The Man In The Barrel

My Mother met this man. She told me that she was concerned at his hanging around the railway station and talking to young girls. She said that once she actually went and spoke to him and asked him what he was doing, a man of the cloth behaving like that. He told her that it was his personal mission to help girls in trouble and she had to accept that. I have no reason to doubt her story. So, I knew his story many many years ago when I was young and having come across a reference to him just a few days ago , I thought it might make an interesting journal entry.

I read recently that his family are trying to have his named cleared all these years later. It is not for me to say whether he was guilty or innocent. I can only tell you that a court of law found him guilty and the strange happenings that occurred thereafter.

He was the rector of Stiffkey (pronounced Stookey) in Norfolk. His name was Harold D. The news broke in 1932 that he was to be brought to trial on charges relating to his moral conduct. He made many trips to London and particularly to Soho to help girls who had fallen into prostitution. The church authorities became concerned because he was not only visiting London but he was also bringing many girls back to the Rectory and even holding “pyjama” parties with them or so it is said. One girl levelled an accusation of attempted rape against him. He admitted himself that he liked girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty.  He declared his innocence. His congregation supported him. The trial made headlines across the world. Harold said he took girls to Paris and even to America. The most damning piece of evidence was a photograph of him supposedly undressing a girl. He had the court in uproar when he said he had never heard the word “buttock” and did not know what it meant!

Harold D. had been an actor before he went into the church. He was now in his sixties and had served his Parish for around twenty-six years.

He was found guilty, disgraced and unfrocked. He had to find a way to pay for his defence. He decided to have himself exhibited in a barrel on Blackpool beach. A notice said he was “fasting” to death in protest at what the church had done. There was a window in the side of the barrel where he could converse with the paying onlookers. It also had a cushioned seat, electric light and a chimney so that he could continue to smoke his cigars. Sometimes he proclaimed his innocence, sometimes he would urge people to hurry up and see the one and only ex-vicar of Stiffkey, the one that even the Archbishop of Canterbury could not muzzle. Apparently, his eldest son thought him quite mad.

As the act was billed as a “fast to death”, the Blackpool authorities had him arrested on a charge of attempting suicide by starvation. In court, he was found not guilty, having admitted he had no intention of starving to death and that he was not responsible for the show owner’s advertisements. He received the sum of £382 in damages from Blackpool Corporation. However, the public lost interest in seeing him in the barrel after that and he had to find another way to make money. Having been an actor, he was not short on ideas. On one occasion he was exhibited alongside a dead whale. On another he was “roasted” in a glass oven whilst a mechanical demon prodded his behind with a pitchfork. Another time he was shown in a refrigerated chamber.

It is strange that he chose to perform with animals because he had a morbid fear of them, a real phobia. Once, when he was in the barrel, a fellow performer thought he would play a joke and he dropped a live mouse into it. Harold D. went frantic, almost hysterical and hammered on the side to be taken out.

So maybe working with animals was an act of great courage on his part or maybe he would just do anything to keep in the headlines and make money. It is not for me to say.

His new act began with him standing outside a lion cage where he would address the crowds for ten minutes or so on the infamous legal judgment that had brought him so low in life. He would end with a few jokes and then climb into the cage where he would act as a lion “tamer” for around three minutes.

On the night of 28th July 1937, things went disastrously wrong. The lions were very sleepy. Harold D. began to flick his whip at them. The lioness took no notice but the lion got up and began pacing around. Harold flicked his whip harder and told the lion to “get on with it”. The lion did, he pounced and bowled the ex-vicar over. The crowd fled in horror. A sixteen year old lion tamer called Irene got into the cage and tried to drag the lion off but it was useless. The only pole long enough to go through the bars was hidden underneath the cage. The young girl showed extreme bravery. She first jammed a wooden handle into the lion’s mouth but it broke, she then grabbed an iron bar and hit the beast over the head with it until the lion dropped the horribly injured man.

Harold was rushed to hospital with a hideous gash in his throat. His neck was broken. He died two days later. In typical “show must go on” fashion the proprietor of the show advertised for people to come and see the lion that mauled the infamous vicar of Stiffkey to death.

He certainly had a colourful life. What made him do the things he did after being unfrocked. Why did he not appeal? Was it the born actor in him, was it the desire for fame, was he a little deranged? Alas, we shall never know. This comic/tragic figure is now consigned to history.

For the sake of living relatives I have refrained from putting on this man's picture.  If anyone wants to learn more about him, let me know as I have found a site I can send you.