#greatorex

'Mother With Child at Christmas'  

'The Peril of Too Much LOLZ' 

           The Reverend Dan Greatorex (1829-1901) led a curiously double life.  Best remembered for charitable work among his impoverished Whitechapel flock, he also spent long interludes galavanting abroad without any apparent missionary zeal, amassing an ungodly quantity of exotic weapons along the way. 

These foreign jaunts would have sunk without trace were it not for his meticulously illustrated travelogues. No one perusing his London correspondence could have any inkling of Greatorex the Victorian adventurer, who journeyed as far as Canada, Australia and the Middle East.

Yet, while on home ground at St. Paul’s church, Dock Street, he oversaw an enormous array of social reforms. The good vicar started a maternity benefit fund, numerous schools and nurseries, which served free meals of toad-in-the-hole and Irish stew to poor children (“the first in the kingdom” as he never tired of boasting) and later a Children’s Temperance Society to deter urchins from the beer bottle. Another concern was with Dock Street’s many sea-faring types. Greatorex collected lending libraries for ships, ministered to sailors in Dockside boarding houses and cared for their orphaned children – his “clothed scholars” - whom he trained to be nurses and teachers.

He served at St. Paul’s from 1962 for 35 years until a stroke forced his retirement to the Devonshire coast with his wife Margaret Doyle, one of the first clothed scholars. According to a 1960’s admirer, Greatorex left Whitechapel “tired and broken,” having “burnt himself up in service of the best kind.” As his earliest diaries reveal a youthful fascination with ship-wrecked vessels, it is fitting that he exhausted himself among “those whose calling is upon the great deep.”

Nevertheless, the ‘sailor’s chaplain’ was at first intimidated by uncouth seadogs, especially those from Catholic nations like Spain, France and Portugal.  He wrote: “it requires great courage to go on board ship and into boarding houses to speak to men of various nationalities who, if they have any religion at all are prejudiced and ignorant. I am thankful to say the visits are now very rarely resented.” His uneasy visits took place against a backdrop of tension between low-church evangelicals, like Greatorex, and the Tractarians, whose Catholic-influenced liturgical embellishments caused the 1860 riots at St. George’s-in-the-East. (Greatorex was involved in theological turf wars with his St George’s rivals, Revd Bryan King and Revd Lowder,until he succeeded in driving them from his patch in 1864.) But his efforts were amply rewarded by gifts of curios and yet more weapons from his roving flock. These objects were the mainstay of his collection and the stories surrounding them probably piqued his own wanderlust.

            Greatorex presented the bulk of his collection to the Whitechapel free library shortly after it opened to the public in 1891 – a gesture of his life-long interest in the local population’s education. The Whitechapel commissioners deemed it worthy of a whole room and it became the nucleus of a new museum on the second floor.  According to Percy Horne, the museum’s interwar curator, Greatorex’s most bizarre donations were clubs, axes and spears furnished with shark’s teeth belonging to “cannibals and headhunters” of the South Pacific Islands and New Guinea.  Dating back to the 1870’s, many had seen active service, particularly those which belonged to bloodthirsty king Thacomba of Fiji. Amongst the weapons were other South Pacific specimens like a “beautifully carved” paddle from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands.

            A contemporary donation book (c.1891 – 1908) details a menagerie of natural history specimens also received from Greatorex, who was enchanted by the creatures he met on his travels. 15 species of dry snake, an Amazonian salamander and turtle carapaces jostled for space in dark cabinets with assorted marine life, including squids, the jaws of a great white shark and some remoras, which, in life, would have dined on their neighbour’s parasites. The remains of his pet - presented to him by two children on Ascension Island – must have been among the turtle specimens. On 25th March 1873 he wrote:  “I gave them (the children) a shilling, but the poor fellows said there was nothing money could buy on the island, neither sweetmeats nor toys.” The amateur naturalist also ensnared one of the squids himself en route to Australia. According to a 12th October 1872 diary entry he kept a ‘Portuguese man-of-war’ in his sponge bath aboard the Saint Vincent “for observation.” The next paragraph reports a “strong stinging sensation,” and the squid is never heard from again.

On the same trip, he bought aboriginal shields, a chopper and 3 wimmera spears for his collection, after hearing that a certain ‘Bullocky’ could hurl his spear 27 yards. (Incidentally, Bullocky was part of an all-aboriginal cricket team, which toured England in 1862 – the first overseas Australians to play in the country. One of their number died of tuberculosis and was buried in a pauper’s grave.) A man of his time, Greatorex said his own spear-throwing attempt amused “the darkies” no end.

            The Whitechapel museum grew under the regime of successive curators, but the catalogue remained scattershot at best. Apart the natural history specimens and Percy Horne’s mention of the South pacific weapons, the museum records are silent on the particulars of Dan Greatorex’s donation. However, the closure of the museum in 1953 (for lack of funding) left another intriguing clue. When the collection was divided up, some Egyptological specimens and a Rajputana sculptural figure found their way into the Horniman museum, accompanied by a single note asking: “Who was Greatorex?” Sadly, the curator is as yet unable to locate the artefacts or give further descriptions of them.