The Woman in the Vicarage: A Wolverhampton Scandal

The magnificently spired church of St John, Wolverhampton, is justly proud of its Renatus Harris organ. But when the new vicar, the Rev. Henry Hampton, arrived in 1862, he found the music wanting. He sacked the organist-cum-choir director Francis Allen. The latter gentlemen did not take it well and went about the town with a story that the vicar was a “bad man” and “living in adultery with a person he represents as his daughter.” 

In March 1863, the Rev. Hampton sued Allen for £2000. The vicar had to begin by detailing the curious makeup of his household. Mrs. Hampton did not reside with him any longer; owing to drink she was cared for by her aged mother in Worcestershire. 40-year old Mrs. Harriett Troughton, a daughter from Mrs. Hampton’s first marriage, lived in the Wolverhampton vicarage in the role of something like the lady of the house. Rev. Hampton told the Birmingham jury that he had known Mrs. Troughton since she was a girl of nine. There has never been any familiarity between them. She had been “undeservedly calumniated.” She lived apart from her husband on no fault of hers; he was a beast. In the witness box, Hampton admitted that he may have let people think Mrs. Troughton was his “daughter” because he always thought of her as his child. There had been comments made about the nature of Mrs. Troughton’s presence both at Hampton's recent brief stop at a church in Liverpool and at St. Luke’s in London. He had resigned that parish but blamed it on a dispute over a building fund.

The defendant Allen denied ever suggesting that Mrs. Troughton was the vicar’s mistress. He merely wished to point out that “no one knows who or what she is!” The jury found quickly for the Rev. Mr. Hampton but awarded him the traditional nominal damages of a single farthing. 

Mr. Hampton remained at St. John’s until his death in 1880. Mrs. Troughton moved out at some point. The vicar is remembered as a “human dynamo” and there are two windows and a wall plaque in his honour.

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Illustrations

* Wolverhampton History & Heritage Center

* St. John's in the Square by Peter Hickman