ALEXANDER RANN was indicted for stealing on the 27th of March 1822 , two coats, value 30 s. , the goods of Joseph Samuel Lescher .
JOHN LIMBRICK .” I am an officer. On the 27th of March, I was at my door in Church Row, St. Pancras, talking to Croker. The prisoner went by with a basket, with a handkerchief over it; he looked hard at me. I told Croker to follow him. He turned round and saw me coming, and threw down the basket, pushed Croker aside, and ran off. I pursued him and took him at last.”
St Pancras c.1860
Church Row, St Pancras was demolished to make way for the Midland Railway Station, now St Pancras International. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft lived for a while in Church Row. Eight years earlier than the case here, in 1814, he declared his love for Mary Wollstonecraft over the grave of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who had died in childbirth. Mary Goodwin wrote “Vindication of the Rights of Women” in 1792, and her daughter wrote “Frankenstein'”. The churchyard was also the site of the burial of the famous clown Joseph Grimaldi, in 1801.
Back to the case:
HENRY CROKER . “I was with Limbrick, and saw the prisoner pass with a basket. I went after him, and asked if he had any fowls;” he said “No.” I said some had been stolen. He said, “I have got my master’s clothes.” I said “Who is your master – where does he live.” He said at Pentonville, and immediately threw the basket at my feet. I picked it up; Limbrick pursued and took him. It contained two coats, and two lemons.”
MR. JOSEPH LESCHER (Bef. 1768 – 1827) “I live at West End, Hampstead . The coats are both my son’s, whose name is Joseph Samuel Lescher (1796 – 1871), and were in the hall about nine o’clock, when I went out in the morning. I returned at five, but did not miss them till next morning, and on Tuesday the officer brought them.”
JOHN CORBETT . “I live at West End. On the 27th of March I saw the prisoner with another about three o’clock, about one hundred yards from the prosecutor’s house, with the basket. I noticed them particularly, and saw a brown great coat outside the basket. The other carried the basket.”
GUILTY . Aged 20. Transported for Seven Years .
This was the same sentence that Robert Miles got two years earlier for a rather greater value of items.
First Middlesex Jury, before W. Arabin, Esq. Old Bailey Proceedings, 17th April 1822. Reference Number: t18220417-116 www.oldbaileyonline.org.
As it all kicks off tonight, I’m going to re-post this tonight, to say hello Rio, and good luck to the Scotsman……
JP Boland
I came across all of this during the Wimbledon fortnight this year, and it amused me. J.P. Boland turned up to a few family funerals in the 1920’s. He has the enormous distinction of being the first Olympic champion in tennis, and a double gold medallist, winning both the men’s singles, and doubles in Athens in 1896, and he beat the Australian.
I’ve spent a short while trying to work out what he was, and concluded in the end that, in the effortless way we adopt people, that the best description is, probably, he was a Londoner. The evidence is all pretty convincing for me.
He represented Great Britain and Ireland in the men’s singles , he was part of an Anglo-German duo in the doubles. He was born in Dublin, went to school in Ireland, and England, went to London University. Lived and worked most of his life in London. Died at home in London on St Patrick’s Day 1958. He was an Irish Party M.P. in the House of Commons for eighteen years (1900 -1918, a firm supporter of Home Rule, a member of the commission for the foundation of the National University of Ireland, and for more than twenty years General Secretary of the Catholic Truth Society. His son-in-law, and one daughter were both Fianna Fáil TD’s, and another daughter Bridget Boland was a playwright, novelist, and screenwriter who summed up the confusion quite well in 1988, when she said “Although I hold a British passport, I am in fact Irish, and the daughter of an Irish politician at that, which may account for a certain contrariness in my work.” Finally, he had a papal knighthood, and an honorary doctorate from the NUI.So more correctly, Dr J.P.Boland, K.S.G, BA (Lond),MA (Oxon), LLD (NUI).
Now make of the above what you will. To me he’s a Londoner, if you’re from Dublin, he’s almost certainly a Dubliner. If you’re Irish, then he’s almost certainly an Irishman. Indeed the Irish Examiner, fudged it nicely in April this year to use him for the claim “an Irish- born athlete has competed at every staging of the summer Olympic Games since 1896.” . If you’re English, he is probably British, in the shameless way a British man wins Wimbledon, and a Scot is the heroic runner-up.
That only leaves the Anglo-German win in the doubles………………..
Bolands Mill 1916
John Mary Pius Boland, (1870-1958), was born at 135 Capel Street, Dublin, to Patrick Boland and Mary Donnelly; after the death of his mother in 1882, he and six siblings became the wards of his uncle Nicholas Donnelly, the auxiliary bishop of Dublin. The Bolands controlled one of Ireland’s leading baking and flour-milling companies. In 1916, Boland’s Mills was seized by members of the 3rd Battalion of the Irish Volunteers led by Éamon De Valera: perhaps as few as 100-130 poorly armed Volunteers were involved. This complex of buildings was situated in south Dublin, near Grand Canal Dock and overlooking the Grand Canal itself (the current Treasury Building is built on the site of the original mill). It was strategically important because it contained important transport links that connected Dublin to the southern ferry port of Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire): the rail terminus at Westland Row, and the roads leading into the city that crossed the Grand Canal at Mount Street.
But, we’re really concerned with the events in Athens, twenty years, and thirteen days earlier. JP kept a journal in which he also recorded his Olympic visit. The long-lost journal was found in 1994 and is now in the IOC’s archive in Lausanne.
JP spotted a notice in the Oxford Union about the proposed Olympic revival. He was fascinated, and “straightway determined to be present if possible at these Games’” and he played a minor role in spreading the Olympic gospel. Konstantinos Manos, one of the secretaries of the organising committee for the Athens Games was a freshman at Oxford in 1895. Boland contacted Manos and organised a breakfast party at the Union with some of his athletic friends at which “kippers, grilled chicken and curried sausages, omelette, coffee, toast and preserves” were consumed as Manos explained the Olympic concept to the guests.
Boland was studying at the University of Bonn from mid-October 1895 to mid-March 1896, on a sabbatical from Oxford. During his time in Bonn, he completed hardly any sport, apart from playing a round of golf and participating in three football matches. His only mention of tennis in his journal is the fact that the courts were flooded, and iced over in winter for skating.
JP left Bonn on March 14, 1896, with Alfred Pazolt as his travelling companion and completed a slow tour of central and south-east Europe on his way to Athens. St Patrick’s Day was celebrated in Munich “with a glass of beer at the Hoffbrauhaus”. They spent three days Vienna sightseeing, and going to the Opera, the theatre and a performance of Much Ado about Nothing. In Patras, they “explored the town & old Venetian fortress”, before arriving in Athens on March 31. They had organised the trip through Thomas Cook and stayed at the , a one of the best and most expensive in Athens, where they “couldn’t have been better off. Two first floor rooms in an excellent hotel in the centre of everything, wine included, meals when one liked and the choice of 14 or 15 dishes for 20 francs a day.”
He clearly had no intention of competing at Athens. He played recreational tennis , but had had some coaching at school when he was at the Oratory School. The sport was “decidedly inferior’’ to cricket as far as Boland was concerned. A dinner conversation with an English-speaking Greek from Alexandria, Dionysios Kasdaglis, on 6 April 1896 inspired a decision that was to create Olympic history.
Kasdaglis informed Boland that few players had entered the tennis competition and he agreed to partner his dinner companion in the doubles and also enter the singles. However, for the men’s doubles, JP was paired with Friedrich Traun, a German athlete, who was competing in the 800m. Boland was “totally unprepared for tennis” and spent the following day frantically “hunting up the various requisites”. “A tennis bat of sorts was easily secured at the Panhellenic Bazaar in the Rue de Stade, but tennis shoes were not to be had in Athens”. so he had to play in a pair of ordinary shoes, with leather soles and heels.
The thirteen competitors who entered for the tennis competitions formed a strange bunch, and included a Serbian weightlifter and Greco-Roman wrestler “who had only the most rudimentary notion of playing” according to Boland; his own doubles partner was a German 800m runner. The entries also included George Stuart Robertson, an English hammer thrower and Edwin Flack, the Australian 800 and 1500m Olympic champion. Kasdaglis represented Egypt and the remainder of the field were Athenian tennis players.
Mens Doubles final 1896, Boland and Traun are on the right hand side.
He beat three Greek opponents to qualify for the final, held on April 11 , where he won (6-2, 6-2) beating the man who encouraged him to enter, Dionysios Kasdaglis. He had considered withdrawing from the final but felt he “could not scratch as the game was of an international character”.
Immediately before the men’s singles finals, Boland and Traun, defeated Kasdaglis and his partner, Demetrios Petrokokkinos, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 to win the men’s doubles title. It’s still pretty impressive, playing five sets, back to back, over two matches, even if it is against an opponent who’s doing the same thing. Even so, breaking your opponent twice in each set is a pretty comprehensive win, and even more so in leather soled shoes.
George 1st of Greece, 1912
At the Closing Ceremony on April 15, all the Olympic champions were presented with their prizes by King George 1st of Greece, the grandfather of the Duke of Edinburgh. Each winner received “a huge diploma in a large circular cardboard case, a medal in a case and a branch of olive a couple of feet long that had been “brought especially from Olympia itself. “
A number of myths have attached themselves to his achievement; quite clearly he was not invited to compete by his Oxford acquaintance Konstantinos Manos, neither did he travel to Athens with a group of Oxford students and most importantly of all he did not engage in any type of nationalist demonstration after his victories. Even so, the myth is that when the Union and German flags and the flag were hoisted to honour Boland and Traun’s victory, Boland pointed out to the man hoisting the flags that he was Irish, adding “It [the Irish flag]’s a gold harp on a green ground, we hope.”It’s not a Tommie Smith and John Carlos moment, but it’s also a telling pointer of the complicated relationship between two countries, an Irish born, British subject, co-operating with a German, and winning in Europe. For me, that pretty much makes the case for John Mary Pius Boland being a definite Londoner.
MR. W. W. PARKER Mr. Wilfred Watson Parker, M.B.E., T.D., of Towersey Manor, Thame, died on November 29th.
The second surviving son of the late Sir Henry Watson Parker, President of the Incorporated Law Society, who died in 1894, Mr. Parker was sixty-eight years of age. His mother was Marian, daughter of the late James Rorauer, of the Treasury. Mr. Parker was educated at Beaumont, as were his two brothers, and afterwards followed his father’s profession as a solicitor. In 1898 he married Miss Frances Charlotte Purssell, third daughter of the late Alfred Purssell of Hampstead.
The Requiem Mass was at Westminster Cathedral on Thursday.
The above text was found on p.46, 4th December 1937 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
PARKER—PURSSELL.–On June 30, at St. Dominic’s Priory, Haverstock Hill, by the Very Rev. F. A. Gasquet, D.D., Wilfrid Watson, second surviving son of the late Sir Henry Watson Parker, of Hampstead, and Lady Watson Parker, of 22, Upper Park-road, N.W., to Frances Charlotte, third daughter of the late Alfred Purssell, C.C., of Hampstead.
Joseph Sidney Lescher (1803 – 1893, aged 90), son of William Lescher and Mary Ann Copp; so on our side of the Lescher family. He’s the father of Frank Harwood Lescher,Patrick Grehan III’s son-in-law; Father Wilfred, Sister Mary of St Wilfrid, and Herman the accountant. He was a partner of the wholesale druggists Evans, Lescher, and Evans. His father William Lescher (1768 – 1817), had emigrated from Alsace, France, in 1778, before the French Revolution. Family tradition holds that “Lescher of Kertzfeld” received his patent of nobility in the reign of Louis XIII, in the middle of the C17th. The Leschers were Roman Catholics. His wife, Sarah Harwood was the daughter of a West India merchant in Bristol and a member of a staunch Baptist family, but she converted to Catholicism two years after her marriage. This branch of the family lived mostly in Hampstead, including 17 Church Row, later the home of H.G.Wells, and even later, in the 1960’s, the home of Peter Cook, where he had Lennon, McCartney, and Keith Richard to kitchen suppers in the basement. Joseph Sidney also lived at Elm Tree Lodge, in Pond Street, in the 1890’s and at Oak Lodge in Haverstock Hill, where he was living with his sister Harriet, Patrick Grehan Junior’s widow in 1870; three months after that census was taken Harriet Grehan’s step-daughter, Celia O’Bryen was herself to become a widow when John Roche O’Bryen died in South Kensington on the 27th July’
Joseph Sidney Lescher’s obituary from the Tablet is below.
We regret to record the death of MR. JOSEPH SIDNEY LESCHER, at the ripe age of 90 years, by which a link is broken with a long Catholic past. Born in 1803, Mr. Lescher was, about the year 1810, for a short time at a school at Carshalton, in Surrey, under the Dominican Fathers, and was afterwards amongst the first, if not the first, of the students at Ushaw College. In after life Mr. Lescher took an active part in City affairs, until about twenty years ago he retired from active life in order to devote himself more largely to those works of charity and beneficence which had always occupied his leisure. It has been said of him that he was never known to refuse an appeal calling for the exercise of genuine charity. The extent of his means was the extent of his charity—a charity that went hand-in-hand with an earnest faith and with extreme simplicity of heart and character. He was happy in having given to the Church a son, Father Wilfrid Lescher, of the Dominican Order, and an only daughter, Sister Mary of St. Wilfrid, of the Order of Notre Dame, now the Superioress of the Everton Valley Convent, Liverpool. Two of Mr. Lescher’s nieces had joined the same Order, the elder one, Miss Frances Lescher (better known as Sister Mary of St. Philip) being the Foundress and present Superioress and presiding genius of the Mount Pleasant Training College at Liverpool. Another of his nieces, Miss Monica Lescher, is present Lady Abbess of East Bergholt, where her sister holds the office of Mother Prioress, and there are others of the family at Atherstone, and at the Convent at Taunton—all following the family tradition of service in the cause of Catholicity in England.
The funeral took place at Kensal Green Cemetery on Monday last, after a Solemn Requiem Mass, sung by the Dominican Fathers in their church at Haverstock Hill, whither the body had been taken over night. The Very Rev. Father John Procter, Prior, sang the Mass, and there were present in the church and at the funeral, amongst others. Mr. F. Harwood Lescher, Mr. Herman Lescher, and the Rev. Wilfrid. Lescher, 0.P., sons of the deceased ; the Rev. Edward Lescher, Mr. Lescher, of Boyles Court, Mrs. F. Harwood Lescher, Mrs. Herman. Lescher, Mrs. Patrick Grehan, and Miss Clare Grehan, &c., &c.
The above text was found on p.29, 15th July 1893 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
There are a lot of Leschers knocking around in parts of the story, so it is probably useful to have some brief biographies of some of them. This one is the son of Joseph Samuel Lescher, of Boyles Court, Essex, and the grandson of another Joseph Francis Lescher also of Boyles Court. Joseph Francis Lescher Senior was one of the two Lescher brothers who came from Alsace towards the end of the C18th. Joseph was the elder, probably by at least ten years, and William his younger brother arrived in England in 1778.
According to Joseph’s niece Frances, “In the second half of the eighteenth century a Laurence Lescher of Kertzfeld, by his overbearing temper and iron discipline, so worked upon the sensitive mind of his oldest son, Joseph, as to drive him to run away from home.It is related that the youth arrived in London with only half a crown in his pocket; but with the indomitable spirit of his sires, he made good use of his natural capacity, and in the year 1778 found himself in a position to marry, and to bring to London his brother William, then a boy of ten.The two brothers eventually became partners in a starch factory.Joseph purchased the estate of Boyles Court in Essex, but William remained in London, where he could more easily keep in direct touch with the practical details of his business.” Frances Lescher becomes Sister Mary of St. Philip, and has a successful career at Mount Pleasant convent in Liverpool.
So from a family point of view, this side of the family are more distant cousins. But back to this Lescher.
Mr. Joseph Francis Lescher, the recipient of the hereditary honour of Count of the Holy Roman Empire from Pius X., belongs to a family which has provided, not only well-known sons to the Church, but conspicuous men of business to the City. Mr. Herman Lescher, (his second cousin) whose death took place while he was yet a young man, established what was reputed among his fellow-accountants to be the largest single-handed business existing among them all. Mr. Joseph Lescher has himself served as a director of the Phoenix Assurance and other companies, and, as this honour bestowed by the Holy See reminds us, has given his services to many a charitable undertaking. Born in 1842, the son of Mr. Joseph Samuel Lescher, J.P., of Boyles Court, Essex, and his wife, Martha, daughter of John Hoy, of Stoke Priory, Suffolk, he was educated at Stonyhurst, and married, in 1875, Miss Mira Hankey, daughter of Captain Hankey, 9th Lancers. He was High Sheriff of Essex for 1885, and is the Chairman of the Brentwood Petty Sessions.
The above text was found on p.21, 23rd March 1907 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
MR. J. F. LESCHER.
We regret to record the death, on Monday last, of Mr. Joseph Francis Lescher, J.P., hereditary Count of Rome and Baron of Kertsfeld in Alsace by grant of Louis XIII. Mr. Lescher, who was eighty-two years of age, was a son of the late Mr. Joseph Lescher, of Boyles Court, near Brentwood. He was educated at Stonyhurst and afterwards entered upon financial and commercial life, becoming a director of the Phoenix Assurance and other companies. He was prominently identified with public life in the county of Essex, where, for upwards of fifty years, he served as a Justice of the Peace, being Chairman of the Brentwood Bench for thirty years ; he was also a J.P. for Middlesex and London. He retained his activity until the end, and was sitting in court only a few days before his death. He had been High Sheriff of Essex in 1885 and was a deputy-lieutenant for the county. In 1907 Mr. Lescher was created hereditary Count by Pius X.—R.I.P.
The above text was found on p.32, 13th January 1923 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
Mary Adela Lescher, [Sister Mary of St Wilfrid] (1846–1927),known as Adela in the family, was born at 17 Church Row, Hampstead. She was the second of five children of Joseph Sidney Lescher (1803–1893), and Sarah Harwood(1812 – 1856). Joseph Sidney was a partner of the wholesale chemists Evans, Lescher, and Evans. His father William Lescher (1768 – 1817), had emigrated from Alsace, France, in 1778, before the French Revolution. Family tradition holds that “Lescher of Kertzfeld” received his patent of nobility in the reign of Louis XIII, in the middle of the C17th. The Leschers were Roman Catholics. His wife, Sarah Harwood , Mary’s mother, was the daughter of a West India merchant in Bristol and a member of a staunch Baptist family, but she converted to Catholicism two years after her marriage. The eldest brother, Frank Harwood Lescher is Patrick Grehan III’s son-in-law; Adela was a year older than Wilfrid (1847–1916), who was ordained a Dominican priest in 1864. Mary’s only sister Abigail, died in 1844 at the age of five. The youngest brother was Herman (1849 – 1897) who died of flu in 1897, aged just forty-eight.
Adela was educated by governesses at home, and in France, where the family had gone for health reasons, until her mother’s death in 1856; after which she was sent to the Benedictine school at Winchester, Hampshire (later at East Bergholt in Suffolk), where she had an aunt, Caroline Lescher (1802 – 1868) known as Dame Mary Frances,O.S.B.; in a slightly curious twist another cousin of Adela’s, her first cousin Agnes, [daughter of William Joseph Lescher (1799 – 1865) and another of Caroline Lescher’s nieces was Lady Abbess at Bergholt from 1888 until 1904, and know as Dame Mary Gertrude. She attended the Dominican school at Stone for a short time. She left boarding-school in 1864 and continued her studies in languages, music, and literature at home under her brother’s former tutor.
Mary had two older cousins, Frances Lescher (Sister Mary of St Philip), who was the principal of Notre Dame Teacher Training College at Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, and Ann Lescher (Sister Mary of St Michael), who was also a sister in the Institute of Notre Dame, as well as their youngest sister Agnes (Dame Mary Gertrude). In May 1869 she entered the mother house of the Notre Dame order, dedicated “to teach the poor in the most neglected places”, at Namur, Belgium, and took the name Sister Mary of St Wilfrid. She returned to England in September 1871 as a professed sister to teach in the Notre Dame boarding-school at Clapham, London. After a bout of rheumatic fever she convalesced at Mount Pleasant and was then appointed to the college staff there to lecture in botany, English, and music. In 1886 she became mistress of the boarders, instructed the senior girls, and taught psychology. In 1892 she was appointed superior of Everton Valley Convent, Liverpool, which ran a convent day school, several elementary schools, and a pupil-teacher centre where boarders were prepared for entry into the Mount Pleasant Training College.
In April 1893 Archbishop Eyre of Glasgow invited the Sisters of Notre Dame to establish a Roman Catholic teacher training college in Scotland which would relieve female students from the need of travelling to Liverpool or London for training. A site was chosen at Dowanhill, in the west end of Glasgow, near the university, which had just opened its classes to women. The college was officially established in December 1893 with Sister Mary of St Wilfrid as its first principal, assisted by four sisters. The first female Roman Catholic teachers to receive their training in Scotland began their course of study in January 1895. Sister Mary of St Wilfrid took an active part in the training of the students and through her singleness of purpose made the venture a success.
A major achievement of Notre Dame College was the development of practical science teaching and the revolutionizing of biology teaching. A ‘practising school’, which was to include both a secondary school and the first Montessori school in Glasgow, was opened next to the college in 1897 and new schools were opened in Dumbarton (together with a convent) in 1908 and Milngavie in 1912. A staunch member of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Sister Mary of St Wilfrid encouraged all her students to join. As sister superior she was manager of the Notre Dame schools until May 1919, when Notre Dame Training College was transferred to the national scheme and came under the control of the national committee for the training of teachers. She retired as sister superior in 1919. She had been instrumental in founding a Notre Dame association for former students and the Glasgow University Catholic Women’s Association. She also set up a branch of the Scottish Needlework Guild to make garments for the poor and vestments for missions, and, after a stay in a nursing home in 1904, had set up the Association of Catholic Nurses of the Sick. Sister Mary of St Wilfrid died at Notre Dame Convent, Dowanhill, Glasgow, on 7 May 1927, and was buried on 11 May at Dalbeth cemetery.
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/48666,] with additions.
This is a rather modest wedding in comparison with some of the grand society weddings a decade later. It’s probably projecting far to much on it being an accountant choosing value for money….. The age difference seems to be about right for the times. He’s thirty eight, and she’s twenty eight, and rather sadly it’s a fairly short marriage because Herman dies of flu, ten years later in March 1897.
Interior, Brompton Oratory
MR. HERMAN LESCHER was married on Saturday last at the Church of the Oratory to Miss MARY AGNES WILSON. The wedding was of a very quiet character, the party consisting only of the immediate relatives of the bride and bridegroom. The marriage service was performed by the Rev. Father Crook, of St. Mary’s Chelsea, assisted by Father Gordon, of the Oratory, and the Rev. Wilfrid Lescher, O.P. The bride was attended by her niece, Miss Madeleine Wheeler, and Miss Carmela Lescher, niece of the bridegroom, as her bridesmaids. Father Gordon preached a short and touching exhortation to the newly married couple at the conclusion of the ceremony, and after breakfast at the house of Mrs. Robert Wilson,
Mr. and Mrs. Herman Lescher left town for Clifton, en route for North Devon.
The above text was found on p.25, 6th August 1887 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
The Annual Dinner of this Society was held on Monday, Sir Charles Clifford in the chair. Among those present were the Bishops of Southwark and Emmaus, Lord Arundell of Wardour, Mgrs. Gilbert, Fenton, Harington Moore, the Very Revv. Canons Moore, O’Hallaran, McGrath, Murnane, V.G., the Very Rev. M. Kelly, 0.S.A., and a large number of priests and laymen. After dinner the chairman proposed the healths of ” The Pope” and “The Queen,” and in doing so referred to the mission of Mgr. Ruffo-Scilla and the Papal Jubilee. The health of “The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster” was next proposed, to which the Bishop of Emmaus replied, in doing which he appealed on behalf of the charity. The other toasts were “The Bishop of Southwark,” “The Bishop of Emmaus,” “The Chairman,” proposed by Mr. George Blount, “The Clergy,” proposed by Mr. Dudley Leathley and responded to by the Right Rev. Mgr. Moore, and “The Stewards,” proposed by Mr. Wm. Towsey and responded to by Captain Parkington. During the evening excellently rendered vocal selections were contributed by Miss Margaret Hoare, Miss Eliza Thomas, Master Schrappel, Mr. Dudley Thomas and Mr. Tremere. Mr. Henry Leipold presiding at the piano.
The above text was found on p.24, 26th November 1887 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
Almost inevitably the Roper Parkingtons were there…….
The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress held a reception of Catholics at the Mansion House on Monday afternoon. Gracious, simple, and Catholic, it was a gathering of the family. The Archbishop was there and all the Bishops who had arrived for the Low Week Meeting : the Bishop of Newport, the Bishop of Birmingham, the Bishop of Nottingham, the Bishop of Salford, the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Bishop of Southwark, the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, the Bishop of Menevia, the Bishop of Galloway, and the Bishop of Amycla, whose purple with that of the Monsignori added colour to the scene. Amongst the clergy were Mgr. Canon Scott of Cambridge, Mgr. Tynan of Salford, Mgr. Canon Moyes, Mgr. Canon Howlett, Mgr. Grosch, Mgr. Brown, Vicar-General of Southwark, the Right Rev. Vicar-General of Glasgow, Provost Mackintosh, priests too numerous to name from all parts of London, North and South, Canons of the Cathedral Chapters of Westminster and Southwark, parish priests, Cathedral chaplains, priests from the provinces, members of religious orders, Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, Benedictines, Franciscans, Servites, Canons of the Lateran, Vincentians, Salesians, Oblates of St. Charles, and many more. Catholic society in all its grades was represented :—the Princess Marie Louise de Bourbon, the Duchess of Seville and the Duc de Seville, Lady Mary Howard, Lady Edmund Talbot, Lady Vavasour, the Earl of Denbigh, Count Mensdorft, the Austrian Ambassador, the Count and Countess de Torre Diaz, Count O’Clery, Sir W. H. Dunn, M.P., and Miss Dunn, Sir J. and Lady Roper Parkington, Sir Francis and Lady Fleming, Lady and the Misses Dalrymple, Miss Weld Blundell, Colonel Sir Charles and Lady Euan-Smith, Sir Henry, Lady, and Miss Norbury, Sir Charles and Lady McDonogh Cuffe, Lieutenant General and Mrs. Mackesy, Mr. Justice Walton, Mr. J. G. Snead Cox, Major and Mrs. R. Meyer, Miss Anstice Baker, Mrs. Bernard Mole, Miss Streeter, Mlle. Janotha, Miss Minnie Stewart, Mrs. Leeming, Mrs. Plater, Colonel Vaughan, Mr. Roskell, Mr. Lescher, Surgeon-General Maunsell, Mr. and Mrs. John Kenyon, Chancellor and Mrs. Tristram, Dr. Counsell, Lieutenant-Colonel Wellesley, Miss Emily Hickey, and about 500 others, all representative of business, law, art, letters, and public life among the Catholics of London.
A programme of music of exceptional interest was provided in the Egyptian Hall under the direction of Mr. H. Plater. The central attractions were the singing of Madame Blanche Marchesi in Willeby’s “Crossing the Bar,” an “Ave Maria” by Mlle. Janotha, and ” Jerusalem ” from Gounod’s “Gallia.” Miss Newbery, Madame Henrietta Engelhard, and Miss Catherine Aulsebrooke, also sang with much acceptance ; Miss Nora Freeley in violin solos, Signor Manrico Bacci, Mr. Fraser Gange, and Mr. Denis O’Neil in songs also making their mark; as also did Mr. H. Plater as a whistler, and little Blanche Young, a mite of a child, in a finely executed “Good Luck Dance,” written by Mile. Janotha, and named after her mascot, ‘ Little White Heather,” which, by the way, Mlle. Janotha brought with her. The accompanist was Mr. Albert Lyne.
Egyptian Hall, Mansion House
The reception was in every way a memorable one in the crowded year in which the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress are utilising every opportunity for doing good. An illustration was a beautiful but pathetic scene in the Egyptian Hall. While all was moving brightness in the rooms of state, at the end of the Egyptian Hall, to the accompaniment of the rare music, a number of cripple girls were giving an exhibition of exquisite work in artificial flowers, to which craft and art they had been trained by a beneficent institution, the Watercress and Flower Girls’ Mission in Cripplegate, founded in 1866, and beginning work among crippled girls in 1879. The work is educational, curative and industrial, and extends to all parts of the country, teaching crippled girls to earn their own living, and ministering weekly to 5,000 girls, women, and children. It was established by a Nonconformist minister, and is a non-Catholic institution, but charity knows no boundaries, and “God’s Poor,” of whatever creed or kind, find loving sympathy in the large Catholic heart of the City’s queen. The cripple girls and their exquisite work were made a special and fitting feature of the reception.
The above text was found on p.30, 9th April 1910 in “The Tablet: The International Catholic News Weekly.” Reproduced with kind permission of the Publisher” The Tablet can be found at http://www.thetablet.co.uk .
More detail on the flower girls mission can be found here
Herbert Vaughan was born at Gloucester, the eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel John Francis Vaughan, of an old recusant(Roman Catholic) family, the Vaughans of Courtfield, Herefordshire. His mother, Eliza Rolls from The Hendre,Monmouthshire, was a Catholic convert and intensely religious. All five of the Vaughan daughters became nuns, while six of the eight sons received Holy Orders and became priests. Three were later called as bishops in addition to Herbert: Roger became Archbishop of Sydney, Australia; Francis became Bishop of Menevia, Wales; John became titular bishop of Sebastopolis and auxiliary bishop in Salford, England.
In 1841 Herbert Vaughan, the eldest, went to study for six years at Stonyhurst College, then to the Jesuit school of Brugelette, Belgium, and then with the Benedictines at Downside Abbey, near Bath, England.
In 1851 Vaughan went to Rome, in the Papal States of Italy. He had two years of study at the Collegio Romano, where for a time he shared lodgings with the poet, Aubrey Thomas de Vere.He became a friend and disciple of Henry Edward Manning. Manning, a Catholic convert, became the second Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain in 1850.
