The Very Rev. Canon Bagshawe D.D. November 1901

OBITUARY.

THE VERY REV. CANON BAGSHAWE, D.D.

We deeply regret to have to record the death of the Very Rev. Canon Bagshawe, of St. Elizabeth’s, Richmond, Surrey, which occurred at Brighton on Wednesday morning, after an illness of two months. John Bernard Bagshawe was the second son of the late H. R. Bagshawe, Q.C., and Judge of County Courts in Wales, and was born in December, 1827. He was educated at University College School and at St. Mary’s College, Oscott, and was ordained priest soon after he attained the age of 23, on March 15, 1851, by Cardinal Wiseman. After his ordination he was appointed to work in a small Mission in Webb-street, Southwark. He was one of the four or five priests who were sent out, as the first Catholic Army Chaplains in modern times, to the Crimea, where he arrived soon after the battle of the Alma. In the battle of Inkarman he was, while attending wounded Royal Irish called on to lie down while cannon shots were fired over him, which he saw ploughing through Russian columns coming up on the side of the bill. His tent was blown down in a stormy night, and he, delirious, crawled out and wandered in the dark into the French lines, where he was cared for in his delirium for a week. He was afterwards in the fighting in the Redan, and in charge of the German auxiliary force. He remained some two years in the East, and returned to England in the summer of 1856. For a time after his return he was a locum tenens, but was ultimately appointed as rector of St. Elizabeth’s Church, Richmond, and there for forty-five years he has lived and laboured. The parochial district was at that time very much larger than it is now, and as it ranged from Kew to Kingston there was plenty of work for a priest to do. The school hardly deserved the name ; it was what is now the library at the back of the church. Canon Bagshawe, after Some difficulty and self-sacrifice, got the schools in Park-lane erected and opened, and these have been recently enlarged and brought up to date. Besides his unwearying labours in his parish Canon Bagshawe was the author of several works of doctrinal instruction, which are not only well known, but popular and useful. .Amongst these may be mentioned The Threshold of the Catholic Church and Credentials of the Church. In March of the present year Canon Bagshawe celebrated the golden jubilee of his priesthood, when he was presented with an address and a purse of gold by his congregation. . A Requiem Mass will be celebrated at St. Elizabeth’s, Richmond, on Monday, at half-past eleven, after which the burial will take place at Mortlake R.I.P.

The above text was found on p.19, 2nd November 1901  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 .