Harold Davidson

Harold Davidson

Harold Francis Davidson (14 July 1875 – 30 July 1937), sometimes known as the "Prostitutes' Padre", was a Church of England priest, often referred to as the "Rector of Stiffkey". In 1932 he was defrocked on charges of immorality. He died after he was attacked by a lion in a cage.

Background

Davidson came from a clerical family and could count 27 clergy relatives including an Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson. His father, the Reverend Francis Davidson, came from a wealthy Birmingham family but poured his money into building the new parish of St Mary's in Sholing, Southampton to which he had been appointed in 1866 and also on his wife who was severely ill all her life. There was little left to finance his son's studies. Davidson was educated at the Banister Court School in Southampton and the Whitgift School in Croydon, moving there to live with his maternal aunts and grandmother.

During his years at Whitgift he formed a small group of amateur actors with other boys and they would organise fundraising events for his father's parish and, later, for other churches in the Southampton area. When Davidson left Whitgift in 1894 he and his friends decided to spend their pre-university gap year becoming professional entertainers. They toured the provinces and were invited to appear at the Steinway Hall in London in 1895.

Student days

Davidson's father wanted him to join the priesthood, and he enlisted the help of influential friends to push his son towards that calling. Davidson had intended being ordained but had undergone a crisis of conscience due to church opposition to the work of the Toynbee Hall Mission in the East End of London. After three years he realised the stage was not a very conscientious way of life for him and, having saved enough to begin studies, he entered Exeter College, Oxford.

Davidson was allowed to continue his stage career while he studied Theology. However, due to his absences and exam failure, Exeter required him to leave in 1901. Davidson obtained a place at Grindle's Hall instead, where he obtained a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in the normal five-year span, though half of his time was spent away from college.

He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Reginald Kennedy-Cox who would later found the Dockland Settlement in the East End. They used to arrange gatherings of artists for Sunday teas in Kennedy-Cox's rooms and at one of these Davidson met his future wife. He stood out in debates and his views on church reform caught the eye of the Bishop of Stepney, Arthur Winnington-Ingram who later became Bishop of London and was to remain one of Davidson's supporters at the trial and until Davidson's death. He also became president of the Oxford University Chess Club, organising tours against other universities and representing Oxford in the annual chess matches against Cambridge in 1901, 1902 and 1903.

Ordination

In May 1903 he had his last professional stage employment and on 21 September 1903 he was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. His first curacy was at the Guards Chapel (Holy Trinity) at Windsor and then from August 1905 he was a curate of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Davidson's appointment as Rector of Stiffkey St John with Stiffkey St Mary and Morston was announced in July 1906. Stiffkey and Morston are rural parishes on the north coast of Norfolk. In October 1906 after a six-year engagement, he married Moyra ('Molly') Saurin.

He was popular in his Norfolk parishes where he was the only resident landowner; Marquess Townshend who owned all the land other than the glebe lived in London and rarely came up to his estates in Norfolk. The rector looked after the villagers' needs, whether they went to his church or not. He visited everyone each week and he did special tours at Michaelmas to ensure they all had enough to pay their rents; he would pay the money due if they didn't. His diminutive stature (he was 5'3") led his parishioners to nickname him 'Little Jim'.

He maintained his connections with the theatrical world and kept up with theatre friends all his life. He was the first chaplain of the Actors' Church Union of Central London while he was still at St Martin-in-the-Fields until 1918. At the request of a school friend, Maundy Gregory, he invested in a disastrous revival of the comic opera Dorothy at the Waldorf Theatre in 1909.

He served as a Royal Navy chaplain from 1916-20. When he returned, his wife Molly was pregnant by another man. He accepted a post as tutor to the Maharaja of Jaipur's son for a year and proposed taking his children to India with him. Davidson contracted someone to take on Stiffkey while he was away but his wife then decided she wanted to keep the family together, and the rector's permission to go was cancelled. However, since he had already contracted someone to take over his parish, he remained in London for that year with the family till they could all return to his parish.

When they returned to Stiffkey in 1921, he continued his trips down to London to save young women from prostitution. He would approach girls in the streets and claimed to have saved many from a life of vice by helping them find jobs, particularly in the theatre.

Financial difficulties

Davidson first hit the headlines in 1925 when he fell into debt. Stiffkey and Morston had been sold by the Marquess in 1911 and the two new landowners refused to pay the tithes, forcing the rector into debt. He was prosecuted for not paying poor rates of £39 11s 1d on the tithes paid to the church. The local Justices of the Peace ordered him committed to jail and Davidson was unable to find the £100 sureties to keep himself on bail pending an appeal because, he said, locals "were afraid of offending certain persons with whom I have got into difficulties through taking a strong line of action". Davidson won a temporary order from the High Court to prohibit his arrest.

The High Court ruled that he should not have been asked to pay rates on church property when he had not received the tithes to pay them with. Many clergy suffered the same difficulty at the time due to an overhaul of the tithe system to placate landowners who objected to paying them. The rector still retained some of his after the changes and he was allowed to declare bankruptcy as an alternative to jail. The terms of the settlement obliged him to pay a large part of the income of the rectory to his creditors. All his income went through trustees from that time and what wasn't paid to creditors went directly to his wife. Hence it seems improbable that he could have spent it on girls in London, as was later claimed at his trial. His money in London came from other bona fide charity sources for which he had to make account.

Investigations begin

In 1930, Davidson missed the Remembrance Day service. Major Philip Hamond, one of the landowners of Morston, who had disliked Davidson since he refused to allow him to be churchwarden in 1919 and had had several further altercations with him since, was furious and accused Davidson of insulting the war dead.

Hamond discovered, through a clergy relative, that if Davidson was accused of immorality the church would have to investigate. A complaint was made to Henry Dashwood, solicitor to the Church of England and adviser to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. It is not certain if this was done by the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Bertram Pollock or by Hamond through a relative who was a rural dean. There are no letters of complaint from the bishop to Dashwood at any time. Later letters confirm that nobody in the bishop's office was aware that he was under investigation until they received a notification of his impending trial a year later. The investigation was directed by Dashwood from London. He visited Hamond in early January 1931 and also met the churchwarden of Stiffkey who told him the rector was the best priest they ever had and warned Dashwood that he would find no one to say a bad word against him.

Dashwood then began investigating Davidson's activities in London and he hired the Arrows Detective Agency to follow the rector. Again the private detectives uncovered little; of the 40 girls they interviewed only one would say anything against him and then only when drunk (she recanted when sober).

Almost a year had gone by and a lot of money had been spent without result. Dashwood was under pressure and was being threatened with the Bar Council for the way he was conducting the investigation, threatening and mistreating the girl whom they got drunk and who was so traumatised that she tried to commit suicide. In December 1931, Dashwood attempted to get the rector to sign an open confession to immorality while denying him access to the bishop and the right to know of what he was being accused. The rector refused and immediately offered his resignation to the bishop in return for a church investigation into any accusations against him; his life was an open book he wrote; all the bishop had to do was ask. His family's advice was recorded and sent in to the bishop as well and remains in the archive. He offered to step down if his parishioners wanted him to and they refused.

In a final meeting with the bishop he tried once more to offer to resign in return for a church investigation. He claimed that it would do the church harm to allow the case to come to court. The bishop replied he was entirely in Dashwood's hands and the rector should sign the confession or go to trial. The rector asked how he could possibly sign a confession to charges his bishop couldn't even remember; if that was the choice then he could only choose trial.

Charges under the Clergy Discipline Act 1892 were served on the rector on 20 January 1932, with a Consistory Court trial date set for 1 February. The rector barely had 10 days to find himself a defence team and no money to do it with.

Dashwood sent detectives to serve sub poenas on everyone the rector knew. At the last moment his bishop changed his mind and agreed to accept his resignation rather than a trial but Dashwood released charges to one London newspaper to ensure the bishop could not withdraw. The newspapers were able to write stories that conveyed the impression of guilt.

Davidson later requested a trial in camera so he could present a defence. It was denied him. He never gave interviews to the press even after the trial but he did write a series of articles himself for the Empire News called "Why I am fighting" when the paper offered to defend him. It was quite usual for the media to come in when a defendant in a major trial had no money and offer to pay for his defence in return for exclusive access. In the rector's case a top counsel was retained, but the prosecution successfully sued for contempt of court so the paper and its counsel were obliged to withdraw. He finally got a Jewish defence team which offended the judge who considered a consistory court to be a court of Christian morals.

When the Daily Herald published its story it was fined £50 for contempt of court. The Empire News, to which Davidson had given a series of articles, was fined £100. Davidson was cleared of contempt.

Church disciplinary trial

Davidson's trial began on 29 March 1932 at Church House, Westminster, before the chancellor of the diocese of Norwich. This was a church disciplinary trial, not a criminal prosecution, but it was a public sensation. Gwendoline Harris (known as Barbara Harris) who was 16 years old when she first met Davidson, claimed the rector had posed as her uncle and paid her rent, later arranging for her to live at his London home in Macfarlane Road, Shepherd's Bush. Harris claimed the reason Davidson had missed his train on Remembrance Day was that he was "trying to kiss me all the time". Evidence in the form of letters between them support the rector's claim that he never disguised the fact that he was a priest.

His defence was that his work in London had been authorised by his bishop, and that only Harris had actually given evidence of immorality, she having been paid by the prosecution. He admitted to trying to help up to 1,000 girls with advice and sometimes money (one woman, Rose Ellis, had her treatment for syphilis paid for by Davidson). He had connections with the film industry and could get girls claiming to be actresses parts as extras. The rector's family including his daughter Patricia gave evidence that some of the girls mentioned in evidence had visited the family at Stiffkey and that neither she nor her mother had objected. The hearing lasted 26 days and attracted large crowds.

The prosecution produced a photograph of Davidson standing talking to a 15-year-old girl who had her back to the camera; she was wearing a black shawl but was naked underneath. Davidson claimed he had been set up and that he had been offered money for posing with two of his acquaintances in the hope that the publicity would be helpful to his case. The photograph was never examined for authenticity and neither he nor the girl knew how it had been taken. However, the photographs showed a white line down the centre of them which could indicate that they were faked as he claimed.

On 8 July Davidson was convicted on all five charges. The chancellor of the diocese said that Davidson's evidence was "a tissue of reckless, deliberate falsehoods".

After Davidson had exhausted his appeals, he was defrocked at Norwich Cathedral on 21 October 1932.

A final appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury failed. Davidson tried to speak at a meeting of the Church Assembly in 1936 but was told by the archbishop that he had no right to speak.

Aftermath

A letter written by Davidson to Lady Weigall on 1 January 1937, apparently asking for money, in which he offers his own comment on his case and his recent arrest at Victoria Station. Lady Weigall contacted the police.

With the loss of his clerical income, he went back to public entertainment, even before he had exhausted appeals. In September 1932 his appearance fasting in a barrel at Blackpool was advertised. The massed crowds at his exhibition caused an obstruction and the police arrested the promoter Luke Gannon for causing it, and Davidson for aiding and abetting him. Both had to give undertakings "that the barrel business with Mr Davidson will cease"; they were fined 40s. each.

However, Davidson's contact with the law was not entirely as the defendant; after his last service at Stiffkey he was assaulted by Major Philip Hamond, churchwarden at Morston and the man who had initiated the original complaint against Davidson. Davidson had called at Hamond's house, apparently to ask for a church key, but Hamond did not wish to speak to him and told him "Clear out, or I'll kick you out!". Hamond then kicked the Rector off the step, stating at the Magistrates' court that it was "a kick of finality and contempt". Hamond also kicked a companion of Davidson's, Clinton Gray-Fisk. He was convicted of two counts of assault and fined 20 shillings on each plus the court costs. Local legend states that Hamond received many letters from sympathisers paying part of his fine, and that one enclosed a packet of hobnails with a request that he put those into the soles of his boots for next time.

Davidson then went to Blackpool to live off his notoriety. He would appear either in a barrel or being apparently roasted in an oven while a figure dressed as a devil prodded him with a pitchfork. In August 1935 he was summonsed again, this time by Blackpool Corporation, for attempting suicide by fasting – an entertainment again promoted by Gannon. Davidson appeared in court in ecclesiastical robes, described as "an ex-clergyman of no fixed abode". This time, however, he was found not guilty: the court did not believe that he was intending to take his life. He then successfully sued the Blackpool Corporation for false arrest and malicious prosecution and was awarded £382 in damages. Late in 1936 he was fined for trespassing on Victoria Station. On 20 July 1937 he was arrested by two policemen after exiting a lion's cage, for not paying the fine and was subsequently given 15 days to pay £7 8s.

Death

For the summer season in 1937 Davidson worked at Thompsons' Amusement Park in Skegness, where he was billed as "A modern Daniel in a lion's den". He would enter a cage with a lion called Freddie and a lioness called Toto, and talk for about ten minutes about the injustice he felt had been meted out to him. On 28 July, he was moving through his act when he accidentally tripped on the tail of the lioness. Presumably perceiving this as an attack, Freddie the lion attacked and mauled him. Renee Somer, the 16-year-old lion attendant, entered the cage and fought the lion back using a 3 ft whip and an iron bar.

Davidson was taken to Skegness Cottage Hospital with a neck injury and broken collar-bone and lacerations on his upper body. The lion had mauled him at the neck leaving a gash behind his left ear.

A coroner's jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure.

Davidson was buried in Stiffkey churchyard. Thousands crammed into the village to attend the funeral service. Round the sides of his grave, in gold lettering, is a favourite quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson which says "For on Faith in Man and genuine Love of Man all searching after Truth must be founded".

Posthumous treatment

The strange story of the Rector of Stiffkey has been the subject of several fictionalised retellings. David Wood with David Wright wrote a two-act treatment A Life in Bedrooms, produced in Edinburgh in 1967 and later as The Stiffkey Scandals of 1932 on BBC2 TV and at Queen's Theatre in London in 1968, which trod a middle ground on Davidson's guilt or innocence. This was subsequently revived as The Prostitute's Padre at Norwich Playhouse in 1997.

A musical And God Made the Little Green Apple was staged at the Stables Theatre, Manchester in 1969. Stuart Douglas wrote a play in 1972 The Vicar of Soho which portrays Davidson as a politically naive, but well-intentioned social reformer. Ken Russell made a 1990 underground film Lion's Mouth based on the scandal; the central character is a female journalist on the Skegness Sentinel. A 2009 stage production The Missionary's Position gives an amusing variety music hall style portrayal of Davidson as a naive buffoon but leaves his guilt open to question.

John Walsh's novel about Davidson's life, Sunday at the Cross Bones, was published on 8 May 2007.

The 1982 film, The Missionary starring Michael Palin tells a similar story but is set in the Edwardian period.

Many documents concerning the case are now in the public arena, except his personal letters and papers which remain with his family. The documents have been used by Davidson's descendants and the present priest at Stiffkey as evidence that he was not guilty of the charges which were found proved against him. A BBC regional documentary in 2004 showed their attempts to posthumously exonerate him.

The death of Davidson has echoes of the unlikely death of Hannah Twynnoy, killed by a tiger in England.

Sources

• The Reason Why by Harold Francis Davidson (Deane Printing Works, London, 1935)
• The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940 by Ronald Blythe (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1963; 2001 reprint is ISBN 1-84212-258-4); chapter on Davidson, pp. 134–154.
• The Prostitutes' Padre by Tom Cullen (Bodley Head, London, 1975)
• The Troublesome Priest by Jonathan Tucker (Michael Russell Publishing, 2007)
• Biography of the Rector by Karilyn Collier (2004)

External links

• BBC Inside Out profile arguing for Davidson's innocence
• Norfolk History and Past Times
• Rector of Stiffkey website written by his granddaughter, Karilyn Collier