Further description of the parish area can be found here (a detailed report of 1848) and here (tracing various aspects of its history - industry, housing, criminal associations); parish registers are here.

THE CHURCH

When the Revd Joseph Marychurch Vaughan came as curate of the parish of St George-in-the-East, his main task was to establish a church in the very poor area in the northern part of the parish, with a population of about 6,000. (The Statistical Society's 1848 survey had excepted Upper and Middle [where the church was built] Grove Street as being almost wholly occupied by persons in a condition of life somewhat above that of the poor labourers who surround them, but this was probably no longer true.) Three houses in Grove Street were acquired from Mrs M.A. Harris, the leaseholder, in 1867, for a parsonage. (The mortgage was held by C.C. Druce, and the renowned locally-born secularist Charles Bradlaugh was trustee of Mrs Harris.) The church, with 500 sittings, was built on the cheap, at a cost of £3,500. The Bishop of London's Fund gave £1,500, the London Diocesan Church Building Society £300, the Incorporated Church Building Society £150 and Marshall's Charity £100; he had to find the rest. He was a freemason (a member of Royal Albert Lodge, and later of Asaph Lodge), and appealed for help in the Freemasons Magazine & Masonic Mirror of 1868:

The architects were the Francis brothers Frederick John (1818-96) and Horace (1821-94), whose practice was at 38 Upper Bedford Place, Bloomsbury; Messrs Dove were the builders. The foundation stone was laid by the Bishop of London on 29 April 1868, and he consecrated the church on 12 February 1869, with the Archbishop of Canterbury present [drawing left from the Illustrated London News, 20 February 1869; ICBS plan 06719 of new church, with gallery, right]. Mr Vaughan was inducted as the first vicar.

St John's was built of stock brick, with stone dressings, and consisted of a nave and aisles of five bays, the last bay of which formed the chancel. The construction of the east window suggested that a chancel extension was envisaged, but this never happened. At the south-west was the base of a tower which should have been completed with a belfry stage and a brick spire; this too was never finished, and a single bell was hung in a wooden frame on the top of the tower.

THE DISTRICT

The 1878 Vestry map [left] shows the area served by the church: at that time, a mix of very poor dwellings and industrial sites, many of whose owners are identified on the map.

Vaughan's successor (1879-1909) was George Thomas Cull Bennett (see Charles Booth archive B222 pp20-35). He was a St Bees' trainee, and was ordained by the Bishop of Carlisle by letters dimissory, to serve in Durham diocese, in 1863 (in the same service as North Green-Armytage), to the curacy of St James Benwell, Newcastle (then in the diocese of Durham); from 1868-76 he was curate of Cockfield, in country Durham, and then for three years incumbent of Kenley, near Shrewsbury (where he and his wife Maria - who died during his time there - was involved in legal proceedings over the mortgage on Bishopscourt Farm, Shapwick near Blandford). He was musical, and one of many Victorians who wrote music for Miss Margaret Ann Headlam's harvest hymn Holy is the seed-time; in 1880 he published an anthem It came even to pass.  He was a supporter of the Family Welfare Association, the Charity Organisation Society (serving on its local committee) and the East London Nursing Society, and a regular attender at meetings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In 1882 he was the Friday (St Antholin's) Lecturer at St Mary Aldermary in the City [a post funded by a long-established charity, whose holders latterly required the Bishop of London's approval].

The 1886 Religious Survey of London records attendances on 24 October of 98 in the morning, and 128 in the evening; see here for statistics of baptisms and weddings during the lifetime of the church.

Charles Booth, writing in 1902, commented that the parish, by then 70% Jewish, had a small, but attached congregation, with an inner circle of communicants devoted to the vicar, and most of them have formerly been parishioners though they may be so no longer. The most interesting piece of work is a Bible-class held by the vicar. It is crowded, and such is the pressure that if absent three times a member forfeits his place, and in a recent year out of fifty-five members forty-eight did not miss a single meeting. The fact is remarkable, and the explanation no less so. The Bible is made the vehicle for lessons in science, and the resources of the laboratory are freely used to illustrate its words. '"God made the firmament" — what do they know about the firmament?' So their vicar gives the class an insight into the nature of gases. And so absorbing is the interest of the course, and so thorough the teaching, that It has taken six years to reach the end of Genesis.

He remained here for thirty years, as a widower; in January 1902 at the age of 64 he married Louisa Nelhams (aged 42) at St John's, with his long-serving curate Charles Reeder officiating. She was a well-qualified nurse who had worked at the Victoria Hospital Chelsea, in Edinburgh and Glasgow, at Guy's and Westminster Hospitals. When he retired they moved to Blything in Suffolk, where he died in 1911, aged 74. Louisa then moved to Guildford and died in 1916, aged 57, at Netherne Mental Asylum, Hooley, near Coulsdson.

In 1865, in some desparation, Vaughan had advertised in The Ecclesiastical Gazette for a curate, at a stipend of £130 a year - views moderate, schoolroom services - to help him build up the new district.

• Thomas Charles Hills was the first to respond, though did not stay long. (This needs confirming: the 1866 Clergy List has 'C. Hills' as curate of St John's, St George's-in-the-East, but it is not recorded elsewhere.) He trained at St Bees and served a 2-year curacy in Derby (then in Lichfield diocese) until 1864, when he became northern and Scottish secretary for the Patagonian Mission (later the South American Missionary Society). He returned to Lichfield diocese in 1867 as Vicar of St Mary Bolsover, a poorly-endowed but historic church (dating from 1020, restored in 1877) in the patronage of the Duke of Portland, with a stipend of £120, including 56 acres of glebe; there he became the first chairman of Bolsover Urban District Council - 'Hillstown' was named after him. He was the custodian of a sugar bowl which was a rare example of 'Bolsover ware' (the kilns had been destroyed in 1750).

• Stanley Hamilton Hayes (1873-74) trained at Trinity College Dublin, and was ordained in 1865 to the parish of Aughnaneidlen in the diocese of Down, Connor & Dromore, moving the following year to Edensor (the Chatsworth estate church in Derbyshire) and in 1868 to Bordesley, Birmingham (then in Worcester diocese), living at Grosvenor Terrace, Cattell Road, where he was discharged from bankruptcy the following year (a fate that befell a singificant number of curates who served in our parishes, and in due course his vicar here - see above); after further brief curacies at St Stephen's Redditch, St Peter's St Alban's and Chatham (where he made composition with his creditors) he came here. He married Rebecca Farmar. By 1886 he was chaplain at the Westminster Workhouse in Poland Street - in the religious census of that year, morning attendance at the chapel was 160 and evening 180; he remained in post into the First World War. In 1913 the Westminster, Strand and St George's [Hanover Square] unions merged as the City of Wesminster Union and the Poland Street premises were closed; the following year the building was taken over by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for housing wartime refugees: on 5 September 200 Russian Jews, mostly from Antwerp, were placed there. A week later, the premises were handed over to the Jewish authorities and continued in operation as the Poland Street Institute for Jews. The buildings were reconstructed as a garage in 1925, and the site is now a multi-storey car park.
  

• David Nickerson (1875-76) was Canadian, studied at King's College Windsor in Nova Scotia and was ordained in 1868, serving in three parishes in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the last including a chaplaincy to the British Army. After his short time here, and a year as chaplain to the Islington Union, he became a Chaplain to the Forces, with postings in this country and abroad (including Cyprus, Egypt and Malta) for the next two decades. While in Portmouth in 1887 he published a threepenny broadsheet under the odd pseudonymn 'Don't Care' Is Free Trade a Mistake? [echoing an earlier title of John Bright, and an ongoing debate], Dedicated to the Production of England, both Capital & Labour. He said at a conference that the best prospect for a Poor Law child was to draft him into the army or navy. He became curate of Netley in 1900, Rector of North Stoke (near Bath) in 1902 and Vicar of Harlington, near Dunstable, in 1905.  Before he left the Army, he produced The Origin of Thought (Kegan, Paul & Trench 1901), an introduction to philosophy 'for thoughtful people of good education but who have not read philosophy', in a light and popular manner, said one review, but with a misleadingly abstruse title. Another review, Black and White, said while on some points the book is philosophically unsound, it is written in such a bright, attractive way that no one can read it without being charmed by the personality of the writer. He described in detail a baby's growth to consiciousness, and speculated on the links between thought and electricity. In 1909 he became vicar of Newton-upon-Ouse in Yorkshire (Elsie Folkes, his servant in Harlington, successfully suing him on his departure for £2 in lieu of notice). His son Major General William Henry Snyder Nickerson was a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross for his service, as a lieutenant in the Royal Arrmy Medical Corps, to a wounded man at Wakkerstroom in the Boer War.
  

• Edwin Theodore Lewis (1880-86) was ordained deacon in South Africa by the Bishop of Grahamstown in 1874, where he served a three year curacy at Holy Trinity, King Williamstown; he came to England and was briefly at Holy Trinity, Gray's Inn Road and St Michael Bromley-by-Bow before coming here, and was not priested until 1881. Although he stayed here six years, most of his later curacies were brief: Grays Thurrock and Hanningfield (both in Essex), St James-the-Less Bethnal Green (remaining for six years) and St Peter Stepney. Leaving London, he held posts in Asterby, Lincolnshire; Freshwater and Sandown (both on the Isle of Wight); and - going to the opposite end of the land - St Andrew, Fort William. He retired to Bristol in 1904, appaently holding no further posts.
  

• Henry John Frye (1883-87), born in Thaxted in 1851 (where his father Philemon was a bookseller), trained at Lichfield (a theological college founded in 1857), and ordained in that diocese in 1882, serving in Smethwick; from here, he went on to curacies in Chesterton (Staffordshire), Little Ilford, and Northmoor Green, Holton and West Pennard (all in Somerset), and in 1902 became the chaplain of Shepton Mallet prison (built in 1625 and still in use, though it has been through many changes; in Frye's time the number of inmates was relatively low). He died at Shepton Mallet in 1913.
  

• Samuel Secretan (1884) is described as an 'Irishman and perpetual curate'! It is true that he had studied at Trinity College Dublin (winning the Hebrew Prize in 1854) - though he had also attended St John's College Cambridge - and also that he served at least eight brief curacies and never held a benefice up to his death in 1911. He was from a French Huguenot family, some of whom achieved distinction (including Charles Secrétan, 1815-95, a Swiss philosopher of religion). Frederick Samuel Secretan (1750-1837 - his grandfather?), was naturalised, became a member of Lloyd's, had 15 children, and retired to Monmouthshire. Samuel had academic pretensions: in 1866 (apparently living in Leicester) he published Remarks on 'Ecce Homo' (one of many critiques of an essay of that year by Sir John Robert Seeley - W.E. Gladstone penned another). For a time he tried his hand as a schoolmaster, at Howden in Yorkshire; here is a caustic critique of a sermon, in curious style and reflecting his fascination with liberal scholarship, which he preached there and published. His name does not appear as an officiant in the baptism or marriage registers at St John's.

• Charles Clare Dawson Smith (1887-88) [later hyphenated as Dawson-Smith], was one of our few clergy to train, as a non-graduate, at Chichester (which J. L. Ross had helped to found fifty years earlier before he became Rector of St George-in-the-East). He was ordained in 1885 to a curacy in New Brampton (Chesterfield - then in Southwell diocese), and after his short time here and a further curacy in Burnham became in 1897 Rector of Thornton-cum-Nash, near Stony Stratford (in Oxford diocese - with Beachampton from 1922) until his death in 1935. (He re-appeared briefly at St John's in 1910 to help out.) In 1905 he put in a patent application [25939] for improvements in explosives for shot and other guns. In 1917 Thornton Hall, and all the land surrounding but excluding St Michael's Church and Rectory, was leased by its owner, Colonel Henry William Harris, 'gentleman', to the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mary and Jesus as a girls' school, Thornton College; this fascinating document (which includes detailed provisions for wartime hostilities, as well as for garden produce and chandeliers in the house) can be read here. His son Lt Frank Dawson-Smith, who had been a regular contributor to Bird Notes, was murdered by mutineering Somali soldiers of the King's African Rifles at Ramo in Jubaland on the Abyssinian border in 1920. He was a 'communicator' in psychic sittings attended by his mother.
  
  
• Daniel Radford (1887-92), ordained in 1871, 23 years after graduating from London University; he came here after six curacies (Emmanuel Camberwell, St Peter Streatham, St Augustine Hackney, St Nicholas Chiswick, St Mary Harlow and St Barnabas Kentish Town). At Chiswick in 1881 he published Studies at the Foot of the Cross: Seven Good Friday Addresses, and at Harlow in 1883 he entered into debate on 'polychurchism', a term coined by high churchmen to denigrate the view of those who claimed that the early church was made up of many separate congregations, and that unity today therefore does not require visible unity and central leadership. His main point, as he explained in the Church Times, was: The reply to the Roman Catholic argument that the Church, being a visible body, must possess a visible head, is simply this, that Christ is a visible head, for what we mean by an object being visible is not that it is in a position to be seen by this or that number of eyes at a given time, but that it is in itself capable of being seen; that, in short, it is not a mere impalpable spirit. He characterised the Roman church as a bi-capited monster, for which his critics accused him of perfervid imagination. But he was catholic rather than evangelical, influenced by the English Church Union, of which he was a member, and publishing a courteous 'eirenicon' in response to the evangelical Bishop Charles Perry, formerly of Melbourne, The Theology of Christian Ordinances (Rivingtons 1884) explaining why he had changed his views.
  He left here to become the last resident rector of Papworth St Agnes near Cambridge, remaining until 1916. This was a congregation started in the 1830s by the missionary preaching in a barn of H.J. Sperling (whose family remained patrons of the parish and local landowners). His stipend there was £195, with 79 acres of glebe; the population was 153. When he left, it was joined to Graveley. His youngest son Francis married in Australia in 1905.
  On 25 July 1910 he contributed to correspondence in The Times about 'long generations':
  

  Sir, I do not know whether but dare say there are many family instances like my own, but on this subject it may be of some interest to mention that my great-grandfather was born in the reign of Charles II. If this savour of antiquity it is partly explained by my being more than half-through my 83rd year, the youngest child but one of my father, who had ten children, and who was himself the youngest but one of 25 children by the younger of two wives. Yours faithfully, DANIEL RADFORD

  
  
• Richard Alexander England (1890) - born in 1843, from student days at Jesus and Caius Colleges, Cambridge in the 1860s he had money problems, despite a life interest in the Stibbard estate in Norfolk, which he inherited when his father, Dr William England of Ipswich, died in 1871 and mortgaged. He was ordained in 1869 to a title in Bicester (Oxford diocese), priested the following year by the Bishop of Worcester for St George Birmingham, and served curacies off and on in various places. He wrote occasionally for the Church of England Pulpit and Ecclesiastical Review (founded in 1873 by A.J. Melhuish with articles on various topics, not just religious): for example, 'Marriage: a Type of Christ and his Church' in 1879; he also pulished a sermon on Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand and Lichfield in the year of Selwyn's death (1878). In 1882 he became Rector of Wyke Regis, in Weymouth (in Doreset, but the Bishop of Oxford was patron), with a net stipend of £318, though was non-resident. In 1883 he advertised in The Guardian Curate wanted immediately, for charge of mission chapel, two Sunday servces, light work, stipend £100. By 1888 the vicar of nearby Fleet, Thomas Morgan Bell-Salter, was curate in charge; England had been declared bankrupt in 1886. He later lived in Penzance, and died in Southend in 1912.

• John Thomas Hughes (1890-98), who trained at St Bees and served curacies in Cumbria and Newcastle before coming to London; from St John's he went to a further curacy in Tottenham.
  
  
• Charles Reeder (1892-1902), also St Bees: he stayed here for ten years, but his previous seven curacies, and two later ones, were brief; he became vicar of Clapton, near Peterborough in 1906 until his retirement in 1929. In 1903 from Kimbolton, near St Neot's, he produced a testimonial for the Encylopædia Britannica: question 7 (of 20) asked Is it of practical use to Clergymen?
  
  
• Andrew Weinstein (1890-93), a Jewish convert who subsequently worked in South Africa, Australia and the USA; he baptized a number of Jewish children and adults during his time at St John's - see more about him here.
  
  
• William John Thorburn (1902-09) trained at SPCK's Southwark College and served for six years as a chaplain at Madura in South India and then for six months at Gascoyne in Western Australia, at a mission station established by a descendent of Charles Besley Gribble, the first minister of St Paul Dock Street; but he became ill and had to return home; after four further curacies, St John's was his last post and he retired to Oldham and died soon afterwards.
  

Joseph Vaug

The penultimate vicar (1919-39) was Henry Shrubbs. Born in Cambridge in 1880, he was a schoolmaster when he married Maud Allen in Lambeth in 1903; he then studied at Fitzwilliam Hall [not yet a college] in Cambridge and trained at Ridley Hall, and was ordained in 1908 to curacies at St Thomas Stepney (when he lived at 432 Commercial Road, close to St John's vicarage) and Christ Church Spitalfields. He he was involved with the Church Army, and to the disapproval of some conducted a number of baptisms at their local headquarters. The parish magazine  - buses 15a, 23a and 40a, trams from Aldgate and Bloomsbury [see here for more details] - set out his pitch » » »

Despite a low church stance, he maintained two (sometimes three) celebrations of the eucharist each Sunday - though it seems from the details here, from The Parish Record of 1937 (no.210), that 11am was a 'stay-behind' following Mattins - plus on saints' days, and a midweek service of Compline. The list of staff and organisations is interesting: there was a full programme (and the registers show reasonable numbers), yet when the war came, although the church was not blitzed, it failed quite rapidly. Right is a picture of a 'Bucket Parade in Camp' (?) from 1937, and left the church interior in the 1930s. Several other items in this edition of the magazine are also of interest, both for the attitudes they reveal and for the contrast with today, for instance on safeguarding, multiculturalism and bank interest rates!

(1) SUNNY DAYS An army of girls and boys had enjoyed a fortnight's holiday at the sea or in the country, and the Vicar expressed gratitude to those who had made this possible. Of course, one or two more venturesome boys and girls had to be rescued from the deep, and a fight resulted in heart-strain for one excitable youngster. Such things must be .... John Bull, the Verger, reported that at one camp by the sea over 2,000 poor boys were gathered, and that he would never forget the sight or the experience. (2) A ROYAL VISIT It is some years since St. John's was honoured with a royal visit. In 1922 H.R.H.The Princess Beatrice opened the Winter Sale of Work and this June H.R.H. The Duchess of Kent accompoanied by The Countess of Brecknock came to Church, listened and took part in a short programme of sacred music given by the juvenile Organisations and afterwards presented some 80 prizes to Sunday School children and Bible-class members. The visit was with difficulty kept secret until a few hours before the event and thus was particularly a Christian family gathering. Entrance to the Church was restricted to the regular worshippers and the parents of the children. Hundreds gathered in the street and thus secured a good view of our beautiful Princess and wife of the King's Brother. Inside the Church the proceedings were carried through quietly, reverently and without fuss. In the Church porch the Bishop of Stepney presented the Vicar to Her Royal Highness and he in turn presented Mrs. and Miss Srubbs, Rev. Dudley Gray and the Wardens and their wives. Mr. Bull in gown and carrying his staff of office escorted the company to the Chancel. The Princess expressed her real pleasure in coming to St. John's (her first visit to the East End), her earnest appreciation of all that the Church is endeavouring to do. It fell to Lydia Gardner the most-regular scholar to present a beautiful bunch of flowers to Her Royal Highness. (3) OUR NEEDS - WHO WILL SUPPLY? The Vicar appealed for £6,000 for a new Church Institute; £60 for an electric organ blower; £100 for a church boiler; for 150 copies of Songs of Praise [an interesting choice - this hymnal, first produced in 1931, was 'non-denominational' and more widely used in schools than in churches]; 3 pairs of thick blue door curtains; 1 extending ladder; and 100 new kneelers. He wrote this about the Institute, at 20 Christian Street: A VISION we trust will materialise Long have we hoped for the provision of a really adequate and suitable Church Institute, to house the social, educational, physical and religious organisations so necessary to such a congested Parish as St. John's. Hundreds of the youth hang about sordid gloomy streets and courts during the dark evenings, waiting for mischief and too often find it; when a bright Institute offering healthy scope for their ever-increasing leisure hours would certainly draw a considerable proportion and thus save many from the pitfalls confronting them on every side. Thousands have benefiited by the warm, heart, high-toned hospitality of the old Institute, originally The Comet, a gin palace of Dickens' day. The building has seen rough times during the taming and training of Whitechapel youth, but it has sent out into life stalwart saints. Today the old building literally rocks under the weight of its human burden, and its sighs are heard in creaking floors and windows. Wonderfully generous has the Brewery landlord been, spending often far more that the rent paid. Never have we been refused help. If 'The Trade' has in time past been criticised, the ever helpful, kindly character of its principals could never be. What a joy and help it will be if the Brewery can see its way to give us the remaining years of the Lease, and further if the mysterious owner of the Freehold will freely or for a small sum present the piece of land. The privilege of taking part in so Christ-like a work is the only recompsense we can offer. The site is in the centre of the Parish, and within a few years of the Church. A sum of £6,000 is needed, God asks it, for his work in building up our Whitechapel youth upon Christian principles for Christian service. God never asks in vain, for we are but stewards of His wealth and bounty. Millions of Pounds on deposit in the Banks today produce to the owners only half a per cent. We would gladly give four times that interest to any who would lend the £6,000 needed. Could any money interest compare with the joyous uplift to down-trodden lives which the proposed Institute will give? Who will offer to God the first thousand pounds? Venture great things from Him, who has given you wealth. (4) SUNDAY TRADING Shrubbs had been much exercised over the difficulty, as he saw it, of keeping Sunday in what was then a Jewish-majority parish; there were several synagogues close by, and Hessel Street market, where Sunday is a busier day than the ordinary Saturday elsewhere, and non-Jewish shops were also opening. He pinned his hopes on the 1936 Shops (Sunday Trading Restriction) Act, passed amidst controversy, to help matters. And he was cheered by a recent confirmation of 36 lads and maidens from the parish, whose preparation was not through orderly classes, as in the suburbs, but often started over frying bacon and eggs or kippers (one in the eye for his Jewish neighbours!) - decisions for Christ are come to under an alley lamp-post.  A few Muslims were also beginning to live in the parish: in the baptism registers for the 1930s are several children with Asian fathers and English mothers - see here for statistics. His conclusion was as follows: Sunday in Whitechapel is almost Sunday again owing to the working of the 'Sunday Closing Restriction Act' [sic: not its proper title]. Of course, loop-holes are being used to the uttermost. Christian Sunday habits, almost forgotten, are again becoming possible. Only an overdose of Christian forbearance can have allowed the old way to continue so long. We ought not to dishonour God's Day and hinder his children because we wish to manifest a kindly and over-tolerant spirit to the unbelieving dweller in our midst. Such licence is neither helpful to him nor to ourselves, and many a Jewish brother has expressed surprise to me, for he has been led to under-rate the sincerity of our religion. Softness is not always true kindness, nor an excuse for breaking a Divine Command. The Christian in Whitechapel can now go to worship in peace, and coarse-sounding bargaining seldom penetrates the sanctuary... He added that a good choir was necessary, but impossible unless members were regular at rehearsals; that worshippers should follow the scriptures readings in the pew bibles; that they should join audiibly in responses and Amens; if you feel for the poor, feel in your pocket; and he reminded them that the church had no endowments. To this he added the following guidance: IF: 1. You have a paper that needs signing, bring it to the Church Vestry any morning at 10.15, or to the Institute after 6pm 2. You need a J.P. signature, apply to the Mayor at the Town Hall 3. You need a Laywer, go to Toynee Hall 4. You need a Nurse, or Hispital Letter, apply at Vicarage The Vicar will do his best in every need. So ask him. And he capped this advice with a paragraph urging parishioners to take out insurance cover against the toll of the roads - preferably a 'double accident policy' to cover death as well as injury from road accidents.

VICAR AND WORKING GIRL CHARGES AFTER PROMISE TO A DYING MOTHER Serious charges in connection with a girl were brought yesterday, in the Consistory Court at Lichfield, against the Rev. Hyma Henry Redgrave, vicar of St. Paul's, Burslem. The Chancellor of the diocese, Mr. G. J. Talbot, K.C., presided. Mr. W.H. Disturnal, K.C., said that for nine years the defendant had been at St. Paul's, a large working-class parish. He was aged fifty and a married man with a family. The girl, Hannah Gater, was twenty-two and the daughter of a working potter at Burslem. The acquaintance was formed through the vicar visiting the girl's mother on her death-bed. On February 22 he wrote to the late Bishop of Lichfield: The girl in question is my foster-daughter. In the very sight of Almighty God I promised her dying and departed mother that she should be in my charge and that I would shield her from all wrong and harm. I have sacredly kept this promise. After the mother's death the girl went to the vicarage as a servant.The defendant had been consistently with her and had conducted himself with her in the presence of witnesses in a manner which could lead only to one conclusion. When the vicar sometimes had meals with her he had been seen to squeeze her hand and press her foot. Upon one occasion when a girl friend of Miss Gater entered the dining-room, she found the vicar in an arm-chair with Miss Gater on his knee. On July 19 last year the vicar was in an hotel in the Strand, London, with Miss Gater and a woman named Mumford, whom he had engaged to look after her. Mumford went to the girl's room and found the door locked. It was opened by the vicar and she found Miss Gater alone with him. The defendant had bought clothes for the girl and directed tradesmen to send them to a neighbour's address. He had rented houses at Stafford and Leicester where he had stayed with her. At the latter place a house was taken in the name of Lucas, and by that name the defendant was known to the tradesmen. Alice May Pindler, thirteen, grand-daughter of a sidesman, said that when she went with the vicar and Miss Gater to Rudyard Lake they travelled in a first-class carriage and the vicar put his arm round Miss Gater's waist. He bought some chocolates for them and a spray of roses for Miss Gater. At Rudyard Lake a storm was threatening and got up from the seat, the vicar having hold of Miss Gater's arm. The storm becoming more threatening, the vicar said he would offer up a little prayer that the thunder and lightning might hold off. She once heard the vicar say that Miss Gater was a naughty girl because she had not given him a kiss that day. NOT IN SERVANT'S DRESS Herbert Jennings, headmaster of St. Paul's School, said he frequently visited the vicarage. When the girl first went there she was treated as a servant, wearing a cap and apron. After some time she put aside servant's clothes. The girl was not popular with the family. Lily Brett, a companion of Miss Gater, said the vicar always made a terrible fuss of Miss Gater. He would put his arm round her, drink tea out of her cup, and kiss her. Once or twice he had come into Miss Gater's bedroom when the witness was there. On one occasion she went with Miss Gater to Newcastle-under-Lyme. They met the vicar, who took them to a tea shop and bought strawberries and cherries. He bought Miss Gater gloves and took them to a picture theatre. Questioned by Mr. Vachell for the defendant, she admitted that Miss Gater told her she had been adopted by the Redgraves. She also heard that this had caused annoyance to the sons and daughters at home. The hearing was adjourned until today.

Hubert Alfred Robins became priest-in-charge in 1940 (appointed by the Crown because the see of London was vacant at the time), for what must have been a sad incumbency. Born in 1895, he had trained at St Boniface College Warminster (King's College) and was ordained in 1936, served two two-year local curacies, at Holy Trinity, Mile End Old Town, and Christ Church Stepney. He left in 1943 when local clergy were centred on St George-in-the-East, to become vicar of St Erkenwald, Southend, and then in 1952 to two parishes in Devon, Shebbear and Buckland Filleigh (with two years as rural dean of Torrington) before retiring to Cornwall in 1968, living in Lesnewth, Bocastle.  (Right is Golding Street in 1937.)

I