Christ Church Watney Street Curates

Curates of Christ Church Watney Street (1841 – 1951)

This long list reflects the general Victorian pattern of men holding a sequence of brief curacies - sometimes only a matter of months - in their search for a position as incumbent. Only a few stayed longer, because they had a specific commitment to ministry in the East End (particularly at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century, when Christ Church had a well-developed programme, and a more definite Catholic ethos). Alongside the well-connected 'Oxbridge men' there are plenty of Irish, and a few Scottish, graduates, plus non-graduates from theological colleges such as St Bees, Birkenhead and Queen's Birmingham, for whom the struggle to find posts was harder. See here for statistics of baptisms and weddings at Christ Church.

James Sanderson Clarke (1844-47) - born in 1821 and baptized at St Bride Fleet Street, he studied at St John's College Cambridge and after serving his title here and four further curacies (in Denham, Worth, Lewisham and Blackheath) became Vicar of Goudhurst in Kent from 1864 (with an honorary chaplaincy to the 41st Kent Rifle Volunteers the following year) until his death in 1911 aged 90, where according to his memorial tablet he restored the church and provided the parish with 'adequate schools'. He had two daughters and six sons, who attended Tonbridge School; one was ordained and became a Prebendary of Chichester, holding various offices in that diocese; two others lost their lives in the First World War - one with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces at Ypres in April 1915, and another, who had been a member of the London Stock Exchange, with The Buffs (the East Kent regiment) at Hulluch a few months later: details here.

Henry Berkeley Jones (1846) was born at Mangro Grove, Mauritius in 1813, where his father had gone the previous year as a military chaplain (at £300 a year, speaking fluent French and learning Creole - but passed over for promotion as senior chaplain, and dying there in 1837). He was sent to England in 1826 (the painting right is from that year - image from later life needed!) and attended Charterhouse and St John's College Cambridge. Ordained in 1839, he served curacies in Chester diocese - at Whalley near Blackburn, then from 1841 of St James Toxteth Park in Liverpool. In 1843, he published a reply to the Rev James Henry Sutcliffe's pamphlet accusing the Bishop of London of heresy and popery [on what grounds?] of which the Christian Remembrancer wrote loftily

We have never seen the [pamphlet] and therefore much of the force of the Rev. H. Berkeley Jones's Reply to it (Rivingtons) is lost on us. We think it can hardly be worth a Reply. We wish Mr. Jones would not mar his good cause by making untenable assertions. It is not true that the Clergy are learned as a body, and it is most important that they should learn to know and lament their fault in this respect.

He became perpetual curate of St John Werneth, in Oldham (then also still part of Chester diocese) before his brief time here, and later was curate of Belgrave Chapel. In 1852 he was sent by the Colonial Land Emigration Board with a party of 280 'bounty emigrants' to Moreton Bay, Queensland; his spontaneous writings about this experience - currente calamo, as reviewers put it - were published as Adventures in Australia, 1852 & 1853 (Richard Bentley 1853). One of his comments on the gold-diggers (though he had not visited for himself, but was relying on reports from others!) was the mind, not well-fortified by religious sentiments, is apt, in the absence of the softening influences of domestic life, to be degraded step by step into paths which it never contemplated before without horror or dismay.
Oblivious of the political issues of Australian colonisation, The Critic said that he aims rather at usefulness than at brilliancy. He looks at facts as they are and reports them with a sort of photographic truth. His outlines are good - his details accurate, we have no doubt; but the scene, as he presents it, is wanting in light and play, colour and motion. The artist, the man of fancy, will learn nothing from Mr. Jones's adventures. Indeed, it is an abuse of terms to call such commonplace experiences of men and things, 'adventures'. The emigrant, however, will find in this record of personal observation hints for his guidance of no small value.
The Spectator included a more positive review, with extended quotations from his book, reproduced here.
He was appointed a Special Justice, under the 1834 Apprenticeship Act for New South Wales which made arrangements for former slaves, and supported Indian immigration to Australia, reflecting in his book (p80): Coolies from India would have been more extensively introduced [to Australia] had the Indian government permitted it. Such as have been got, about two hundred, have given satisfaction ...They are patient, diligent and provident. A boon is conferred on them by removing them from India, where they are suffering much from a crowded population ... However, he favoured separate development for indigenous people, praising squatters' efforts, and recounting how he had entertained an Aboriginal woman by singing to her the National Anthem, but disparaged her children's songs, for they have no poetry or historical tradition of any kind.
How long he stayed in Australia is unclear, but in 1864 we find him as curate of Whalley Range in what had by then become the diocese of Manchester, remaining there for a further few years; by 1870 he held no ecclesiastical post.

George Mockler (1847-54), of Trinity College Dublin, fifth son of a Lieutenant-Colonel, ordained by the Bishop of Worcester, who was the first of twelve chaplains to die in the Crimean War, to whom there is a memorial at the Royal Garrison Church, Portsmouth [right]. Appointed to the troops at Malta in April 1854, he died six months later of cholera, having been carried on a stretcher to Balaclava. Shortly before he died, Henry Press Wright (later an archdeacon on Vancouver) read the service for the Visitation of the Sick over him, and he murmured beautiful prayers, beautiful prayers. A tablet over the north-west door of Christ Church read

Erected to the memory of the Rev. George Mockler M.A., formerly Curate of this church and later Chaplain attached to Third Division of the British Army in alliance with France and Turkey engaged against Russia in actual warfare. He had endeared himself during a ministry of 7 years to his late Congregation who have raised this memorial of their attachment and esteem. The zeal evinced by him for the welfare of the dying, sick and wounded after the battle of the Alma so enervated his physical energies that he sank under the heavy labour imposed upon his exhausted nature. He died on the 2nd day of October 1854, in the 34th year of his age. His remains were interred upon the heights of Sebastopol.

An article comparing unfavourably the ministry of Roman Catholic chaplains at Scutari, who, it claims, were on hand primarily at public places to minister the formal rites of extreme unction and confession, with that of Anglican chaplains, who spent time talking with sick and dying men in the hospitals. It points out that the casualties among chaplains were more than double those of other officers - This does not look like the fate of a cowardly and self-sparing body - and singles out George Mockler for comment: So reduced was he by sickness, caused by hard work among cholera and fever patients in Bulgaria, that the medical officers besought him not to land with the troops in the Crimea. He took his name, however, off the sick list, saying, "What will the poor dying do if their chaplain be away?" He landed at Old Fort, dragged his worn limbs to Balaklava, and there became an easy prey to cholera (Dublin University Magazine vol.55 (1860) p165).
Another priest who saw action in the Crimean war and served briefly here was Edward Laughlin.

William Holmes (1858-??), by 1868 Chaplain to the East London Union workhouse in Homerton (living at Harrogate Road, South Hackney), and from 1873 Curate of St James Fulham.
George Gustavus Morton (1860-62) - of Trinity College Dublin, began his ministry at Borris, County Carlow, before coming here; after a further curacy in Acton (marrying Sarah Ann Riddell in 1865 at Lympsham), he was Vicar of Ulverston from 1868-78, to which he was presented by the Revd Alfred Peache, who had purchased the advowson (he was a wealthy benefactor of the London College of Divinity and of other evangelical causes). There he came into conflict with Town Bank Sunday School, which met in the 17th century grammar school - rebuilt in 1900 - and asserted its independence from the parish; on Morton's departure, it merged with St Mary's Sunday School, under his successor G.W. Bardsley. A memorial window was added on the east side of the chancel in 1925, which lists his involvement in the building of St John's Osmotherly [in North Yorkshire], St Jude's iron church, the rectory and the restoration of the National School in the parish. He became Rector of Pitney in Somerset 1886; by 1892 he was living in Exmouth, and a member of the Anti-Vivisection Society.
R Smith (1863) - this may have been Richard Smith, ordained in 1856, who became Perpetual Curate of Rushton, near Leek, in 1863.

Alfred Conder (1863-65) - MA and LLM of Queen's College Cambridge and ordained to this parish (he published his farewell sermon The Future Meeting); his father-in-law G. Hartwell Roe then appointed him rector of Middleton-on-Sea, a village of 71 souls near Bognor (on whose his death Conder himself became the patron) - church right. The parish had suffered greatly from the encroachments of the sea. Here, until he died in 1895, at Middleton House (with eight children and six servants), he ran a private school for boys (he was also described as chaplain of the Merchant Taylors' Company convalescent home - was this the same institution?), with British, Canadian and Chinese pupils. The local history archive notes that he could regularly be seen taking groups of boys to church by wagonette and for a number of years these boys formed the major part of the congregation. But services were often cancelled for want of a attenders. He took a leading part in the affairs of the town, was a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, and wrote on education matters, including giving approval to the New Gymnastics for Men, Women and Children developed by the American Dio Lewis, and based on callisthenics, dumb-bells and 'pangymnastikon':

Violent gymnastics, like violent muscular exertion of every kind, are most injurious. As a Cambridge man, I have had many opportunities of observing this; and it is well known that those who in early manhood were distinguished for their skill in athletic sports, too frequently pay the penalty for their disregard of the laws of health, by premature loss of vigour. I am acquainted with a large public school in Ireland, in which violent games were at one time very much in vogue; but it was observed that diseases of the heart became prevalent among the boys; and the result was, that the authorities had to prohibit the objectionable sports..... This system, therefore, deserves the serious consideration of all teachers, as it appears to afford ample scope for the due exercise of the muscles, without the risk of producing any of the evils to which other plans often gave rise.

One of his sons, Hartwell (1869-1937), who married Millicent Phillips from Connemara in 1895 at St Matthew Bayswater, became Tasmania's State Mining Engineer.

Robert Wilson (1864-66), of Trinity College Cambridge; be began his ministry in Edale, Derbyshire and then served in Walworth, at St John's and as a missionary curate of Lock's Fields; after his time here (also described as 'missionary curate'), and a year at St John Wapping, he moved to a post at Ramsden Crays in Essex for the next two years.

Leonard Harcourt Earle, of Queen's College Cambridge; born in Dartmouth in 1834, he served curacies in Shrivenham, Stour Provost and Charlton-by-Dover (marrying in 1861), and was then linked to Christ Church as a 'London Diocesan Home Missionary' (1864-71), before becoming Rector of Conisholme near Grimsby, where in 1877 he enlarged the village school, built by his predecessor, to accommodate 30 children. A.C. Barrett, author of a Companion to the Greek Testament, for the use of theological students, and the upper forms in schools (and who also wrote a Treatise on Mechanics and Hydrostatics), ackowledged Earle's help in the preparation of the 4th edition (1878). He died in London aged 56.
Samuel Scott (1866-68), of Trinity College Dublin, ordained in 1864 by the Bishop of Ripon; from 1874-95 he was Chaplain of the Southampton Union [workhouse], retiring with a government pension.
George Philip Ottey (1868-69) - born in Southfleet, and a pupil at Rugby, he graduated from St John's College Cambridge, where he played first-class cricket for the university team from 1844-47 (statistics here); after a brief spell in Worcester diocese, he was curate of Lewisham in Rochester diocese, marrying his wife Mary-Louise there. Other posts followed, and in 1867 he published a pamphlet The dragon bound and loosed: a statement of some reasons for supposing that the millennium began in the period extending from A.D. 789 to 867, and ends in that extending from 1789 to 1867 (William Macintosh, 1867) - the reference is to Rev 20.2. The end did not come, so he responded to the call of the London-wide mission and came briefly to this parish. He regarded himself as a (moderate) Christian Socialist, and wrote to the press, in relation to the emigration programmes which his Vicar supported, my socialism is not confused. It is founded on the belief that the Government is bound to take means for removing the sufferings of the people when private means are proved inadequate. He went on to became a diocesan schools inspector and secretary of the London Diocesan Board of Education (living in Chepstow Villas, Notting Hill), and a Prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral. In 1874 he wrote a paper How shall the church retain her influence over boys after they leave her day-schools? (Brettell & Co 1874), and Prophecies and Types of Messiah: Four Lectures to Pupil-Teachers (SPCK 1879). As Vicar of Much Hadham, near Ware (1886-89) he produced a one-year course for Sunday School teachers Christian Principles and Church Seasons (1888); he died in Bournemouth in 1891, aged 67.
Calvin Beaumont Winstanley (1869) - born 1833 in Windsor, Liverpool, the son of a clergyman, he attended King William's College on the Isle of Man, and graduated LLB from Jesus College Cambridge in 1857 (and later BCL). In 1846 he and another relative had inherited the family pension of £25 granted by King Charles II after his escape from the Battle of Worcester. Ordained in 1860 to Sandal Magna, to officiate at West Bretton (near Wakefield), he moved, without cure, to the East Riding village of Bishop Burton, where he regularly visited the parish school - the school log for 1863 reports that his wife and daughter took in quantities of gooseberries - and in 1895 that his widow returned to visit a grave - whose? He was no stranger to the Chancery court: in 1855, he was involved in a case over the estate of a cheese factor in Wolverhampton; in 1860, over a lease in Huddersfield; but in particular, he and his wife were plaintiffs in a long-standing action over her family trust, begun in 1851, reported as Micklethwait v Winstanley (New Reports 1864 p204) and on appeal to the Lord Chancellor as Birks v. Micklethwait (1864) 33 Beav 409, and Law Times Reports NS XIII (1865) p13 - they do not appear to have benefitted from the experience! He left Bishop Burton in 1869; after his brief time here, he was curate of St Mary Peterborough, and from 1870 of Ashton, near Stevenage. In 1873 he served for a year as curate of Holm Cultram Abbey, in Cumbria, the incumbent Arthur Ashworth devolving active work to curates because of failure of health [the church was subject to a major arson attack in 2006]. From 1876 until his death in 1879 he was incumbent of Cartsdyke in the diocese of Glasgow.

Thomas Worthington (1869-70) - trained at St Aidan's College Birkenhead (opened in 1847), he was curate of Blyth in Nottinghamshire before and after his short spell at Christ Church; following two posts in Scotland, and two in Dorset, including the headship of Bridport Grammar School - where he wrote a Companion to the Book of Common Prayer and historical notes about Chideock - he served the rest of his ministry in Australia, apart from a break from 1888 to take a degree as a mature student at Cambridge (formally recognised - ad eundem gradum - by the Universities of Adelaide and New Zealand). He retired in 1903 to Jersey.
J.H. Wright (1870)
John Francis Nash Eyre (or Nash-Eyre) (1870) trained at St Bees and was ordained deacon by the Archbishop of York in 1853 as curate of St Lawrence Kirkby Misperton, near Pickering, living at various addresses in the parish (Great Habton, Foston and Barugh); two years later he was declared an insolvent debtor, and went on to serve brief curacies at Hope (Hanley, Stoke), Taunton, Forest of Dean, West Mersea and Coseley (Staffordshire). He was only priested when he became Vicar of Denholm in West Yorkshire from 1861-70, where he worked ecumencially, including joining with fellow-ministers in providing a testimonial to the oratorical skills of Jacob Green, a three-time runaway slave from Kentucky, whose story was printed by Henry Fielding of Huddersfield in 1864. After a couple of temporary London posts (including chaplain of Lambeth Cemetery and Morning Preacher at the Magdalen Hospital - previously in this parish, but by then moved to Streatham) and several months here as 'senior curate', Eyre became Vicar of Waterlooville in Hampshire, and in 1873, by an exchange of livings, of St Mary Ilkeston in Derbyshire (then in the diocese of Lincoln; the Duke of Rutland was patron - I have come to live amongst you, and probably to die amongst you, he said at his induction - which proved to be the case). He was a surrogate for the dioceses of Lichfield and Ripon, and also had a connection with St Paul Chatham. Five years later his wife Frances died, and bankruptcy proceedings were again instituted, but despite periods of inhibition he remained in post until his death in 1887, aged 57 (he remarried in 1880, and a son Montague was baptized in 1882). He had supporters and critics in equal measure. There is a full and fascinating account of his troubled ministry at Ilkeston here - including not only his financial difficulties, but also allegations of adultery, and a story about his presence on the cricket field up to the moment when the bell rang to announce the arrival of a funeral at church. His gravestone at Ilkeston records him as a Doctor of Laws (conferred in 1874 by the University of Philadelphia).

Coleman Connolly (1871-73), probably the fourth son of a gentleman farmer and architect from Lettermullen, Galway, he studied at Glasgow University and after his time here (lodging at Colet Place, off Commercial Road) enrolled at Worcester College Oxford when he was 47, where he took part in union debates. By 1889 he was living at Holmdale Road in St John's Wood, where he died in 1894 aged 71, leaving a large fortune (where did this come from?), fifth shares of which, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, went to Lieutenant Flaherty of the city fire department, Mrs Ann Daverns (a washerwoman) and her children Mrs Joyce of that city.
William Joseph Rundell (1874-??) - one of the first trainees from St Aidan's Birkenhead (which opened in 1847), he was ordained in Chester diocese in 1850 and served several curacies, including Faversham (where he promoted the London Society for Propagating Christianity among the Jews, and recevied a testimonial of respect in 1860); St James Pentonville from 1863; St George Southwark (marrying Julia Clementina Phillips, daughter of the Rev Howell Jones Phillips, in 1861 at Crunwere church in Pembrokeshire - her brother, a physician, died at their home in New Kent Road in 1867); All Saints Paddington from 1868, living in Eastbourne Terrace (where he was declared bankrupt, and moved to Pereira Place, Shepherd's Bush for a time, before being discharged the following year); St Luke West Holloway; St Philip Bethnal Green in 1872, and Christ Church from 1874. He was declared bankrupt a second time, in 1883, then living in Hammersmith; but the following year became vicar of Westmarsh in Kent. Archbishop Benson's papers at Lambeth Palace Library contain correspondence about Rundell from 1884-85 with A.J. Mason, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge (who shared a Truro connection with Benson).

Richard Sykes Chalmers (1875) - a doctor's son from Hull, born in 1834, he studied at Durham University and St Mary's Hall [now part of Oriel College] Oxford, and Lichfield Theological College, and was ordained to a title in Alvanley, Cheshire in 1868, with a second post in Ebberston, Pickering in 1872. He time here was brief; he went on to St James Ratcliffe, and by 1884, he was a curate in North Meols, West Lancashire (having married Adela Gertrude Martin in 1881 at St Mary Paddington - in 1885 she petitioned for a decree of nullity). He died at Castleton, in the Esk Valley in North Yorkshire, in 1890, aged 56.

Joseph Thomas White (1877-79), studied law and theology at Trinity College Dublin, and came here after curacies at Edlaston (Derbyshire) and Bowdon (Cheshire) and a brief incumbency at Dunham Massey.
Reginald Augustus Roper (1879) - born in Evesham around 1847, he married Mary Pringle in 1868 at St Pancras Old Church, and then studied at Queen's College Birmingham; ordained in 1871, he served for less than a year at St George, Birmingham, and the same at All Saints Islington (Caledonian Road) before a longer period at St Thomas Bethnal Green (where he published a sermon on Matthew 28.19 & 30 Baptism: an ordinance of Christ, and as such binding throughout all ages, in answer to the Rev C. Voysey's sermon against the observance of the rite. (Ten years earlier Voysey had been a curate at St Mark Whitechapel, and he had recently been 'defrocked'.) From 1881-87 he was living in Aston, Birmingham without any ecclesiastical post, marrying Caroline Lansley at Dummer, Hampshire in 1887.

Edward James Norman (1880-??) - trained at King's College London and was ordained in 1851, serving various curacies. Either during or after his time here he was chaplain of St George's Workhouse. In the 1884 London Mission, he was delegated as a missioner to Christ Church Stepney; he was a keen member of the Church of England Temperance Society. In 1888 he was appointed vicar of St Mary Ocker Hill, in Tipton (of which the Crown and Bishop of Lichfield were alternate patrons). There he faced two big legal battles over the parochial schools. The first, in the High Court in 1892, was an unsuccessful attempt to sack, and evict from his tied accommodation, the long-serving heateacher without giving reasons. And in the county court in 1897, he faced a claim for damages in relation to the dismissal of a pupil teacher because of disagreements over his other activities in the parish (which were held to be irrelevant). Since both cases show the potential for the arbitrary abuse of power by incumbents, they are more fully recorded here. He died in 1899.
Ernest Charles Evans (1883-86) - born 1859, this was his first post, after Tonbridge School and Keble College Oxford, where he was an Exhibitioner; after a second curacy at St Dunstan Stepney (where he married Caroline Lansley in 1887) he became vicar of Holy Trinity, New Charlton, in Southwark diocese in 1893.
Aaron Emmanuel Suffrin (1883-85) - more details here.
Frank Phine(h)as Hill (1884-87) served his first post here after St Catherine's College Cambridge, and lived in the Clergy House, Upper Chapman Street. He worked with his Vicar W.P. Jay in encouraging University men in town whose evenings are free, and to whom a ramble 'Eastward-Ho!' once a week, would no doubt be a pleasant break in the monotony of an otherwise conventional life, to visit the parish. (For a few years from 1884 a monthly magazine called Eastward Ho! was published by H.G. Davies, about church life in the East End.) He involved himself in the grievances of working men, writing to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1884 on 'labour questions' - as secretary of a group campaigning to limit the 'slavery' of long hours and poor working conditions for tramway and omnibus workers (with support from the Anglican and RC hierarchies). In 1885 he was part of the organising committee that mounted a demonstration in Hyde Park - reportedly with 150,000 people present - a week after the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which re-shaped the law on child prostitution, raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 and shifting the balance towards prosecuting the male clients, and others involved in the trade, rather than its victims. The Bill - supported by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and a range of church and labour groups - had languished for four years, but a sensationalist campaign by W.T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, helped to return it to the agenda. (Section 11 of the Act - the Labouchere amendment, made at the last minute - also further criminalised male homosexuality.)

After two further London curacies (Holy Trinity Chelsea and St Simon Zelotes Bethnal Green) Hill returned to his native Wales, to three incumbencies in Llandaff and Monmouth dioceses. He was the first incumbent of St Paul Grangetown, Canton (in Cardiff) from 1894 - a church built a few years earlier. to serve a deprvied area of 16,000 people, by Lord Windsor at a cost of £4,000 in Early English/Decorated style, seating 450 - [right: listed GRade II in 1975, it was used for filming an episode of Dr Who in 2005, and is currently up for sale, with an asking price of £300,000]. Hill had an endowment of £60, a stipend of £180 and a parsonage at 64 Clive Street. In 1895 he reported on its Relief Committee to the Charity Organisation Society (having been actively involved with its work in London); he was also a committee member of the National Vigilance Association and International Bureau for the Suppression of Traffic in Women and Children (in existence 1885-1953). In 1911 he moved to Llangwm, near Usk, and in 1922 to St John Ebbw Vale from 1922. From 1921 he was a regional organising secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He and his wife died in a motor accident in Weston-super-Mare in 1931.

James William Brodrick Sproule (1886-88), born in Bath in 1852, where his Irish-born father (c1812-91) was incumbent of St Mark Lyncombe, and an Oxford graduate, he was ordained in 1875 and served two curacies in Lichfield diocese (Quarry Bank and Dudley) and then in 1883 was briefly the first curate of St Elisabeth Reddish, a beautiful and defiantly anglo-catholic church by Alfred Waterhouse (part of a suite of local buildings) in south Manchester. In June 1883, he officiated at St Jude Liverpool when the incumbent, Ernest James Augustus FitzRoy, was inhibited by Bishop Ryle pending a ritualism case in the Court of Arches, Taylor v. Fitzroy, following disturbances similar to those at St George-in-the-East over a generation earlier (FitzRoy was present, clutching the alms dish). This may have made him unemployable for a time, but he then came to Christ Church and to a further curacy at St Clement Barnsbury (marrying his wife Edith), returning in 1893 to three more in the north-west (Christ Church Ashton-under-Lyne, St James Latchford and Birchfield), before coming back to London in 1900 as curate, for a number of years, of St Luke Stepney. His glamorous sister May (or Mary) - right - married George Hess; they lived in Paddington, and Mentone, France.

Joseph Hick Lewthwaite (1887-89) was a Durham graduate (he completed a DCL in 1905), and a musician who often sang solos (for example, at an 1883 concert in the new lecture rooms at Palace Green in Durham, under the direction of the cathedral Precentor - on the day when the Precentor was awarded an honorary doctorate of music - he sang The Wandering Minstrel, by P. Mazzoni, with The olden time as an encore). He came to London after curacies at Beverley Minster (which had a musical tradition), St Mary Crumpsall in Manchester (which did not), and Moreton-in-the-Marsh, in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, where a pastoral scheme transferring this chapelry (and the house which he had occupied) from Bourton-on-the-Hill to Batsford was being implemented. After his time here, he went to Haverstock Hill, to a chaplaincy at the French Hospital in Victoria Park (founded to serve the Huguenot population of London), and to St Leonard Bromley, where he was choirmaster of his masonic lodge. He bcame Vicar of St Paul (Pear Tree Street) Clerkenwell in 1896, succeeding on his death the Revd Armine Styleman Herring, a descendant of an 18th century Archbishop of Canterbury who had opted for urban ministry rather than his father's comfortable rural parish, wiritng a book shortly before his death with the prosaic title Nearly Forty Years Exclusively Among the Poor of London and highly-regarded for his work, including his advocacy of the Canadian emigration cause, yet lived in a comfortable Georgan terrace house outside his parish in Islington. Lewthwaite, however, lived in Goswell Road. He was interviewed for the Booth archive in 1899. In 1903 he completed the re-decoration of St Paul's chancel with his own hands, saving the church an estimated £300: In a poor parish like mine the only way to get the people into church is by appealing to the senses. Most city churches are dull and dingy inside as well as out. Three years ago I made up my mind to try to improve the church, and although it was hard work, and I had not very much time, I have now completely redecorated the chancel. He used £50 of gold leaf, stencilling a design on the walls and a Last Supper over the altar. In 1914 the Illustrated London News reported A young man who appeared at the London Guildhall on a charge of assaulting Miss Lewthwaite, an actress, was fortunate. Learning that he bore a good character Miss Lewthwaite forgave him. Her father, the Rev. J.H. Lewthwaite, a Clerkenwell vicar, pleaded for him, and he escaped with a fine [right]. He ministered at St Paul Clerkenwell until his death in 1936 aged 80.

Arthur Edward Whatham (1887-88), born in Liverpool, he trained at St Aidan's Birkenhead and alternated between English curacies and missionary posts in Canada and the USA, finally settling in Louisville, Kentucky, where he started an American branch of the Charity Organisation Society. He claimed in a pamphlet of 1887, Neo-Malthusianism: A Defence (a reply to a paper read to the Lordon Junior Clergy Society by the Hon & Rev Arthur T. Lyttleton - first Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, later Bishop of Southampton and one of eleven members of that family to play first-class cricket) that neo-Malthusianism [one of the influences on the COS] is the only means of preventing the alarming increase of pauperism, sickness, crime and immorality, and, from a Christian point of view, is perfectly lawful... I say it becomes the duty of every thoughtful man and woman to think out some plan to stop, or even check, the advancing tide of desolation; and the only plan, to my thinking, that is at all workable, is artificial prevention of childbirth .... Immorality would largely diasppear, and the Christian ideal of marriage be raised. He wrote a few books and many articles on the parallels between Hebrew, Assyrian, Babylonian and Sanskrit mythology (related to the Genesis creation narratives - for example, The Yahweh-Tehom Myth (1910), The Polytheism of Genesis chapter 1 and The Anthropomorphism of Genesis 1 (1911) - the Exodus account and, in the American Journal of Religious Psychology & Education for July 1911 the 'sign of the mother-goddess'). Right is the 'rod and ring' symbol from the Code of Hammurabi about which he wrote in 1905. Later he turned to more racy articles about sex (writing on original sin, and phallic symbolism, in The American Journal of Urology and Sexology), birth control, and other subjects such as 'Does Nakedness tend to promote Immorality?', 'Women and Clothes' and so on, until his death in 1922. He came to the defence of William Montgomery Brown, Bishop of Arkansas, who was tried and deposed for heresy - he was both a self-professed Communist and denied the literal and supernatural interpretation of scripture - in a work (published posthumously in 1925) Why the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America has no power to try Bishop William Montgomery Brown. In 1899 he published a review (in Bibliotheca Sacra) of William Walsh's scurrilous Secret History of the Oxford Movement; and in 1910 he collaborated with Brown on The Level Plan for Church Union.

Arthur Bernard Littlewood (1888-95), born in Stoke Newington in 1864 and a scholar at St Paul's School, he began his ministry here after Sidney Sussex College Cambridge. He was active in the Charity Organisation Society, and in School Board affairs. After a trip to Australia, and a return to Stoke Newington for a further curacy, he was Vicar of St Paul Haggerston from 1901-04 (where in 1904 he married Magdalene Georgina de Longueville Giffard, the daughter of a French judge), then of East Farleigh, Maidstone - a well-endowed Lord Chancellor's parish, and a hop-growing centre, where the Church of England ran missions for many years; he became Rural Dean of Malling in 1934, and was an active member of the Kent Archaeological Society.
John Henry Bovill (1888-90) was born in Whitby in 1862. His Cambridge studies were based at Ayerst Hall, a short-lived private hostel in Queen Anne's Terrace, for less-wealthy students founded by the Revd William Ayerst (whose father had been associated with this parish for a time in the 1840s). Ordained deacon to St Clement Toxteth Park in Liverpool in 1885, he came to St Mary Poplar the following year and then to Christ Church (and was priested in 1889). After a further curacy in Long Stowe, Cambridgeshire he went in 1894 as missionary in Lebombo, joining its first bishop William Edmund Smyth; he was Rector of the Cathedral at Lourenço Marques [now Maputo], and Her Majesty's Acting Consul. He wrote Natives under the Transvaal Flag (Simkin Marshall 1900) and was an early commentator on the evils of racism. He is mentioned in Josephine Butler's short book Native Races and the War (Gay & Bird 1900). See further H.P. Thompson Into All Lands: The History of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701-1950. He returned in 1901 and officiated in London, St Albans, Kingsthorpe in Northamptonshire and at St Andrew Romford until 1920, living latterly in Ilford, and died in 1933.

Edward Frith Everett (1890-92) - right - born in Stamford in 1866 (his family had been millers in Norfolk, but his father Edward Hawley Everett had been a curate in Parr, St Helen's, and then chaplain of the workhouse in Stamford, and later incumbent of Wittering in Norfolk), he began his ministry here after Pembroke College Cambridge; after two other London curacies and a third at St Lawrence Northampton, from 1906, and 15 years at Little Bowden (Market Harborough) - the final one as Vicar - he returned to St Lawrence Northampton as incumbent in 1921. In 1928 he published a history of the first fifty years of that parish. He died in 1933 (and is remembered on 9 August by the Guild of All Souls): the Hull Daily Mail of 10 August reported

Whilst preaching last night to a large congregation at St Lawrence's Church, Northampton, the vicar ... suddenly collapsed in the pulpit. Members of the congregation rushed to his aid, and he was carried into another part of the church where, despite efforts at artificial respiration, he died within a few minutes The remainder of the service was abandoned and the congregation dispersed unaware of their vicar's death. Mr Everett who was 66 years of age had been treated for heart trouble for six years and as his doctor was able to give a certificate as to the cause of death the Borough Coroner has decided not to hold an inquest. A few hours before his death Mr Everett officiated at the funeral service of one of his wardens, and this and the intense heat is believed to have affected him.

Herman Caplan (1890-92) - more details here

William Geoffrey Munk (1892-98) - his third curacy after Worcester College, Oxford; he then served ten years as vicar of St Mary Cable Street (see here for evidence submitted to the 1906 Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline describing a service at St Mary's, and Munk's response) and a further ten years as vicar of St John Sutton-on-Plym (Plymouth) and chaplain of St Ursula's Home, Edith Avenue (where in 1918 he married Irene Langford, a parson's widowed daughter), returning to London as chaplain of the Sisters of Bethany at Clerkenwell, and then as a chaplain at the London Hospital, returning to Devon as incumbent of Dunchideock for seven years until his retirement in 1936. He is remembered by the Guild of All Souls on 27 May.

James Humphrey Poole (1892-96) - trained at Lincoln Theological College and served his title at Bardney, Lincs, before coming here; after a year as perpetual curate of Ulley, near Rotherham (whose patron was the Anglo-Catholic stalwart Viscount Halifax, who owned the manor and built the church in memory of a dead brother), and four as curate of nearby Northfield he returned to Lincolnshire, first as curate of St Faith Lincoln, then for two years from 1907 as Vicar of St Mark, Holbeach Marsh, near Boston; he returned to Northfield as Vicar until 1917, then went back to Lincolnshire as Rector of Skirbeck, Boston from 1918 for at least the next decade.

Alexander Wilhelm Schapira (1895-97), previously curate at St Mark Whitechapel - more details here.
Hugh Randolph Cavendish Smith-Marriott (1897-99), of Magdalen College, Cambridge. In 1825 the Rev William Marriott Smith-Marriott inherited a baronetcy and a 116-acre estate at Horsmonden in Kent, with a house (now Grade II*) incorporating 15th and 16th century features and a grand Georgian wing to which many Victorian additions inside and outside were made. Hugh served curacies in Swindon and Dover before coming here, and returned to Horsmonden (in Rochester diocese) as curate from 1905, and Vicar from 1922, until his death in 1944 (having briefly become the 9th Baronet Smith-Marriott of Sydling St Nicholas), when the estate was sold.

Into the twentieth century

Gilbert Gervase Elliott (1897-1905) was from a well-to-do Borders family (more details here) and studied at Pembroke College Cambridge and Wells Theological College. After his title here, he became vicar of St John Limehouse [where Charles Anderson had previously been incumbent], then of St Alban Hammersmith (Fulham). For a few years he led the annual mission at the young offenders' institution in Rochester - in 1914 120 boys applied for an interview with him, and the Bishop of Rochester confirmed 42 of them. He then went to St Bartholomew Brighton, before going briefly in 1926 as a UMCA missionary in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika (diocese of Zanzibar). He then spent a couple of years as port chaplain to the Missions to Seamen in Singapore, but after a brief spell as chaplain in Cannes he returned to Zanzibar as Archdeacon (where in 1936 there was a riot, on which he reported). Most of these posts were of a definite anglo-catholic tradition! He returned to England in 1937 as chaplain to Nugent Hicks, the Bishop of Lincoln (who had been Vicar of Brighton during Elliott's time there), and Canon and Prebend (with the resounding stall of 'Sexaginta Solidorum') of the cathedral; he died in 1951, aged 78, at Hove.
Arthur Mirrielees Cazalet (1898-1902) - see here for more details of his cosmopolitan life, including his connection with Jewish missions.

Arthur Harold Barlee (1898-1908), born in Donnybrook, Ireland in 1875, he attended King's School Canterbury and Trinity College Dublin, and was ordained to serve at Christ Church. From 1908-14 he was vicar of St Mary Cable Street. As a member of the St George-in-the-East Board of Guardians, he moved a resolution in 1911 cautioning school superintendents against placing school leavers with Jewish employers, stating that this made it difficult for Gentile children subsequently to obtain entrance to a Christian home. He then went to Australia, as Vicar of St John Bulimba in the diocese of Queensland, and from 1917-19 as Rector of St Paul's Cathedral Rockhampton (the diocese had been founded in 1892). He returned to England to a two-year curacy in Teddington, then from 1921-29 was vicar of St Aidan, Small Heath in Birmingham. Then he went to the West Indies - first to St Vincent, where he was Canon of St Patrick and Curate of Kingstown Cathedral (serving as acting Rector in 1930 pending the appointment of a new bishop), and thence to Barbados where he was Vicar of St Paul from 1932 (on the standard stipend of £250, quarters provided) and from 1945 Canon and Rector of St Michael's Cathedral. The Barbados Advertiser of 3 May 1952 reported - accurately (he retired to Swavesey Vicarage, between Cambridge and St Ives):

MAY NOT RETURN
Canon A.R. Barlee, who has not visited his home in England since 1947, left on Thursday by the Golfite for the U.K., but it is uncertain whether he will be returning to the West Indies. Canon Barlee has four brothers and three sisters in Bedford who want him to return to EWngland. He is the only surviving clergyman of a family which has for the past century and a half, maintained the tradition of always having a clergyman as a member of its household.

Charles Harcourt Blofeld (1905-06), born in 1881, served three separate stints as chaplain of the training ship Mercury before succeeding Fr Arthur Tooth (who in 1877 had been imprisoned for ritualism offences - more details here and here), as Warden of the preparatory school Tooth had founded, St Michael's, Otford in Kent, from 1931 to his death in 1938 [chapel right]; he had earlier published A Book of Prayers for Boys, together with Special Prayers for the Holy Eucharist, &c. (Mowbrays 1908). His younger brother Thomas Guest Blofeld (b.1864) succeeded him in this post during and after the War, and died in 1964. (A century before, a namesake ancestor trading in Middle-row, Holborn and Clapham as a perfumer, dealer and chapman, was released from bankruptcy in 1827, having followed the directions of the court.)
John Phillips Milne (1907-08) was an Australian, born in Adelaide in 1877 and trained at St Barnabas College there, serving curacies at Christ Church Mount Gambier, St Bede's Semaphore in that diocese and then, in 1903, at St Andrew Middle Brighton in Melbourne; he was also for a time tutor to the sons of Lord Tennyson, Governor of South Australia. He visited England briefly, where he did much slum work with distinct success, as his obituary in the Adelaide Register (3 September 1924) put it. Similarly, at St James Sydney he did duty among the lower classes of the community in that State. His ambition was to study at Cambridge, and he graduated from St John's College - spending some time at the college's Lady Margaret Mission in Walworth (begun in 1883, the first London mission of a Camridge college), and as The Eagle of 1908 reported, speaking at college meetings about the mission as one outside the parish, and able to compare it with the part of London in which he is now working (namely, this parish). He did not return to Australia, and died (after an operation) in 1924, leaving an estate of £1600.
Richard Prosser Ellis (a brief spell in 1907), born 1863, of Trinity College Cambridge; he had been a curate in Masham and at St Barnabas Pimlico (where there had been ritualism riots in the 1860s), and later was a curate at St Augustine with St Faith in Stepney and for three months in 1917-18 at St Silas Kentish Town. He died on New Year's Eve 1936, living at Lympstone in Devon. He published a version of the Stations of the Cross (Mowbray 1905).
James Howell (1910-12) - from King's College: his fourth curacy, after which he became vicar of Ratley with Radway, near Banbury, in Coventry diocese, from 1912-33, retiring to Folkestone.
Edwin Castledine (1911-12) - pictured - born 1885, he too trained at King's (AKC) and was ordained in 1908, serving curacies at Haverstock Hill and Dulwich before coming here; after a further curacy in Southend (during which his American fiancée cancelled their wedding plans because of the war - see story right from the Berkeley Daily Gazette), he moved to Sheffield diocese as Vicar of St Margaret Brightside from 1917-20, before spending four years in California, where he gained a BD at the Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley (publishing a monograph Jesus or Paul? in 1925). He returned to Sheffield as Vicar of Balby from 1926-31 (in which year the parish boundaries were altered), returned to California for a time (serving at St Peter Redwood City, The Good Shepherd Belmont and elsehwere), and back again to Sheffield from 1935-37 as curate-in-charge of the mission church of St Cuthbert Herringthorpe, built the previous year, and then Vicar of the ancient parish of Thorne. He then returned to California, serving in various parishes including Our Saviour, Placerville and St Luke Auburn, and died in 1969.

Edwin James Dent (1912-13) - ordained in the USA after a period when he passed himself off in England as a clergyman, and later declared bankrupt, his curious story is charted in more detail here.
Edward Fisher (1913-16) - a London science graduate (Huxley Scholar) who later trained at King's London; ordained in 1910, he served his title at Christ Church Hoxton, then came here, and was a forces chaplain from 1916-19; further curacies followed at Palmer's Green, Mildenhall, Harpenden and (after a break) Felmersham; he was Rector of Little Staughton in St Alban's diocese from 1939-43 and retired to Sidmouth (with permission to officiate in Exeter diocese).
Frederick Burton Norie (1913-15) - born 1868 in Forfarshire, and ordained in Canada in 1889, he served as a missionary in Ontario at Clarendon, Westport and Hintonberg; at St Matthew Quebec; as Rector of St Matthias Toronto; and at Vancouver. He then came to a series of British curacies - in Dundee, then in London (Highgate, Knightsbridge and Stoke Newington), briefly back to Grantown-on-Spey in Scotland, and then to this parish. He returned to a post in Toronto for a year, and then back to further curacies in London (Streatham, Kingston, Camberwell and Fulham). In 1929 he became Vicar of Stoughton, and from 1931-33 of Egerton, retiring to Chatham.
John Alfred Hultgren (1915-22) - a Swedish surname - trained at King's College London, he began his ministry here (and was active on the local committee of the Charity Organisation Society), and served further curacies in Oxford diocese, at Burford and Banbury, becoming Vicar of Colnbrook in 1932 (taking a London BD in 1940) and of Buckingham in 1943 (and rural dean from 1947).

In Fr Groser's time

Austin Lee (1930-31) - although his stay was brief, his highly eccentric ministry merits this separate page.
Kenneth John (Jack) Mackay Boggis (1932-36) - later Rector of St George-in-the-East: his story is told here.
Edward Godfrey Denholm Denholm-Young [latterly Denholm] (1937-40), born 1909, trained at King's College London; this was one of five London posts before he became chaplain to the Community of St Katharine of Alexandria at Parmoor, near Frieth between Henley-on-Thames and High Wycombe. They had been bombed out of Fulham and moved there in 1947, remaining for 51 years (when the last sister died); the house is now run by the Sue Ryder Prayer Fellowship. (It had been Sir Stafford Cripps' family home - he was born there - and King Zog of Albania lived there during the Second World War.) He retired in 1973 to Godstone in Surrey. His brother Eric was a Brigadier, and a General in the second World War; the historian Noël Denholm-Young was a relative.

Derrick Lovell Williams (1940-42) - born in 1914 in Hampstead, he studied at Jesus College Cambridge and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and was ordained in 1939 by the Bishop of London to SS Peter and Paul, Harlington, transferring here the following year, where, according to press reports after his death, he spent every night during blitz days putting out fires, rescuing people and comforting the bereaved. He was commissioned as a Royal Navy chaplain, but tranferred to the army, insisting on going through the ranks in order to get to know the men. Initially attached to the Intelligence Corps, he became a chaplain to the 45 Royal Marine Commandos in France in November 1943, and was reported as killed in the early hours of D-Day the following June, aged 30, hailed as the 'courageous curate' and first padre to lose his life in France. The story is sadder and more complex: As Lord Lovet, who led the 1st Special Service Brigade, recorded,

On Sunday René de Naurois, his decorations a splash of colour on a white surplice, said Mass for three hundred men kneeling on the grass. At the Interdenominational Church Parade a favourite hymn, that has since become our own, was sung with feeling: Eternal Father, strong to save, O hear us when we cry to thee, For those in peril on the sea. It goes well with male voices, but the new padre preached a rotten sermon about death and destruction which caused surprise. There are few atheists to be found before a battle, or later in shell-holes. Tension was building up, and charity perhaps a trifle thin on the ground. There were a number of complaints; the cleric was suspended and told to return from whence he came. Poor fellow! A spark can cause the prairie fire! It was mistaken zeal from a man, lacking combat experience, who did not know his congregation, and doubly unfortunate in that it conflicted with my own 'God speed' before departure. The incident was forgotten but the dismissal was taken badly. On the last day in camp the unfortunate man took his own life. A sad business, with barely time for regrets, for troops were belting up amid the dust and shouting as embarkation transport came grinding in to Southampton to take us away. Max, a most humane officer and the soundest of administrators, cleared up the pitiful remains. The padre was put down as a "battle casualty".

He was buried in Hollybrook (Southampton) cemetery, leaving a widow and two young sons.

Charles (Carl) Threlfall Richards was Fr Groser's brother-in-law (he was married to Nancy Bucknall) and served briefly as an assistant priest at Christ Church before and after it was blitzed. He had trained at Mirfield, and after a curacy in Kidderminster and First World War chaplaincy was Vicar of Battyeford (next door to Mirfield) for several years, and then of Treslothan in Cornwall. He left the ordained ministry during his time here, returning to the south-west with a new partner, and died in Braintree in 1965.
Dr Arthur Geoffrey Lough (1942-44) was technically curate of Christ Church, but served the whole parish - his details are here.

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