A Thousand and One Rumours

St. Swithun's, Hempstead

All was in readiness for the wedding feast at Hempstead Court, the country home of the Rev. Samuel Lysons of St. Luke's, Gloucester. Tuesday, October 9, 1855, was his daughter Alice's wedding day. The groom was a popular local clergyman, the Rev. Hugh Hovell Baskerville Farmar. From a prominent Irish family, Farmar was curate at St. Nicholas in the nearby village of Hardwicke. The little Hempstead church of St. Swithun was decorated with flowers and filled with the local gentry and friends of the young couple. But the appointed hour of 11:00 passed and neither party to the nuptials appeared. By noon, guests were told that owing to the bride's indisposition the wedding would be the following day. Within hours, the truth was known - the Rev. Farmar had disappeared. He had visited his betrothed the night before and had not been seen since. The trains were checked, canals were dragged, and several tramps at a local "mop fair" were questioned by police. But days passed with no sign of the missing curate. "The affair is altogether wrapped in mystery."

Detectives were employed. "A Thousand and One Rumours" were circulated. Reported sightings in London and Ireland were busts. It wasn't until December that Farmar was traced to America. The Gloucester Chronicle reported, "Some expression fell from the lips of the intended bride during the last interview which was misconstrued by the gentleman into something like regret at the step she was about to take." Farmar despaired; his only plan was to flee, an act he will ever regret. He wanted all the friends of Miss Lysons to know that the blame for this unhappiness was all his.

The sequels to the wedding mystery are equally interesting. The Lysons name was well-known in Gloucestershire, a family of clergymen, physicians, and antiquarians. Jilted Alice Lysons did eventually marry; in 1861, she wed a young man named George Hacker. George was the son of a local railway porter and he was being educated in Cheltenham at the Rev. Lysons' expense. Alice, apparently, couldn't wait for the schooling to be finished. That May, the papers reported, "This week, she left home secretly to be married to him."

As for the Rev. Farmar, he joined the Episcopal church in the midwestern state of Illinois. He invested well, mostly in agricultural land, and became quite wealthy. He left the clergy and settled near Springfield, Missouri on a 300-acre farm. In January 1890, he was found dead in his burned-out log home. One of the local papers speculated the fire was set by some of his "negro tenants" angry over recent evictions. If he was murdered, it was never solved. Farmar kept to himself, he was an eccentric. All the locals knew about him was he came from England about forty years earlier. "Great excitement prevails," readers were told. Farmar never married. 

If you have not yet checked out Clerical Errors, A Victorian Series, Vol. 2, please go here. Thank you. Comments, criticism, additions, and suggestions are welcome below.

Charles Darwin & the Curate

The Rev John Warburton Robinson was an Irishman, educated at Trinity, and ordained at Oxford in 1864. In August 1868, he arrived in the village of Downe, Kent. Robinson was the new curate at St. Mary's church. The Rev J.B. Innes, the absentee vicar of Downe, wrote to his most famous parishioner, the great Charles Darwin, to say, "I hope you and the other parishioners like him." Robinson set about his clerical duties, including a fund drive for a new village school. But, in late November, the curate abruptly announced he was returning to Ireland for three months to attend to family affairs.  

Charles Darwin and Rev Innes were old friends and regular correspondents. Thus, Darwin wrote Innes to share some gossip, "Rumours are very common in our village about Mr. Robinson walking with girls at night." The naturalist had heard this second hand from his wife. A neighbour, Mrs. Allen was said to be "very indignant about Mr R's conduct with one of her maids." Darwin said one of his own servants at Down House had been hear to say, "They do not believe that hardly anyone will go to Church now." 

Innes was shaken by this news; Robinson had presented testimonials that "painted him to be little less than a saint." The old vicar clearly did not have the greatest trust in the residents of Downe. "I know too much of reports in general and Downe reports in particular to credit anything which people say behind a man’s back & are afraid to say to his face." Would Darwin dig into this and report back to him? Innes needed to know more. "I can only say that, though I do not know Mr. Robinson, I would try to protect him from malicious accusations but if he is immoral I will do all in my power to get him out forthwith."  

The 60-year-old Darwin agreed to find "The Origin of the Rumours." About a week later, the impromptu sleuth reported back that "Rumours certainly are rife against Mr R." The hottest gossip linked the curate with a young lady named Esther West, formerly a servant with the Allens. They were seen talking quietly in the road and elsewhere 'round the village at odd hours. The Allens gave Esther the sack and she'd left Downe. But Darwin did question Mrs. Allen. "Judging by her manner, [she] knew a good deal, but said she was nervous & wd not commit herself— accordingly she said she cd not remember who had told her any one single thing; or the name of the girl in the village; & further that her cook did not want to commit herself & declined to say whether it was in the daylight or after dark that Mr R. talked with the girl." Hardly conclusive. The Robinson case fell to the ground. Detective Darwin didn't care for his new role, "I feel in an awkward predicament. I do not feel sure, owing to my ignorance of law, whether I may not be exposing myself to an action for defamation of character." He closed the case, if you will, "I am most sincerely sorry for all this vexation & trouble." 

Rev. Innes still considered his curate unsuitable and would bring the matter to the Bishop. But, in the end, Rev. Robinson never returned to Downe, resigning in February 1869. 

The Rev John Warburton Robinson obtained more work as a curate in the 1870's. His career ended in 1876 when he was arrested for an indecent assault with a guardsman in an alley near London's Knightsbridge Barracks. That charge was reduced but Robinson was involved subsequently in two similar cases. According to one report, he emigrated to Melbourne, Australia.   

Darwin died in Downe in 1882, having spent the last 40 years of his life in the village. There was a family vault at St. Mary's but - not without controversy - Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The letters quoted here can be found in full in the Darwin Correspondence Project at the University of Cambridge. (darwinproject.ac.uk)

This Darwin story is now included in my 2020 collection of clerical errors, How the Vicar Came and Went available at Amazon. 

“A Vicar and His Housemaid”

One April day in 1891, the vicar of Wilmington, the Rev. William Augustus St. John Dearsley, known as Sinjin, was in his study with his wife. Also present was their pregnant housemaid and her stepmother. Jenny Levett accused the vicar of being the father of her child. Mrs. Dearsley blurted out, “We had to go through this all before with poor Sarah. Am I never going to be able to have a servant?”

Dearsley was 52 and had been vicar there for 16 years. The parish patron was His Grace the Duke of Devonshire. The old Norman church of St. Mary & St. Peter was overshadowed – literally – by a famous ancient yew, variously estimated to be more than a millennium old. The vicar was active in restoring the famous turf-carving - the “Wilmington Giant,” on the Downs. Many believed it to be some sort of fertility totem. The Rev and Rose Dearsley had no children. Hers, anyway.

Jenny was 20, a wheelwright’s daughter, who'd been with the Dearsleys for five years. She was a special favourite of the vicar who often tried to steal kisses in the pantry. “Please, Vicar, I have my work to do,” Jenny pleaded. In September, 1890, according to Jenny’s recollection, the Rev. Dearsley came uninvited into her bedroom. The result of this "improper intimacy" was the talk of the village the next April.

Rev. Dearsley flatly denied that he was the father of the unborn child. Despite Mrs. Dearsley’s quoted outburst, she stood by her husband. They let Jenny go, of course, but gave her 30s for her confinement. Mrs. Dearsley supposedly said, if it was up to her, she would have rather shot her! Jenny gave birth to a healthy boy on 20 June 1891.

The village gossip continued. Jenny wrote directly to the vicar: "You know how I used to tell you of going in the pantry & chattering and kissing me, but it was no good, you would do it.  I did not think you were so hard-hearted as what you must be not to have wrote or done anything for me after bringing me to ruin and disgrace." In August, the scandal had become so open that Dearsley was ordered to attend the Sussex magistrate’s court. The case of “A Vicar and His Housemaid” filled columns of newspapers across Britain. "It is wonderful the interest that is taken in the peccadilloes and sins of “the cloth."

Mr. Gill, a London criminal barrister, painted a picture of seduction. Little kisses followed by “letters of the most extraordinary familiarity.” As a witness, Jenny detailed it all. She resisted her employer at first, but, in the end, she surrendered to him willingly. There was no force. She didn't cry out. She didn't tell Mrs Dearsley. When she eventually confronted the clergyman, he replied strangely, “I am not prepared to confess to such a charge.” 

Henry Dickens, son of the great novelist, represented the Rev. Dearsley. The vicar was a largish man, heavy-set. He swore that he was not the father of Jenny’s son; in fact, he had never been intimate with her. In the box, he admitted a previous servant (Sarah Mepham) had left Wilmington in a family way but she “freely" signed a letter stating that the vicar was not the father of her child. As for Jenny, Dearsley admitted his fondness for her. He did playfully beg her for kisses. He wrote some silly letters - not love letters. Dearsley listened while the prosecutor read from those letters; they certainly sounded like love letters. He admitted he gave Jenny 30s but only to help her family. He'd also given Jenny’s father 20s. The vicar denied telling Jenny's father to "go to London" where such matters can be “taken care of.”

As a witness, Mrs. Dearsley said she knew all about the kisses and the silly letters. Foolishness but there was just too much gossip in Wilmington. She broke down while being questioned, crying, "This is too much. I cannot stand it. I will do anything for my husband."

In cases like this, the defense will always try to find another possible father and Robert Butcher, the son of a Hailsham publican, was brought into the frame. Dearsley had no use for the lad and told him to stay away from the vicarage but he knew that Jenny and Robert frequently went "romping on the Downs together." Robert was called as a hostile witness. He had known Jenny for many years. He'd walked out with her, etc, even proposed to her. They were seen about Hailsham during the time frame in which he could have been the father. But he denied everything. 

The Dearsleys claimed the entire prosecution was plotted and paid for by Robert Lambe, a wealthy parishioner. Generations of Lambes had been powerful landowners on the Downs. Relations between the vicarage and the Lambes were obviously not cordial. Lambe did not deny it. The prosecutor admitted that Lambe was paying the bills, because “He wants to get this man (pausing – for dramatic purposes - to point to the vicar) out of the parish.” 

The magistrates needed only a few minutes before unanimously deciding the Rev. Dearsley was the father of Jenny Levett’s son.  The vicar was ordered to pay all her court costs, confinement expenses and pay child support of 5s per week until the lad turns 16. (The vicar dropped a planned appeal and settled with Jenny for a lump sum.) There were cheers in court and jeers in the streets following the verdict. Rev. Dearsley resigned as vicar and left Wilmington. He lived in Bosham for some time as “a clergyman without cure of souls.” In 1900, he resurfaced as chaplain at a church in the tiny Cambridgeshire village of Reach where he remained until his death in 1913.

For full-length stories of Clerical Errors, please visit here.

A "Midnight Spree" at the Vicarage

For centuries, the crocketed pinnacles of the tower of St. Goran's church, though a mile in from the sea, have been one of the landmarks to mariners sailing the often stormy waters of south Cornwall. In 1862, the Rev. David Jenkins had been vicar in the remote parish for nearly forty years. His vicarage was at Polgorran House, a fine home built of slatestone rubble and a short distance from the church. The main rooms overlooked a large garden. In the rear of the house, connected by a hallway, was the servants' cottage. On a Cornish night in early May 1862, the Rev. Mr. Jenkins said the evening prayers for the household, that is, his daughter and their two female servants. At ten o'clock, he locked up for the night. 

The vicar had been recently troubled by noises. Before midnight, he heard them again. Grabbing his (unloaded) gun, the vicar sent his daughter to the village. She soon returned with five stout men. Meanwhile, Jenkins had traced the noises to the bedroom shared by the servants. From the lawn outside, the vicar demanded the door be opened, threatening to shoot anyone who came out the window. There were the sounds of a mad scramble within. When the door was finally opened and all the occupants accounted for, there were six people in the room: the two servants, including Caroline Solomon, the cook, the village schoolmistress and three local men: James Huxtable, Mr. Gully's butler, Sam Kerkin, the grocer and George Colenso, a local constable, no less. Quite a party had been going on, apparently. The vicar was furious to find what were called "the fragments of an entertainment," including the remains of two pasties (made of pork and eggs), a piece of pork, bread and butter, part of a rhubarb tart, cups and saucers, a tea canister, cream and milk and a teapot warming on the fire. 

The Rev Mr Jenkins sacked his servants on the spot but opted to press charges against the three men under the Vagrant Act. At the petty sessions in St. Austell, the men were tried for entering the vicarage for an unlawful purpose, i.e., feloniously converting the vicar's property (the food, cutlery and crockery) to their use. They were all found guilty and given a month's hard labour at Bodmin gaol. 

The little tale of the "Midnight Spree at the Vicarage" aroused considerable interest, far beyond Cornwall. Many felt the punishment was overly harsh. The verdict was stayed while the case was appealed. It took most of a year before Kerkin et al v Jenkins was heard in London before the Lord Chief Justice and a panel of High Court judges.

This minor fracas in a distant village presented an interesting and important domestic issue. Not for nothing were servants warned that "no followers" were allowed below stairs. The vicar's cook certainly had no right to sanction this private supper party from her master's larder. While that was plainly true, the court was reminded that the cook had been fired. The men were going to prison. The counsel for the threesome argued that their intent on going to the vicarage that night had simply been a romantic one: they went a-wooing their lady friends. Surely it was improper for them to be there but they had not gone to the vicarage with any felonious intent - the snack board that had been put out for them by their hostesses was only "incidental to their lovemaking." 

The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, himself a "notorious ladies man," seemed to enjoy the argument. He said if it was a crime for a lady to invite a policeman in for a piece of cold meat and a cuppa, English magistrates would be kept quite busy. In the end, the Lord Chief convinced his colleagues, amid some grumbling, to quash the convictions. [Constable Colenso was actually promoted to Sergeant in the Cornish Constabulary.]

The Rev. Mr. Jenkins remained vicar of St. Goran's until his lamented death in 1869.

Clerical Errors - A Victorian Series Vol. 2 is available here.

"The Love Trials of a London Curate"

On 30 May 1878, an announcement appeared in the Births column of the London Standard: 

DUCHESNE— May 24, at the house of the Rev. G. Vasey, 47, Highbury Park, Mrs. Robert Duchesne, of Highbury-hill, of twins, baptised George and Robert.

The clergyman mentioned was the Rev. George Vasey, curate of St. Saviour’s, Highbury. He had had enough. This had to stop.

The 32-year old curate had been in the North London parish since 1873. In addition to his church work, assisting Canon Moore, Vasey had started a private prep school for boys which had achieved some excellent results. He had been assisted financially by Robert Duchesne, a merchant grocer in the City. Mrs. Mary Duchesne and her daughter, Florence, had been helpful in other ways, fitting out the school with linens, crockery and the like. The previous December, the Rev. Mr. Vasey and 20-year old Florence Duchesne were married at Christ Church, Highbury.

It was a well-known fact that a young bachelor curate would always be “a considerable attraction to the young ladies of the neighbourhood.” Upon word of his engagement, the Rev. Vasey received a visit from Miss Maud Cooper. Maud insisted that the curate had previously pledged himself to her sister, Lucy, who was understandably heartsick. Vasey denied any such courtship and, certainly, Lucy's feelings were not reciprocated. Anonymous letters began arriving around Highbury a short time later. 

These “abominable libels,” not only targeted the clergyman but also his new mother-in-law, Mrs. Mary Duchesne. “Your wife is still going on in her old habits,” read a note sent to Mr. Duchesne. The sender threatened Duchesne: put a stop to it or “you will be hissed in the streets.” One of the teachers at the school received a letter asking why she would work at an institution where such “shameful conduct” was allowed. The writer accused Mrs. Duchesne of “walking out” with Mr. Vasey whenever her husband was away. Canon Moore, the patron of the parish, of course, would get a letter. Why had he not put a stop to this “grievous scandal?” No man was safe with Mrs. Duchesne whose house was known as “the bad house on Highbury Hill.” After services one Sunday, Lucy Cooper actually confronted Mrs. Duchesne and asked, "Aren't these scandals terrible?" Then came the "twins" announcement in The Standard.

The merged cases of Duchesne v. Cooper and Vasey v. Cooper took place at the Law Courts in May 1879. The plaintiffs asserted that the sisters Cooper, spinsters in their 30’s, were behind all of it. Vasey testified that he only met the Cooper ladies through his church work. He had no relationship of any kind with Lucy Cooper. Both Mr. Vasey and Mrs. Duchesne testified before Judge Sir Henry Hawkins, denying any improprieties had occurred between them. Vasey presented to the court one signed letter in which Lucy berated him and declared that she never wanted to see him again. Charles Chabot, London’s go-to man for handwriting analysis, was examined. He had compared the anonymous letters with Lucy's letter and other items written by the sisters, he concluded that the offending letters were mainly in the hand of Miss Lucy, but some had been written by Miss Maud Cooper.

The attorney for the sisters Cooper assured the court his clients did not write the letters, moreover, they wished to make clear for the record that they absolutely repudiated the improper and immoral imputations contained therein. Lucy and Maud each took the stand to deny sending any of these offensive notes. In fact, each sister claimed to have receive similar offensive letters.  

Two days into the trial, Judge Hawkins met with lawyers for each side. He clearly felt the Cooper ladies were guilty. He was sure the jury would agree with him. To allow the case to go to the jury for a verdict would expose the sisters to perjury charges and no one wanted that. The evidence had fully contradicted the abominable imputations against Rev. Vasey and Mrs. Duchesne, which was why they came to court in the first place. Let's leave it at that, Hawkins suggested. The case was allowed to end without a verdict. A kindly outcome managed by the judge they called "Hangin' Hawkins."

The Rev. and Mrs. Vasey, with their growing family, remained in Highbury for several more years. Their in-laws (eventually) moved to Essex.

St. Saviour's is now an art studio. It is a listed building, remembered as being once the subject of a Betjeman poem, the "great red church of my parents."

  

Revolting Cruelty to Children

Ruyton of the XI Towns is one of the more curious names in an English gazetteer. It is a cluster of Shropshire villages that a young doctor named Arthur Conan Doyle once described as "not big enough to make one town, far less eleven." In 1893, the Rev. William Backhouse Gowan became the new vicar of the ancient red stone church of St. John the Baptist. With his wife, Isabella, and their four children, he settled in to the large vicarage over the road. 

Almost immediately, owing to the sequential death of the vicar's sister and her husband, Rev. Gowan agreed to take in their two daughters, Charlotte and Beatrice Harris. Their father left the vicar £650 to house and school the Harris girls. According to all reports, the arrangement began well; the cousins all got on nicely. 

It should be said that Mr. Gowan's tenure in Ruyton had not been trouble-free. He clashed with a local grandee. On another memorable Sunday, police had to be called to Ruyton church when Gowan tried to fire the incumbent organist and replace him with his son. It did not go well. But few could have anticipated the sensation when Mr. and Mrs. Gowan were charged by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) with cruelly treating their two adopted nieces. 

In the fall of 1898, the Gowans were tried in Shrewsbury at the Quarter Sessions. The NSPCC's Inspector George Luff testified that when he showed up at the vicarage, Mr. Gowan tried to block his entry. But Luff insisted and made his way inside, only to find Mrs. Gowan furiously scrubbing two naked girls. The girl's clothing, piled up nearby, was taken away. Shown in court - "dirty, black, and ragged" - this created a great sensation. Charlotte May, 12, and 8 year old Beatrice had been examined by doctors. They found Beatrice's hair was thick with lice and other vermin. Her uncut toenails resembled claws. Charlotte was in slightly better condition, but her hands were red and swollen, "extraordinary hands for a child." 

According to Inspector Luff, it was the systematic habit of Mrs. Gowan to beat these children "with practically any instrument that came to hand." Charlotte told the court that Mrs. Gowan hit her with a frying pan, a cane, a bread-board, a whip, a broom-handle and more. The two girls were questioned closely. Charlotte, the elder, said that she and Beatrice were given all the drudgery chores. They had to be up at 5:30 to make breakfast for the Gowans. If anything was amiss, the Harris girls would get no breakfast. Food was regularly used to discipline the girls; Charlotte once went hungry for 29 hours. When Beatrice was caught eating a potato meant for the pigs, she was beaten and kicked by Mr. Gowan. Several former Gowan servants: a housemaid, groom and governess, supported the girls' horrific stories.

The Gowans needed a daily police escort to get through the hissing and hooting crowds drawn for the three day session. Inside, the vicar assured the court that discipline was only used when required. Alas, he stated, these two recalcitrant girls had not been properly raised. They were habitual liars, had filthy habits, especially at the dinner table (thus they ate with servants) and they were thieves who would eat every "dainty" in the larder they got their hands on. Mrs. Gowan admitted she sometimes kept the children without food as a punishment but never for 29 hours, a "pure invention." She never hit the girls with a pan, but admitted to using a wooden cane when required. She blamed this overblown story on their village enemies, and vengeful discharged servants.

In the closing arguments, the NSPCC described the Harris girls' existence as a "hell on earth." The Gowans' counsel conceded that Mrs. Gowan may have been "stronger than necessary" in her discipline, but consider her provocation. As for Mr. Gowan, the jurors were told that the evidence against the vicar was very slender. However, the Shropshire jury took only twenty minutes to return with two guilty verdicts. The Sessions Chairman denounced the Gowans; their position and education made the offence more heinous than otherwise. He sentenced each to four months' imprisonment, "with such hard labour as they could do." The outcome was cheered "by the many thousands of people congregated outside the court."

The Harris girls were handed over to Benjamin Waugh, founder of the NSPCC, who was hopeful that other relatives might come forward to take charge of them. [Thanks to Phil Poole with the Shropshire Family History Society for the following: After their ordeal with the Gowans and the trial, the Harris girls were placed with St. Scholastica's, a small "Anglo-Catholic" school for girls in Oxford. Phil believes Charlotte lived to be more than 100 years old; Beatrice would later be a nurse in London but has been harder to trace.]

As for the Rev. Gowan, the Bishop of Shrewsbury quickly stripped him of the Ruyton vicarage. Gowan certainly couldn't go back to a village where people were calling him "an incarnate devil." After serving his sentence, Gowan found clerical employment rather quickly in the Diocese of London. He was a curate in Bromley-by-Bow and then later in Bethnal Green, living well in to the 20th Century. Isabella Gowan died in 1903.

Full length accounts of such Victorian scandals can be found in Clerical Errors - A Victorian Series, Volume 2.

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.