A LOVER OF SINNERS

Seventy years ago the Rector of Stiffkey was

defrocked, but, asks Leo McKinstry, did

he really deserve to be eaten by a lion?

DESPITE the recent unedifying parade of atheists, thieves, adulterers and homosexuals through the dog-collared ranks of the Church of England, the greatest scandal in Anglican history remains the bizarre case of the Rector of Stiffkey, the Reverend Harold Davidson. It is 70 years since the celebrated ecclesiastical trial of Davidson, who was charged by Church authorities of immoral conduct with young women. Found guilty on every count, he was defrocked and spent the rest of his life performing ever-more ludicrous publicity stunts in a campaign to clear his name. Perhaps today he would have succeeded. And in the view of his surviving relatives he was the victim of a conspiracy.

Davidson's tale had all the ingredients of a farce, from his career-long obsession with prostitutes to the talk of falling pyjamas and nude photography at his trial. The very name of his Norfolk parish, with its hint of a double entendre, only adds to the mood of comedy. And the macabre nature of his death — he was mauled by a lion in a Skegness amusement park in 1937 — provides an almost biblical conclusion to his story.

Even his most passionate supporters could not dispute that Harold Davidson was a foolish, eccentric, sometimes irritating man. His son Nugent said that his behaviour could be 'mad, utterly mad', while Davidson's wife Molly, referring to her husband's gift for self-delusion, explained, 'It is useless to tell a lunatic who says he is a poached egg that he is not one.'

Born in 1875, the son of a Southampton vicar, Harold Davidson began his working life as a comic actor, showing enough talent to earn about I1,000-a-year. But in his early twenties he gave up the stage for the pulpit, becoming the Rector of Stiffkey on the Norfolk coast in 1906.

Though Stiffkey provided his growing family with a secure living, Davidson preferred to spend most of his time on charitable work in London, particularly with girls, whom he decided were 'more in need of assistance than boys'. A diminutive figure with a high-pitched voice and busy movements, Davidson was proud of the zeal he showed this 'rescue work', styling himself the 'Prostitutes' Padre' and boasting that he ministered to over 150 of them every year. It was a calling that he vigorously pursued overseas during the first world war as a chaplain in the Royal Navy, On one occasion, having been arrested in a police raid on a Cairo brothel, he explained that he had been tracking down a diseased prostitute who was infecting his men. Back in England after the war, Davidson found that his wife had been conducting an affair with a lodger at the Stiffkey rectory and had given birth to a child. He now took up his missionary activity with greater enthusiasm than ever. Teashops were a favourite haunt in the search for vulnerable girls, and he became such a nuisance that he was banned from several of them. With his acting background, he also liked to talent-spot for the theatre, regularly asking producers to give parts to his new discoveries. 'Oh no, not you again,' Beerbohm Tree could be heard to mutter at Davidson's appearance by the stage door. Davidson was also hopeless with money and was declared a bankrupt in 1926 after several disastrous speculative investments.

Davidson's devotion to the metropolis meant that he paid too little attention to his Norfolk parish, often arriving only on Saturday night and departing again on Monday. One Sunday morning, he was so late that he cycled down the church aisle and parked his bike at the foot of the pulpit. An influential parishioner, Major Hammond, a Boer War veteran, was appalled. In 1931 he complained to the Bishop of Norwich about Davidson, citing not just his neglect but also his practice of bringing girls from London back to the rectory.

The bishop had to respond, so he hired two private detectives to follow Davidson around London for six months. After they submitted their report, showing how much time Davidson spent in female company, the bishop summoned Davidson in December 1931 to explain that if he resigned quietly, he would not be defrocked. When Davidson refused the offer, a consistory court was established at Westminster to begin hearings against him.

Much of the proceedings had the same air of absurdity that had characterised Davidson's career. A key prosecution witness, a frank 17-year-old called Barbara Harris, testified that Davidson had put his hands 'all over' her and had asked her to give herself to him 'body and soul'. She further told how one night he got on to her bed wearing only his pyjama top. Evidence was also produced of Davidson asking a girl to treat a boil on his buttock, which prompted Davidson to make the incredible claim that he did not know the meaning of the word 'buttock'. Equally ludicrous was the moment when the prosecution produced a photograph showing Davidson with a girl, who was nude except for a shawl draped across her shoulders. Confronted by this evidence, Davidson claimed the pose had been part of an entrapment exercise. The chancellor of the diocesan court, Keppel North, was having none of this. Describing Davidson's evidence as a sue of falsehoods', he found him guilty and sentenced him to be deprived of holy orders.

At first glance, the case against Davidson looks cast-iron. Yet there are many, including members of his family and residents of Stifflcey, who strongly believe that Davidson's theory about a conspiracy is not so far-fetched. They argue that, at a time of political upheaval in rural East Anglia because of the agricultural depression, the rector's radical views and his support for farm labourers had incurred the antagonism of the Norfolk establishment while his attempts to highlight the problem of prostitution in London among runaway girls was nothing but an embarrassment to the Church. Despite his failings, Davidson was much-loved by his Stiffkey parishioners for the concern he showed them; a feeling of affection that lasts to this day. The present rector, John Penny, says, 'Most people here recall him as a faithful parish priest who cared for the sick and gave generously to the poor. He exercised both compassion and courage in his work.'

On the issue of sexual impropriety, it could be said that Davidson was only following the example of the former prime minister William Gladstone, who devoted many of his evenings to 'rescuing' fallen women, though there is no evidence he had any physical involvement with them. Davidson's grandson, Cohn •St Johnston. told me, 'My uncles, who were quite objective about the case, were adamant that the rector did not have any sexual contact with these women. After all, he took many of them to Norfolk to meet his wife; hardly the behaviour of a man with something to hide. My grandfather's problem was that he was naive.'

Davidson's defenders point to the flawed way that the legal proceedings were organised against him. For example, Major Hammond, who made the initial complaint, had a grudge against the rector after Davidson had objected to his appointment as a churchwarden. Crucially, one girl. Rose Ellis, who was meant to be the key prosecution witness, having known Davidson since 1920, withdrew her statement against him, saying that the two private detectives appointed to follow Davidson had made her drunk and given her money to incriminate him — 40 shillings had been the price. 'Ten more than Judas received,' commented Davidson mournfully. Yet the court was never allowed to hear the sworn affidavit that her original statement to the detectives had been untrue.

Perhaps most important of all, Davidson was denied any assessors — or ecclesiastical jurors — at the trial, which meant that the diocesan chancellor, Keppel North, who was a close friend of the Bishop of Norwich and was godfather to one of his children, effectively acted as both judge and jury. Even the normally restrained Church Times was outraged by the handling of the case: 'We have no hesitation in saying that the conduct of the case by the Bishop's legal advisers was tragically ill-advised. The secret inquiry agents, the characters of some of the unnecessary witnesses, and, above all, the photograph, made the trial both undignified and unChristian.'

Continuing to protest his innocence, Davidson turned his campaign against the verdict into a variety act. He exhibited himself in a barrel on the Blackpool promenade, alongside a show of performing fleas. Charging 2d per viewing, Davidson is estimated to have earned over £5,000 a summer, money he needed now that he had been deprived of his living. He continued, however, to stay in trouble with the law. He had to go to prison for rent arrears that he owed to his London landlady; he was arrested for accosting two 16-year-old girls on Victoria station; and he was thrown out of a nudist camp in Harrogate, later telling reporters that he was considering establishing such a facility in Stifflcey.

The final act of this strange life was the most poignant. His Blackpool contract finished after an attempted 35-day fast in his barrel ended, typically, in a farce when he was arrested for trying to commit suicide by starvation. In a desperate move, he then agreed to appear in a cage with two lions in a Skegness amusement park, in an act billed as 'A Modern Daniel in the Lion's Den'. One night in July 1937 a lion called Freddy, fed up with Davidson's long harangue against the leadership of the Anglican Church, attacked him and then carried the limp body by the neck to a corner of the cage. The Prostitutes' Padre died of his wounds a few days later.

The Church of England might have used an ecclesiastical hammer to crack this particular nut, though there can he little doubt that he was wholly unsuited to the traditional priesthood. The real tragedy of Harold Davidson is that he was born in the wrong age. In today's Anglican Church, where every lifestyle is celebrated with alacrity, the Prostitutes' Padre would have been in his element.