Author Tom unearths a very Victorian scandal
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FORMER radio presenter Tom Hughes has a lifelong interest in Victorian England. His particular focus of research has been Victorian clerical scandals and he has just published his latest collection of stories of curates and vicars accused of various forms of misconduct – sometimes falsely accused.
In his latest book, How the Vicar Came and went: Victorian Clerical Errors, two reverend gentlemen from Derby make the pages.
The Rev Thomas Howard Twist, vicar of St Michael’s Derby, who in 1881 was accused of sending false telegrams to his mother-in-law under the name of Col Delacombe, the Chief Constable.
And, five years later, in 1886, the Rev William Hope, vicar of St Peter’s Derby went to court suing a woman from Litchurch who had told the police her daughter was being detained for immoral purposes in the Rev Hope’s vicarage.
Their stories have been sent to us by Mr Hughes and are published here:
VILE MACHINATIONS
On Sunday, March 27, 1881, the Rev Thomas Howard Twist MA, vicar of St Michael’s church in Derby, did not preside. His curate relayed the absent vicar’s thanks for the great support throughout the parish during his recent “affliction.”
As the whole town knew, the Rev Mr Twist had just been arrested in connection with one of the strangest clerical scandals of the period.
The 36-year old Twist, out of Cambridge, had been vicar in Derby for five years. He was an excellent preacher and published devotional books and music.
Alas, his personal life had not been a happy one. His first wife died within a year of their wedding. He then married Emily Harding, a surgeon’s daughter. After a difficult pregnancy and childbirth, Emily was diagnosed with puerperal mania and placed in an asylum by order of the Lunacy Commissioners.
The decision had occasioned a great deal of bitterness between Rev Twist and Mrs Harding, his widowed mother-in-law. The child had survived and, for some time, Mrs Harding lived at the vicarage with Mr Twist and her granddaughter.
But in 1880, the woman found some letters the vicar had exchanged with a “young lady” in the parish. These letters – according to Mrs Harding – suggested that the vicar considered himself engaged to this new lady – although his poor wife, of course, was still alive.
There was a last dispute. Mrs. Harding took her grandchild and went home to Buxton, vowing to prevent the clergyman’s “vile machinations.”
In February 1881, Mrs. Harding received a telegram from Col Delacombe, Derbyshire’s Chief Constable, advising her to hold her tongue. He threatened her: “You have been making trouble and my evidence is strong against you. My advice is be quiet or I must arrest you.” Mrs. Harding consulted her nephew, a London solicitor, who wired Delacombe demanding an explanation. He received a curt reply from the Chief Constable: “Mrs Harding has done too much in Derby and her course and yours is to be quiet.”
When Col Delacombe was finally made aware of the telegrams (and there were others) sent in his name, he denied writing any of them. The Rev Mr Twist was arrested at the seaside in Cromer, where he had gone “for his health.”
He wrote to Delacombe, pleading,
“For God’s sake, stop the case.” He admitted it all. “I was persuaded to frighten a woman who for years has done me grievous wrong. The cause lies in a very sad trouble and the sooner the case is over the better for all of us.” This naturally caused a great sensation in Derby.
Mr Twist was only charged with a misdemeanour: fraudulently intercepting a telegram. His defence was funded by supportive parishioners; his counsel argued that the clergyman was guilty of nothing more than “a stupid practical joke” on his bothersome mother-in-law. Hadn’t anyone noticed that the telegrams supposedly from the Chief Constable had been sent from a post office located at a chemist’s in the Duffield Road?
At the Derby QuarterSessions, clerks and messenger boys were subjected to an excruciating discussion of postal regulations and procedures. In the end, the vicar was acquitted but the finding was not universally accepted. The Derby Mercury thought that Twist had “committed indiscretions which have not only brought great humiliation upon himself but have inflicted injury upon the Church”.
Plainly, Twist would have to resign his vicarage – and he did, a decision which reportedly “afforded intense relief to the minds of Churchmen”. He was also sacked as the chaplain at a local training school for governesses.
As for public opinion, Twist seems to have retained a good deal of support. Notwithstanding, he left Derby but was unable to find regular church employment for some time. Eventually, he wound up in the Blythswood section of Glasgow as a minister with the Episcopal Church in Scotland. He outlived his mother-in-law but not his poor wife, who lived another 40 years.
He did not remarry. St Michael’s church in Derby has been redundant since 1977. The building (circa 1858) has survived several “permissions” to tear it down and has been recently remodelled for office space.
IN A VICARAGE FOR ‘IMMORAL PURPOSES’
Mrs Isabella Evered, a clergyman’s widow, caused a great stir in 1885 when she made the claim that her 17-year-old daughter was being held in a Derby vicarage. Specifically, she was being “detained for immoral purposes”.
The Rev William Hope had been vicar of St Peter’s, Derby since 1847.
A bit too “High Church” for some, they called him “Hopeless William.” He had buried two wives and his third had recently made him a father again in his early 60s.
His vicarage was of a sprawling sort, with lots of room, and also in residence were Mr Hope’s two married daughters, who had married two brothers, sons of the late Rev Everard Evered. Mary Frances Evered was 17 and seemed to prefer the cramped but lively quarters with her brothers and their young wives in Derby to her mother’s isolation in the village of Litchurch. Mrs Evered, although “a lady of passionate temper” permitted this arrangement until the arrival at the vicarage of Gerard Llewellyn Hope, the vicar’s youngest son and of dubious reputation.
Academia or the church held no appeal for Gerard. He had joined the army, married way too young
and now lived apart from Mrs Hope. The prospect of such a dissolute scoundrel roaming the vicarage warren in proximity to her virgin daughter set not well at all with Mrs Evered. Mary was removed from the Hope establishment and dispatched to a school “some distance from Derby.”
Like her mother, Mary was also of a “passionate” nature and she “escaped” from exile and returned to the vicarage. Mrs Evered showed up to find her daughter in a locked room, guarded by a “smiling” Gerard. Eventually, Mary left abruptly by ladder.
To his credit, the Rev Mr Hope declared Mary unwelcome in the vicarage and sent her back to Litchurch.
Of course, that was not to be the end of it. Mrs Evered intercepted a letter from Gerard in which he promised to divorce his wife and run off with Mary to – Florida!
In fairness, Mrs Evered’s two sons and their young Hope wives had also decided to leave Derby for that southern state and all six were booked to sail from Liverpool on the 16th of October. Mary Evered had gone back to the vicarage to prepare for the journey. When Rev Hope would not admit the relentless Mrs Evered to the vicarage, she marched off to the police to swear out the warrant.
With a crowd now gathered in the street, Rev Hope admitted the police, who retrieved Mary who was returned to her mother’s “protection.” The very next day, Mary fled again. As Lady Bracknell observed, to lose your daughter once or twice might be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose her a third time does rather seem like carelessness.
Mary managed to catch up with the others and was soon steaming toward the new world. Left relatively alone in his vicarage, the Rev Hope sued Mrs Evered for malicious prosecution, demanding damages of £5,000, a grand sum in that time. In the witness box, the vicar was asked many questions about his youngest son, Gerard. The trial centred on whether Mrs Evered had reasonable cause to tell the police that her daughter was being detained “for an immoral purpose.” Justice Manisty decided her claim had not been sufficiently demonstrated. He left it to the jury to set the damages. Such was the townsmen’s view of the shambolic life at St Peter’s, they fobbed Rev Mr Hope off with a mere £20.
Such would have to be the consolation for Rev Mr Hope in his remaining days. God’s weary servant was called home in 1889. The St Peter’s vicarage, scene of so much drama, was later razed to widen Burton Road, near the present Vicarage Avenue. But what of Mary Evered and her daring bolt for the Sunshine State? Apparently, the romance, if any, between Mary and Gerard cooled in the tropic conditions. In January 1892, at Brompton Oratory in London, Mary Frances Evered married Capt William Hussey-Walsh, newly home from the Burmese campaign. Gerard, meantime, had finally divorced his first wife. According to the 1891 census, he had remarried and was living in Wolverhampton with his wife, and they were registered as an actor and actress.
■■The book is available from Amazon, priced £7.99