the scottish episcopal church

A New History, by gavin white

Preface

1
Tullochgorum

2
Eighteenth Century

3
Seabury

4
Worship

5
Edinburgh

6
Oxford Movement

7
Glasgow

8
Publications

9
Church or Province

10
'English Episcopal'

11
Schools

12
Social Service

13
Synods and Councils

14
Clergy Training

15
A Small Dog Barking

16
As Others See Us

17
Women

18
Society

19
Second World War and After

Selected bibliography

Links

"I am visiting constantly in St. Peter's district, walking about, going up and down dark and dirty stairs, seeing the conditions under which so many live. I confess a large impatience and a vast discontent at the apparent feebleness and helplessness of organised Christianity in the face of these intolerable conditions of housing and child life. We ask you to rejoice that at Christmas or Easter we had more communions than last year or the year before. I confess to you that this progress, if progress it be, leaves me entirely cold. I do care with my whole heart that the filth and squalor that I see day by day should be taken for granted by the Christian conscience in this great city of Glasgow." So wrote Canon Aitchison of St. Peter's, Glasgow, the chapel for the poor down the road from St. Mary's Cathedral, in 1930. (1)

How did Episcopalians, who looked on the working classes as a threat, come to have such a developed set of institutions to assist the unfortunate ? The answer must be tentative, but it was partly the belief that the poor and the workers were distinct groups, and if the workers were a threat, the poor were largely loyal and grateful to the upper classes who cared for them. Though, as Canon Aitchison noted, aiding the unfortunate was not at the top of everyone's agenda. Most Episcopalians lived where they knew little of poverty, and their reaction to it was feeble. But enough were involved to produce caring programmes, and if these were weak and underfunded, they still did good work.

The most notable work was Aberlour, the great Episcopalian orphanage on Speyside. It began with Canon Charles Jupp, born in Sussex of humble parentage, trained as a teacher in Church of England schools, then ordained after studies at Lincoln, and for six years curate in north of England mining parishes where he was horrified by the suffering of orphans. His health failed, and he went to Scotland to become chaplain to a lady who intended to build a church and school, but who died before this could be done. Yet not before starting Jupp on his work with orphans. From 1875 until his death in 1911, at the age of 81, Jupp laboured to raise money for orphans, and by the end he had five hundred. Originally they had been Episcopalian children, with life centred on a church dedicated to St. Margaret, but it was impossible to make distinctions and they soon began to serve all in need. Normally they took children aged five or more, but they usually had twenty younger ones. Daily life was relaxed and humane, and, as was noted in 1929, "Girls go to service and boys for any work for which they are suited. And every spring a few boys go to Canada...". On Jupp's death, when he was replaced by Canon Jenks who stayed until 1928, 11,000 was raised to pay for new buildings, and the yearly cost of operations through the early years of this century was about 13,000. (2)

From 1928 until 1958 the warden was Canon C.A.E.Wolfe, a legend in his own day, and placement of the orphans became more difficult as boys were no longer wanted for the farms of Speyside. Trained girls were always welcome in domestic service, and boys were prepared for domestic service and, from the 1930s, as tradesmen in the army and navy. Episcopalians took great pride in Aberlour; when it was proposed to admit local children to the school in 1934, to keep up the numbers, there was fear that the endowment for orphans might be used for others and Aberlour become "a middle-class academy", as had happened to so many local grammar schools in England in the previous century. There were 846 objectors to a new constitution, though this partly reflected traditional Episcopalian suspicion of state education. In fact only two of thirteen teachers were Episcopalian at this time, and the school had been turned over to government in 1918, so a purely church project had already become something of a national institution. After a fire in 1938 a replacement new wing was planned, and, "Part of the building will be the Neville Chamberlain Peace Thank-Offering Wing", in the wake of apparent success in averting war at Munich, but some Episcopalians were not convinced that Chamberlain had really brought peace, and others protested that the building should not be named for him as he was Unitarian ! (3)

In 1967 the buildings were sold and the remaining children transferred to small "Aberlour Homes" throughout Scotland, according to newer ways of caring, and eventually these gave way to the Aberlour Child Care Trust. Orphanages have a bad name to-day, and some were pretty awful, but they were mostly better than living in the streets. And Aberlour was clearly as happy as such a place could be; visits by adults who had spent their childhood there are the best indication of this. And even to-day, when only the clock-tower and church remain of the elaborate buildings at Aberlour, elderly people from all over Britain arrange to be buried at Aberlour where they spent their childhood years. But what happened to the boys who went to Canada ? They probably fared better than the average orphan sent to Canada to work on a farm, since there was a church involvement to oversee things at the other end, but to encourage them with tales of the success of the Scottish migrants who became a millionaire elite in Canada was misleading. The millionaires did not begin as farm-boys. (4)

Then there was rescue work amongst girls. This began as the "rescue" of girls actually on the streets, and then became "preventive", to stop girls going on the streets. Eventually it seems to have provided homes and a way ahead for girls in any sort of trouble. St. Andrew's Home in Edinburgh began in 1858 with a small house for "fallen women", known as the "House of Mercy", then moved under the influence of the Rev. Daniel Sandford of St. John's, Princes Street, to a larger house, apparently Meadowside House, in Lauriston Lane. In 1862 this became part of the Sick Children's Hospital, and another house, Greenside House, was leased, while the Lady Superintendent formed the Community of St. Andrew. Then the home was placed under diocesan control, with twenty five "penitents", and a school for a hundred children from the Old Town. In 1884 a house was purchased at Joppa, the mission work having already spun off to become St. Michael's. There were various crises, such as a fire which destroyed the house in 1906, and in 1919 the Community of St. Andrew became contemplative and withdrew in favour of the Community of St. Peter from Horbury, while by this time "rescue" had given way to "prevention". (5)

We are told that by 1939 there were forty girls who "loved the place", and at functions and "parties held during the year you will always find a large percentage of 'old girls' present." Much of the cost was borne by running a laundry in which the girls worked, though they also attended night classes to further their education, but it was constantly asserted that the girls were not over-worked and were happy. If they were not all happy, at least the aim was that they should be happy. And the ladies who ran the place had no pattern on which to run it except the girls' boarding schools they had attended themselves, which led to a rather odd terminology but a humane regime. On average a girl would stay for two years, and the place was marked by the long chaplaincy of Canon Laurie from Old St.Paul's. He seems to have had a special gift for giving teenage girls a greater sense of their own value. By the 1940s the girls were being sent to Joppa by welfare and probation officers from all over Britain; some were Church of England and some nominal Protestants. Those with a Presbyterian connection were cared for by a Church of Scotland chaplain. Some were first offenders in cases of petty pilfering, some were out of control at home, some were escaping a bad home life, and, "The girls are not exploited, they work steadily and play heartily, and look well and happy." But perhaps the best evidence of what went on was an appeal in 1948 for kilts so that the girls could compete in Scottish Country Dancing. (6)

Yet the original programmes in such homes were more draconian. Viviene Cree has written of the National Vigilance Association in Edinburgh, which became the Guild of Service, and finally Family Care. And, in her account, "Rescue work was built on the principle of religious teaching, solitary confinement, and hard labour, usually in the form of laundry work." The NVA home in Edinburgh, Claremont Park, made similar claims of happy girls returning to tea-parties, but some ran away, "resistance to the regime was growing", and after the Second World War girls were so reluctant to go there that it had to be closed and re-opened on totally new lines. And lest this be considered irrelevant to Episcopal homes, Canon Laurie was on the NVA committee from its first meeting in 1911, and was chairman for the last twelve years of his life. Finally, Family Care began negotiations to unite with Aberlour, though this fell through. But the middle-class ladies of this organisation who patrolled railway stations to protect girls, until policewomen were appointed to this work in 1946, were only one of many social services of that day. (7)

But as well as Joppa there was St.Ronan's Home at Dundee, and there was also "Miss Wilkinson's rescue work in Perth". St.Ronan's had 64 girls living there in 1930, of whom twenty were maternity cases, the maternity work being concentrated at Dundee. The matron since 1925 was Miss Ethel Smith-Shand, but she went south to become superior of the Order of the Divine Compassion. By 1942 St.Ronan's was being run by Miss Catherine Luce and Dr. Janet Murray, both veterans of missionary service in Africa. "The fees are being put up to a higher scale with provision for reducing them for needy cases", which sounds more like a finishing school in Switzerland than a rescue home in Dundee, but by then most fees would have come from the social services. (8)

But despite the change of emphasis from rescue to prevention, as late as 1927 Canon Laurie and Provost Don of Dundee were able to assert that "real rescue work among girls was being attempted and successfully accomplished." Yet Laurie was concerned that "the real crux of the rescue work movement lay with the men much more than it did with the women", and in 1931 a Major Haverfield was taken on as "Male Moral Welfare Worker". When he resigned in 1938, Malcolm MacColl opposed a replacement on the grounds that only Canon Laurie had ever wanted such an appointment in the first place. Laurie had been going to raise the money but had failed to do so, and it had fallen on the Social Service Board of the church to pay the cost, and nobody now supported the idea. Major Haverfield was not replaced, but this was partly because they could find nobody for the post, which raises the question of just what Major Haverfield did. There is just a hint that it had something to do with birth control. Canon Laurie was even more opposed to contraception than most people of his era, seeing it as a threat to morals since "they could have all the entertainment without the risks and responsibilities." (9)

There were smaller rescue homes in other dioceses. When Bishop Deane was provost of St. Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow he was the prime mover in starting St. Mary's Home, and when he went to Aberdeen he was largely responsible for St.Clair's Home, founded in 1924 with room for eighteen girls. And there probably were others of which no record remains. (10)

A quite different work, and one which is not easily classified, was St. Margaret's Library. This opened at Edinburgh in 1912, first on Ann Street and later on Leamington Terrace, as a counter to the Theosophical Society, which was then taken very seriously. It provided books, papers, lectures and discussions. Some of the lectures were rather daring; in 1929 a lecture on the Virgin Birth began with the statement that, "The Virgin Birth is an essential fact of the Catholic Faith; though it was no part of the primitive Gospel." But having once opened up a vital subject the lecturer then had cold feet, or got in a muddle, and developed an unlikely theory of personal contact and transmission of information between John, Paul, Mark, and various others. (11)

Of course there were innumerable works begun locally, pursued while the need continued, or while support continued, and then abandoned. At one time there seems to have been support for co-operatives in Edinburgh, and there was a shadowy connection with the St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society, while in the 1920s there was a certain enthusiasm for Medieval Trade Guilds, a spill-over from the Roman Catholic corporatism of the day. There was concern for the welfare of tinkers, who were not very popular in Scotland as a whole, and a home for wayfarers was run by Franciscans in Dunfermline. As far back as 1851 St. Mary's, Glasgow, began a provident fund with a minimum weekly deposit of threepence; in each December this was returned with twenty per cent interest "in orders for coal and clothing", though one third of the amount could be in actual money. This ran successfully for many years, though it became more sophisticated with time. And there were many others; as late as 1946, when there were innumerable savings banks in operation, the congregation of St. David's, Pollokshaws, a poor mission of St. Margaret's, Newlands, began a bank "open to all those who have sufficient character and determination to save rather than fritter away their small money." At the other end of the scale was St. Ebbe's Hostel for female university students in Edinburgh, begun in 1920, on the principle that students needed Episcopal teaching and a religious ethos. It closed in 1929 as it was too small to be self-sustaining and there were other "excellent hostels for women students", even if not Episcopalian. And yet the main contribution of Episcopalians to society were probably through the regular schools and hospitals and social agencies in which they worked. The death of Rebecca Strong, the former matron of Glasgow Royal Infirmary, at the age of one hundred, brought back tales of her battles against the medical establishment, including what was virtually a strike, and she was as much an Episcopalian as any bishop. (12)

Yet for all this good work, and it was good work, Episcopalians were only doing a small part of what was done, and as the years went by they were increasingly out of touch with most of the population and unaware of their ways of thought. In 1942 a discussion on how the church should teach the youth of the nation was brought down to earth by the Rev. Kenneth Strachan, of St. Margaret's, Aberdeen. He said that most young people were entirely cut off from the church, and so they were. But to a great extent they always had been. (13)