← The Rest Is History
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- [00:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to thereestishory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com.
- [00:27]
Tom Holland
The Reverend Mr. Davidson's downfall was girls. Not a girl, not five or six girls even, not a hundred, but the entire tremulous universe of girlhood. Shingled heads, clear cheeky eyes, nifty legs, warm blunt fingered workaday hands, small firm breasts, and most importantly, good strong, healthy teeth besotted him a single human life was all too short for him to savor such a universe and his awareness of this allowed him to encounter at least a thousand girls during the 20s alone. Quite early on in his sacred career, he hit upon an exciting solution to what otherwise might have been an insoluble problem.
- [01:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
He.
- [01:23]
Tom Holland
He would make girls his special ministry. And so he set about it with a single mindedness which in any other circumstances should have brought him a deanery. So that is from Ronald Blythe's book the Age of Illusion, which is the history of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Ronald Blythe did not talk like that, but I think the quality of the material is kind of appropriate to. I can imagine Alec Guinness or somebody making maybe reading that out. And Dominic, it's a brilliantly funny, witty book, isn't it? Full of strange stories and anecdotes and you like me, have fixed on one chapter in particular which is the extraordinary story of Harold Davidson who was the rector of church in a Norfolk village called either Stiff Key or Stooky. And opinions on this vary and we will be coming to the big debate on how you pronounce that word in due course. People in Britain have always loved the kind of scandal hit vicar and the rector of Stiffy or Stooky is the archetype of that, isn't he?
- [02:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
He is the ultimate scandal played vicar, it's fair to say so if listeners like the episode and they want to buy Ronald Blythe's book the Age of Illusion, the Folio Society edition, as an introduction by me, which I did about 10 years ago and when I was reading that book, this one chapter, I mean it's all great but this one chapter absolutely leapt out at me. He is an extraordinary man. He is a man who boasted, who prided himself on, to use his own terminology, picking up 200 girls a year. He made newspaper headlines day after day in the mid-1930s, he Having been a vicar of this small parish in Norfolk. He ended up as a fairground attraction in Europe's most popular seaside resort. And he has a final showdown with a lion called Freddy before a gaping audience of holidaymakers in Skegness. So, Tom, it is an incredibly funny story, but it's quite a melancholy story as well, isn't it? You think it's quite a dark story.
- [03:32]
Tom Holland
I do. Well. So I came across this story when I went to the place you described as Europe's most popular seaside resort, which is Blackpool. I read Ronald Blythe's chapter on the Vicar of Stookey or Stiffkey there, and I've been wanting to do an episode on him ever since. And now, at last, we get the chance. And it strikes me that actually, coincidentally, this is quite, quite an odd pairing with our previous episode, which was also about a priest from East Anglia behaving badly, and it featured a trial on an East Anglian offence that was done in London. So there were certain points of contact comparison. But just to put my cards on the table, I think the reverend Mr. Davidson is not remotely as bad a person as Thomas of Monmouth, who featured in our previous episode. Indeed, I think he's maybe quite hard done by.
- [04:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, I may well agree with you. Now, anybody who thinks, gosh, this is a slight subject, you should stand corrected, because no less a historian than A.J.P. taylor said that the story of the Reverend Mr. Davidson offered a great parable of the age of the interwar years in his. In his history of this period, he wrote, wrote of him, he attracted. He, the Reverend attracted more attention than, say, Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, which man deserves a greater place in the history books? And I think our answer is quite clear because we will never do a podcast about Cosmo Lang, but I think we could do a whole series about Harold Davidson. Now, he has attracted. It's a sign of his importance that he's attracted several excellent biographers, most recently an author from Norfolk called Jonathan Tucker, who wrote a book called the Troublesome Priest, who argues that, like you, Tom, he thinks Harold Davidson has been much maligned. So let's get into his story. He was born just outside Southampton in Hampshire in 1875, and he came from an ecclesiastical family. More than 20 of his relatives had been Anglican clergymen, and his father, Francis Davidson, was the local vicar in this place called Shoaling in Hampshire. And another of Davidson's biographers, Tom Cullen, describes his father as a tiny man with a luxuriant beard that gave him the appearance of a gnome.
- [05:39]
Tom Holland
And his mother was the great niece of Dr. Arnold, as in Tom Brown and Rugby School. So he's the great, great nephew of Dr. Arnold, which is quite a thought.
- [05:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Here's the point at which our podcasts on Benjamin Lay and Harry Potter and public schools meet, I think it's fair to say because Harold Davidson was a very short man. He was five foot three. He, he went to a school called Whitgift in Croydon where actually I've been to give a talk. They have a very good history festival. I recommend it. He stayed with his maiden aunts in Croydon and under their influence they were, you know, massive kind of Christian do gooders. Under their influence, Harold worked part time at Toynbee hall in the East End, this kind of settlement house, helping the poor.
- [06:25]
Tom Holland
I mean that is, it's the idea, isn't it, of the middle classes going out into darkest London. The idea that you bring poor relief not just to darkest Africa but to the most poverty stricken reaches of the capital. And I guess it's really the kind of intersection point between institutional Christianity and socialism. Massively influential it is.
- [06:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
And actually there is a political dimension to Mr. Davidson's career which we will come to now. The expectation is that he will follow his father into the priesthood. But when he was at school he discovered the pleasures of the stage. He acted in farces with his friend from school, who's a man called Leon Quartermain, who later became a West End star and actually acted with what became the Royal Shakespeare Company. So that's jolly good.
- [07:12]
Tom Holland
And Davidson's life might well have been happier had he continued in that career, don't you think?
- [07:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, unquestionably, unquestionably. So actually, when he Left school in 1894, his family expected him to go to Oxford and to study for Holy Orders. But he does something very different. He becomes an actor. So he, his specialism is the sort of classic late Victorian Edwardian light entertainment, drawing room comedies for the kind of respectable middle classes. And his finest hour, he played Lord Fancourt Babbali in the Fast Charlie's Aunt.
- [07:45]
Tom Holland
Which involves dressing up as a woman, doesn't it?
- [07:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes. So he dresses up as his friend's aunt. This is the great joke of the play. Now the thing is, while he's being in these farces, he's still quite a morally serious person. He's a teetotaler and when they go to provincial towns to do plays, he will give Bible readings to the elderly. You know, he takes this quite seriously. And in fact, in 1894, so the end of the year, by his own account, he has an encounter that changes his life. He's walking along the embankment of the River Thames in London in heavy fog, and he comes across a girl of 16 who is about to throw herself into the river. And she is from Cambridge. She has run away from home and she has no money and she has nowhere to go. And he takes pity on her. He offers to pay her fare home. And he gives her a letter to her mother explaining what he's done. And he said afterwards, her pitiful story made a tremendous impression on me. I have ever since kept my eyes open for opportunities to help that kind of girl.
- [08:44]
Tom Holland
That kind of girl.
- [08:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
Now, the trouble is, what does he mean by that? Yes, I've always kept my eyes open for opportunities to help girls like that. You can interpret that, of course, two ways. And I think one of the things that listeners will have to decide for themselves is whether to take a charitable explanation of his activities or a more cynical one. Anyway, four years after this, he decides he will give in to his father and he will become a vicar. After all, his father has a friend called Basil Wilberforce, a descendant of the great man. And Basil Wilberforce is the chaplain to the speaker of the House of Commons. And he says, oh, I can wangle your boy a place in my old college, Exeter. Exeter College, Oxford. Even though Harold doesn't have very good qualifications. So he gets this place at Exeter, Oxford. He goes up there and he's useless. He doesn't really want to be there. He says he really wanted to be an actor. He says later, I could have earned hundreds of pounds a year as an actor, but I've had to settle for three pounds a week as a curate, which is not very much. He's still massively into the theatre. He's still appearing in plays. And it was later said that he decorated his Oxford rooms with signed photographs of actresses, which perhaps not the ideal look if you're hoping to be a late Victorian man of the cloth. Anyway, he ignores the rules at Oxford. He's always late, he fails loads of exams, and in 1901, he's basically kicked out to a private hall associated with Oxford called Grindle's hall. And it takes him two years to pass. And the Bishop of Oxford is very dubious about ordaining him for the priesthood. He says, this bloke is useless. He's not really committed. He obviously wants to be an actor. Fine. And he gives in to a lot of pressure. So Harold becomes a curate at the Church of St Martin in the Fields in London. So their orchestra the Academy of St Martin in the Fields has appeared with us at the Royal Albert Hall. So that's a lovely intersection point and.
- [10:37]
Tom Holland
A church with a great commitment to the homeless, which in due course, the Rector will demonstrate.
- [10:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. And then in 1903, he gets a brilliant break in North Norfolk, Alan Partridge's territory, He is offered a job as the rector of Stiffkey St. John and Stiffkey St. Mary Anne Morstan. Now, some listeners will say stiff key. Is it not pronounced stew kee, as you used to believe, Tom? But you know what? I did some digging into this. The only thing that's pronounced stooky is the local cockles, which are called Stooky Blues. But the people of the area call the place Stiffkey. So Stiffkey is this village with about 350 people. It's got a few shops, it's got a pub, but it's a very good job. The job is in the gift of this bloke who's called the Marquis Townsend, who has had a very scandalous private life. Now, as the curate of St Martin in the Fields, Davidson had officiated a controversial wedding to a beauty called Gladys, and he'd had to persuade Townsend's family to accept the match. So Townsend owes him a favor. And Townsend says, look, I'll give you the living at this place Stiffkey. And he's got a Georgian rectory, he's got acres of farmland and he has an annual income of £500 a year. Now, if you go onto the website, the academic website, measuring Worth, which charts relative values over time in relative income terms, that is an income of £400,000 in today's money.
- [12:05]
Tom Holland
You can rub by on that, can't you?
- [12:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
You would think you could get by on it, but not if you're a man like Harold Davidson. So now he can get married. He's been courting, of course, an actress, a blonde Irish actress called Molly Sorin, and they get married. And between 1907 and 1913, they have four children. Davidson is still very committed to his social work. He goes off to London a lot in the week. He works in these kind of East End settlement houses and actually in the village, he is popular with the poorer residents. He's known as somebody who's very kind hearted, who lends them money to help with their bills and their rent. And people nickname him Little Jimmy. Now, I don't know why Jimmy, but they name him Little Jimmy and they say he's a sort of friend of the poor man. You know, people like him for that.
- [12:53]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And also he falls out with the local landowner, doesn't he? A Colonel Groom.
- [12:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes.
- [12:59]
Tom Holland
And Davidson has rebuked Groom for keeping a mistress.
- [13:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
The irony.
- [13:03]
Tom Holland
But maybe there's an element of kind of class tension there, I think a political dimension.
- [13:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think he's a do gooder, he's a social reform kind of person, and some of the North Norfolk landowners don't really care for that. He also has these extracurricular interests, so he's still spending a lot of time at the theatre and he will spend a lot of time backstage at West End theaters talking to people about the Bible. Even at this point, people say it's interesting how the people he talks to, they all tend to be women of a certain age. You know, have you noticed this?
- [13:34]
Tom Holland
Wearing skimpy costumes?
- [13:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right. So by 1910, he's expanded his horizons to Paris, and he goes to Paris every few weeks and he says, I'm very happy to act as a chaperone for dancing girls who've been recruited by the Folies Bergere, these showgirls. And over time, he starts to invite these girls back to the rectory in Norfolk. Sometimes he invites groups of them, up to 20 at a time. Now, Molly doesn't like this and they start to argue very bitterly. But also the local gentry don't like it. They say, what? You know, we don't want showgirls in North Norfolk. What's all this? Now, he might have been consumed by scandal earlier were it not for the First World War. So just as Asquith was rescued from civil war in Ireland by the events in Sarajevo, so Harold Davidson is rescued.
- [14:19]
Tom Holland
So the First World War, not all bad.
- [14:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
No. He volunteers to join the Royal Navy as a chaplain. And this is probably his biographers think, because basically, relations in the rectory are not good. Molly is very cross with him about his enthusiasm for these girls. So, first of all, he goes on to HMS Gibraltar, which is stationed in the Shetlands. And his biographers have found a service report from the captain who says he was absolutely useless, performs his duties in a perfunctory manner, not on good terms with messmates, disregards mess rules and regulations, regulations. But then he's moved to HMS Fox in the eastern Mediterranean. And here, perhaps an ominous sign, the police raid a brothel in Cairo. And they find him in there. And he says, oh, thank God you've come. I've been searching for a prostitute who's been infecting my men with vd.
- [15:09]
Tom Holland
Because the thing is that these kind of explanations are a feature of the story as it develops. And they keep cropping up. And as, as, as you said, Dominic, listeners have to decide whether they want to be charitable or not in accepting the truth or otherwise of these explanations.
- [15:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think a clergyman who goes to a brothel because he's worried about the health of his men, I think that's commendable, don't you?
- [15:34]
Tom Holland
I do. But also there's a slight. Me in a brothel in Cairo. Exactly. What were they thinking?
- [15:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, the war ends in 1919. He returns home to a bombshell, actually a very sad bombshell. His wife Molly is six months pregnant, but six months earlier he was in Cairo, he was not in Norfolk. So when their daughter is born in June 1919, she's not his. Jonathan Tucker thinks that the father was an old school friend of Harold Davidson. That's low.
- [16:04]
Tom Holland
The daughter looks like him, doesn't she? So he can kind of get away with it.
- [16:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, she does. She looks just like him. This school friend is now a colonel in the Canadian army who had come to stay with Molly in the second half of 1918. Anyway, Davidson, he's pretty good about it. He says, well, I will accept the girl as my own. I think the atmosphere now is very tense in the rectory, so he's spending more and more time in London and here we should perhaps talk about his routine. He will leave home first thing every Monday morning and he will spend the whole of the week in London, not in Norfolk. And then he will come home either very, very late on Saturday night or increasingly he gets the five o' clock in the morning train for on Sunday, and that, if he's lucky, will allow him to get to the church just in time, come rushing in, put his surplice on, right? And often there are stories about him desperately pedaling on his bike from the station and literally pedaling up the aisle to the altar, getting off his bike and starting the service. So as a parish priest, he's actually only there one day a week and sometimes barely even that. What he's doing is he's hanging around the theaters as usual. He's also a part time chaplain at the Actors church, which is St. Paul's in Covent Garden. But what he's really thrown himself into is his mission to rescue the girls of London. So to give you an example of how this works, probably his favourite of all the girls was a girl called Rose Ellis, who was a homeless prostitute whom he met in Leicester Square in 1920 and he gave her cash for a room. He met her every week. He sometimes would bring her up to Norfolk to the rectory. He would get her to work in the garden and he would try to fix her up with acting jobs. But Rose is just one of many girls, because anybody who thinks, oh, London in the 1920s, all very starchy or very boring, you're wrong. Central London was notorious for working girls, for street walkers, there were probably about 25,000 prostitutes on the streets.
- [18:07]
Tom Holland
And for guardsmen as well, weren't there?
- [18:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, exactly, Guardsmen. I need a bob or two. So a lot of these girls are former servants or farm girls or shop girls who have got into trouble in some way and have come to London to try and start again, but it hasn't really worked out. So Davidson has a lot of, shall we say, recruits to choose from. And as he says himself, he picked up on average 150 to 200 girls every year. That is a quotation. Picked up is his term. Again, perhaps a slightly injudicious choice of words. And his great error, as Ronald Blythe points out, is that he doesn't really discriminate. So he sees, and I quote, every young girl from 15 onwards as a fallen woman who needs to be saved. So he will hang around theaters, he goes to Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square, the sort of the places where you pick up prostitutes in those days. But he has a particular ton dress for waitresses in tea shops, so nippies. So, yeah, so, like the Lion's Chain or whatever. So, as Ronald Blythe puts it, he's a sucker for the ineffable harmonies created by starched linen crackling over young breasts and black stocking calves in chubby conference just below the hem of the parlour maid's frock. He loves all this.
- [19:23]
Tom Holland
So he's going into the tea rooms, they come up and serve tea. And then he starts talking about the Bible.
- [19:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, I don't know how much the Bible. I mean, the Bible does play a part at some point quite often. What he does is he will say, well, can I get you a drink, my dear? You know, when did you get off work? All this kind of thing. It seems pretty innocuous. He'll talk to them a lot about the stage. I have great contacts on the stage. You would, you'd be a wonderful actress at the Western, you know, this kind of thing. He will listen to their woes, listen to their story. Often he'll say, I can find you somewhere to stay, a better place to stay. I can fix you up some better lodgings. I can find you a job as a domestic servant, or I can put you in touch with some of my theatrical friends.
- [20:05]
Tom Holland
And so actually, I mean, in due course, when he. He gets into trouble and people are trying to work at what he'd been up to, the word that comes up again and again and again is pestering is. And I think somebody says this is like a kind of a repetition in a gramophone record every time a witness is talk. You know, describes his approach.
- [20:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's a.
- [20:24]
Tom Holland
He is a pesterer.
- [20:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, some of these tea shops actually end up banning him. They're like him again, really pestering our waitresses. He won't leave them alone, but he will bring them if they become close, he'll bring them to Stiffkey to stay in the rectory and to do odd jobs. And just to. To stress, we're not talking about 10 girls or 20 girls or 30 girls, we're talking about 200 girls every year over a period of 12 years. That's by his own estimate. So I mean thousands. Now, all of this costs him a lot of money. As we've heard, he's making a good living, but he's spending so much money on these girls that he can't make ends meet. And around 1920, he meets a man called Arthur John Gordon. He says, I'm a rich American businessman and I can help you out. Actually, Arthur John Gordon is a total con man and he persuades Davidson to give him his savings and then keeps asking him for more money. It's a classic kind of pyramid scheme type thing. Davidson, a complete mug, believes him. Five years on, he's in such a mess, he has no money that he can't pay his tax bills and he's facing prison. He has to borrow money from moneylenders and that autumn he is declared bankrupt. But he still can't stop himself from spending all this time in London and throwing all this money at waitresses.
- [21:38]
Tom Holland
Also, one of the reasons he's now going up to London is to try and find this guy Gordon who's ripped him off. So that's so. So it's about rescuing girls, but it's also about rescuing his own personal finances.
- [21:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is indeed. And also, I suppose North Norfolk is becoming an increasingly unwelcoming place for him because he has made an enemy of one of his church wardens. Who is Major Philip Hammond. Of course he's a major. So Major Hammond, I looked him up, he was decorated in the burwar, he won a Military Cross on the Western Front where he was a tank commander. So he is a, you know, he is a serious person. Hammond has long Been very suspicious of all these girls at the rectory. And he thinks Davidson is a useless parish priest, which I suppose in many ways he is.
- [22:21]
Tom Holland
Yeah, he's never there, is he?
- [22:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, he's never there. And then in 1927, they have an absolutely astronomical, massive falling out, in which I have to say, I think Davidson is completely to blame. Hammond's wife Rita has recently died and he decides to tidy up the area around her grave in the churchyard in Morston, which is part of the kind of the parish. And Davidson goes absolutely ballistic and he sends him a letter and he says, morstan Churchyard is my private property. You have no right to interfere in it in any way without my permission, any more than I have the right to come and annex a part of your garden.
- [22:55]
Tom Holland
Yeah, that's mad. That's really unthinking and cruel.
- [22:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think there must have been bad blood there because you wouldn't go, surely, if you had any brains at all and the blokes just lost his wife. You wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't do this.
- [23:08]
Tom Holland
He seems to have a particular dislike for upper class military men.
- [23:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, I think so. Major Hammond, obviously, you know, is furious and never forgives him and is determined to get his own back. Then, Three years later, November 1930, Davidson makes a terrible mistake. He's in London with the ladies and he fails to make it back to Stiffkey in time for the Armistice Day ceremony at the village war memorial. I mean, when you think this is within, you know, what, 12 years at the end of the war. This is a mad mistake to have made. I mean, it's a very bad. It's a really bad. Look, Major Hammond is absolutely outraged. Remember, decorated in the First World War.
- [23:49]
Tom Holland
And a church warden.
- [23:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. He says, I will bring this guy down. And he makes a formal complaint to the Bishop of Norwich about Davidson's behaviour with women.
- [23:58]
Tom Holland
And it's great to have the Bishop of Norwich back on the show.
- [24:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Yes. So the Bishop, a better man, I think, than his predecessor.
- [24:06]
Tom Holland
Well, we'll see.
- [24:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
The Bishop of Norwich says, I don't know whether I really want to get involved in this, but he has a legal counsel called Henry Dashwood who, Who clearly thinks they should get involved. And Henry Dashwood says, what we ought to do, really, is to have this out in open court. There's a thing called a church consistory court and we can prosecute the rector for immoral acts. And if he's guilty, he can be suspended or he can be defrocked, he can be kicked out. But we need evidence. So Dashwood hires a private detective and she tracks down this girl, Rose Ellis, who was Davidson's favorite. He pours port and lemon into this girl, fast. Buckets of port and lemon. She gets absolutely wasted and she tells all the whole story. He lends her money, he takes her out, he does this, that and the other.
- [24:56]
Tom Holland
But nothing too bad comes out of it, does it?
- [24:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, this is the thing. So there's one incident which we'll come back to in the second half.
- [25:03]
Tom Holland
Buttock related.
- [25:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes. He persuaded me to lance a boil on its bottom. Right. But that's it. There's nothing beyond that. Meanwhile, Davidson himself has got wind of all this going on. He's protesting his innocence to the bishop. He writes him a tremendous letter. December 1931. Tom, would you like to read the letter?
- [25:22]
Tom Holland
For years I have been known as the Prostitutes Padre. To me, the proudest title that a true priest of Christ can hold. I believe with all my soul that if he were born again in London in the present day, he would be found constantly walking in Piccadilly. So anyone who wants to meet Christ.
- [25:42]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Head to Piccadilly. Exactly. Yes. He says Christ suffered all this slander, but you know, he looked after the woman taken in adultery. He was great friends with the notorious harlot of Magdala. And the unbelievable thing is the bishop, I don't know if he's totally convinced, but he seems pretty happy.
- [25:58]
Tom Holland
But you know what? He's. I mean, Davidson isn't wrong. I mean, Jesus in the Gospels does get criticized for hanging out with prostitutes.
- [26:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
He does. Maybe all priests and prelates should do that.
- [26:12]
Tom Holland
All I'm saying is it is an option that's always there.
- [26:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, it's an option that Davidson has undoubtedly taken.
- [26:17]
Tom Holland
He's embraced it, I think it would be fair to say.
- [26:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
Anyway, the Bishop unbelievably seems tempted to let the whole thing drop. But then on 7 February 1932, a bombshell that changes the whole complexion of the case. The bishop gets a letter from a 17 year old girl called Barbara Harris. She says, I have known Davidson for two years. Quote, I know lots of things against him that might help you. He has the keys of a lot of girls, flats and front doors.
- [26:48]
Tom Holland
Let's take a break and when we come back, we will find out the full detail of what Babs Harris has to reveal. Hello. Welcome back to the Rest is History. The date is 29th March 1932. And we are in Church House in Westminster where a consistory court is about to hear the opening statements in the trial of the rector of Stiffy, Harold Davidson and Dominic. He stands accused of associating with women of loose character and also of accosting, molesting and importuning young females for immoral purposes. And it's lucky for Harold Davidson, isn't it, that the great British public take no interest in the thought of vicars who go around consorting with women of loose character. No interest at all. Or do they?
- [27:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, I think if you're in the 1930s, if you live in the 1930s and you hear of a vicar who's been accused of importuning, that is a dream. You're all over it. You're all over it. Exactly as Ronald Blythe says. By the time the case opened, Stiffkey was as notorious as Babylon and it's incumbent to celebrate it as Al Capone. And the thing is, it's even better for the newspapers. They don't have to go to North Norfolk because the Church of England is so cheap that they can't. They don't want to have to pay to take witnesses to Norfolk. So they say, well, we'll do it in London to save money. But of course that's a gift to the reporters. So this trial opens at the end of March. The prosecution is led by one of the stars of the criminal bar, Sir Roland Oliver Casey. And his star witness is this woman, Babs Barbara Harris. She's now 17 and she says, I met Davidson in marble arch in September 1930. At that point she was what Ronald Blythe calls a highly experienced 16 and a half. Davidson, she says, pretended to mistake her for a well known actress and persuaded her to have tea with him.
- [28:48]
Tom Holland
And this is a favorite kind of tactic of his.
- [28:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is. Later on he visited her lodgings, he got her address and he visited her lodgings, telling her landlady that he was her uncle. She was at that point living with an Indian policeman. But when Davison turned up at 2 o' clock in the morning, they didn't mind at all. He made a point of saying to them, oh, it's fine, you're in bed, you know, you're not married, whatever. But actually God does not mind sins of the body, he only minds sins of the soul.
- [29:20]
Tom Holland
And Dominic, this is a reflection that is inspired by tales that the Indian policeman has been telling about temple girls back in India. And I kind of thought when I was, I reread the chapter. We are only three and a half decades before the Summer of Love in the 1960s and there's a sense in which poor old Harold Davidson is a man out of time, because that mixing of interest in Eastern religion, ecumenicism and sexual liberation, I mean, he'd have been much happier in the 60s than in the 30s.
- [29:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. Do you know what, though? I have a theory, and I've always had this theory, that the 1930s are actually a little bit of a dry run for the 1960s. There's more similarities between those two decades than people think.
- [30:02]
Tom Holland
The rector born in the wrong decade.
- [30:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Exactly. So he starts to stay overnight at Babs's lodgings, especially when the policeman goes home to India. Barbara Harris says at first he kept to the chair, but after the first few nights he did not. She claimed that he made advances to her, but she wasn't interested. So, and I quote, he relieved himself. He got her to come and stay at Stiffy Rectory. She said, actually, this element of it has been slightly glamorized. It's not as exciting as you might think. When I arrived at the rectory, he asked me to work as a kitchen.
- [30:32]
Tom Holland
Maid and for no money.
- [30:34]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. And told me to sleep in the chair. Anyway. She's a tremendous character. So when the defence lawyer questions her, it gets better and better. It turns out, as Ronald Blythe puts it, her real name was Gwendolyn. She'd made love with many men, including some Indians. She had left school at 14 and from then on she'd helped herself. When she'd not got a job, she stayed in bed until 11 or more in the morning. She liked all the men she'd known. She was always happy. She liked reading. No, she hadn't had vd, but once she thought she had. Silly me, she implied cheerfully. And actually, Blythe's discussion of the trial is very, very funny. And what he captures is just what a mad comedy it is. And actually Davidson himself, who of course had acted in farces and light entertainment, is determined to behave as though he's on the stage. So he's chuckling and winking and making ridiculous asides and all of this stuff. And of course, all of this is brilliant for the newspapers, as, to quote Blythe, again, it gives them a combination of prelates, waitresses, strongmen hunting, church wardens, amorous Indian youths, publicans, landladies, dentists titled female do gooders, the Folies Bergere bathing suits, photographs, train journeys and every possible variation on the popular prurient theme of virtue exposed.
- [31:49]
Tom Holland
I mean, there's a sense, isn't there, in which this is the archetype for every kind of tabloid scandal that will follow, all the ingredients are there. This is the ultimate. It can never really be exceeded. And in a sense, journalists right the way up into the 1990s are simply trying to reheat this.
- [32:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Now, the funny thing is it goes on so long that Davidson runs out of money, he can't pay his defence team, and unbelievably, the prosecution actually give him money so that the trial can continue. Now, his defence team, their argument is this is completely unfair and everyone has the wrong idea that he's not morally corrupt, he's just well meaning and a little bit naive. And his defence lawyer says, you know, there's a lot of talk about him kissing women, but he kisses everybody. Not in a sensual or sexual way. It's the usual gesture for him when leaving someone he likes or if they've done something for him. Now you might say, well, come on, this is. I don't believe this, but I actually think this could well be true. In all the parade of witnesses, the only one who accuses him of indecency is Barbara Harris.
- [32:54]
Tom Holland
And she's kind of the most meretricious of the witnesses, would you say?
- [32:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Jonathan Tucker thinks that she was coached by the rector's enemies. He points out the guy who's presiding over the trial is a great friend of the Bishop of Norwich. So the whole thing is slightly rigged. And that letter that blew the whole thing open, I think it's generally agreed now that she didn't write it, that it was a fake, that it was probably written by somebody else, one of, you know, his enemies, you know, with her connivance, possibly.
- [33:23]
Tom Holland
And just to add, I mean, you say how the tone is comic. I mean, it is. And that's why it's such a kind of richly and fondly remembered story in so many ways. But it is Barbara Harris, or people who are manipulating her, who does introduce a slight darker element to the story. So she says that he gave her a black eye at one point and that he recommended that she go and work in a brothel. That sounds very out of character, but again, we're kind of left with, you know, do you believe the worst of him or do you think he's very hard treated? I mean, it's very, you know, you've got to essentially decide what you think, I guess.
- [34:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, on her, I think it is very clear that she is making stuff up and she freely admits, by the way, that she will say anything for money and that she's. She Keeps changing her story and making a great joke of it and everybody laughs. But there's no doubt, I think, that she was, you know, I would not be surprised at all if she'd taken money from Davidson's enemies. And she's just randomly saying whatever comes into her head because every other witness, and we're talking about landladies, waitresses, shop girls, showgirls, none of them say that he tried to sleep with them. They basically say he's a pest, he's can be a boar, possibly he's a little bit too familiar, you know, kind of kissing them goodbye and all of that kind of thing and stroking them and stuff, but that's it. And although it's true, you might say he's a little bit of a weirdo. I mean, are not a lot of vicars slightly unusual?
- [34:59]
Tom Holland
But also, I mean, we talked about how he loves a farce, how these were the kind of plays that he acted in as a young man. And bedroom farces in particular invariably involve vicars being discovered in cupboards with French maids. And there's a completely innocent explanation. And there are two such incidents that are revealed in this trial, aren't there?
- [35:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
There are. They're both related to buttocks, actually. So the first one is this business about whether this girl, Rose Ellis lanced a boyle on his buttock. He's asked this and he says to the court, well, I don't know what the word means, I don't know what a buttock is. And then he says, and I quote, it is a phrase I've honestly never heard so far as I remember, it is a little below the waist and everybody just bursts out laughing at this and says, come on, this is ridiculous. Obviously I think he's doing it to get. It's actually genuinely doing it to get a laugh. I mean, obviously he knows what a buttock is, but this is his sort of the old farcer's instincts. Yeah.
- [35:58]
Tom Holland
And not sensible timing.
- [36:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
Not sensible timing. Now, the second buttock incident is perhaps more damning. This guy, Sir Roland Oliver, produces a photograph of Davidson in his clerical garb. And tweed, isn't it?
- [36:10]
Tom Holland
He's got tweed in a clerical collar.
- [36:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
Looking very serious and he's sort of semi embracing a 15 year old girl called Estelle Douglas. We only see her from behind, but she is completely naked. So basically her buttocks are facing you now. Davidson says this was a massive setup. I've been tricked, he says, I was asked to do a publicity photo to help her get work as an actress. I was wrapping her up in a shawl, and I was led to believe that she. I couldn't see what was on the other side of the shawl. And I was led to believe that she had a bathing suit on and that she wasn't naked. Now, I think this is true. I think the photograph was set up by the same private detective who had got Rose Ellis drunk on port and lemonade, and that Davidson genuinely was hard done by. However, it's a ludicrous photo. It's on. It's on the Internet. You can see it on the Wikipedia entry.
- [37:00]
Tom Holland
Because he looks so solemn, doesn't he?
- [37:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is quite damning. The court is not impressed with this photo. So, I mean, some people actually think the photo was interfered with. Anyway, the photo is bad for him. The court adjourns in early June. By now, whenever he goes to Stiffy for services, there are tons of people there, you know, sort of gawpers and tourists. But he turns up so irregularly that the diocese has started sending replacements. There's a brilliant incident on 12 June when he arrives late. The service has already started and they've sent a substitute who's called the Reverend Richard Cattle, who had previously been the England rugby captain. And Davidson rushes into the church and wrestles with this guy for the Bible in front of all the parishioners.
- [37:44]
Tom Holland
I mean, it's so Jeeves and Worcester.
- [37:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, it is Jeeves and Worcester. Cattle gives way and he says to the congregation, I'm leaving now because it is clear that nothing short of force will prevent Mr. Davidson from taking part.
- [37:55]
Tom Holland
And presumably there's a massive size disproportion.
- [37:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, you'd think so, because he's little Jimmy, remember.
- [38:00]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [38:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
And the boat is a rugby player. Must be huge. Anyway, on 8 July, the court hands down its verdict. Davidson is guilty on five counts of immorality. But crazily, the bishop takes a month to announce the sentence. And in the meantime, Davidson decides he needs to raise money to pay his legal bills. And so, first of all, he does a variety act at the Prince's Cinema in Wimbledon. And he does this, you know, for a couple of days or whatever, and then he thinks, well, that that wasn't enough. I need to go for the really big stage, the proper big time. And that is Blackpool, which, as you.
- [38:41]
Tom Holland
Said, is the most popular seaside resort, not just in Britain but in Europe at the time. It seems amazing to think now, and I always thought it's intriguing that one of the people who goes there several times is Sigmund Freud. And Freud adored Blackpool so much that memories of paddling in the waters there were included in his book on the Interpretation of Dreams. And clearly that Freudian idea that you have the ego and then you have the id, the kind of the unacknowledged promptings of your desires and yearnings, I mean, must be part of the context in which people are trying to make sense of this story, that there is an awareness now that maybe, you know, a vicar can go around trying to rescue prostitutes and may, on his conscious level, think that he's doing God's work, but the subconscious is always there. And I think Blackpool is the perfect place, really, for him to. To end up trying to make money. Because, in a sense, people who go to Blackpool are looking to be titillated by sex and violence in a way that I think previously, you know, wouldn't have been acknowledged, that this is what they were doing. So at Blackpool, I mean, it's. It's incredibly handsome resort that's been developed over the previous few decades. By the 1930s, as Davidson goes there, a new attraction has opened up at Madame Tussauds in Blackpool, which consists of exhibits taken from the Liverpool Museum of Anatomy, which has just shut. And topics there include the sexual parts of hermaphrodite. There are exhibits that deal with the effects of syphilis. One exhibit displays the habitual masturbator and shows how if you masturbate, you become idiotic and sink into second childhood. And then the idea that you go there, in a sense, to enjoy a sense of superiority, to trample down on those who might normally be your betters. So there's one display that is 100 guinea carpet, and it's been brought there by a showman, and he says, come to the winter gardens and spit on 100 guinea carpet. So the chance to go and see a rector, an Oxford graduate, someone who has been an officer in the First World War, to see him humiliate himself. I think that that is part of. Of the appeal. And of course, that is part of why the whole case of the Rector of Stifke is such a national sensation and why we're sitting here talking about it. It's that disjunction, isn't it, between the status of a rector and the humiliations that he's led into.
- [41:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
Oh, definitely, definitely. I mean, sex is a huge part of Blackpool's appeal, by the way. There are all these kind of accounts from, like, mass observation, who did these surveys in the 1930s about people having knee tremblers, as they were called, and Kind of back alleys and stuff. The, the, the rector's not doing that. What he's actually doing is sitting in a barrel in. He's inspired, he says, by Diogenes. So on the seafront is a place called the Golden Mile, this stretch of kind of attractions. He sits in this barrel. He's next to Mariana, the gorilla girl, and Dick Harrow, the world's fattest man. And he sits in this barrel for 14 hours a day. There is a window so people can see him in the barrel and there is a chimney so that he can smoke his cigar and thousands of people come to see him. But actually, I don't think he makes an enormous amount of money.
- [42:09]
Tom Holland
And at this point he is just sitting in the barrel, isn't he? Further refinements will be added, but exactly.
- [42:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
Now he goes back to Stiffkey. He has a final encounter with Major Hammond. He arrives to preach in August and he finds that Major Hammond has locked him out of the church. So he preaches to a thousand people sitting in the churchyard. Then there's a bizarre scene where he wrestles again, wrestling becoming a feature. He wrestles with Hammond for the keys of the church and Hammond literally kicks him down the steps. And Davidson complained and Hammond ended up having to pay a 20 shilling fine for assault, for common assault, for kicking him. Anyway, so to the end game. On 21st October, he is summoned to Norwich Cathedral for sentencing.
- [42:49]
Tom Holland
Norwich Cathedral again? Yeah.
- [42:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
Now, inevitably, he's late. He's driven through the night to get there. He sends the bishop a telegram to say, I'm joyfully sorry I'm going to be late. Then he arrives. There are supporters there who cheer him when he goes in. The bishop reads out, starts reading the sentence. It's very clear that he's going to be defrogged to be kicked out. It's very like the Dreyfus case when Dreyfus is kind of kicked out of the French army. And Davidson interrupts him and gives a passionate speech. He says, I'm entirely innocent. There's not one single deed which I have done which I wouldn't do again. With the help of God and the bishop, deaf to his appeals, we hereby by the authority committed to us by Almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, remove, depose and degrade him.
- [43:33]
Tom Holland
That's an excellent Episcopal accent.
- [43:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
Ah, thank you. That's how the bishop spoke, I think. Now, for anybody else that would be the end of the story, but not for Harold Davidson. He's facing massive legal bills because he has to pay the prosecution costs as well. Now that he's lost the case, how can he make money? The obvious answer, get back in the barrel. So for the next four summers, he works the Golden Mile. Now the barrel is his staple act, but there are interesting variations. So one of them is he gets into an open coffin filled with ice and he says, I will lie in this coffin and starve myself until the bishop hears my appeal. The Blackpool police arrest him and they say he's. He's trying to commit suicide and this is a crime. But he actually wins the case and was awarded £400 in damages. That's not bad. The most popular thing though, is his glass fronted oven. He would get into this glass fronted oven where he would be roasted while a mechanical devil poked him in the buttocks with a. With a toasting fork. The buttocks again. Always that theme.
- [44:43]
Tom Holland
There was a brilliant reminiscence of. By a guy called Richard Whittington Egan in the oldie about six years ago, who went and he. He describes talking to the Rector, his beautiful voice, a mellifluous amalgam of the Oxford accent and ecclesiastical tone. And he g. And this guy, Richard Whittington Egan, went back again and again to see him in his glass coffin and says, we talked of fossils, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the mystery of Jack the Ripper. And then Paul, Richard Whittington Egan doesn't like school. And the Rector tells him very sternly, befitting the Royal Naval chaplain he had been, always stick to your guns, tell the truth and fear no man. So that is clearly the moral lesson that the Rector is living out by sitting in a coffin full of ice or having his buttocks jabbed by a mechanical demon.
- [45:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, this is not all of it, right? So he's in terrible debt and at one point the police actually arrive at his barrel to arrest him for debt. He says, I just need to step out for a second. And then he runs for it down the promenade in Blackpool with the officers in pursuit. He gets into his flat, he locks himself in the bedroom, he opens the window, he climbs down the drainpipe and escapes in a taxi. They catch up with him eventually and he's sent to prison for nine days, most of which he has to spend in the prison infirmary because. Cause he's been injured climbing down the drainpipe. And this is just a sort of flavour of the baroque madness of his career at this point.
- [46:09]
Tom Holland
And the humiliation.
- [46:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, he has to work as a book salesman. He works briefly as a railway porter at St Pancras. Station in London. At one point he applies to be the manager of Blackpool Football Club.
- [46:23]
Tom Holland
Did he have any qualifications to do that?
- [46:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
I don't think so because I don't think he's got much of a sporting hinterland. I mean it would have been an amusing thing, right? Anyway, he doesn't get it. He still unfortunately has not kicked the addiction to girls. So in late 1936, I think it is, he is fined for again importuning two 16 year old girls of Victoria. He'd come up to them and said, would you girls like to be the lead actresses in a West End show?
- [46:49]
Tom Holland
You see now he's starting to seem a bit, a bit suspicious again.
- [46:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
This is a bit suspicious.
- [46:53]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [46:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Now the problem with his showbiz career is obviously, you know, this is always the way with tabloid scandals. People have a short memory and he is competing against quite sexy acts in Blackpool. So by the late 1930s he's up against acts such as the bearded lady from Russia, the dog faced man and the three legged Italian boy. Yeah, you'd have to be jabbed a.
- [47:15]
Tom Holland
Lot in your buttocks to compete with that.
- [47:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Which who are you going to see of all those? I mean actually I'd probably see the.
- [47:19]
Tom Holland
Rector, but I quite fancy seeing the three legged Italian Italian boy.
- [47:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
See, I was thinking the dog faced man. But anyway, 1937, he decides to try his luck elsewhere because in the summer of 1937 he's invited by a fake captain called Fred Rye to join his menagerie in the resort of Skegness. Tom, you're. Have you been to Skegness as well as Blackpool?
- [47:41]
Tom Holland
So Skegness was actually posher in the 30s, but now I loved Blackpool but I thought Skegness was awful. I had the worst night of my life in Skegness. We booked ourselves into the most expensive hotel which I think cost about £12. And I was kept up all night by two couples next door who were having a very energetic time and they stopped around one o' clock and then they started up again about three.
- [48:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
Okay, well fair play to them, I mean.
- [48:09]
Tom Holland
Yeah, but it wasn't great for me.
- [48:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
No. So Davidson, well, who knows what he would have made of that behavior. He might have knocked on the door.
- [48:17]
Tom Holland
He would have gone in.
- [48:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, hello ladies. He absolutely would. Now as it is off your part.
- [48:24]
Tom Holland
In a West End show, he's got.
- [48:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
A very different act. He's going to perform in an act called Daniel in a Modern Lion's Den. This would involve him standing outside a cage and delivering a 10 minute sermon. Now inside the cage are two lions called Freddy and Toto. And at the end of the sermon he gets into the cage to spend a few minutes addressing the lions.
- [48:47]
Tom Holland
And so there you see the, the kind of, the more middle class tone of skegness that he's, he's not just having his buttocks jabbed, he's delivering a sermon. So slightly more elevated, isn't it?
- [48:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
You're absolutely right. Now the problem is that he's frightened of animals and he says he's nervous of these lions. I think not unreasonably, but he agrees to do it. Now I would suspect that, that most people listening to this podcast can guess what's going to happen on 28th July 1937. He's giving the evening show and the place is packed with holiday making families. Remember 28th of July. So peak of the season and they have paid 3 pence each to attend. Davidson gives his usual sermon and then he goes into the cage to address the lions. The lions are generally very docile. Now the most popular accounts will tell you that he accidentally trod on Toto's tail. But I've done some enthusiastic googling and I think this is not true because I found an eyewitness account. Freddy was in his way and he tried to slip in between him and the back of the cage. He was nowhere near Toto and I'm sure he did not touch her. Whatever happened, something triggered Freddy's ire and nobody has ever put this better than Ronald Blythe. And thus in scarcely credible terms, the little clergyman from Norfolk and the lion acted out the classical Christian martyrdom to the full. He fought wildly, gallantly, but Freddy killed him in full view of a gaping mob. Now actually what happened is the lion tamer, when she saw this happening, ran into the cage and hit Freddy with a stick and, and dragged Davidson out and then before fainting herself.
- [50:29]
Tom Holland
And Dominic Harold Davidson would have been happy about this. Not only cause he's being rescued from a lion, but there's a further reason, isn't there, why he would have been happy to be rescued by this particular lion tamer.
- [50:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Unbelievably, the lion tamer is a 16 year old girl called Irene. My dear.
- [50:48]
Tom Holland
Could I interest you in a job?
- [50:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Davison was carried off. Now he lived for another two days. I think it is. The newspapers claimed that he awoke on his deathbed and said have I made the front page? This is clearly not true. He didn't do this. In fact it might not even have been the lion that killed him. This is the bizarrest twist of all. A doctor accidentally gave him an injection of insulin because he thought Davidson was diabetic, which he wasn't.
- [51:15]
Tom Holland
And it may be that it was.
- [51:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
That that killed him. So what a sad end. But that's actually not quite the end of the story because in Blackpool and in Skegness his legend lingered. So in Skegness, the fake Captain Fred Rye saw this as a brilliant commercial opportunity. He rebranded the show as. As quote, see the actual lion that mauled and caused the death of the ex rector of Stiffkey. And they had packed houses all summer, Freddie and Toto. Freddie wasn't punished for this and they were joined by Irene who also became a star very briefly in her own right. So that was lovely for Irene and for the lions, I suppose. Yeah.
- [51:58]
Tom Holland
And so the rector did manage to help a 16 year old girl.
- [52:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
He did. She was the one girl he really helped. Yeah. But in Blackpool his place on the seafront was taken by a very different character whom we have mentioned, I think briefly before in our episode about bizarrely British fascism.
- [52:15]
Tom Holland
Yes. So this is Colonel Barker, who was a transgender fascist boxing instructor. And Dominic, we do love a transgender fascist boxing instructor on the rest is history, don't we?
- [52:27]
Dominic Sandbrook
Originally, Lilias Irma Barker then renamed Valerie Arkle Smith and then took the name either Sir Victor or Colonel Barker. And he worked as an officer of the National Fascisti and went under the sobriquet the Man Woman. Yes, and yeah, trained its members in fencing and boxing. They were not a very serious group, I think it's fair to say. The National Fascisti.
- [52:49]
Tom Holland
No, and so he basically ends up needing to make money. And so as you say, takes the rector's place and the notice outside describes him as the first person in the world to have the now famous operation changing her sex from that of a woman to that of a man. But again, there is this element of slightly prurient curiosity because people come to see Colonel Barker with the woman that he or she has married and they lie on a bed with a huge spotted Dalmatian. They lie there and they have kind of 12 hours a day being abused and spat on by people who are looking down.
- [53:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
So here's the thing, right? The Colonel Bark act was called on a strange honeymoon, right? And people would go to this. But in front it was organized by the same impresario called Luke Gannon who had organized the Rector's Barrel. And in front of the pitch Gannon put the Rector's Barrel and behind it what appeared to be a dead body under a shroud. So people were going to see Colonel Barker under the illusion that they were also looking at the corpse, the lion mauled corpse of the Rector of Stiffkey.
- [54:03]
Tom Holland
I mean, Dominic. A strange honeymoon indeed. Such a mad story. So, thanks so much for that. Hope you've enjoyed that, everyone. And we will be back next week with another tale of violence and occasional humiliation, which is that of Mary, Queen of Scots. So we will see you next week.
- [54:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
Bye. Bye.
- [54:26]
Tom Holland
Bye.