Licensed
Workers (Accredited Lay Workers)
Miss Emily FitzHardinge Berkeley will be remembered by many readers of this magazine, although failing health brought her active work in the parish to an end four years ago. She was a considerable sufferer but managed to keep in touch with many of her old friends till the end. When able to go out, she has attended St. Paul's, Shadwell, finding the steps up to St. George's a serious matter owing to her weak heart. She was a most Devoted worker, always willing to spend herself and all she has for Christ, but never, if she could help it, a penny upon herself. Her example will long live with us. |
Miss P.M. Hatton has
left us after 5½ years of most strenuous service in the parish. The
Diocesan Board of Women's Work announced that for two years they have
regarded her as just the person for their work, and that they had
thought this a good opportunity of securing her services. She entered
upon her duties at the London Diocesan House, 33 Bedford Square, at the
beginning of March. She has our best wishes for her health and strength
and success in her new work. Miss Hatton was specially approved by the
Bishop of Stepney for the task of organising the Social Service of this
parish, She had charge of the joint Children's Care Committee Office at
136 St. George Street, where the arrangements for securing treatment
for the ailments of the children attending the Highway, Blakesley
Street, Lower Chapman Street, Cable Street Central, and the Lowood
Street, Cable Street and Berner Street Special Schools [a mix of 'P.H.' - physical
handicap - and 'M.D' - mental deficiency schools - see here for more details] were
made. This work involves an enormous number of visits to the homes of
children residing in the area (with the result, among others, that this
is one of the best visited parishes in London), besides a huge
correspondence with the London County Council (several departments),
hospitals, treatment centres, and kindred agencies, such as the Invalid
Children's Aid, Tuberculosis Care Committee, Skilled Employment
Committee, War Pensions Committee, Juvenile Advisory Committee, and the
like. No one without Miss Hatton's wide knowledge and experience could
have undertaken the task. No one without her remarkable agility,
energy, and speed of work, could have brought the work up to the high
standard of efficiency to which, at no small sacrifice to her health,
and with a complete sacrifice of leisure and other ties, she managed to
bring it. The work in our office at 136 St. George's Street can safely challenge comparison with any work of the kind in England, and this we owe to Miss Hatton. Her work for the Rangers, and Guides and their Camp, was undertaken by her as a form of recreation! and was quite outside the circle of duties the Bishop sent her here to perform, but it was none the less appreciated by him. We desire to tender to her our grateful thanks, not unmixed with anxiety lest her strenuous years at St. George's may have made grave inroads upon her strength. |
During the 15
months that she has been amongst us she had worked unceasingly for the
welfare of Pell Street Club, and few of its members can know how much
time and thought she had given to it and to them. Her Sunday School
class will miss her sadly, and the Wolf Cubs will perhaps mourn her
departure most of all. For she has been the creator of the St. George's
Pack, and very dear indeed has it been to her heart. We can only
offer her our sincerest sympathy that an unfortunate accident had ended
her work here, and our hopes for an early and complete recovery, and
success in whatever work she undertakes in Ireland. |
Margaret
E. Hallward was born in Frittenden Rectory in 1868, one of a family of
eleven. Her father who was Rector there found in her a valuable worker,
but her conception of the service of Christ and her fellows involved,
as she believed, more sacrifice of her personal inclination than this
entailed. In 1900 her brother, John, was curate to the Rev. Arthur
Dobson, Rector of Stepney, and Margaret joined the splendid band of
workers the Rector had gathered around him to maintain the tradition of
Church effort for which the Parish was already famous. She worked there
for seven years; but them on the death of her father, she thought she
ought to rejoin her family, and settled with them at Buxted, Sussex,
and later at Frittenden. When her mother died in 1915 Margaret Hallward
took up work for the Y.M.C.A. in the great Camp at Havre and remained
there till 1919. In 1921 she felt again the appeal of the great task
she had laid down for family reasons in 1907, and, believing she could
do something to befriend some, perhaps many, of the East Londoners she
had got to know and love in khaki at Havre, returned to Stepney. This
time it was to a different Parish. The Rector of St. George-in-the-East
was an old school friend of her brother John. She offered for work
there and the offer was accepted with enthusiasm, and the work which
she then undertook she was carrying on at full pressure up to within a
few hours of her sudden death. So much for the chronology of a life which in the remaining space available we will endeavour to appreciate. There was no small significance in Margaret Hallward's taking up residence at 35 Prince's Square. The house had been the home for many years of her aunt, Miss Caroline Hoare. It meant, therefore, the maintenance of a family tradition of social service. Both she and her aunt belonged in fact to one of those great and powerful clans of philanthropists which have been among the strongest and most splendid elements of English social life for two centuries. There were not a few points of resemblance in the characters of aunt and niece. Both were powerful and extremely courageous personalities. Both of them combined with all this force and determination a questioning spirit - a rare combination. Both of them cherished really deep attachments to those among their less fortunate neighbours with whom they became acquainted. It was possible to observe in the working of Margaret Hallward's mind and in her activities the extent of the change which has come over both social philanthropy and philanthropic effort since she took up work in East London in 1900. In 1900 a parochial organisation like that of Stepney Parish Church was, apart from the Poor Law, practically the only agency on the spot for succour, uplift and amelioration. The Rector and his staff accepted the position as a permanent one and were out to build up means of rendering these services more and more effectually and for more and more people every year. They appealed confidently to all good people who believed in the future well-being of England to give them unstinted aid in money and effort. When Margaret returned to work in 1921 the Parochial situation had been completely revolutionised. An immense and complicated variety of public machinery had been set up to carry out the very objects for which she and her colleagues had worked at Stepney twenty years before. At the same time for a variety of reasons most thinking people had begun to question alike the wisdom and necessity of voluntary gifts and voluntary effort. Many were asking whether there out to be people with any surplus of money or time. Margaret Hallward felt the full weight and significance of these changes, She was equally content to take her place performing small functions in a big piece of public machinery like the School Care Committee Organisation, and to spend an afternoon listening to the schemes of her "Labour" acquaintances for turning the social fabric upside down. But all the while she was demonstrating triumphantly that all the philosophic questioning and all the administrative developments had failed between them to produce anything of equal value with personal work and home visiting based upon love of God and man. The wonderful thing about her was that with all her own strength and deep moral sense she could cling with an unconquerable optimism to the belief that the apparently feeble and incompetent would prove themselves one fine day, if only given a chance, strong and efficient., It is hardly necessary to add that she was a worker of quite unique value in a Parish like St. George-in-the-East. Her questioning attitude in social economics did not shake her strong Churchmanship or her unflagging zeal as a Sunday School and Bible Class teacher, She brought into the grimy surroundings of St. George's her great love of beautiful things, whether in the gardens of Kent, the snows of Switzerland, or the Lakes and Cities of Italy. She loved these things in proportion as they could be made available for her friends, and at the time of her death had just refused to accompany her sisters on a long Italian holiday rather than leave those whom she knew so well to befriend under the shadow of London Dock wall. One of the many delightful aspects of her service was her genius for bringing other members of her family and clan into it. Her fellow workers will not readily forget the frequent appearances of the Hallward and Hoare connection laden with country produce for decorations or sustenance. All those who loved her, and in forlorn and hesitating moments loved to lean upon her great strength and firmness of purpose, are thankful that she passed so swiftly and painlessly to the next stage of her service for the Master; but if we dare repine we would fain ask "Lord why so soon?" J.C.P. |
My dear
Rector, I wish I could have been with you and your people tomorrow
evening, but it is impossible. St. George's parish has had in Miss
Hallward one for whose presence, influence and work they will always
thank God. Those who like myself have known her at all intimately will
say: "Every thought of her is blessed, every memory good." Her love,
her influence, must continue. Death cannot destroy them. There is the
momentary shock and bereavement, but in Christ there is greater love,
life and service. Tell her many friends how real is my sympathy with
them. Yours very sincerely, HENRY STEPNEY. |
On
my bookshelves I have a book of which I am very fond. It is a book of
photographs of East London and it has one of 13 Christian Street,
Stepney. That was the place that I first met Dorothy Halsall. It was
not a chance meeting for me. I was at the time at William Temple
College, where I had met a close friend of Dorothy's who had worked
with her in Sheffield. She knew that Dorothy was working in the parish
of St George-in-the-East but was about to move to the Royal Foundation
of Saint Katharine to work with Father John Groser, and so it came
about that I replaced Dorothy at St George's, and thus a strong and
lasting friendship was established. I learned so much from her seeing
how she related to others of all descriptions - the young, the elderly,
the tough seafaring men coming to be in the house run by the Franciscan
brothers on Cable Street just around the corner from Christian Street.
But for the eight years that I was there it was her work with the
elderly people that made the strongest impression on me. She was
regularly at a lunch club held in the hall at St George's, where the
people loved her and where she was happy to give them advice when they
asked for it, but never patronised them. All over the area there were
and still may be people who are deeply indebted to Dorothy for the help
and care she gave them, and within the Foundation itself she could
always be found by women workers like myself who were thankful to
consult her about their work and its problems, which were never in
short supply. It was a real joy to many when she was in the Queen's New
Year's Honours List - so well deserved. Her Christian faith was always
deeply important to her and many years later when I visited her in
Havant it was very moving to discover the reality of her prayer life
and the inclusion of so many friends – those from the past as well as
many new friends, and many world-wide causes and prayers for world
peace. |
We
used the big room on the ground floor for meetings and discussions and
for a place where children could come after school … The house was just
round the corner from Cable Street and near the Franciscan house
where the brothers ran a club for men who worked on the ships that
would come into the docks, and Father Neville used to come to the staff
meetings on Monday mornings at the Rectory. Opposite the house … was Christian Street School
(run by the London County Council), and next to the house a small
synagogue where the Jewish children went for instruction and not far
away was Fairclough St School [now Harry Gosling School], also
run by the LCC … which kept the Jewish festivals and started early on
Fridays and finished early so that the Jewish Sabbath could be
observed. From the start of my time in Stepney I went twice a week in
the mornings to teach the Christian children scripture. The Church itself when I came was a pre-fab within the stone walls of the original church which had been seriously damaged by the bombing. There was a said Eucharist each morning, and on Sundays a Sung Eucharist at 9.30am with a Eucharist at 11.30am for the children, with a kind of commentary for the children to help them to understand what it was all about. I did a lot of visiting of the families of the children who came to church. During that time I arranged to take a group of children to an old house in a village in Hampshire which had a garden on the river Test where my mother was born and some member of her family had lived for the last 300 years … It was a great time for all of us and especially for me since I had spent a lot of time there as a child. |
2 February 1974 (when
asked to take on St Botolph's) There is a verger, Peter, and a tiny Germanic lady worker Trudie Eulenberg who is abrupt and, as Bishop George Appleton a former rector observed, not everybody's cup of tea but a brand of her own. |
A seated statue of the
Virgin Mary was brought back from Walsingham earlier this year by the
parish pilgrims led by David Randall. Half the congregation hated it
and half loved it … Trudie Eulenburg, our parish worker, calls the
statue ze doll on ze shelf, because as I didn’t know where to
put it I placed it on a window sill. Today one of our crypt men threw
it on to the floor breaking it into smithereens. Half cheered, half
cried. |
10 April 1982 Trudie Eulenberg, our parish worker, phoned to say her father, 103, has died, so I drove immediately to be with her at her house in Harrow. She has been bullied by him for all her life and when I said prayers by his corpse I was surprised to see how tiny he is. He owned the Eulenberg music publishing business in Germany, but because he was a Jew he had to leave it and flee to Switzerland in 1939. After the war, then aged 68, he started the business again in this country. |
Mrs. Ranyard, in her Missing Link Magazine, states that the supporters of ihe Bible Women's Mission have enabled her to maintain, during the past year, 222 Bible women. The total receipts last year were £17,179; the total expenditure, £17,414. The donations to special districts and to the general or working fund were £11,808 17s l0d. The lady superintendents received in payment from the poor last year: For Bibles, £785 5s 8d; for clothing, beds, soup, £4,584 17s 6d; total payments from the poor, £5,370 3s 2d. The expenditure of the mission includes: For salaries to Bible-women, £6,865 18s 9d; payments for Bibles, £698 16s 7d; returned to the poor in clothing material and by payments for work, £4,926 15s; and rent and furniture, with light and fire in Mission-rooms, £2,221 6s Id. The mission has supplied nine Bible-women to country districts. Thirteen women have been trained with the Bible-women previous to their hospital training as nurses. The mission has paid salary from its foreign fund in aid of native Christians employed as Bible-women abroad, or for purely Bible work. It has six Bible-women in Beyrout and Damascus, twelve at Ooroomiah (in Persia), three or four in India and Burmah, two in Madagascar, one in Jerusalem, two in Lodiana, one in Marseilles, one for the French at New York, one in Jamaica, one in Demerara. Within the last fourteen years there has passed through the hands of the Lady Superintendent of the mission for various Bible mission purposes a sum not far short of two hundred thousand pounds: £116,874 in voluntary donations to the first work; £10,646 payments of the poor for Bibles; £58,790 for clothing from the poor; total £186,310. £5,257 for mother-house and Bible-women nurses, inclusive of £1,309 spent in food, clothing, &c., to patients; £5,091 for Dudley-street and Parker-street dormitories; £1,054 for Mr. Moon's Bibles for the blind; and £2,065 for foreign fund to place Bible-women on foreign stations when providentiul openings occur: total £199,777. |