A sad story

Name: Betsy Moore (died fr[om] taking an overdose of Colocynth, taken to produce a miscarriage!). [Colocynth (or Bitter Apple) is a particularly strong purgative which even ancient Egyptians believed was able to provoke miscarriage if taken early in pregnancy.]

Abode: Great Coates (servant at Mr Epworth’s) fr[om] Ludford. [Ludford is a village in the Lincolnshire Wolds thirteen miles from Great Coates.]

Date of burial: 3rd July. [1871.]

Age: 22.

Minister: No ceremony. “Felo-de-se”. By Coroner’s Order! [Felo-de-se is ‘felon on self’ – a now obsolete legal term for someone who takes his or her own life.]

I am writing a piece about the Humber-side nature of the parish and went to the Library to capture some entries from St Nicolas’ burial registers which show how the bodies of unknown sailors washed up on the bank of the estuary were buried in the churchyard. In addition, while I was there, I rediscovered and captured this entry.

Betsy isn’t a diminutive; it (or Betsey) is the form of her given name when it appears in other records.

She was born in the July-September quarter of 1849. She shows up at Ludford aged 2 and 12 in the 1851 and 1861 census returns. In 1851 she was the youngest of four children aged two to six living with her widowed mother. In 1861 she is staying with a charwoman in the village. She doesn’t look as if she had much going for her. ‘Going into service’ within a year or two would have been almost the only option open to her.

In the 1871 census, taken exactly three months before she died, she is indeed recorded as a servant of Mr Epworth at Great Coates. Francis Epworth was a farmer and lived with his wife Sophia, four children and three servants on Aylesby Road. Betsey is listed as a housemaid. (Francis and Sophia’s gravestones are in St Michael’s churchyard.)

The entry in the burial register is in the handwriting of the Revd T B Coopland, the resident Assistant Curate, and, more than anything else, the two exclamation marks say as much about the attitude of the church at the time as the fact the burial went ahead without prayers or a funeral service.

We've uncovered the accounts in both the Lincolnshire Chronicle for 7th July and the Grantham Journal for 8th July. 

She had worked at the Epworths for nearly two years and was spoken of as a good servant.  She had bought an ounce of Bitter Apple at Binbrook (not far from her Ludford home) on May Day at about the second month of her pregnancy.  She took it on 1st July when thought by the cook who gave evidence to be four months pregnant. 

Her bowels became inflamed, and she confessed what she had done to the doctor who tried to treat her.  She died early on the 3rd, the inquest was heard in the farmhouse later in the day, and she was buried that night.  She left no goods or chattels.

Twice recently I’ve come across a Grimsby story in the same year where a housemaid was prosecuted for stealing a single postage stamp, was imprisoned for a day, lost her place, and died from taking rat poison; the story is remembered because of the riot which then took place outside her employer’s house.

A couple of years ago I posted another story from near by Irby-on-Humber seventeen years later which might also have been the result of someone very like Betsy having to conceal a pregnancy.

Wearing crosses

I haven’t quite got my head around why an evangelical Christian would want to establish his, or especially her, right to wear distinctive and visible Christian jewellery at work, especially if the employer had insisted on either a corporate uniform or a limit to potential infection hazards.

The New Testament is quite consistent about this sort of thing. Jesus’ own teaching takes a dim view of those who make any form of show of distinctive religious dress (the over large phylacteries and over long robe fringes of certain scribes and Pharisees at Matthew 23.5) and later writers urge women in particular to adorn themselves with modesty and good works rather than braided hair, gold, jewels or expensive clothes (1 Timothy 2.9,10 and 1 Peter 3.3,4). One strand of the early church tradition also insists on obedience to even to a slave owner because the Lord will see the quality of the work which is done (Ephesians 6.5,6 and Colossians 3.22-24).

Drawing direct parallels between biblical teaching and modern situations is always more difficult than some strands of fundamentalism might indicate, but, nevertheless, it isn’t difficult to see that the early Christians who followed these teachings would find it incomprehensible that in later generations Christians would take their employers to court to establish the right to wear at work jewellery representing the death of the Lord.

It would be consistent for bodies like the Evangelical Alliance to be saying to them that we are not pagans, nor are we members of just one among many religions competing for equal privileges. They would say, let others sue for the right to wear yellow robes, turbans, veils or anything else. They would conclude, let Christians witness by acceptance, diligence and modesty, and not by outward signs.

The photograph was taken on the way back from Matins one day last week.

Waiving fees

The legislation which came into effect at the beginning of the month says

the incumbent… may waive any fee payable to the Diocesan Board of Finance (DBF) in a particular case… [and] may, after consulting the churchwardens,… waive any fee payable to the Parochial Church Council (PCC).

The formal explanatory material which accompanied the legislation as it went through the General Synod says

[Fees] may only be waived ‘in a particular case’. That means the incumbent must be able to point to something about the particular case that would justify waiving the fee… DBFs may wish to offer advice to clergy about how and when they wish to exercise their right to waive fees. The [Archbishops’] Council’s advice is that this should only be in cases of clear financial hardship. It is understandable that some clergy have been known to waive fees for those who are long-standing members of the congregation. The [Archbishops’] Council believes, however, that this practice should not be encouraged, certainly as far as the DBF fee is concerned.

So the incumbent has an unfettered right to waive fees. He or she needs nobody’s permission to do so. The Archbishops’ Council offers advice and discouragement, the particular DBF may offer further advice, and the churchwardens must be consulted in relation to the PCC's fee, but none of these other parties may in fact direct the incumbent's decision.

However, the right relates to ‘particular cases’. The incumbent cannot say ‘I don’t believe in the fee system so I will decline to charge fees’. He or she cannot say, for example, ‘the fee for a funeral of someone under 16 is nil, but my general policy is not to charge a fee for a funeral of any teenager’ or ‘my general policy is not to charge those who over time have given substantial financial support to the church’.

What he or she can say is ‘this particular person is in real financial difficulties so I will not charge’, and also, I assume, he or she can say things like ‘I judge it would be a pastoral disaster to charge a fee in this particular case so I will not do so’.

The Lincoln DBF has issued its booklet of advice.  This says, under the heading ‘Key changes’,

Fees cannot be waived generally, only in particular cases and only be the incumbent who must be able to point to justifiable reasons, such as hardship, and should consult the Archdeacon.

This is almost fine so far, although perhaps ‘should consult the Archdeacon’ is already a bit of a stretch from the DBF advising or requesting that the Archdeacon be consulted; since the legislation names consultation which must take place (with churchwardens in relation to the PCC fee) it follows that nobody can actually require additional consultation.

But three pages later the Lincoln DBF advice has a substantive paragraph under the heading ‘Waivers’ which reads in full:

PCCs cannot waive any portion of the DBF fee without permission from the relevant Archdeacon. The PCC fee or any other local fees may be waived by the PCC or incumbent, as agreed between the PCC and incumbent.

It is difficult to believe that either of these sentences has been written or approved for publication by anyone who has engaged properly with the legislation, let alone by anyone who wishes to be taken seriously exercising a formal right to offer advice in relation to it.

The first sentence names the PCC and Archdeacon as the two parties involved in a decision about waiving the DBF fee. But we have seen that neither of them is actually a party to that decision (other perhaps than being parties which the DBF might or might not advise the incumbent to consult).

The second sentence names the PCC and incumbent as the two parties who must agree any decision about waiving the PCC fee. But we have seen that it is the incumbent who decides, after consulting the churchwardens, and the PCC isn’t involved (still less a party which needs to agree).

There are also further obvious problems with naming the PCC as a party to any of this. We have seen that the waiving of fees can only be considered in particular cases not as matters of general policy, so it is very difficult to see what role a PCC might actually play. A PCC will only meet a few times in a year and so simply wouldn’t be in a position to advise let alone agree about a particular case (especially where a quick decision about a funeral fee needs to be made). And anyway it would be totally inappropriate to share any information about the financial situation of individual parishioners with such a body.

It may seem perverse, but I’m actually a little relieved to find this level of incompetence demonstrated so clearly in the booklet. It shows just how far the Working Party who dealt with this matter on behalf of the DBF has gone off piste. The serious but in most cases futile objections I have raised about the rest of what the DBF is imposing on us suddenly looks less like the rantings of one of the diocese’s difficult clergymen.

As I look at other diocesan websites, I see that most (but sadly not all) advice about waiving fees is accurate and reasonable, and no other one makes things up about a PCC role. I also see that the universal new practice elsewhere in the Church of England is that parishes continue to collect all fees and then disburse them as necessary – payments of the DBF’s fee to the DBF being monthly (in some cases quarterly) and accompanied by a single page form listing the relevant services and fees.  I hate to think how much paid time is to be spent in our Diocesan Office administering every individual funeral payment across the whole of old Lincolnshire, or how much extra clergy and volunteer time is to be spent completing a separate form relating to every separate individual fee generating activity.

The photographs were taken after Matins at St Nicolas’ this morning.

Red tower / big drill

When I arrived for Matins one day last week, I discovered that the angle and quality of the dawn sun was briefly doing this to St Nicolas' tower.

Meanwhile work was also beginning to enhance flood protection for the houses immediately north of St Michael's, and the little boy in me enjoyed the drill best.

Men on the roof

Mary and Joseph have been popping up in different forms and at different venues across North East Lincolnshire during Advent as part of an Advent Calendar organised by the local Churches Together.  Today they are models at the top of St Michael’s tower.  It took more work than I had imagined securing them in place in a high wind, and a police car ‘blue-lighted’ from the other side of town to see what was going on when someone dialled 999 to report men at work on the church roof possibly pinching the lead.  Happy Christmas.

Proportionality

“It is your busy time of year.” Yes, but that has nothing to do with Christmas being so near. I have been called three times in the last six weeks to diocesan briefing events at the Lincolnshire Showground, in Scunthorpe and in Lincoln. I find I have notes from all three still on my desk awaiting action or at least cascading the sometimes quite disproportionate information to others.

The Bishop wrote to say attendance at the renewal training about safeguarding (child and vulnerable adult protection) was mandatory, and we do indeed need to maintain the highest levels of good practice here. The Church of England’s general rigour has meant that the systematically predatory no longer look on involvement in the church as an easy route by which to access the vulnerable. It was also clear this year that one diocese’s lack of rigour has been the cause of real harm to some vulnerable individuals, which may be in part what spooked the diocese into providing renewal training now.

What this means in practice for this parish, apart from an annual review that everything from Childline posters to awareness of proper reporting systems remain in place, is that we have Criminal Record Bureau (CRB), now Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), checks in place and renewed every five years for about a third of the one hundred or so regular church attenders in the parish. This applies even to the ones for whom a CRB clearance is already in place for another area of their lives – I’m still separately checked by the church, hospital and FE college, although there is a chance that DBS checks may become more proportionate by becoming ‘portable’.

At the moment I’m also just setting up the next safeguarding awareness training evening for two new people who will be joining the teams taking Communion to homes. The briefing reminded us that we should really have two references and a job description sheet on file for each of them as well.

The second briefing was about how we handle fees - the diocese said it hoped all parishes would be represented at this, so I could actually have asked someone else to go and report back. It was here that the word ‘proportionality’ sprang most forcibly from my lips.

At present the three church Treasurers collect fees which are technically part of my stipend and I send their cheques to the Diocesan Board of Finance (DBF) at the end of each quarter. Should our auditors or the diocese want a break down then it would take the Treasurers a little extra paperwork but it could easily be provided.

From 1st January the legal status of this money changes. It becomes the property of the DBF, which has decided how it wishes us to account for it and how it wishes to police both our handling of it and our good practice in the way we charge ‘extras’.

So the DBF will now require that we generate a separate form relating to each and every individual fee generating activity – and we return over £10 000 of fees from this parish each year. For some fees, it wants this form e-mailed straight away so it can collect the payment direct and then send the parish’s portion and extras to us. For other fees, it wants us to collect the payment and then send the DBF the form and its fee, and to do this monthly not quarterly.

For every wedding, the DBF now requires us to tell it what extras were charged, although this has nothing directly to do with accounting for the fee money which belongs to it. For every funeral, the form requires us to state not only which Funeral Director’s firm is involved but the name of the member of staff dealing with the particular funeral. For every churchyard memorial the form requires us to state not only the grave to which it relates but also to provide contact details for the next-of-kin of the person buried there.

I was in a tiny minority raising questions about this, but I actually wonder whether some of it is even in breach of the Data Protection Act - I can understand a requirement that we have accounts which show clearly how all payments to us have been handled, but I seriously doubt whether it is legal for the diocese to build up a computer database of next-of-kin on the back of this process.

A Churchwarden from a tiny parish said she was grateful to have a system set out on a form she could follow through step by step when she had the odd wedding or funeral to deal with in a year. An incumbent of a major parish said it would be simple for her administrator to change all the parish’s systems and use the diocesan forms as the basis for the parish’s own record keeping. So what had I to worry about?

The final briefing was about marriage preliminaries and registration. The Bishop wrote that he expected incumbents and priests-in-charge to give attendance the highest priority. It was in part prompted by concerns about ‘sham marriages’ about which the Diocesan Registrar confessed we have been naïve (as I did in a post here in April 2011). But this post is already too long, and the briefing was really to promulgate the disproportionate approach about which I already posted then.

Meanwhile, the picture shows our effort this year to make links between Christingle and the outside giving of our three churches. The orange / world has our link parish in Zimbabwe marked. The ribbon / blood is made up of Christmas cards being sent in response to information from Action of Christians Against Torture. The cocktail sticks / fruit carry the sorts of tins which members of the congregation contribute to a local food bank. The candle / light of the world is marked for the Children’s Society for whom each year Christingle is a major source of education, prayers and funding.

Believing in Common Tenure

Eighty-five per cent of the serving Bishops in the Church of England don’t want to share the new terms and conditions of their clergy.

Nearly two years ago (at the end of January 2011) all serving clergy without long term security of tenure (such as Priests-in-Charge, Team Vicars and Curates) were automatically moved onto new terms and conditions called Common Tenure. Since then all new clergy appointments have been on this basis. It was also open to those who did have long term security of tenure (such as Archdeacons, Rectors and Vicars) to opt in as well. Both Archbishops opted in to begin the cascade, and I see that my own formal Common Tenure paperwork is dated from 1st March 2011.

There have been something like twenty new Bishops appointed since then, and these all now serve under Common Tenure. What about the other ninety or so of our present serving Bishops who were already in post by January 2011? A question was asked at the recent General Synod about how many of them have opted in. The answer was eleven.

Although there is absolutely no obligation on them to do so, I had a quite disproportionately depressed reaction when I read this last week. I suppose it is the dull sense that if they really believed it was the best for us they would have grabbed the opportunity to be part of it themselves. I suppose it is the even duller sense that such a high proportion of Bishops are overseeing terms and conditions for us to which they chose not to be subject themselves.

Anyway, part of the new terms and conditions is a mutual obligation between Bishop and clergyperson to provide and to participate in appropriate schemes of ministerial development review (at least once every two years) and continued ministerial education. Of course these things are not new - indeed fifteen years ago I was working full-time for the diocese trying to operate the good practice recommended at that time in these areas.

I’ve written before about such things, especially when I was engaged in a ministerial development review experiment in the summer of 2010 which was part of the diocese's preparation for the introduction of Common Tenure. The process was not completed then (my Archdeacon never responded to the draft Role Description I was obliged to send her, and no offers of relevant continued ministerial education came my way), but it was only a trial run.

The keen eyed will spot the fact that this was more than two years ago, but I know the other Archdeacon’s Secretary has now been given extra hours to get the diocesan scheme moving (she included me in an e-mail a little while ago when she was trying to find out who had been trained as reviewers for it), and I suppose I will not be ‘overdue’ for such a review until March, so I simply have to trust that those who will supervise my terms and conditions hereafter  really do believe in them.