Tag: Ushaw

The exhumation of Julian Watts-Russell 16th May 1894

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Julian Watts-Russell was a Pontifical Zouave, who was killed in the battle of Mentana, Nov. 3, 1867. “A monument had been erected to Julian Watts-Russell on the site of his death, and his heart had been buried there.” In 1894,  the Rev. Mr. Lindsay who had just arrived in Rome, to study at the Academia Ecclesiastica,  prior to his ordination the following year, ” found the monument in the cellar of the principal café of the little village” of Mentana.  “By his generous care it was brought from Mentana to Rome on Friday, February 23,”..it will be erected in the Church of St. Thomas, adjoining the [English] College.

It wasn’t entirely clear why Father Lindsay was searching for any traces of Julian, but there seemed to be some sort of family connection. It turn out that  Claud Lindsay is a sort of first cousin. He and Julian Watts-Russell share an uncle in Charles Towry-Law, though by different wives. By 16th May 1894, the monument has been found, restored, and installed in the church of St Thomas of Canterbury in Rome.  Someone seems to have visited his grave in the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome and found it rather damaged, so the decision was made to exhume the body, and rebury the remains of “one who may be called the last of the English martyrs “, 

Campo Verano cemetery, Rome – General view

“The exhumation of the body of Julian Watts-Russell took place between 6.15 and 8.15 on the morning of Wednesday, May 16. There were present : Mgr. Merry del Val, Mgr. le Duc de Stacpoole, the Rev. Torquato Armellini, S. J. (Julian’s confessor), the Rev John Prior, D.D. (Vice-Rector of the English College), the Rev Arthur Hinsley, a former student of Ushaw College (the alma-mater of Julian Watts-Russell) the Rev. Claud R. Lindsay (representing Julian’s brother and sister) Dr. Eyre and Count de Raymond (a relative of Julian, and whose mother, the Countess de Raymond was intimate with him and present when the coffin was last opened). The remains were found buried in a concrete vault and in two coffins, the outer one wooden, the inner one of zinc, both of which had been injured by rain &c., owing to the defective manner in which the vault was closed. The zinc coffin was brought to the surface, and the remains transferred to a zinc casket. A crown of roses which had been placed on his head had decayed, except with regard to the general form and primary fibres, but had remained as a crown upon the skull, while the flesh had disappeared beneath it. The head thus resembled that of the relics of so many Roman martyrs to whose life also Julian’s had borne so deep a resemblance. After a portion of the burial service had been performed and the casket blessed by a capuchin friar of San Lorenzo, the remains were re-interred in the vault. The ceremony was very satisfactory to all present, and the remains are now secured from further injury. the work was superintended by Signor Caviliere Tricchi, Official director of the Cemetery, who deserves every praise for his courtesy, and respect to the remains of Julian. The work of the grave will be concluded in twenty days, and it is intended to keep it in a good state of repair henceforward. For this purpose further subscriptions have been contributed by the following persons: Lady Herbert of Lea (who is paying her annual visit to the Eternal City), Mrs George Vaughan, Mr W. Osborne Christmas, Mgr. le Duc de Stacpoole, the Rev Thomas Belton, C.R.L., the Rev G.B.Tatum, M.A., the Rev. Claud R. Lindsay, the Rev. Arthur Hinsley, Mrs Meynell, and an anonymous priest from New York. The total so far collected is about £42, [A modern day equivalent of £30,000]  and it is intended to apply what remains to the present restoration of the grave. The Rev. Mr. Lindsay is anxious that the sum should be increased to sufficiency by the contributions of former Zouaves, and will be thankful for any offerings sent to him at San Silvestro in Capite. Should any money remain over after the restoration of the grave, it will be devoted to keeping it in a permanently good condition. The inscription on the coffin which was soldered on to the side of the new casket, was as follows;

JULIAN WATTS RUSSELL

PONTIFICAL ZOUAVE, 2ND COMP., 1ST BAT.,

DIED AT MENTANA 3RD NOVEMBER, 1867,

AGED 17 YEARS 10 MONTHS.

RESQUIESCAT IN PACE.

MISSING

The above text was found on p.17,26th May 1894,  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 .

Joseph Sidney Lescher – (1803 – 1893)

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Church Row, 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 .

Fr Philip O’Bryen 1861 – 1913

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Philip O’Bryen is one of Ernest O’Bryen‘s older brothers. To be precise, he is four years older.

Philip, Celia, and Alfred OBryen
Philip, Celia, and Alfred OBryen

He was born 25th Jun 1861 in South Kensington, and died 7th Nov 1913. He is the third son of John Roche O’Bryen and Celia Grehan, one of their six children. He is a half brother of Mgr Henry O’Bryen, and Corinne and Basil O’Bryen by his father’s marriage to Eliza Henderson.

His obituary from the Tablet gives some clues.

The Tablet 15th November 1913

THE REV. PHILIP AUGUSTUS O’BRYEN.

We regret to record the death of the Rev. Philip Augustus O’Bryen, rector of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Princes Park, Liverpool which occurred on Friday afternoon, November 7, with startling suddenness. His morning had been spent in active work in the parish. After saying an early Mass at 6.45, he heard confessions and took Holy Communion to eight sick people. Between breakfast and noon he visited the sick in the Consumption Hospital, and returned home about midday. Feeling unwell and in considerable pain, he took to his bed. A little before three he was visited by one of his curates; at three he was found dead, having succumbed to heart failure, arising from rheumatism, to which he had, been subject since an attack of rheumatic fever in his student days at Ushaw.

Father O’Bryen, who was a cousin of Archbishop Bagshawe, was born in Westminster in 1861. He received his early education under the Christian Brothers, at Clapham, and went in 1872 to Ushaw, where he remained eighteen years, four of which were occupied in teaching. He was a B.A. of London University. Ordained at the English Martyrs’, Preston, in 1889, by Bishop O’Reilly, he was immediately appointed Professor of Mathematics and Science at St. Edward’s College, Liverpool, where he remained until his appointment as assistant priest at the important mission of the Sacred Heart, Liverpool, in 1895. Towards the end of the following year he was placed over the Mission of St. Joseph, Skerton, near Lancaster. On his arrival he found only a school chapel, but through the generosity of the late Miss Margaret Coulston he was able to build the present magnificent church and presbytery. In 1902 he succeeded the Rev. Father Pyke, now of the English Martyrs’, Preston, at Mount Carmel, Liverpool, and applied the funds raised by his predecessor in connection with the silver jubilee of the mission to erect a roodscreen and effect other improvements. His first important work in his new sphere was the division of his parish, and he superintended the building of St. Malachy’s Church, the foundation stone of which was laid some ten years ago by Cardinal Logue.

Requiem Masses for the soul of the deceased priest were said in several Liverpool churches. On Sunday evening the remains were taken to the church, where a crowded congregation had assembled. A solemn dirge was recited on Monday evening. The funeral took place on Tuesday, when a High Mass of Requiem was sung at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel by the Archbishop of Liverpool, the deacon being Father Newton (Eccles), and the subdeacon Father J. Fitzgerald. Dean Goethals and Father J. Broadhead (vice-president of Ushaw) were deacons at the throne, and Father H. Blanchard was master of ceremonies. The music of the Mass was sung by the clergy diocesan choir, under the direction of Father A. Walmsley (Great Crosby.) The relatives present were Mr. and Mrs. Alfred O’Bryen, Mr. R. O’Bryen and Mr. B. Smith. The clergy present included Canons Kennedy and Hennelly (Birkenhead), Prior Burge, 0.S.B., Dom Wilson, 0.S.B., and Dean O’Donoghue (Wigan). The sermon was preached by the Rev. Father J. Hughes, who spoke highly of the character and work of the deceased.

The remains were taken to London, and the interment took place at Fulham Catholic Cemetery on Wednesday.—R.I.P.