It is not clear why this proprietary chapel was established, only a few hundred yards north from the parish church on Cannon Street Road [formerly New Road], between what are now Chapman and Bigland Streets [Chapel Street lay between them], in the premises of a former CONGREGATIONAL CHAPEL.
Sailors' Rest Asylum / Shipwrecked & Distressed Sailors' Asylum
| Some years since, I had formed the Sailors' Rest Asylum, and provided for shipwrecked and distressed sailors lodging and food, until they could get ships. At first we had an Asylum House, in Wellclose-square ...The house became too small, and I then sought out, and engaged a large range of premises in Cannon-street-road, having a wide entrance and two folding gates. Here was a dwelling-house for the manager, and the premises being in a ruinous state, I had an extensive place below fitted out with tables, forms, and stoves, as the Sailors' Mess, and a large floored place above, as the Sailors' dormitory for clean straw, and an old sail as a covering. The Sailors' Mess was the chapel every night and morning. Opposite to this I had another range of premises, as the cook-house and kitchen, and at the expense of £200 had these fitted up, also, for sailors. All this I carried on and had supported, and the greatest good was done with hundreds of poor destitute or cast-away sailors, who went out, or came from all parts of the world. A company of dissenting ministers and laymen examined the whole of the Sailors' Rest Asylum in 1831 ... and all the ministers and laymen pronounced it the most important institution, and worthy of all possible support. When the twenty four ministers, who had engaged to take the whole of our establishment, withdrew from it, without any justifiable cause, I found we could no longer support this cause in Cannon-street-road ... [and offered to transfer it to Dr Fletcher of Stepney] ... but to my great surprise and grief he refused it altogether, in consequence of other ministers withdrawing, so that I was obliged to transfer it to the Rev. Mr. B [Thomas Boddington], a clergyman of the Church of England, who took it in connection with Trinity Episcopal Church, in Cannon-street-road; and after two or three years he transferred it to a captain of the navy, who obtained the Bishop of Llandaff's patronage, and Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, as president, with some, also, of the lords of the Admiralty. Sir Edward made his experience of this institution the principal ground of all his evidence before the Shipwreck-committee of the House of Commons. At length the whole failed, and was broken up and destroyed; so that now there is only one Sailors' Asylum, in Well-street, where no dissenting minister would be allowed to preach. The nightly shelter for the houseless, by the London Docks, housed about seventy destitute sailors of a night, last winter; but no non-conformist minister is allowed there: but had Dr. Fletcher kindly taken the Sailors' Rest Asylum, and the dissenting and methodist ministers united with him, they might have had all the money the Blackwall Railway gave for pulling down all the premises and making a new road directly through what was our Sailors' Rest Asylum; and thus all the evangelical ministers could have had access every night to preach to sailors, who would be compelled to be present. One hundred every night, who would be the greatest curse or the greatest blessing to all parts of the world, as they obtained ships for foreign voyages! |
| Crowds of shipwrecked,stranded, castaway, robbed, or destitute Sailors reach London from all parts of our sea-shore and of the world, shirtless, shoeless, and penniless, who must perish in our streets but for prompt assistance. The SAILORS' REST ASYLUM is opened for all such distressing cases. Every forlorn and starving Sailor is here instantly received on application: he is washed and shaved, and has a basin of bergue, or thick oatmeal porridge, and a sea biscuit, every morning — is sent out to look for a ship through the day — and has a basin of good soup and a biscuit every evening, with clean straw for his bed. The number of Sailors in the Establishment, during the last winter, averaged from 80 to 100; and many more, in the most deplorable state, daily apply for relief, but cannot be admitted for want of funds to support them till they can obtain ships. By timely relief, sailors have been assisted to obtain ships; and have been kept from begging and robbing, and numerous other evils to which they might have been exposed, and from being a burden to the country in general; and, as such, the Institution has some claims of justice, as well as of mercy, on the public at large: but its claims will appear to be most urgent, when it is considered that great numbers of destitute sailors, by means of the Asylum, have been kept from actual starvation, and that the relief is for a class of men who very seldom have the benefit of parish assistance, or of the various local charities of our country; and when it is further considered, that men of various colours, and from different climates, many of whom never heard the Name of Jesus, are daily brought under the sound of His Gospel, the object needs no encomium to recommend it to the Christian World. |
In
1836 he became the chaplain of Giltspur Street Compter, a prison
built opposite Newgate (to designs by George Dance the younger) in 1791
to replace two small City goals, mainly to house debtors but also
felons and other offenders, and vagrants and 'night-charges'; it was
demolished in 1855. As the third annual report of the
Prison Inspectors
explains, Boddington had actually read the daily prayers with a
biblical exposition on a voluntary basis for some time prior to his
formal appointment, as his predecessor was too ill to perform his
duties, which had in any case for many years had been undertaken on his
behalf by the 'Taskmaster'. His salary was £200 a year. He resigned at
some point before his successor was appointed in 1842.Burial ground,
and the lascars
The
chapel also had
a burial ground; as G.A.
Walker reported in Gatherings
from Graveyards in 1839,
| The burying ground at the back of this chapel is large, and very much crowded. The fees are low; many of the Irish are buried here, and bodies are brought from very distant parishes; many of the grave stones have given way. There is a schoolroom for children at one end of the ground, built over a shed, in which are deposited pieces of broken-up coffin wood, tools, &c. |
Insanitary and over-full burial grounds in London had become a major problem; this was one of the many sites mentioned by Walker in evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee in 1842, in connection with A Bill for the Improvement of Health in Towns, by removing the Interment of the Dead from their Precincts.
In 1839 The Times
reported controversy over a lascar burial in this
ground, from their barracks in Cannon Street Road; it was observed by
'several thousand' people as an exotic
curiosity. An official of the East India Company had leased space,
and allowed Catholics, Dissenters and lascars to bury their dead there,
for a fee of 7 shillings. Dr Farington, the Rector of St George's,
protested that those who swarm in
the neighbourhood - Dissenters and poor Irish papists as
well as lascars - had a rooted
aversion to the settled order of things both in church and state.
This was typical of the growing anti-Asian prejudice - see Michael
Fisher Counterflows
to Colonialism (2006) chapter 4.
HERE
are accounts of how Lascars were perceived, from 1805, 1823 and
1839.
Protestant Association
For part of its brief history, the chapel
was associated with
the Protestant Association,
whose journal The
Penny Protestant Operative reports
various meetings of the local branch, the Tower Hamlets Operative
Protestant Association, in the Cannon Street Road schoolroom and
elsewhere in the borough.
For example, in 1840 the Revd J. Cotter (from Ireland) delivered a lecture on the state of Romanism in Ireland, and the pleasing circumstances connected with the numerous converts from Popery at Dingle and Ventry, and exhibited specimens of indulgences and beads. The room was crowded, and two or three hundred persons were unable to obtain admission.
Ministers of
the chapel
The
meeting was chaired by the Minister, James
Harris,
to whom the congregation had presented a testimonial in 1839. In 1842
he became incumbent of All Saints Spicer Street, Mile End New Town.
There he became a council member of the newly-formed Association for
the Promotion of Improved Street Paving, Cleansing and Drainage.
The Church
Review of
1850 reported that he was to become one of three additional colonial
bishops, to serve in Western Australia (even though he was 65 at the
time); but this did not happen - no bishop was appointed until 1857,
and in 1859 Harris became Vicar of Wellington and Curate of West
Buckland in Somerset, and died there two years later.
From
1840-42 Charles Day was
the Minister, and chaplain of the City of London Union. He was from a
well-connected family - his father, a Norwich incumbent, had married
well, and he himself married a clergy widow - and he was an LLB (or
BCL) graduate of St John's College Cambridge; the Marquess of Bristol
was patron of his first living, at Rushmere in Suffolk, which he left
in 1835 for a spell at Theale in Berkshire. He attended, and sometimes
chaired, Protestant Association meetings (it was to him that Sir Robert
Peel's
secretary replied to their submission on 'Infidelity in the
Metropolis'), continuing to do so when he
became vicar of Mucking,
a village near Thurrock in what was then Rochester diocese, where he
remained until his death in 1868. He was, among other things, a member
of the Peace Association, a director of the Pall Mall-based Mitre Life
Assurance Association, and a musician. In 1864 he revised, with James
Turle (organist of Westminster Abbey), Haslam's
Supplemental Tune Book, 'containing
50 sublime melodies, from the Ancient Temple Services, the Modern
Synagogue, Greek, Latin. Russian, Moravian, and other Rituals, adapted
in simple harmonies, as Metrical Psalm Tunes and Chorales, to the use
of the Anglican Church, with or without accompanying Hymns'. A review in the Evangelical Magazine & Missionary
Chronicle commented
| A new edition has been
issued of the much esteemed book of psalmody
first named above. The estimation in which it is held proves its merits
to a certain extent. It is, no doubt, one of the many books that have
in part arisen from the improved views of psalmody which mark our day,
and in part promoted those views and the corresponding practice. Among
these selections, however, we should not rank the one now before us by
any means first. The new compositions are not at all the best part of
the book, but many fine old tunes from different sources are
introduced. We think, however, that both as regards compositions and
arrangements, the popular taste and capacity have been too much
consulted in proportion to the classical merits of the music. This is
of course a question of degree, and the compilers have consistently
adhered in the matter to the views expressed in their preface as to
what is mainly required in modern church music. The "Supplemental Tune-book" is remarkable chiefly for the sources from which the tunes are derived. Those from the old Hebrew worship are of course especially interesting. It is always difficult for music of a new and somewhat foreign character to find its way into common favour and use, while the appearance of such novelties from time to time is exceedingly valuable. We think that several of the tunes in this small collection will be found fully worthy of introduction into our psalmody. |
In 1842, George Harrison, of Lincoln College Oxford, was licensed as the Minister, and also chaired and attended meetings of the Protestant Association. He left the following year to become perpetual curate, then first vicar, of Rainow near Macclesfield, where a new parsonage and church were built; he was an active local member of the Evangelical Alliance, and in his latter years was also resident at Palestine Place, a centre of Christian Jewish mission, in Bethnal Green.
However,
from 1844-48 Dr Alfred
Bowen Evans became
the Minister - no doubt through the influence of Bryan King, who had
recently become Rector of the parish. He had preached a course of
Advent sermons here
the
previous year, on
The Return of Jesus
Christ to our Earth, with its Attendant Events.
He
had been curate of Enfield and Lecturer at the 'hyper-Tractarian'
church of St Andrew Wells Street, in Marylebone, where in 1841 he had
published Dissent and
its Inconsistencies, and had made his
mark as a preacher, attracting large numbers of young men to the
church and taking an uncompromisingly pacifist stance at the time of
the 'Russian war': war, he said, is 'utterly indefensible'.
Intriguingly, The
Train
('a first class magazine' - another Protestant journal) commended him
despite his churchmanship.
Another reviewer, commenting on his published discourses Christianity
in its Homely Aspects,
said
| The author of this volume of sermons wishes that it may fall into the hands of any who may have entertained a prejudice against the church in which they were delivered; and assuredly, if these sermons represent the doctrines preached in that church, we cannot well imagine a better answer to charges often brought against its clergy. The style of the discourses is peculiar and antiquated, and there is a good deal of reasoning which we should think above the comprehension of the average run of congregations; but the doctrines and principles enunciated appear to have no such tendencies as should furnish any ground of jealousy; on the contrary, we should say that they are particularly free from such notions, and that the most Protestant congregation in the metropolis might listen to them without any other feeling than that of gratification and interest. |
Evans' farewell sermon
at Trinity Episcopal Chapel was published as The
Dove: the Christian Pattern.
In
1852, then living at Kentish Town, he obtained a protection order
against bankruptcy; but he continued to publish sermons preached at St
Andrew Wells Street, including further thoughts about war (its theology, its anomalies, its incidents
and its humiliations), and a series
of lectures
on Job. In 1861 he became
Rector of St Mary-le-Strand (which he re-ordered on Tractarian
principles), remaining until his death in 1878, and continuing to write
- for example, The
Future of the Human Race (1864). In The Pulpit and
the Press he remarked that a man might preach Calvinism in a chasuble
or a surplice and it would
be declared to be Romanism, while he might preach Romanism in a Genevan
gown, and it would not be distinguished from Calvinism. He
supported the Rector of St George's, Bryan King, in his introduction of
choral services (pointing out in a sermon that the Psalms were intended
to be sung rather than 'read').
But Bryan King
presumably had little say in the appointment of Evans' successor in
1848 - Henry
Robbins,
of Wadham College Oxford, who since 1843 had been Head Master of
Stepney Proprietary Grammar School. He restored
the hard-line Protestant tradition, having been a speaker at the
Protestant Association, and involved in the 1845 Anti-Maynooth
Conference (protesting at Parliament's proposals for grants and
endowments to a Roman Catholic college - the proceedings were written
up by A.S. Thelwall who was attached to ST MATTHEW
PELL STREET); in
1853 a collection was taken for the Society
for Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics,
after a sermon by its Deputation Secretary. This had been set up four
years earlier by Alexander Dallas, and continued until 1950.
District
Visiting
At
some point in its history the chapel affiliated to
the
General Society for Promoting District
Visiting, which was set up in
1828 by a variety of evangelical groups, with some episcopal
support, with the object of promoting
a general and systematic visitation of the poor, with a view to
improving their temporal and spiritual condition. Within
three years, London had been divided into 866 sections, with 25 local
District Visiting Societies drawing on 573 regular lay visitors who
made 163,695 visits in 1831. The following year's District Visitors
Record claims a
regular system of domiciliary visitation was thought to be necessary,
by which every poor family might be visited at their habitations,
from house to house and from room to room, and their temporal and
spiritual condition diligently yet tenderly examined into, and
appropriate treatment applied.
But some were suspicious of the Society's methods, since although they
recommended communicating and co-operating with the local incumbent
before a District Society was set up, of which ideally he should be the
president, they reserved the right to set up a Society even should the sanction of the
clergyman be withheld. In 1840 they produced a manual
by Thomas Dale
(a residentiary canon of St Paul's and Vicar of St Bride's) with a
preface by Bishop Blomfield of London, commending the system but
commenting There
is a special promise of blessing annexed to ministerial service; and
the sense of that speciality ought not to be effaced from the minds
of our flocks, by the permitted intrusion of laymen, however pious
and zealous, into that which belongs to our own peculiar office. If
this be not attended to, you must expect that tares will spring up in
the wheat, and that your visiting societies will become so many
nurseries of schism.
How
did this chapel relate to its parish church and the distinctive
tradition that was emerging there, and when did it close? Presumably
this was soon after after Robbins' death. It was later demolished, and
in 1875
one of the new RAINE'S SCHOOLS
buildings was erected on the site, with the playground over part of the
old burial ground – as Mrs
Basil Holmes
reported in 1897, the remaining area comprised a cooper's yard (Messrs
Hasted & Sons), a carter's yard (Messrs Seaward Brothers), and
sheds and
houses.