, a friend recently appointed to St John Limehouse, with a parsonage opposite the gasworks, he said he hoped he would diffuse more light and less stink.
He undoubtedly used his experience of the east and west in his journalism and at the dinner table; but he protested that unlike others who came to gawp at the East End, I have not dipped into it on philanthropical errands from the West....or hunted within its border for curious literary materials ('Life and Work among the East-London Poor' in Good Words 25 (1884) p50). See further Seth Koven Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton 2004). He invited many of the famous figures of the day to preach at the church.
HERE is part of an 1876 article in the Australian press comparing him with Bryan King. St George-in-the-East, it seems, was still being watched worldwide (though the comments are heavily dependent on The Times' partisan view of King). It describes him as a clergyman of some literary pretensions and subdued Ritualistic proclivities, claiming that his services were little different from those of Bryan King, but that they were acceptable because of his pastoral acumen. This may be unfair, as it ignores a generation of religious cultural change. But Harry Jones was certainly media-savvy.
In 1882 his wife Emily had a serious accident, and soon after he left the parish. After a spell at his mother's family home in Barton Mere, Bury St Edmunds they returned to London, to St Philip Regent Street. In 1895 he wrote, in Fifty Years: Or, Dead Leaves and Living Seeds, I had daily service at St George's, but when I began it at St Philip's (where I now am) not a soul attended, and once my colleague was stopped by a stranger who came in for private meditation and said it interrupted him. In this work he also expressed his aversion to parochial missions (while at St George-in-the-East, he had protested against the major diocesan mission of 1874); he could not explain exactly why, and recognised that they could do good, but they were not his way: he was chary of insistent domestic visitation.... importunate religious pressure... exceptional strain.... whipping up attendances.
Harry Jones' greatest achievement at St George-in-the-East was the creation of ST GEORGE'S GARDENS as a green oasis – something he replicated at St Vedast Foster Lane in the City (where he served from 1897 to his death in 1900 - succeeding Dr Sparrow Simpson, librettist of Stainer's Crucifixion - and claiming to have the 'only grown-up tree in the City of London' in his churchyard). He became a Prebendary of St Paul's (though didn't like using the title) and a Chaplain to the Queen. He was widely admired - on social, sanitary and municipal questions he was eminently wise and successful, said one commentator, reflecting the priorities of the day: Henry Scott Holland, founder of the Christian Social Union in 1889, said 'The more you believe in the Incarnation, the more you care about drains'. Harry Jones entered the fray on railway policy, arguing that the system should narrow the huge gap between what farmers received and what consumers paid (Our Farmers in Chains, 1890). HERE is a sermon on Christian Charity, which Harry Jones preached, part of an 1895 Lent course arranged by the CSU; and here is his little book on The Perfect Man; or, Jesus as an Example of Godly Life (1869).
He
was a keen traveller, and published Holiday
Papers (1864), The
Regular Swiss Round - in Three Trips
(1865) - in a brisk and
pointed style, said one reviewer. In a rather
contemporary touch, he expresses concern
over the ignorant behaviour of other British tourists and advises on
the correct way to visit the Alps so as not to be confused with idlers and the gamblers, who
travel for luxurious pleasure or evil gain. There
followed Past
and Present in the East (1880),
which offers both theological and practical insights on visiting the
Holy Land.
His Plain Words on Courtship and Marriage (James Nisbet 1890) have an odd ring: women, he argues, can find in the Bible those stories of romance which they so desire for themselves, such as that of Abraham and Sarah. But the true position of woman, the best estimate of matrimony, may have been unperceived and undeveloped by the writers of the Old Testament. In keeping with his belief that a single woman's ultimate role is that of a wife, he advises them not succumb to the mysteriously blind influence of love, and seek to marry a handsome man who may not be a desirable spouse. Men, on the other hand, should seek a woman of good temper and homely thrift. Here, and in various other publications, he argued strongly for temperance, rather than total abstinence, as the ideal economy in the home.
He also wrote children's books! Prince Boohoo and Little Smuts (Gardner Darton 1896) was described byThe Sector as really good nonsense, not at all copied from Mr Lewis Carroll; admirably fresh, and inspired by a quite delightful insousiance. The World said it will charm the more qualified critical reader by its mingled gravity and whimsicality. It is not all sugar plums; there are nice little bits of satire in which the Rev. Harry Jones is easily recognisable.
In 1912 Mary Steer, who ran the non-denominational BRIDGE OF HOPE 'rescue' mission in Betts Street, wrote of him, in Opals from Sand (p41):
| He was a
broad-minded, generous man, big and strong, and of imposing appearance,
and he was also a man of peace. I shall never forget his
kindness to me
and the welcome he gave me into his parish; indeed, throughout his
Rectorship I experienced nothing but extreme kindness
and consideration
from him..... Whether he was at home or not, I was always
welcome to get
what books I wanted from his valuable and miscellaneous library, and
scarcely any one of interest ever visited the parish but there came a
note inviting me to meet them at lunch. When he left I felt I had lost
a father. There is a legend in St. George's which is so characteristic of Mr. Harry Jones that it must be true. One day he was discovered gazing intently at a blank brick wall which divided the churchyard from the burying-ground of the Wesleyan Methodists. The result of the Rector's cogitation was, that the wall speedily came down and there arose the pretty recreation-ground of St. George's, a bright spot in the midst of dreary surroundings. Mr. Jones was evidently haunted by a vision of things to come. For many years he always presided at our Council meetings; and even after he left chiefly on account of Mrs. Jones' ill-health...frequently came up to London to attend them. One little bit of work in St. George's which he said he could not give up was the chairmanship of the Bridge of Hope Council.... Wherever he went he always sent me the Easter offering from his church. |
See further Brian Heeney 'Harry Jones and the Broad Church Pastoral Tradition in London' in ed. P.T. Phillips The View from the Pulpit: Victorian Ministers and Society (1978), and also his friend Henrietta Barnett's comments on the Jones' household in her biography of her husband Canon Barnett: His Life, Work and Friends (1919) vol 1, p224.
| THE
CURATES CLERICAL SOCIETY The mid-19th century saw the founding of many local clubs and societies for clergy, for sharing books or reading papers, usually in the context of a meal. This was part of the growing 'professional' identity of the clergy. Harry Jones and other Broad Church curates in London formed such a society in the 1850s, and he was elected President, and later wrote about it in Fifty Years. It kept its name long after they had all moved to more senior posts. Among its members or regular speakers at various times were Brooke Lambert and John Llewelyn Davies, from ST MARK WHITECHAPEL; Isaac Taylor (1829-1901), scholar of linguistics, who was a curate in Bethnal Green and later Dean of York; the noted preacher Stopford Augustus Brooke (1832-1916), who became a Unitarian in 1880; and the historian and Librarian of Lambeth John Richard Green, who said of Harry Jones he is a parson of the Charles Kingsley school, with a sort of forced muddy-boot originality about him.... Jones, for his part, said of Kingsley's Tractarian abhorrence the sight of red edges on a hymnbook [a mark of Catholic content] would produce a deep inarticulate groaning..... Charles Kingsley, Frederick Denison Maurice, Frederic William Farrar (whose son was later a curate at St George-in-the-East: see below) and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (Dean of Westminster) were among those who read papers. |
Charles
Henry Turner (Rector 1882-97, from 1891 with St Matthew Pell
Street, and Rural Dean of Stepney for his last four years), son of the
barrister-treasurer of Guy's Hospital, was an
organised man – as befitted the Tenth Wrangler of Trinity
College
Cambridge, a former chaplain to the Bishop of London, and a Chaplain
to the Queen. In 1888 he presided over the opening of Miss Steers'
Bridge of Hope Mission in Betts Street [mentioned above],
for which Harry Jones returned; she found Turner a good and supportive
source of practical advice. In 1897 he was appointed to the eminent
committee, initially chaired by the liturgist Dr Bright, which produced
SPCK's revised edition of Church Hymns in
1903.
He left the parish because of the health of his wife Edith (daughter of a Borneo missionary), and the following year was made the suffragan Bishop of Islington (the one and only holder of this title), an office which he held until his death in 1923, moving from Highgate to live at Stainforth House, 96 Clapton Common – in those days a desirable address (another bishop lived at number 26). The Athanaeum was his club, where he did business.They had nine children (six of them born during his time at St George-in-the-East). He was a keen total abstainer. The Christian Socialist Conrad Noel described him as the ponderous and Protestant Bishop of Islington, but others spoke more positively of his ministry.
(His beard is a sign of changing attitudes to clerical facial hair. The General Baptist Repository of 1859 regarded it as a breach of Anglican propriety that Mr Jennings, the curate of Stepney, should officiate at services for the Puseyite rector Bryan King wearing a large black beard and moustache. In fact this was a medieval Catholic prohibition, which lasted until modern times (though a man incapable of growing a beard could not be ordained!) The 1603 Anglican Canons, then in force, appear to allow either all or nothing - i.e. not just a moustache. The Orthodox, by contrast, have always positively required beards. The interplay of cultural and theological factors make this an intriguing issue, on which much has been written - some of it relation to the present Archbishop of Canterbury.....)
HERE is a very fine watercolour testimonial presented to Prebendary Turner when he left the parish (now the property of Ken McGregor of Cornwall, and included here with his permission, for which we are grateful). As well as the parish church, it depicts three buildings erected during his time in the parish: the Parish Mission House on The Highway, the Public Library on Cable Street, and Betts Street baths and wash-houses.
In the August 1923 parish magazine a former colleague wrote
| The passing away of the Bishop of Islington in
July 13th, at the ripe age of 81 years, must have recalled to many of
the older Parishioners of St. George's-in-the-East, the great work that
he did in the Parish during the years he was Rector. He was known up
and down these streets, in and out a good many homes, by young and old
alike, as a warm-hearted friend, a wise counsellor, a fine example of
quiet, Christian life. In civic affairs, as well as in matters more
directly religious, he gave a lead which left an abiding mark on the
Parish, and many a man to-day, brought up in the Day and Sunday Schools
of St. George's-in-the-East can look back gratefully to the high
purpose and strong sense of duty that marked the life of Mr. Turner, as
he he was always called. As a builder, he did great things for the Parish: the Mission Hall in St. George Street was his work especially: the Public Baths owed more to him than was generally known: the Raynes' [sic] Schools he watched and cared for with affectionate devotion: while the Parish Church, with its beauty and dignified simplicity, was fay after day and week after week his special care. Many can still remember the quiet earnestness and congregational heartiness of the Parish Church Services in his time. Every detail of the music was carefully thought out, and for years together Mr. Turner made it a rule always to be present at Choir Practice, silently sitting by, ready to advise on any matter that the Choir Master might refer to him him. He loved the young life of the place, as did Mrs. Turner with her unfailing sympathy, and the Sunday Schools in those days, with their hundreds of elder Scholars in regular attendance, were a sight of which any Parish might be proud. Dr. Turner had an exceptional power of gathering workers round him, and in getting the very best out of them. He seemed to inspire his colleagues in every department, and was able to help many a young man to face life's battle with a new sense of duty and loyalty to God. Some can still remember the "Fathers' Meetings" held by the Rector on Thursday evenings in the Rectory. Room, when a chapter of the Bible was read and discussed, followed by lighter reading and refreshment. Few Parishes were handled with such sympathetic insight as was St. George's in those days. Wisely did the Bishop of London speak at the Memorial Service of his "cheerful spirit and unfailing generosity in Church work" all over London. Bishop Turner was laid to rest in the quiet churchyard of Godmanchester, the Parish of his first curacy, two of his former Curates, Bishop Joscelyne and Canon Thornon-Duesbery, taking part in the Service, and all seemed to join earnestly in the prayer then offered: "Rest eternal grant him, Good Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him in Jesus Christ our Lord." [but would he have approved of this prayer?] |
LECTURERS
In the second half of the century there were six further Lecturers. The story of Hugh Allen (1859-60) is told HERE. David Brown Moore (curate 1851, then Lecturer 1854-59) and Thomas Richardson (1859-70) worked at ST MATTHEW PELL STREET, and George Davenport (1871-75) became Vicar of ST MARK WHITECHAPEL.
According
to R.H. Hadden, who was a curate at the time, Charles
Maurice Davies was
briefly Lecturer in 1875, and his name appears in registers. His story
is intriguing. In the 1850s,
while a fellow of Durham University and also curate of St Matthew,
City Road, he was one of the six anglo-catholic clergy who with
Charles Lowder founded the Society of the Holy Cross. But he left
parochial ministry, apart from several brief later attachments,
becoming headmaster of the West London College in 1861. After a short
spell as a Roman Catholic, he returned to the Church of England as a
liberal,
publishing Philip
Paternoster: a Tractarian Love Story, by an ex-Puseyite (1858),
Shadowland:
A Story with a Purpose (1860)
and a novel Broad
Church (1875),
as well as translations of Sophocles and Plautus. Increasingly he was
drawn into explorations of spiritualism and psychical research,
producing a series of widely-read books, some of which can be read
online:
The last Lecturer (described as 'Senior Curate and Evening Lecturer') was John Sidney Adolphus Vatcher (1873-77), born and educated in Jersey, who lived with his wife at 62 Philpot Street. During his time here, he attempted to mount a prosecution against Fr Lowder of St Peter London Docks, in conjunction with the Church Association, but the Rector Harry Jones was strongly opposed to such a course of action and it came to nothing. Vatcher was later vicar of St Philip Stepney and director of the chaplaincy department of the London Hospital for 36 years until his retirement in 1919. Samuel and Henrietta Barnett were friends, and visited the Vatchers at their retirement home in Felixstowe. In 1905 he was one of nearly 2000 signatories to a petition declaring biblical criticism to be no threat to faith.
Like his predecessor William Quekett half a century earlier, he and his wife saw colonial emigration as one solution to social problems - only now it was families and boys, rather than working girls. The East End Emigration Society and Self-Help Emigration Society (which merged in 1913 as the British Dominion Emigration Society) sent many youths to Canada, clothed and equipped under Mrs Vatcher's leadership. The agent in Montreal described those sent by the church-based societies as a superior class of immigrants. [Later emigration programmes which sent over 150,000 children between three and fourteen to Australia and Canada between the 1920s and 1967, many through church agencies, have recently provoked a public apology (covering wider issues) from Kevin Rudd, the Australian Premier, and a British apology may follow. Many of the children were not in fact orphans, and one motive for the programme, declared in the 1950s, was to provide migrants of 'British stock' to guard against losing the nation to the millions of Asiatics that menace us. By the end of that decade, it was claimed that British migrants were poor physical specimens, lacking in intelligence and undisciplined.]
Like other clergy in this parish, he went to law over a family trust, in connection with his father's estate. The case, which went to the Appeal Court, turned on the doctrine of 'fraud on a power', and the duties of trustees to act within the limits of their authority. The remarks of Lord Parker in Vatcher v Paull [1915] AC 372 set the still-quoted principle of trust law that 'fraud' in this context does not necessarily denote ... any conduct which could be termed dishonest or immoral. It merely means that the power has been exercised for a purpose, or with an intention, beyond the scope of or not justified by the instrument creating the power.
| Here, indeed, is one of those sudden and surprising contrasts to be found in London. A high brick wall encloses this oasis, and the nurses and some privileged people have keys to the door, which opens, from a side street close to the noise of the Mile End Road, suddenly into a peaceful, picturesque garden. The idea in the formation was a willow-pattern plate, and the little bridge over a miniature stream is reproduced. Plane trees in a formal array are kept trimmed to give a dense shade, and the hammocks hung from them in summer provide the most ideal resting-places for the worn-out nurses. At one time animals were kept here in cages, as a kind of small "Zoo" for Whitechapel; but since the last alterations the animals have been relinquished, and the bear-pit makes a delightful rock garden, and the various other cages form summer-houses. One thoughtful addition of the vicar was placing a small stove in one of these shelters, with an array of kettles, teapots, cups and saucers, so that any of the nurses resting can have their al fresco cup of tea - and what could be more grateful and comforting? |
CURATES
The second half of the 19th century was a kind of 'golden age' for curates - at least as far as parishes were concerned! There were plenty of clergy available, and some - especially the non-Oxbridge men, and those without patronage connections - served short or longer curacies in half a dozen or more different parishes, as well as missionary stints, not because they were restless or misfits (though some clearly were) but because they were struggling to find incumbent posts.
At some point, probably in the 1880's, 220 Cable Street (a double-fronted Georgian house) became the curates' residence, as well as housing the verger. It had briefly housed a school from 1869. The Revds Goodhart, Stafford, Taylor, Baxter, Cain, Hinscliffe and Iselin were among those who lived here.
Among the many who served here were
William Charles Howell (1862-63), son of the Judge Advocate-General of the Forces, he took a First in Maths at Brasenose and was ordained in 1842, had been chaplain at Le Havre, became vicar of Holy Trinity Tottenham from 1865 to 1904, and lived in retirement to the age of 96. He was a council member of the Essex Field Club, to whom he gave a paper on 'the foxglove, chiefly etymological and local', and was interested in using cameras for astronomical research.
Charles Watkins Lewis (1865-68), of St John's College Cambridge, served all his ministry before and after his London spell in and around his native county of Radnorshire (now Powys), retiring to Hereford.
George
Alcock M'Donnell [or MacDonnell] (1866-??) was a
Dublin-born chess champion. He is sometimes confused with Alexander
McDonnell, another Irish chessman
from the
previous generation. According to Edward Winter's Chess Notes
website
[3974], Harry Golomek
described him, in the 1977 Encyclopedia of
Chess, as
'the strongest of all the chess-playing reverends in
Britain
in the nineteenth century’. The master Steinitz, in the
International
Chess Magazine [May
1891, p147] called him ‘the shady irreverend fou’
-
this is because they had been locked in controversy over M'Donnell's
review of Wormald's book on opening gambits: he has an
unconquerable inclination to associate himself with any kind of
deception or imposition practised in the English chess press. Heady
stuff indeed!
He died in 1899.
William
Henry Foy was
Chaplain to the Union [workhouse] of St
George-in-the-East from 1868?-72; in 1872 he produced a
booklet Poor-law
revelations in the interest of the ratepayers of the United Kingdom,
and on the behalf of the sick and deserving poor. Trained at St Bees, he went as a
missionary chaplain to Gwalior, N W India [pictured],
returning to become curate
of St Simon Bethnal
Green (and secretary of the Soldiers'
Infant Home), then
Principal of the Indian Civil
Service and Military College in Belsize
Park. He published a
sermon preached in Agra and
again in England for the SPG The
Christians of England the Watchmen of India, and edited Claudius Buchanan's Christian
Researches in India: with the Rise, Suspension, and Probable Future of
England's Rule as a Christian Power in India (Routledge
1858). In 1872 he became Rector of Barningham, a Norfolk parish with a
population of 31.
William
James Mann
(1873-5), with Oxford qualifications in law and a Trinity College
London music diploma, was described as
'Curate and Precentor', and spent the rest of his ministry as a
cathedral precentor, briefly at Carlisle and Winchester, then at
Bristol, where in 1886 he became embroiled in the acrimonious 'Risely
controversy'. George Risely, the organist (and a gifted orchestral
conductor) successfully appealed to the Bishop against his dismissal in
1886 (and it is said played 'Fixed in his everlasting seat' from
Handel's Semele
as the
voluntary on his first day back). Mann also wrote about the importance
of a good diet for choristers' physical and musical development.
Daniel
Fleming Wilson Quayle
(1876-83), the first of a series of
clergy
with Manx connections, studied at Christ Church College Oxford. Though
he never ministered on the Island, he
came from an old Manx family, whose members held various offices as
magistrates and in the House of Keys (four generations, including his
father, served as Clerk of the Rolls). After a series of curacies, of
which here was the longest, he was rector of Trimley in Suffolk for
four years, and later curate in charge of Badby with Newnham, near
Daventry, until 1911.
Robert Henry Hadden (1878-80), of Merton College Oxford, was described in his early days as a hot young ecclesiastical reformer. He was a member of Stewart Headlam's Christian Socialist Guild of St Matthew (created in 1877 at St Matthew Bethnal Green) and founder of the Curates' Alliance, which campaigned, among other things, for selling off City churches and using the proceeds to minister to the poor. He owned and published a monthly journal Church Reformer (motto: readapting the ecclesiastical machinery to the wants of the age) which Headlam took over in 1884 and made more radical. He went on to serve in two deprived East End parishes (St Botolph Bishopsgate and St Botolph Aldgate), before returning to St Mark North Audley Street (where he had served his title) in Mayfair, as the much-loved vicar until an early death in 1909. [Future plans for St Mark's have recently excited controversy - see this letter from his grandson - the proposal for a 'wellness centre' is not going ahead.] In 1903 he courted controversy by conducting the marriage of American divorcé William Vanderbilt and twice-widowed Anne Rutherfurd, even though the diocesan Chancellor authorised it. A member of the Reform Club, he was made a royal chaplain to Victoria and Edward VII, and acted as an editor for the Church Times. He died suddenly, talking to a clerical friend in Pall Mall. Elgar's Elegy for strings and harp (op 59) was dedicated to his memory - he was Junior Warden of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. Selected Sermons, with a Memoir by E.H. Pearce, were published in 1911. Hadden's own EAST END CHRONICLE is an important source of information about the first 150 years of the parish. The family home was at Hazel Hatch, Addlestone in Surrey.
Willie Parkinson Jay (1878-81, when he became Vicar of CHRIST CHURCH WATNEY STREET)
Walter Lomer Barnes (1882-84), served four curacies before becoming vicar of Alberbury in Shropshire, and in 1894 of Barford St Martin, in Salisbury diocese to which he was presented by All Souls, his Oxford college, who were the patrons. While in this parish, he was involved with the district sub-committee of the CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY.
C H Cowley (1884-??)
John Robert Sinclair Carolin (1882), trained and ordained in Ireland, and from an extensive clerical family; he was a member of the National Anti-Vivisection Society. From 1890-1922 he was Rector of Wyvenhoe, Colchester.
Walter Phillips (1884-86), a Durham graduate who began his ministry here; after five further curacies, and 4 years in Dalby, Queensland, he became vicar of Skirlaugh, near Hull, and Chaplain of the Skirlaugh Union [workhouse].
Hugh Wilkinson Goodhart (188?-90) – he ran the Parish Church Youths' Institute here, before succeeding the much-loved Samuel John Stone (who wrote The church's one foundation and other hymns) as incumbent of St Paul Haggerston. Stone wrote that his nerves were too worn out for Haggerston any longer - he spent his last ten years in the City parish of All Hallows, London Wall - and that his successor was almost entirely one after my own heart. There is an interview in the Booth Archive B231 (pp86-103) from these years. Stone died in 1900, and Goodhart a few months later. See HERE for details of work among Jews in that parish, led by Michael Rosenthal, later incumbent of St Mark Whitechapel.
Joseph Arthur Dodd (1886-89), of Christ Church College Oxford, who after a spell at Lower Heyford in Oxfordshire (where he presided over the inauguration of the parish council) returned to London as Rector of South Hackney, then back to Ewelme in Oxfordshire where he became an accumulator of etchings and engravings.
Eric Maurice Farrar (1889-91) – another with Manx connections. He was the second son of Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903) and like him attended King William's College on the Isle of Man. His father studied with Frederick Denison Maurice at King's College London, and Maurice was Eric's godfather. 'Dean Farrar' was Master of Marlborough College, Rector of St Margaret's Westminster (where Eric served briefly as a curate), and Dean of Canterbury, and was a preacher and prolific writer of the Broad Church movement (and also a total abstainer). His is now best-remembered for his moralising stories of school life such as Eric, or Little by Little. The real-life Eric was fondly remembered in the parish for his 'noble services', and later for his 'earnest, simple addresses' as a chaplain in the First World War (George Henderson The experiences of a hut leader at the front 1918). He became Vicar of Humberstone in Leicestershire and then of Rock in Worcestershire. Sadly, Law Notes for 1929 records that with a record of forty years' distinguished service as an Anglican clergyman, [he] was found guilty at Winchester Assize Court today of defamatory libel against Miss Dorothy Grace Sheppard, pretty eighteen-year-old daughter of a public house proprietor at Ryde, Isle of Wight; he admitted charges against other women and resigned. What had he written? He moved from Rock to become incumbent of Ashby-by-Partney, and three years later of Salmonby near Horncastle, in Lincoln diocese.
William Sharpe (1889-90), trained at King's College; this was his sixth, and apparently final, curacy
Gordon James Henry Llewellyn was from 1888-94 chaplain of the parish workhouse infirmary and schools, and officiated regularly at the parish church. He had formerly been a minister in the Free Church of England at Ledbury and of the Reformed Episcopal Church in Yeovil. (These two evangelical groupings left the Church of England because of the rise of Tractarianism, but remained committed to the Book of Common Prayer and the threefold ministry, including bishops in the apostolic succession; they merged in 1927). Ordained by the Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1887, he served a brief curacy in Yeovil before moving to London. After a further workhouse post he was rector of Laindon (or Langdon) Hills, Romford from 1905-16.
Dr Albert Edward Joscelyne (1890-95), a scholar of Jesus College Oxford, went on to serve for 13 years at St George Millom in Cumbria and briefly in Islington before becoming Bishop Coadjutor of Jamaica in 1905. In 1910 SPG published his Words to Workers: Being Seven Addresses delivered in Jamaica - sermons delivered to Members of Synod, the Convention of the Brotherhood of St Andrew, and to church workers in Kingston, Jamaica, and in 1911The Voices of God. He attended the 1908 Lambeth Conference (and spoke at the Pan-Anglican Congress that year on the involvement of lay people in parochial councils in Jamaica - a development still over a decade away in the Church of England), but resigned his see in 1913, settling in Salisbury diocese where in 1919 he became Archdeacon of Sherborne, and vicar first of Chardstock then of Preston with Sutton Poyntz, and a canon and prebendary of Salisbury cathedral. He returned to St George-in-the-East to preach at the BICENTENARY in 1929. He retired in 1941 and died in 1945 aged 79.
Charles
Leonard Thornton-Duesbery (1890-94) – another
Manxman (and TCD graduate), and a
layworker there before ordination. He too served in Cumbria and
Islington, and then in Essex and Marylebone, before becoming Bishop
of Sodor and Man in 1924. The Isle of Man
Examiner Annual reported
Besides being a gifted preacher, he has marked capacity for organisation; he is chairman of the Sunday School Institute, chairman of the Home Committee of the Church Missionary Society, and vice-chairman of the Church of England Temperance Society in the London diocese. He is unmistakably an Evangelical. He is well-remembered in the Isle of Man as a fine exponent of Rugby football.
He
died, aged 61, in 1928. His son Julian Percy was the staunchly
evangelical Master of St Peter's College Oxford, and Principal of
Wycliffe Hall. His daughter
Jean moved to the Isle of Man in 1939 and
became quite a power in the land; she was a Member of the House of
Keys from 1966-76.
George
Edward Weeks (1892-93)
- of Queen's College Cambridge; after a brief title here and a second
curacy, he became a naval chaplain and then an
incumbent and college principal (despite his lack of scholastic
experience) in Durban, South Africa. He returned to Engand and gained
two law degrees (including a doctorate) before becoming Dean and Rector
of Nelson Cathedral in
New Zealand in 1916, and a headmaster in New South Wales in
1923. He returned six years later to become vicar of Fenny Compton,
near Leamington, for nearly 20 years.
Robert
Daniel Kermode
(1893-96) – a fellow-Manx curate
with
Thornton-Duesbery (though he had studied at Caius Cambridge), who
returned to the island as Vicar of Maughold, then of Lezayre; he was
rural dean pf Douglas, a canon of the cathedral, and for 18 years a
Proctor in Convocation, representing the diocese on Church
Assembly.
William Romaine Thatcher, of Exeter College Oxford, was Chaplain of St George's Workhouse and Infirmary and Schools at Plashet from 1894 until 1925; he lived in Bow.
Aubrey Baxter (1896-1900) had been a choral scholar at King's College Cambridge, and after St George's spent the rest of his long ministry around Chester Cathedral, where he was a Minor Canon, tutor at the Diocesan Training College (one of the Anglican teacher training colleges) from 1927-45 and much-loved Chaplain of Chester Royal Infirmary from 1926 until his retirement. For this he was awarded the MBE in 1948. The Chester Chronicle reported
| Canon Baxter is known and loved by thousands of people who have had occasion to spend any time in the Chester Royal Infirmary. There rarely passes a night when he does not tour the wards in the Infirmary with a cheery word for all the patients. He collects all the letters, and personally posts them at the Station. His physical agility and mental alertness belie his years. He confesses that he has worn out six bicycles and lost count of those he ‘borrowed’. The advantage of being the Infirmary Chaplain, Canon Baxter explained, was that the congregation was found, and there could be no excuse for not attending. “Once a patient did pretend to be asleep,” said Canon Baxter, “but I waited a bit, and his cup of tea began to get cold, so he had to wake up”. |
Charles
Smith Cain (1896-99) [pictured]
was
born in Seascale, Cumbria and educated at St Bees' School and The
Queen's College Oxford. After serving his title here, he went to St
Andrew's Ashley Place (near Westminster Cathedral, and long since
demolished), where he was involved with the London Diocesan Sunday
Schools and London School Board. He was offered an education post, but
preferred to remain in parish ministry; his last post, from 1923 until
his death in 1949, was at Newport, near Saffron Walden. He was a Hebrew
scholar; his grand-daughter cherishes his grammar books, and a mezuzzah
which he was presumably given at St George's. He used his sketching and
cartooning skills to illustrate his magic lantern slides.
| The
fact remains that the Education Act, as it applies to the provision of
meals, is bad. It was an ill-considered attempt by politicians in a
hurry to appease the demands of an outcry by a section of agitators.
False to all theories of rational government, the Act has shown itself
pernicious in practice; and if its policy constitutes friendship 'for
the masses', the self-reliant poor may well pray to be saved from their
friends. At the outset social workers who, for the sake of the people
for whom they cared, have undertaken its administration,
prophesied its failure and its mischief, and their prophecies have been
too sadly fulfilled. |
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