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St George-in-the-East Workhouse & Infirmary
St George-in-the-East Industrial School
and their chaplains

Much has been written about workhouses, and details of many of them can be found on this comprehensive site. Locally, the story overlaps with the activities of the Charity Organisation Committee. This page is about the institutions that were originally in, or founded by, the St George-in-the-East Union. The Whitechapel Union was separate - serving the area that originally fell within the parishes of St Mary Whitechapel, St Botolph Aldgate and Christ Church Spitalfields - though there were two institutions in what later became part of this parish:

For a contemporary account (part fact, part fiction) of the impact of the workhouse locally, see Jennifer Worth Shadows of the Workhouse (Merton Books 2005).

Workhouse

In 1836, St George-in-the-East was constituted as a Poor Law parish under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, administered by 18 elected Guardians; their office was at 6 Wellclose Square (where Thomas Stone, the Superintendent Registrar for St George's District, was also based following the introduction of civil registration in 1837). The clerk had deal with the vast quantities of paperwork that issued from the central administration at Somerset House - in 1840, 2,000 orders and executive letters.They took over responsibility for the workhouse originally built in 1766 in Farthing Fields, between Prusom Street and Princes Street [now Raine Street] in Wapping, and authorised £2,000 for its extension in 1844. Right are the male dormitories, now flats, on Penang Street, and Prusom Street in the early 20th century before slum clearance.


An article in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77.1 (Johns Hopkins UP 2003) comments that in the early years of the 1834 Act the St George's Guardians, while their spending on 'out-relief' was about average, their 'in-relief' spending (on the workhouse and its inmates) was on a lavish scale, and the author suggests that this was because they had come to regard the London Docks as a 'cash cow' to fund their projects:
The 'in-relief' budget in 1840 was £196.8.0 per 1,000 parish population - nearly double that of Stepney, Whitechapel, Poplar, and Holborn, and three times as much as that of Hackney and Bethnal Green. Only the City unions within the wealthy Corporation area could rival St. George in pounds spent per head. The parish was less out of line with its neighbours in spending on outdoor relief, being in the middle range of expenditure at about £75 per 1,000 population. St George topped the poll of East London parishes for total poor pudget, both in the three years prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act and in the years following.

By 1842 the Poor Law Commission was confident that the Amendment Act was working to reduce the poor-rate burden as had been intended. There was a striking fall in poor relief up to 1840 in England and Wales, after the Act. In east London, the percentage fall in spending was most notable in Poplar and Holborn and lowest in St. George in the East and the City Corporation unions.

The St George guardians were not however profligate on 'management costs'. While they paid their employees well, they employed fewer paid officers than other unions, and their spending on the salaries of union officers was substantially lower than their neighbours'. This could explain in part why the guardians were personally so heavily committed to the practical work that in other unions was delegated to the relieving officers and medical officers. [For example, they agonised over whether they should make personal visits to patients in mental asylums, and supported Stepney's call for a second county lunatic asylum, since Hanwell was too far away.]

The parish had recognized in the first decade of the nineteenth century that the London docks were potentially major contributors to the poor-rate coffers and tried to impose a rate of 5 shillings in the pound. The outraged dock owners brought a High Court action to challenge the legality of such an exceptional charge, and won a reduction to half that amount. Nevertheless, the docks were St. George's 'cash cow' for the next twenty years, which in part may explain the guardians' 'freestyle' spending habits. Who were the benign guardians of St. George? The more obvious 'movers and shakers', the chairmen James Massingham, George Gibson, and Peter Rayner, are tantalizingly absent from trade directories and local lists of worthies. More of these guardians were churchwardens than in other districts and several served on one of the six tiny and famously inefficient local 'paving commissions' that operated in this one parish. Massingham, the inagurual chairman, was a manufacturing confectioner. Three guardians were governors of the local Raine's School Foundation. Perhaps it was the St. George in the East guardians that Sir J. P. Kay-Shuttleworth was thinking of when he complained that members of many London boards of guardians were 'Pickwickians' from the old parochial vestry; the vestrymen, he said, needed re-education. This is a most difficult task! The guardians of St George were re-educated into making economies only by the catastrophic docks recession of the 1860s; they then began to adopt the new Poor Law philosophy with greater enthusiasm.

Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, a Poor Law Commissioner for Middlesex and an educational reformer, was indeed an influential voice. But the author's comments are open to challenge. First because the three men named do in fact feature in local records, rather than being tantalisingly absent: James Massingham was (as she acknowledges) a confectioner, of Ratcliff Highway; Peter Rayner was a livery stable-keeper, of George Yard, off Cannon Street Road; and George Gibson (who unlike the others had not been a churchwarden) was a baker, of Phil[l]ip Street, off Ellen Street. But more significantly, what influenced a change of approach over the following generation was not so much recession in the docks as the powerful local impact of the nascent Charity Organisation Society, with its distinctive approach to social welfare.

The Guardians opened a casual ward for vagrants in Raymond Street, off Green Bank, in Wapping [right].

The annual editions of Shaw's Union Officers & Local Board of Health Manual list the various officers of the Guardians, and the masters of the workhouse (including Edwin Stokes in 1846, and J. Hughes by the 1860s). Right is an 1869 list of staff and their rates of pay.
A character in Jack London's 1903 book The People of the Abyss, commenting on workhouse food for casual vagrants, notes with approval the 'skilly' (a thin porridge) on offer at Hackney and elsewhere, but adds Flour an' water at St. George's in the East.

 Infirmary
In 1871 an infirmary was added to the workhouse, with a nurse training school in 1893. It was renamed an 'institution' rather than a 'workhouse' in 1913, but remained known locally as 'The House'. During the First World War, when Bethnal Green Hospital was taken over for treating wounded servicemen, its patients were transferred here. In 1925 St George-in-the-East joined Stepney Poor Law Union; five years later the London County Council took over the buildings and they became St George-in-the-East Hospital, with 406 beds; in 1948, under the NHS, it came under Stepney Group Hospital Management Committee, and closed in 1956 (by then reduced to 208 beds), it was temporarily used as a shelter for refugees following the Hungarian uprising, and then demolished. Here are pictures of the site today.

From 1934-46 the medical superintendent was John Galwey Leebody, who had previously held the same role at Fulham Hospital. He graduated from Edinburgh in 1923, as had his father Henry Alfred Leebody 28 years earlier, though he was originally from Ireland - born in 1869 in Clondermot, County Londonderry and married at Church Kircubbin Presbyterian Church, Inishargy, County Down. Henry had served extensively as an army doctor: Surgeon-Lieutenant with the Queen's Rifle Volunteer Brigade, Royal Scots (Lothian) Regiment in 1906, a temporary Major with the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1914 (receiving the Territorial Decoration) with the 1st East Lancashire, 1st Highland and 1st Home Counties Divisional Field Ambulance units; and with the same rank in 1921. He later lived in Welwyn, Herts. In Corstophine Old Church on the outskirts of Edinburgh there is a wall tablet to Henry, a beloved physician who died on 19th September 1944, to which was added, when it was transferred after the demolition of St George-in-the-East Hospital, the tablet to his son
To the memory of John Galwey LEEBODY M.B., Ch.B., F.R.C.S. Ed. Medical Superintendent 1934-1946
who faithfully and devotedly served this hospital
Write me as one that loves his fellow men


Industrial Schools

 In 1851 the Guardians built, at a cost of £35,000, industrial schools for 'pauper children' - 150 boys, 120 girls and 80 infants - on a 16-acre site at the junction of Shaftesbury Road and Gipsy [now Green] Lane, Plashet, then in a semi-rural setting: compare the 1894 map [left]. (See here for an early example of an industrial school in the parish.) Josiah Wilkinson's report for the 1861 Commission on The State of Popular Education in England includes these detailed comments about the school (p366ff). By 1871, it had 422 inmates. In due course, Kensington and Poplar Unions also sent children here.

The school closed in 1927; from 1928-83 it was used as a cinema - the Carlton [pictured], then the ABC, and then the ACE - before it finally closed in 1983 [pictured 1970s]; the site is now a car park. (There were two other industrial schools in East Ham: St Nicholas' RC school, Gladding Road, Manor Park, opened in 1868 in the Manor House (one of the homes of the Fry family), closed in 1925 and the premises sold to the London Co-operative Society; and St Edward's RC school, opened in 1875 at Green Street House (Boleyn Castle) - closed in 1906, it is now part of West Ham FC grounds.)

Chaplains
A range of clergy served these institutions as chaplains. Some were full-time, and covered both the Wapping and Plashet sites; others were local parochial clergy, here or in Plaistow. See here a note about baptismal registers for the workhouse.

As this note from the British Magazine of 1840 (vol 18, p594) shows, chaplains were reimbursed at varying rates - no doubt dependent on whether they also held parochial appointments:
Salaries of Chaplains of Metropolitan Union Workhouses
At the weekly meeting of the Marylebone board of directors and guardians, held on the l6th of October, for the purpose of considering the propriety of raising the salary of the Rev. P. Moody, the chaplain [Peter Moody, from Monmouthshire], from 150l. to 200l. per year, one of the directors, in support of his argument against such increase, read a letter he had received in answer to his inquiries upon the subject from the poor law commissioners, containing a list of the salaries of all the chaplains of the metropolitan union workhouses, which were as follow [sic]:– West Ham union workhouse, 120l.; Brentford, 80l. ; St. George in the East, 50l.; Hackney, 40l.; Hendon, 73l. 10s.; Holborn, 50l.; Kensington union, Chelsea workhouse, 40l.; Kensington workhouse, 40l.; Hammersmith workhouse, 30l.; Fulham workhouse, 30l.; City of London union, three chaplains, two at 150l. each, and one at 100l.; East London union, 100l.; West London union, 100l.; St Martin's-in-the-Fields, 100l.; Poplar, 60l.; Strand union, 90l.; Stepney union, Limehouse, 30l.; Mile-end workhouse, 30l.; Ratcliff workhouse, 30l.; Wapping workhouse, 30l.; Uxbridge union, 50l.; and Whitechapel union, 70l. Thus it will he seen that the entire sum paid for the services of twenty four clergymen does not exceed 1493l. 10s. per annum.

George Henry McGill, incumbent at Christ Church Watney Street from 1854-67, was also chaplain of St George-in-the-East workhouse for some or all of this time. According to his 1861 model census, in his time the chapel seated 500. He campaigned for change on two related fronts:

(1) equalisation across London of the levying of poor-rate, which fell heaviest on those areas least able to afford it but in greatest need. In 1858 he published (locally) a 36-page pamphlet The London Poor and the Inequality of the Rates raised for their Relief 'by an East-end incumbent who lives among them - knows their wants - and sympathises with their sufferings',  and over the following years wrote a series of letters to The Times under the same anonymous title (referred to by Llewellyn Davies of St Mark Whitechapel in his 1866 broadside The Poor Law and Charity).

A measure of equalisation came in 1870 when the London Poor-Law Unions agreed to combine their infirmaries and hospitals on a common rate and established the London Common Poor Fund (a process taken a stage further by the 1894 London Equalisation of Rates Act). The result was, wrote a contemporary commentator, that the whole of the salaries of the officers, the education of the pauper children, the care of the lunatics and those afflicted with fever and small-pox - about one-third of the whole charge - has been equalized. In recognition of his work in achieving this, when he left the parish McGill was presented with a valuable present of plate from East-end ratepayers.

(2) He also appealed for a change in 'workhouse culture', which he believed (1) would help achieve, as can be seen in the following letter from The Times of 27 December 1864; this took rather longer to achieve!

PRIVATE CHARITY AND THE POOR-LAW
Sir, — The question with which your leading article of this day concludes, "Why does the Poor Law leave its work to be done over again by private hands?" is one which demands especial attention, at a time when the claims upon the resources of the charitable are so numerous and pressing, as your columns shew. People may well inquire how it is that the £750,000 annually raised in London for the relief of the poor fails to accomplish its object, and how it is that so many thousand persons are thrown in the winter season on the casual charity of refuges and other kindred institutions.

Perhaps you will allow me briefly to state some of the causes which appear to me to have led to this state of things?

The first and chief, if not the only cause, is the decided antipathy which exists on the minds of the poor to have recourse to the parish authorities at all, and especially to enter the walls of the workhouse. I have had an extensive experience of the feelings of the poorer classes, both in the country and in London, and there is nothing which I have found so universally prevalent among them as a horror and dislike of the so-called 'bastille', or Union-house. An inmate of such an abode is, in the eyes of the decent poor, a fellow-creature, and to be a 'workhouse brat' is regarded as a degradation. Now, there must be some substantial reason for this antipathy, otherwise it would never be so deep-rooted and so wide-spread as it is. If we can trace its origin and prevent its continuance we shall stop that preference which many now entertain of dying of starvation in their wretched homes, or even in the streets of London, rather than darken the door of the workhouse.

It appears to me that this dislike of the workhouse flows from two distinct sources — one originating in the poor themselves, the other in the system on which the house is regulated. A simple every-day example will illustrate what I mean. Let us take the case of a widow with three or four children, left penniless by the death of her husband, a dock labourer perhaps, or a costermonger earning a precarious livelihood in the streets. Her support is gone, and she applies to the relieving officer for assistance. In most of the poorer parishes the rule is to allow about 5s. per week in such a case. She finds that she cannot live upon that wretched pittance, and applies for an increased allowance; the request is refused, and she is compelled, sorely against her will, to become an indoor pauper. As soon as she is admitted her children are taken from her, and she is placed in the receiving ward for a few days, very likely in company with some persons of abandoned character, whose bearing and language are often sufficient to outrage the feelings of any one who has lived a respectable life. She is afterwards removed to the common workroom, and made to pick oakum — not a very elevating employment — in the society of persons whose conduct is such as to lower her moral tone, and make her long even for the poverty-stricken freedom which she has lost. All sorts of tempers have to be borne with, all sorts of language to be listened to, till the heart is almost broken, and the spirits are weighed down with misery. The hatred of the workhouse is thus fortified and strengthened by the conduct of the poor themselves.

But the chief cause of it, after all, is the mode in which the workhouse is, in accordance with the law, usually managed. It is to all intents and purposes a kind of prison. There is no exit allowed, except about once in three months for a solitary holiday. Few under the age of sixty years are allowed to go out on the Sunday, and all are liable to be searched both when they go out and when they return. The children are separated from their parents, and the parents from the children. All are subjected to an iron rule very different from that 'charity which thinketh no evil'. If the settlement of an inmate is doubtful, every effort is made to remove him to his legal parish, wherever that may be. He may be passed to the Land's End or to Ireland; to some place where he knows no one and no one knows him. It is true that there is always the option of taking his discharge, which means in many cases, especially in the winter months, running the risk of starvation. And this being the case, can we be surprised that the Poor Law leaves its work to be done by private hands? I think not. Its principles are too harsh even to be acceptable to the poor; its code is too rigorous even to relieve the most deserving, and till this is modified the evils which we now deplore will undoubtedly continue.

But what is the remedy? Greater union and a more comprehensive system; greater discrimination and delicacy in the treatment of the in-door poor, and a considerable extension of out-door relief. It is in London that the weakness of the present law is chiefly seen, and this arises from the fact that it is the direct pecuniary interest of each board of guardians to throw the burdens of the poor from their own shoulders to those of others. Let this be remedied by equalising the rate over the whole metropolitan area, and then we should not hear of the refusals to admit the destitute into the houses provided for their accommodation in the wholesale way chat we now do. Let the respectable poor be dealt with more liberally and kindly than the profligate and vicious, and let those who can by honest means contribute to their own support out of doors be more generously aided in their efforts. Let the workhouse be deprived of its prison-like character, and then we shall find that, though the necessity for charitable appeals will not be utterly put aside, it will be materially diminished, and private hands will not be left to do that essential work which the law of the land has left undone.

I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
An East-End Incumbent

Richard William Bishop Marsh was appointed chaplain of the Plashet schools in 1853, having become Vicar of Plaistow the previous year. He was born in 1817, son of a surgeon from Stratford, Essex, and after Merchant Taylors School and a scholarship at St John's College was ordained in 1940 as curate of Clitheroe, Lancs (then in Chester diocese). He remained at Plaistow (where a 'Tudor style' church had been built in 1830) until 1884, working with Antonio Bailet, a civil servant, to establish schools in the area. He was involved in a Chancery case over an advowson (Briggs v. Sharp [1875]  B. 165) and in complex legal dealings over family property, and was a freemason. He published various sermons: Fast Day Sermons on the Duty of Trusting in God, for the Day of National Humiliation (1854), Every Parish a Family of Christ (1858) and Be ye strong and of good courage (1861). After a year as curate of Purfleet in Essex, he lived at  Foulness Rectory, Shoeburyness, and died in 1902; he and his wife were buried at Nurstead, in Kent.
Herbert John Edward Barter was chaplain at Plashet during his time as incumbent (perpetual curate) of St James Forest Gate from 1872-79. Born in Walworth in 1844 and ordained in 1871 (having four years earlier published a Handbook of Geography & History, for the use of Students preparing for Civil Service and other examinations), he had served for a year in Plymouth. Declared bankrupt in 1879 (annulled in 1884), he was then Vicar of East Tilbury until 1893 - where in 1890 he excavated the foundations of the south aisle and south-west tower, on which he read a paper to the Essex Archaeological Society a few years later. In 1897 he became chaplain of the 662-bed North Eastern Hospital in Tottenham, remaining there for at leat a decade.

William Henry Foy was Chaplain to St George-in-the-East workhouse from 1868(?)-71. Trained at St Bees in 1848, he went as a missionary chaplain to Gwalior, N W India [pictured]. He preached a sermon in 1850 in Agra The Christians of England the Watchmen of India - repeating it on his return to England in 1852 at the SPG's jubilee - 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) - though some reviewers complained he had omitted the most significant portions. He was curate-in-charge of St Simon Bethnal Green until 1855 or so, serving on the committee of the Operative Jewish Converts' Association), and as secretary of the Soldiers' Infant Home:

The Philanthropist, and prison and reformatory gazette 1 June 1855 (no.1, new series) p3
SOLDIERS INFANT HOME.— A public meeting was held at Willis's Rooms on the 7th of May, on behalf of this institution, the object of which is to clothe, maintain, and educate the infant daughters of soldiers. The Duke of Wellington in the chair. The Rev. W.H. Foy, honorary secretary to the institution, observed that it was proposed that the girls should be instructed in the duties of domestic servants, and that those who exhibited the highest intellectual attainments should be sent to training schools, with the view to their becoming school teachers and governesses, The meeting wus afterwards addressed by the Rev. Charles Mackenzie, the chaplain-general, Colonel Crawford, the Rev. Mr. Jackson, Viscount Ingestre, and other gentlemen.

The Lancet 27 October 1855 p391
Soldiers' Infant Home, Rosslyn-Park, Hampstead
We have received a prospectus of this institution, to which we desire to give publicity on account of its merits and national importance .Thirty girls, the children of soldiers who have served in the present war, are already elected for the benefits of the Home, and the election of seventy more is projected on the 5th of November next, the anniversary of the battle of Inkerman. The committee purpose to establish scholarships, for which those who have been educated as teachers will be eligible as candidates; and the sum of £50 has already been contributed to a "Raglan" scholarship. and a like sum to a "Chester" scholarship. A subscription of five shillings annually constitutes a member, with one vote for each child to be elected; an annual subscriber of one guinea is a governor. and entitled to four votes; a contribution of two guineas and a half constitutes a donor, with one vote for life; a donation of five guineas constitutes a life governor, with two votes for life, and an additional vote for every two guineas and a half subscribed. The physician to the establishment is Dr. Robert Dickson; the surgeon, Mr. Solly; and the medical examiner Dr. J.A. D'Olier; the hon. secretary is the Rev. W.H. Foy, 9,Waterloo-place, Pall-mall. The physical and moral welfare of children are objects which demand attention from all.

He then became Principal of the Indian Civil Service and Military College in Belsize Park. However, in 1865 he was declared bankrupt, and legal proceedings began against their eight infant children in relation to his wife Eleanor Hannah's estate which he had mortgaged; when they married in 1848, they had given an undertaking to create a trust when she came of age, but this was never done, and was held to be a fraud (full report in (1868) LR 4 Ch App 35).

Hence, presumably, his becoming a workhouse chaplain. In this post, he challenged the Guardians over their complicity with the licensing trade:

The Temperance Record 3 October 1870 p483
The manner in which drink and parochial affairs have become - so far as the metropolis is concerned - perplexingly intermingled, is shown by the official Poor Law inquiry just concluded in St. George's-in-the-East. The purpose of the inquiry was to investigate certain charges brought against the guardians of that parish by the Rev. W.H. Foy, chaplain of the workhouse. Several of the charges related to the conduct of guardians calculated to destroy the influence of the clergyman. One of them named Dunning keeps a public-house, which, according to the chaplain, he encourages the paupers to frequent, especially on Sundays. As many as fifty were to be seen there at the time. Mr Foy stated that he had seen placards in the windows of the public-houses bearing the words, "The Last Supper. – The chaplain ate the leek. April 1, 1870. The Captain in the chair." Mr Foy did not consider that either these placards Foy did not consider that either these placards or the hot spiced ale they got at Mr. Dunning's would do the paupers any good, and if they were forbidden to introduce liquor into the workhouse they should not be allowed to bring it in their stomachs. The accuracy of these assertions was proved, and it remains to be seen what course the Poor-Law Board will pursue. But do not such things awaken painful reflections? When such occurrences are possible under official parochial management, how can we expect that the development of temperate habits can be encouraged among the poor? With such guardians the practice of teetotalism in the wrkhouse is rendered almost impossible. Of course, the parochial burdens are increased in proportion. But why do not the ratepayers interfere?

Medical Times & Gazette 14 January 1871 p57
Treatment of the Sick and other Poor
A meeting of noblemen and gentlemen interested in the welfare of the sick-poor in our workhouses was held yesterday at the Ship Hotel, Charing-cross. Dr. Rogers, the President of the Poor-law Medical Officers' Association, was called to the chair and with the Rev W.H. Foy, M.A. (late Chaplain of St George's-in-the-East), Mr. Dexter (Kensington), the Rev. Henry Solly, the Rev. Edmund Auriol, M.A. (Rector of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West), Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, and the Marquis of Towshend, addressed the meeting. It was subsequently unanimously resolved –

1. That, having regard to the exposures of workhouse mismanagement and malversation of public moneys shown at the recent official inquiries held at St. George's-in-the-East and Kensington, conjoined with the facts elicited in evidence at the recent trial in the Court of Queen's Bench (Catch v. Shaen), it appears, in the opinion of this meeting, desirable to revise the Association for the Improvement of Workhouse Infirmaries, and for securing a radical reform in the administration of tho poor-laws.

2. With the view of taking such action as will convince the ratepayers of the Metropolis and the public generally that reform in our administrative arrangements is necessary for the removal of these manifold abuses, it is resolved that a Committee be now formed, with power to add to their number, for the purpose of framing such regulations as may be needed, and generally carrying out the objects of the Association.

3 That Mr. J.T. Dexter be appointed Hon. Secretary, pro tem. Expressions of sympathy were received from several gentlemen who were not able to be present at the meeting.

PAUPERISM MADE EASY
At a recent Conference of clergymen and ministers held in London, to consider the evils of intemperance, a letter was read from an East-end clergyman as follows: — "The Rev. W. H. Foy presents his compliments to the conveners of the conference, and regrets that he is prevented by indisposition from attending the conference. He begs to assure the gentlemen who are to meet to breakfast to-morrow that if they send any gentleman into Ratcliffe Highway or St. George's-in-the-East, to watch the public-houses either at morning, noon, or night, they will soon understand how pauperism is made easy. A new phase of public-house influence was witnessed by Mr. Foy on Sunday week, when he, in company with a police-officer, saw fifty-four aged people from St. George's Workhouse on their road from church and chapel enter a publican's house in Old Gravel-lane, the publican being at the present moment a candidate for the office of Guardian of the Poor."

On leaving his post he published in 1872 an 80-page booklet Poor-law revelations in the interest of the ratepayers of the United Kingdom, and on the behalf of the sick and deserving poor and also a sermon Is the pope God's vice-gerent? What saith the word of God? Perhaps he had had enough of London, for he became Rector of Barningham-Norwood, near Holt in Norfolk, a village with a population of 31 (increased to 35 in 1885!) His bankruptcy was finally resolved by a 'Special Resolution for Liquidation by Arrangement' (London Gazette 10 May 1889, p2593).

For some time from 1870 Joseph Marychurch Vaughan, incumbent of St John the Evangelist-in-the-East, was also licensed as a chaplain to the workhouse, as was Edward J. Norman, curate at Christ Church Watney Street, in the 1880s.


Gordon James Henry Llewellyn (1888-94) was chaplain of the parish workhouse infirmary and school from 1888-94, 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.

W.M. Ross
William Romaine Thatcher was chaplain both at St George's Workhouse and Infirmary and of the Schools at Plashet, from 1894 until 1925, living in Bow, mid-way between the two institutions. Of Exeter College Oxford, he had served two curacies in St Alban's diocese and a third at St Luke Stepney with its first vicar William Wallace, who died in 1894 after over 40 years in the parish. Thatcher was buried at Durrington Cemetery, Worthing.

Alexander Perceval Robinson (1926-28 at St George's Hospital) - very elderly, since he was ordained in 1866 from St Aidan's College Birkenhead, and had served curacies in Idle, Attenborough, Oakham, Bicester, Newington and Southwark.
 
Rowland Hill

Thomas Henry Cave-Moyle (1930-32, when he was also Rector of St Paul Shadwell); ordained in 1895, as Vicar of St Paul Cheltenham he wrote in 1920 Evangelical Catholicism: An Enquiry into the spirit of loyal churchmanship.

The registers also record a baptism by Winifred Morgan (presumably an emergency baptism conducted by the matron or a member of staff).

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