LOCUM TENENS AND CHILDREN
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Your article in last week's Spectator on " Locum Tenens " prompts me to write on another aspect of the subject closely affecting the children of a vicarage.. As vicar of a large poor suburban parish with a none too large stipend I try to give my two children age 9 and 7 a summer holiday near the sea by taking a locum tenency for which in addition to my services I have paid as much as three guineas a week rent. I do not stint my services or complain of the rent demanded ; but even so, as soon as I mention my children, I have the greatest difficulty in finding any seaside vicarage that will take me.
Not only do many incumbents advertising for a locum tenens insert " Adult party only," but in a great majority of cases " an adult party " are chosen in preference to a family with young children. Such restrictions are a sad blow to the children of large town vicarages chiefly for whose benefit the change is sought, and one cannot help feeling that those fortunate incumbents who have pleasant seaside vicarages and make these restrictions are none " too full o' the milk of human kindness." It is often in vain that I plead the exemplary conduct of my children, who are perfectly harmless, have not reduced my own vicarage to a shambles, nor .do they interfere with my library of some 4,000 volumes or like " an adult party " borrow books at all, let alone not return them A predecessor of mine in a former parish, father of I think five children, who had suffered a similar experience, once told me he thought there would be a special corner in hell for all those incumbents who refused to let their vicarages to families in which there were young children. He himself has recently been rewarded with a parish in a popular south coast seaside resort and has expressed his intention of making three or four children the minimum qualification for a locum tenens taking his vicarage during the summer.—Yours faith- fully, E. F. L. HENSON. St. Paul's Vicarage, Chillerton Road, London, S.W. 17.
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