Dockland saint
A. N. Wilson We still have riots from time to time in the poorer districts of London. And it is left to the liberal intelligence of Lord Scarman to devise euphemistic reasons for their eruption. In 1859, there were riots in Wapping devoted to smashing up the ritualist mission church of St George's-in- the-East. The riots continued, on and off, for a year. Evening prayer would be inter- rupted by hissing and yells. Hassocks would be hurled at the altar, and stones through the window. It took the presence of 180 Policemen, stationed in the church morning and evening, to quell the disturbances.
The attitude of the Bishop of London was to persecute the incumbent of St George's in his own legalistic way. In Bishop Tait's view, the riots sprang entirely from the clergymen's love of 'silly dresses' and 'mock imitation of Roman ritual'. But this was really very simple-minded of him. True, there were Protestants who took of- fence at the Puseyite excesses of St George's. But, for the local inhabitants, the disturbing thing about the Anglo-Catholic slum-priests was that they were a threat to local trade. In the four streets surrounding St George's-in-the East there were 733 houses, of which 154 were brothels. The riots were prompted at first by the Jewish sweaters', fearful when the priests objected to them exploiting their workers. They were soon able to join forces with the pimps and the publicans to get rid of these pestilential clergymen. Bishop Tait's attitude enabled the rioters to look as though they were fighting in defence of the Protestant religion.
At the centre of all this, there was a remarkable man called Charles Lowder. Fired by the Tractarian theologians, he abandoned a comfortable curacy in the country and moved to St Barnabas's Pimlico, in 1851. In 1855, fie founded the Society of the Holy Cross, committing himself to a rigorous rule of prayer, sacra- ment and fasting, and the next year he began his work of evangelising Wapping. Undeterred by the violence of looters on the one hand, and the ill-informed legalism of the bishop on the other (endless letters com- Plaining about incense), Lowder collected about him a band of devoted curates, and was eventually able to establish the parish Of St Peter's London Docks, still going strong to this day. When he arrived in the Place, they threw things at him. By the end of the cholera epidemic of 1866, in which he behaved with such selfless courage, they were calling him 'the Father'. And 'Father
Lowder' he remained, until his death in 1880. He was the first Anglican clergyman to be called 'father': at a date when many Roman priests still called themselves `Mister'. It was a spontaneous appellation which sprang from the people in his cure. His tireless work for them, his willingness to risk the assaults of disease and criminal violence on their behalf, earned him the ti- tle. When he died, there were thousands in his funeral procession. 800 people filled a special train to follow the coffin from Wap- ping to Chislehurst, where he was buried. Those who could not afford the fare of a shilling made the nine-mile journey on foot. One newspaper said 'it was a triumphal pro- gress such as England has never before seen in this 19th century'.
Father Lowder's name has been largely forgotten now, though there is still an an- nual pilgrimage to his grave. It is high time that we had a new biography of him, and this book is admirably detailed and well- researched. Dr Ellsworth has a splendid feel for her subject. The publication of her book is a timely reproach to all the synods, ecumenical committees, organisers of papal jamborees and wreckers of liturgy who oc- cupy positions of importance in the Chris- tian world today. Their busy preoccupation with things that do not matter fades into in- significance' when measured by the life of a saintly Christian priest who knew his job, and was single-minded enough to do it.
The centre of Father Lowder's life was his belief in the Incarnation of Christ and `depending on that, the real, actual and visible presence of Our Lord upon the Altars of our churches'. To the truth of this doctrine, he devoted his existence: endless toil in the vilest slums in Europe; medicine to the sick; comfort to the dying, instruc- tion for the children; coal from his own grate; blankets from his own bed. The authorities wished that he could stick to the `good work' among the poor and cut out some of the ritualist absurdities. They did not see that the splendours of Catholic wor- ship (Prayer Book rite) and the love of souls sprang from the same supernatural source.
When he preached the Stations of the Cross through the fetid streets of dockland on Good Friday 1869, The Times complain- ed that 'Mr Lowder has chosen to drag the most sacred of subjects through the streets and to celebrate the most awful of events by an imitation of the vulgarest excesses of plebeian vanity'. Others, inevitably, thought he was a crypto-Roman. Nothing could have been further from the truth. 'If your Lordship fears that such a system must lead our people to Romanism, I can only say that I have had some experience of these principles, having taught them as well as I knew for 13 years, during which period I can only remember two instances of per- sons belonging to the working classes leav- ing the Church of England for the Roman communion; one 1 convinced of her error and she has come back, the other seems on the verge of return'. Occasionally he lost curates in the. Roman direction, but not his people. The Roman argument was an ir- relevance to Lowder's sacramental and pastoral life. When he arrived in Wapping, there were those who thought he was a papist because there were lights on the altar and coloured offertory bags for the collec- tion. Within a generation of his death, there had been a strange reversal. When a new in- cumbent of St Peter's London Docks went visiting in the 1930s, wearing a dark suit and a clerical collar, the rumours flew about the parish that he was a papist because he was not wearing the — to them — distinctively Anglican attire of soutane and biretta.
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