Harold Davidson
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Harold Francis Davidson (July 14, 1875 – July 30, 1937), sometimes known as The Prostitute's Padre, was a British Church of England Rector, who was famous as the 'Rector of Stiffkey' defrocked in 1932 for his licentious lifestyle, though this has been disputed by his descendants.
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[edit] Background
Davidson had 27 relatives in the clergy (including his father and uncles), reaching as high as the Archbishop of Canterbury, under whose auspices he worked. Davidson ministered to the homeless in London, in the split ministry he had when he was appointed to Stiffkey.
His father came from a wealthy Birmingham family but poured his money into building the new parish he had been appointed to in Sholing, and on his wife, who was severely ill all her life. When the time came to educate his son, there was no money to finance his studies.
Davidson was educated at the Banister Court School in Southampton and the Whitgift School in Croydon, moving there to live with his maternal aunts and grandmother (who had moved to Croydon after his grandfather's death). During his years at Whitgift he formed a small group of amateur actors with other boys; they would organise fund raising charity events for his father's parish, and, later, for the other churches in and around the Southampton area.
When Davidson left Whitgift in 1894, he and his friends decided to spend their pre-university gap year becoming professional entertainers. They toured the Provinces where they became quite successful in the first 6 months and they were invited to appear at the Steinway Hall in London in 1895.
Davidson then became a professional actor, touring the world with some of the great acting companies of the day such as the Trees'. On several occasions, he appeared with Sarah Bernhardt (who would be a close friend the rest of her life) inviting his whole family to France for her opening night performances and asking that he be put on the bill when she appeared in London at the Palladium. His forte was comedy mime though he also did the classics and comedies like Charlie's Aunt.
[edit] Student days
However, Davidson's father wanted to see him join the priesthood. He enlisted the help of some of his more influential friends to push his son towards that end. Davidson had always intended joining the Church but had undergone a crisis of conscience at the time due to the Church's opposition to the work of the Toynbee Hall Mission in the east end, which he was firmly in tune with. After three years, though, he realised the Stage was not a very conscientious way of life for him and, having saved enough to begin studies, he joined Exeter College, Oxford.
Davidson was allowed to continue his stage career while he studied the religions of the world. However, due to his absences and his failure of written exams (which he rarely sat for), Exeter required him to leave in 1901. Davidson obtained a place at Grindle's Hall, instead, where he obtained a Bachelor's and a Master's in the normal five-year span required, though half of his time was spent away from college working and travelling the world.
At Oxford he also joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, where he met and made his lifelong friendship with Sir Reginald Kennedy-Cox (with whom he would later found the Dockland Settlement in the East End of London). They used to arrange gatherings of artists for Sunday teas in Kennedy Cox's rooms. It was at one of these gatherings that Davidson met his future wife. He stood out in debates. It was there that his view's on church reform caught the eye of the Bishop of Stepney. Bishop Winnington Ingram later became Bishop of London and was to remain one of Davidson's supporters at the trial and until Davidson's death. He also became president of the Oxford University Chess Club, organising tours against other universities, and representing the university in three annual Varsity chess matches against Cambridge University (1901, 1902 and 1903).
[edit] Ordained as a priest
His first Curacy was at the Guards Chapel (Holy Trinity) at Windsor. In May 1903 he had his last professional stage employment and on September 21, 1903 he was ordained as a Priest in the Church of England. He was High Church. At first he was assistant chaplain to the Household Cavalry, and then he was a Curate of St Martin-in-the-Fields from August 1905. Davidson's appointment as Rector of Stiffkey St John with Stiffkey St Mary and Morston was announced in July 1906. Stiffkey (pronounced as its written not as Stewky) is a rural Norfolk village on the north coast of the county and the parish had a population of about 500. Its name came from Norman times when that coast line was a thriving commercial centre. Boats would come down and tie up in the harbour because it sheltered them from the turbulence of the North Sea. Siff meaning Safe and Key meaning harbour were joined into the word Siffquay as a village began to grow up around the harbour and William the Conqueror built his own great hall there. Siffquay eventually became Stiffkey.
Davidson was a respected churchman before the war who conducted some marriages at the Chapel Royal in the Savoy. He was always very popular in the parishes where he was the main employer and the only landowner living in situ; the Marquis of Townshend who owned all the land other than the Glebe, lived in London and rarely came up to his estates in Norfolk. The rector looked after all the villagers needs, whether they went to his church or not. He visited everyone each week and he did special tours at Michaelmas to ensure they all had enough to pay their rents and he would pay it if they didn't. In those days rent was only collected once a year from tenant farmers. He attended several of the King's Levées, although his diminutive stature (he was 5'3") led his parishioners to nickname him 'Little Jim'. He once invested a little money in a revival of the musical 'Dorothy' at the Waldorf Theatre in 1909 at the request of a friend involved in the production. He was asked to be the first chaplain of the Actor's Church Union of Central London while he was still at St. Martin in the Fields, due to his connections with the Theatre and always kept up with friends in the Theatre all his life. He relinquished the Chaplaincy in 1918 to work back in the east end securing the finance for the Dockland Settlement which became one of the largest charity organisations of the time and also securing the patronage of Queen Mary whom he had known since his days in Windsor.
[edit] The First World War
During the First World War he served from October 1915 in the Royal Navy on HMS Fox and in the Middle East. When he returned, his wife Molly (whom he had married in October 1906 after a six year engagement) was pregnant by another man. There was some pressure on him to leave her but he refused claiming marriage vows were for life. He gave his wife the option to choose what she wanted, separation or not. He accepted a post as tutor to the Marharajh of Jaipur's son for a year and he proposed taking his children to India with him. The Church sanctioned the trip and Davidson contracted someone to take on Stiffkey while he was away. But at the last moment his wife decided she wanted to keep the family together and the rector's permission to go was cancelled. When the child was born he adopted her as his own. However since he had already contracted someone to take over his parish he had to remain in London for that year with the family till they could all return to Stiffkey.
From then on he went back to work in the East End and with the homeless. He began to notice how many youngsters were now coming through the courts accused of vagrancy. It was increasing all the time through the next years. When they returned to Stiffkey in 1921, he then took up his trips back down to London again as he had done before 1914.
[edit] Financial difficulties
He first hit the headlines in 1925 when he fell into debt as a result of tithes not being paid to him by two local landowners. Siffkey and Morston had been sold off by the Marquis to raise capital in 1911. New landowners had then moved into the area and taken on the tithes tax to the Church. However they did not get on with the Rector, who refused to be under their control. They in turn refused to pay the tithes, forcing the rector into debt. He was obliged to borrow money to upkeep church property and pay the salaries of the people employed in the parish. The rates of interest were incredibly high, hitting 60% at one point.
By 1925 his situation became desperate and he finally couldn't meet the bills. He was prosecuted for not paying poor rates of £39 11s 1d on the tithes paid to the church. The local Justices of the Peace ordered him committed to jail and Davidson was unable to find the £100 sureties to keep himself on bail pending an appeal, because, he said, locals "were afraid of offending certain persons with whom I have got into difficulties through taking a strong line of action". Davidson won a temporary order from the High Court to prohibit the Justices from arresting him.
The High Court ruled that he should not have been asked to pay rates on church property when he had not received the tithes to pay them with. Many clergy suffered the same fate at the time due to an overhaul of the tithe system done to placate landowners who objected to paying them at all. They wanted them repealed and the church to pay its own clergy. Many clerics found their whole income vanished overnight. The rector still retained some of his after the changes and he was allowed to declare bankruptcy as an alternative to jail. The terms of the bankruptcy obliged him to pay a large part of the income of the rectory to his creditors. All his income went through the courts from that time on. What wasn't paid to creditors went directly to his wife. Hence he could not have spent it on girls in London, as was later claimed at his trial. His money in London came from other bone fide charity sources for which he had to make account.
[edit] Investigations begin
In November 1930, Davidson was late back from London to the annual Remembrance Day service. Major Hammond, one of the landowners of Morston and who had disliked Davidson since he refused to allow him to be Church Warden way back in 1919 and had had several further altercations with him since, was 'incandescent with rage' and accused Davidson of doing it on purpose as an insult to the war dead. In fact he had been ill for several days and had not been able to get back and he asked to be replaced.
Hammond discovered through a relative in the Church, that if he accused him of immorality, the Church would have to investigate the complaint. A complaint was immediately handed in to a Henry Dashwood in London, solicitor to the Church of England and quite a powerful adviser to them and to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. He had the power to decide who should be accused or not. It is not certain if this was done by the Bishop of Norwich or simply by Hammond directly through his relative who was a rural Dean.
There are no letters of complaint from the Bishop to Dashwood at any time. Later letters confirm that nobody in the Bishop's office was aware that he was under investigation till they received a notification of his impending trial a year later. It was all directed from London from the outset by Dashwood. He came for an initial visit to Hammond in early January 1931. He also met the Church Warden of Stiffkey who told him the rector was the best priest they ever had and warned Dashwood that he would find no one to say a bad word against him. Dashwood had hoped it would be a simple case of finding local parishioners to back a claim of neglect of the parish; but he returned to London empty handed.
[edit] Scandal breaks
Dashwood then began investigating his activities in London. That too led to a dead end. Months were passing by and no case seemed to be forthcoming. But Dashwood appears to have been of the same mind as Hammond; convinced that the Rector had to be doing something wrong.
He then hired the 'Arrows Detective Agency' to follow the rector night and day and report his activities in London. Still nothing could be found. Eventually in desperation Detectives were given the name of a woman the rector had looked after for some 12 years. Unfortunately, the private detectives uncovered little; of the 40 girls they interviewed, only one would say anything against him and then only when drunk (she recanted when sober).
Almost a year had gone by and a lot of money had been spent with no results. Dashwood was under a lot of pressure and was also being threatnened with the Bar Council for the way he was conducting the investigation, threatening and mistreating the girl they got drunk who was so traumtised that she tried to commit suicide. Dashwood was finally pushed to call the rector in to his office in December 1931. He attempted to get the Rector to sign an open confession to immorality denying him access to the Bishop and denying him the right to know what he was being accused of. The rector refused. He immediately offered the Bishop his resignation in return for a Church investigation into any accusations against him. His life was an open book he wrote; all the Bishop had to do was ask. His family's advice was recorded and sent in to the Bishop as well and remains in the archive today. They backed him. He offered to step down if his parishioners wanted him to and they refused. They backed his stand.
In a final meeting with the Bishop he tried once more to offer to resign in return for a church investigation. He claimed that it would do the Church a lot of harm to allow Dashwood's case to come to court pushing him to fight. The Bishop replied he was entirely in Dashwood's hands and the rector should sign the confession or go to trial.
He asked again what he had done; the Bishop told him he couldn't remember but he knew the charges were very grave. The rector asked how he could possibly sign a confession to charges his Bishop couldn't even remember; if that was the choice then he could only choose trial.
[edit] The media enters the ring
The newspapers were a different matter: it was very easy for them to write stories conveying the impression of guilt in those days. The knowledge that a scandal was brewing prompted Dashwood to suddenly act speedily to bring charges that could be released to the press. Dashwood had previously taken his time, having spent one whole year before calling the rector in to accuse him. Now suddenly within the space of 3 weeks the rector had been called in, accused, and charges signed by his Bishop.
A Consistory Courttrial was prepared and charges under the Clergy Discipline Act 1892 were served on the rector on January 20, 1932, with a trial date set for February 1. The rector barely had 10 days to find himself a defence team and no money to do it with.
Dashwood began sending detectives out to push subpoenas out to everyone the rector knew. They did it in very brash rude ways putting them down people's backs or shirt fronts etc. if they refused to accept them. The rector had always offered to resign if the Church would come in and investigate Dashwood's charges. He complained to his bishop about the way Dashwood was conducting himself. At the last moment his Bishop changed his mind and agreed to accept his resignation rather than a trial. But Dashwood was having none of it. He released charges to one London newspaper to ensure the Bishop couldn't withdraw.
There have always been rumours that Davidson contacted the press. Evidence shows that he didn't. He was in Norfolk at the time having been called to the Bishop offices. He later requested a Trial in camera so he could present a defence. It was denied to him. He never gave interviews to the press even after the trial. He did write a series of articles himself called "Why I am fighting" for the Empire News.
He did it when the paper offered to defend him. In those days when a major trial was on the cards, it was quite usual for the media to come in when a defendant had no money and offer to pay for his defence in return for exclusive access. It meant a defendant was guaranteed a top counsel. In the rector's case a top counsel was retained, but the prosecution sued for contempt of court and won so the paper and its counsel were obliged to withdraw. He finally got a Jewish defence team which angered the Judge considering it was a court of Christian Morals. He took offence and believed Davidson was deliberately mocking the proceedings which was quite untrue. When the Daily Herald published its story it was fined £50 for Contempt of Court (the Empire News, to which Davidson had given a series of articles on why he was fighting, was fined £100). Davidson was cleared of contempt.
[edit] Trial
Much went on behind the scenes before Davidson's trial finally began on March 29, 1932. This was an internal church disciplinary trial, not a criminal prosecution, but it was a public sensation. Many of the charges related to inappropriate intimacy with girls employed at Lyons tea rooms. Davidson often befriended them because, when working in the West End, they were very easily led into prostitution. However, the prosecution unveiled a star witness, Gwendoline Harris (known as Barbara Harris) who was 16 years old when she first met Davidson. Davidson she claimed had posed as her uncle and paid her rent, later arranging for her to live at his London home in Macfarlane Road, Shepherd's Bush. Harris claimed the reason Davidson had missed his train on Remembrance Day was that he was "trying to kiss me all the time". Evidence in the form of letters by her to Davidson or Davidson to her support the rector's claim that he never disguised the fact that he was a priest. Her claims could be said to be "wild teenage claims", and were unsupported, but they damaged him by smearing him rather than by direct accusation of any wrong doing.
His defence was that his work in London had been authorised by his bishop, and that only Harris had actually given evidence of immorality, she having been paid by the prosecution. He admitted to trying to help up to 1,000 girls with advice and sometimes money (one woman, Rose Ellis, had her treatment for syphilis paid for by Davidson). He had connections with the film industry and could get girls claiming to be actresses parts as extras (Davidson was chaplain to the Actors' Church Union). The rector's family including his daughter Patricia gave evidence that some of the girls mentioned in evidence had visited the family at Stiffkey and that neither she nor her mother had objected. The hearing lasted 26 days and attracted large crowds as Davidson was already considered a cause célèbre.
The turning point in the trial came when the prosecution produced a photograph of Davidson standing talking to a 15-year-old girl who had her back to the camera. She was wearing a black shawl but was naked underneath. Although the photograph was not printed in the newspapers, it made headlines. Davidson claimed he had been set up and that he had been offered money for posing with two of his acquaintances in the hope that the publicity would be helpful to his case, but the photograph seemed clearly to incriminate him. It was never examined for authenticity and neither he nor the girl knew how it had been taken.
However, all the photographs show a wide white line down the centre of them which could indicate that they were faked as he claimed. Rumours were rife during the trial that the prosecution wanted to get Davidson in a compromising situation due to the weakness of their case and the possibility that Barbara Harris' evidence might be ruled as unreliable since she was paid for it. In a court of law it would have been rejected. Davidson's defence team ordered that he never be left alone day or night. So his children were with him all the time. They took it in turns to guard him.
[edit] Conviction and aftermath
On July 8, 1932 Davidson was convicted on all five counts. With the loss of his job, he went back to public entertainment and in September advertised his appearance fasting in a barrel at Blackpool. This appearance did not go according to plan as the massed crowds caused an obstruction to the footpath and the police arrested the promoter (Luke Gannon) for causing it, and Davidson for aiding and abetting him. Both had to give undertakings "that the barrel business with Mr. Davidson will cease"; they were fined 40s. each.
However, Davidson's contact with the law was not entirely as the defendant; he was assaulted by Major Philip Hamond, one of his churchwardens, after his last service at Stiffkey. Davidson had asked to speak to Hamond on parochial business apparently to ask for the key to the church, but Hamond did not wish to speak to him and told him "Clear out, or I'll kick you out!". Hamond then kicked the Rector off the step, stating at the Magistrates' court that it was "a kick of finality and contempt". Hamond also kicked a companion of Davidson's, Clinton Gray-Fisk; he was convicted of two counts of assault and fined 20 shillings on each plus the court costs. Local legend states that the Major received many letters from sympathisers paying part of his fine, and that one enclosed a packet of hobnails with a request that he put those into the soles of his boots for next time.
[edit] Sentence
Sentence for Davidson had to wait until after he had exhausted his legal appeals (which were all turned down). His sentence was announced on October 21, 1932: he was defrocked. A final appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury failed. Davidson tried to speak at a meeting of the Church Assembly in 1936 but was told by the Archbishop that he had no rights to speak. Increasingly he came to believe that he had been framed, and referred to the episode as a 'clerical Dreyfus case'.
Davidson then went to Blackpool to become an entertainer, trading off his notoriety. He would appear either in a barrel or being apparently roasted in an oven while a figure dressed as the devil prodded him with a pitchfork. In August 1935 he was summonsed again, this time by Blackpool Corporation, for attempting suicide by fasting – an entertainment again promoted by Luke Gannon. Davidson was still a public figure and appeared in court in ecclesiastical robes, described as "an ex-clergyman of no fixed abode". This time, however, he was found not guilty: the court did not believe that he was intending to take his own life. He then successfully sued the Blackpool Corporation for false arrest and malicious prosecution and was awarded £382 in damages. This did not indicate that his luck with the courts had changed, for late in 1936 he was fined for trespassing on Victoria Station.
[edit] Death
For the summer season in 1937 Davidson worked at an amusement park in Skegness, where he was billed as 'A modern Daniel in a lion's den'. He would enter a cage with a lion called Freddie and a lioness, and talk for about ten minutes about the injustice he felt had been meted out to him. On July 28, he was moving through his act when he accidentally tripped on the tail of the lion. Perceiving this as an attack the lion mauled him at the neck leaving a gash behind his left ear. The injury was not severe; the lion was old, toothless and sedated.
He was recovering from it and it was arranged that he should be taken back to London by one of his daughters. Then the man who had employed him, a captain Rye sent in private doctors to treat him. They diagnosed an advanced case of diabetes without testing him for the disease. They ordered insulin and supervised the injection themselves. The rector sank into a coma and died the next morning.
His solicitor wanted an investigation but his widow rushed up to stop it, she wanted no more publicity and she wanted nobody touching him. She sat with her husband's body till it was removed for burial. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure. His old parishioners requested that he be buried in Stiffkey where they take care of his grave to this day.
Davidson's widow refused to wear black and arrived for his funeral dressed in white. She wanted it to be a celebration of his life. 3,000 mourners crammed into the tiny village to attend the funeral service. The police had to attend in force to keep crowds at bay. His coffin was carried slowly through the streets of his old villages; people stood outside their homes bowing as it passed. They followed it up to the Church. Round the sides of his grave, in gold lettering is one of his favourite quotations from Robert Louis Stevenson which says "For on Faith in Man and genuine Love of Man all searching after Truth must be founded".
[edit] Posthumous treatment
The strange story of the Rector of Stiffkey has been the subject of several fictionalised retellings. A first musical "and god made the little green apple" was staged at the Stables Theatre Manchester, in 1969 then followed David Wright and David Wood's 1969 musical "The Stiffkey Scandals of 1932" which trod a middle ground on Davidson's guilt or innocence. It was broadcast by the BBC and went into the West End. Stuart Douglas wrote a play in 1972 entitled "The Vicar of Soho" which portrays Davidson as a politically naive but well-intentioned social reformer. Ken Russell made a 1990 underground film "Lion's mouth" based on the scandal; the central character is a female journalist on the Skegness Sentinel.
Yet despite destroying him publicly the rector retained his popularity among his friends, his villagers and the people he met in the years following the trial, particularly among women. He was a great admirer of Annie Besant who he knew during his youth in the East End when he joined the Fabians and he supported her work there. He became a great supporter of women's rights at a time when few men saw them as equals.
Many documents concerning the case are now in the public arena, except his personal letters and papers which remain with his family, and they have been used by Davidson's descendants and the present Priest at Stiffkey as proof of the fact that he was not guilty of the charges which were found proved against him. A BBC documentary in 2004 showed their attempts to posthumously exonerate him.
[edit] References
- 'The Reason Why' by Harold Francis Davidson (Deane Printing Works, London, 1935)
- 'The Prostitute's Padre' by Tom Cullen (Bodley Head, London, 1975)
- 'The Troublesome Priest' by Jonathan Tucker (forthcoming)
- 'Biography of the Rector' by Karilyn Collier(2004)
[edit] External links
- BBC Inside Out profile arguing for Davidson's innocence
- Norfolk History and Past Times
