TEMPORARY CLERGY
Although
Bryan King remained in post until 1863, he was exhausted by the
Ritualism Riots, and took a year's leave of absence. With his consent,
in July 1860 Bishop Tait appointed Septimus
Cox Holmes Hansard
[painting right by Lowes Cato Dickinson, c1880-90] as priest-in-charge for a year. From the family that produced the
parliamentary reports, he was a schoolfriend at Rugby of Thomas Hughes,
who based the Tom
Brown's Schooldays
character of Holmes the praepostor, 'one of the best boys in the
school', on him. For a time, when Hughes' daughter died in 1858, it was
rumoured that Hansard would complete the book, but this was not to be.
He had been curate of St Mary Bryanston Square for twelve years, and
was recommended to Tait as 'caretaker' for St George-in-the-East by
Dean Stanley and Hughes, who said he was a
man without equal for dealing with the roughest part of a London
population. As
a high churchman he was in some sympathy with King, but was also a
Christian Socialist - a friend of F.D. Maurice, and an active vistor
during the cholera epidemics. For the following year he was Kingsley's
assistant in Eversley, Hampshire. For 31 years until his death in 1895
he
was Rector of St Matthew Bethnal Green, where
he introduced a daily eucharist, and campaigned for a free library and
Sunday opening of museums (he was a founder of the East London Museum
there). Stewart Headlam, who founded the Guild of St Matthew, was his curate from 1873-78. Although
generous and much-admired, Hansard was autocratic and lived in some style,
so like King aroused the hostility of church and school officials. | 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)
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.
He was from
Oriel rather than Brasenose College
Oxford, and was ordained in 1835 to a curacy in Brignal, Yorkshire
before helping to establish the new theological college in Chichester
(and writing a piece on 'Thummim and Urim' in the Church of England
Magazine for 1838). He became Vicar of Fyfield & Idbury in
Oxfordshire, and from 1852-63 Vicar of Avebury in Wiltshire (later
writing about its druidical temples). As a college friend of
fellow-Scot Bishop Tait, and no doubt at Tait's
suggestion, he exchanged his
living at Avebury with Bryan King, who was finally able to leave the
parish. In the registers, until around 1870 he 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. |
In the 1840s Ross had seen that reform of cathedral finances could make his vision possible; Letters on Diocesan Theological Colleges, in connexion with proposed cathedral alterations (Parker 1849) included this summary of his position:
| 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 (St John's College) rather than
Oxford, came to the East End from the West End (St Luke Berwick
Street, Soho
1858-72 (where he abolished pew rents). He 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, formerly a curate at St Mark Whitechapel who in 1874
became Vicar of St John Limehouse,
with a parsonage opposite the gasworks, he wrote that he hoped he would
diffuse more light and
less stink.
He
undoubtedly used his experience of 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.
His greatest achievement at St George-in-the-East was
the creation of St George's Gardens
as a much-needed green oasis - see
here for more details.
Because his activities and
interests were so
wide-ranging, both during his time here and afterwards, he deserves his
own page, which is here.
Charles
Henry Turner (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. He was well-provided with curates, and only occasionally
officiated at baptisms and weddings. He chaired the St George's (East)
Committee of the Charity Organisation Society, with other clergy from the local churches as fellow-members. 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 Emma (daughter of the Rt Revd F.T. McDougall, Bishop of Labuan
and Sarawak, a Borneo missionary), and the following year was
made the suffragan Bishop of Islington
- the one and only holder of
this title, though it still exists in theory, and the diocese recently
considered reviving it for Sandy Millar, until he was consecrated in
Uganda instead. He remained in post 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, and Harry Jones',
beards were a sign of changing attitudes to clerical facial hair. The General Baptist
Repository
of 1859 had 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 the prohibition on beards for the clergy was a medieval Catholic
matter, which lasted
until modern times (though a man incapable of growing a beard could not
be ordained!) The 1603 Anglican Canons appear to allow
either all or nothing - i.e. not just a moustache, or a goatee beard.
When Cosmo Gordon Lang, Bishop of Stepney, was nominated as Archbishop
of York in 1908 and went to stay with King Edward VII at Windsor
Castle, the King had just two pieces of advice for him. “Keep the
parties in the Church together, and prevent the clergy wearing
moustaches.” A moustache, rather than a full beard, became the mark of
an evangelical clergyman. The Orthodox, by contrast, have always positively required beards for clergy. The interplay of cultural and theological factors make this an intriguing issue, on which much has been written. It is a ticklish (pun intended) matter: the Archbishop of Canterbury has a full beard, the Bishop of London (and the Rector of this parish) have goatee beards, and the new Bishop of Stepney a moustache...... |
This very fine watercolour testimonial was 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." |
LECTURERS
In the second half of the century there were six further Lecturers (see here for an explanation of the post). 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) was also Vicar of the adjacent parish of St Mark Whitechapel (then separate, but now part of St George-in-the-East).
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 had left
parochial ministry, apart from several brief later attachments,
to become 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 Marion 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. He died in 1926 aged 78, and was buried at Felixstowe.
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) were among the many agencies, some of them church-based (see chapter 5 of Marjorie Kohli The Golden Bridge), which sent 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, Vatcher 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! In the latter years of the century, there were often three, sometimes four, on the staff - and as a consequence the Rector rarely baptized or conducted weddings. 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 of those who came here 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.
The roll-call is as follows:
William
Charles Howell
(1862-63), son of the Judge Advocate-General of the Forces, born 1818, took a
First in Maths at Brasenose (having earlier written a book or pamphlet
mysteriously entitled Astronomical
Prayer),
and was ordained in 1842. He went on to become
chaplain at Le
Havre, and Vicar of Holy Trinity Tottenham from 1865 to 1904 (when the
new parish of St Peter, South Tottenham was created in 1900 his fee
entitlement was preserved while he remained in post); he 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 also interested in using cameras for
astronomical research: The
Rev. Mr. Howell had heard that small cameras could be used for some
kind of stellar research. Was that so? He believed that if it were
pointed to the north, the stars nearest the pole would describe
circular tracks on a sensitive plate during long exposures, and that
the more the camera was pointed towards the south, the more did the
tracks of the stars approximate on the plate to a straight line. Last
year a man taking a shot with a hand camera at the stars was said to
have accidentally photographed a meteor as well. (Two of the clergy of the previous decade at St Paul Dock Street were keen astronomers - see here for Daniel Ace, and here for Charles Besley Gribble.)
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 (the Rector's mother was a Quayle), studied at Christ Church College Oxford. Though
he never ministered on the Island, family 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 (son of a JP and a proprietor of the Liverpool Courier), 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 promoted this cause (for which he had the support of John
Jackson, Bishop of London 1869-85) in the monthly journal which he
founded and owned, the Church Reformer (motto: readapting the
ecclesiastical machinery to the wants of the age).
Headlam, however, with perhaps typical perversity - he was always a
champion of lost causes - took exception to this, despite his close
friendship with Hadden: Are you,
Sir, with your support of the Bishop of London, still among the
Philistines who think that Sunday at 11 o'clock, with the women and
children in their best bonnets, is the only conceivable time for
worshipping God? Headlam's line, like that of William Morris,
was that efficiency should not be substituted for beauty, and that the
city churches should be kept open to provide rest of soul, mind, and body to over-worked and worried men and women for a few minutes each day, rather than being sold or used as show-rooms for engines. In
1884, wtih money from his father, Headlam took over the journal (which was
struggling financially), promising to make it more radical, with a definitely
Christian and catholic point of view. There will be no watering down of
the Christian Faith in our columns to make agreeable to vicious palates
... we shall try to expose all who poison it, and to counteract their
position. He replaced the paper's motto with the lines from Blake's Jerusalem - 'I will not cease from mental fight ... - for which he won John Ruskin's approval.
At St George's, Hadden - perhaps surprisingly - was a supporter of the Charity Organisation Society and served for a time on the local committee. He
went on to serve in
two then-deprived East End parishes (St
Botolph Bishopsgate and St Botolph Aldgate), before returning
to St Mark North Audley Street in Mayfair (where he had served his
title), as its much-loved vicar until an early death in 1909. 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; see also this family account (but note that 8am, not 9am, is the earliest legal time for marriage, and Hadden's name is mis-recorded).
Like his Rector Harry
Jones, Hadden was a keen traveller (he had an extended trip to the USA
in 1886, sailing back to Liverpool on the City of Richmond.) 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 58), inspired by the view from Mordiford Bridge, was
dedicated to Hadden's memory, as he was Junior Warden of
the Worshipful Company of Musicians - see here, from issue 30 of their journal. Willie Parkinson Jay (1878-81, when he became Vicar of Christ Church Watney Street where his story is told in more detail)
Henry Meyners Bernard (1881-82)
studied Maths at Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and served curacies
in Wells and Herefordshire before coming here. There followed six years
as chaplain of the English Church in Moscow, which he left to study
biology and zoology under Professor Ernst Haeckel
at Jena (promoter of Darwin's work and developer of the 'recapitulation
theory'). Thereafter Bernard had a distinguished scientific career,
cataloguing the corals and fossils at the British Museum and publishing
many papers and monographs: in addition to those listed here in the Geological Magazine's obituary, he wrote The Sense of Sight: Sketch of a New Theory (1896), A Suggested Origin of the Segmented Worms, and the Problem of Metamerism (1900), Studies in the Retina (1906) and co-authored a Texbook of Comparative Anatomy (1896). Here is a letter about his theories from the naturalist Alfred R Wallace. He became a Fellow of the Linnean and Zoological Societies. He was a socialist, and wrote The Scientific Basis of Socialism: Two Essays in Evolution (New Age Press 1908). He died in London the following year, aged 55.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 W Cowley (1883-84)
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 (1885-90) – 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. Right is his memorial to his father, in Canterbury Cathedral.
William
Sharpe (1889-90), trained at
King's College and ordained in 1879; this was his sixth, and apparently final, curacy in and around London. He also assisted at St John the Evangelist-in-the-East.
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. They were also linked to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.) Ordained by the Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1887, he served a brief curacy at Christ Church Yeovil before moving to London. In 1893 the Rector recommended him for the living of St Matthew, Stepney, but he was not appointed. 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; there he published a short pamphlet Rome and Marriage (Osborne Mannett 1922) on Pope Pius X's 1908 decree Ne Temere
which had imposed stricter conditions on lapsed and non-Catholic
spouses. 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 of 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, served two curacies in St Alban's diocese and a third at St Luke Stepney with its first vicar, shortly after whose death in 1894 (after over 40 years in the parish) he became Chaplain of St George's Workhouse and Infirmary and St George-in-the-East Schools at Plashet from 1894, serving until 1925, living at Bow, midway beween the two institutions. He was buried at Durrington Cemetery, Worthing.
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”. |
George Guest, later organist and choirmaster of St John's College Cambridge, had been a chorister at Chester, and in his autobiography A Guest at Cambridge (Paraclete Press 1994) recalls Canon Baxter - whose hobby was the origin of words - greeting a mother and her children in the Close with the words "Good morning, madam, do you know how we came by the word 'journeyman'? It comes from the French word, jour = day, and signifies a person who is paid by the day, rather than the week, month or year. And he went off, leaving behind one very perplexed lady."
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.
For Henry Iselin (1898-1916), see here.
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