Notorious All Over Exeter

Holy Trinity Church, Gidleigh

“If there be any man to whose happiness marriage is more necessary than to that of another, it is a country clergyman.” A line from Trollope's novel, The Bertrams. Trollope was spot on. This, however, is the story of the Rev. and Mrs. Arthur Whipham of Gidleigh, Devon.

On the edge of Dartmoor, Gidleigh has long been one of the most inaccessible but celebrated beauty spots in the realm. The Whipham family had owned the park property for many years. In 1835, fresh from Oxford, the Rev. Arthur Peregrine Whipham arrived to be the new rector at Holy Trinity.  He resided at Gidleigh Park and spent a considerable sum restoring the church. In 1843, he married Frances Huxham, a solicitor's daughter from Bishopsteignton. Within a decade, they had eight children; alas, the Whiphams were not happy and there were "frequent differences.” 

Amid mutual accusations of infidelity, the Whiphams separated in 1858. He would provide her with a guinea a week. By 1859, however, financial worries arose. A defaulted bond put Mr. Whipham in jail; he had to rent out Gidleigh Park and lived in a shabby cottage on Holles Street in Chagford. Those guineas a week stopped coming and Mrs. Whipham and their youngest child showed up in Chagford. They moved in; he moved out. Frances found the cottage completely unsuitable and instead took rooms at Southernhay in Exeter. The rector, believing that he had left his wife in a perfectly good home, refused to pay the upcharge for Mrs. Sparshatt's hospitality. The landlady sued him for £47, his wife’s room and board for the previous six months.

Mrs. Whipham told the court that she had suffered for years from her husband's "cruel and unmanly conduct." The Chagford rooms were deplorable; he left his wife and their youngest child with neither food nor farthing. None of the local shops let them have any food “on trust,” the Whipham's credit was no good. She was forced to seek better lodgings. She denied any accusations of her immorality, calling them “rumors spread by wicked men.”  

In court, the rector of Gidleigh explained that he had formerly been a man of some means but an unfortunate speculation and ensuing legal problems had forced him to live with the greatest frugality. He was fully prepared to escort his wife back to Chagford that very day. He simply could not live there with her.  

Judge Tyrrell thought that the rector’s decision to abandon his wife and child in such a cottage, without provision or protection, fully justified Mrs. Whipham’s decision to lodge elsewhere. Whether she could have found a place more affordable than Mrs. Sparshatt’s was not the question. The bill was fair and the rector must pay it. 

The landlady was followed into court by drapers and milliners - with more bills. This time, Mrs. Whipham was not successful. “What does a woman living in a farmhouse,” the judge inquired, “need with silk scarves and pearl buttons?” The tradesmen should have known to be cautious, after all, the Whiphams were "notorious over all of Exeter.”

This public rockfight between a clergyman and his wife was an embarrassment to the Church. Trewman’s Flying Post headlined their columns, Scenes of Clerical Life, a wry reference to the new stories from George Eliot. It got worse. In the summer of 1862, Mrs. Whipham was lodging with John Rowe, a Dartmoor farmer, with five sons including 26 year old Philip. The Rev. Whipham had placed "watchers" on the case, and soon, “the local police constable surprised the paramours in bed together,” in the rectory!

The proceedings in Divorce Court were brief. Mrs. Whipham chose not to deny her "unlawful intimacy" with young Rowe. Several of the Gidleigh “observers” came to London to delight the court with the required salacious details and the decree nisi was issued. Soon after the divorce the Rev. Whipham left Gidleigh church. Attendance at his services had been very poor for some time. According to one of the clerical guidebooks of the day, Holiness in the Priest’s Household is Essential to Holiness in the Parish, Whipham had signally failed. "The Clergyman and his house is as it were a light placed in the parish."

The Whipham story is excerpted from my book, Blame it on the Devon Vicar, a collection of stories of Victorian clerical scandals published in 2008. The book is available here.