Basil Jellicoe

BASIL JELLICOE

It is sometimes said that clergy are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use.

Whilst this may be true for some, it is certainly not true of Fr. Basil Jellicoe. He was the nephew of Admiral Jellicoe who was in charge of the British navy at the battle of Jutland, in the first world war.

I must admit that I had completely forgotten all about him until I read recently AN Wilson's book, 'After the Victorians'.

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I should have remembered his name because I have always been inspired by the Anglo Catholic wing of the Church of England, which has produced so many great heroes of the faith, particularly at the beginning of the last century.

Like them, I value the emphasis upon the sacramental life of the church focused in the Eucharist. I also value the offering of dignified worship, with the vestments, 'smells and bells' which can add such a sense of awe and wonder.

Such dramatic and colourful worship has done much to lift the hearts and minds of those who live in our inner cities. lt gives them a glimpse of heaven and inspires a sense of hope to those whose lives are often rather mundane.

However, what I admire most about the Anglo Catholic wing, is that it has produced some very fine parish priests, many of whom have been bachelors, who have been prepared to work, where others have chosen not to work.

Such priests have walked from the altar of the daily Eucharist, wearing their cassock and biretta, into the streets and homes of their parishioners, seeking to transform their lives and living conditions, as they have earlier witnessed the bread and wine upon the altar transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

One of the greatest of these was Fr. Basil Jellicoe who pioneered slum clearance in this country (UK), long before local authorities had thought about it.

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Basil Jellicoe was born into a clerical family in 1899 in West Sussex. His early years were a mixture of privilege and service. He left Magdalene College, Oxford in 1917 and served in the Mediterranean as a Royal Navy Volunteer. At the end of the war, he returned to Oxford, this time to St Stephen's House, to train for the ordained ministry.

ln 1922, he was appointed by Magdalene College as missioner to the slums In Somers Town, north of Euston Station in London. The following year he was made a Deacon and a year later, he was ordained a priest.

Father Jellicoe was regularly seen in the parish, wearing an old black cassock, surrounded by hordes of clamorous children, over whom, on wet days, he would spread his cloak like a giant umbrella.

As he visited his parishioners, he became aware of the appalling conditions in which many were forced to live. He noted that in one room, measuring 10 feet by 8 feet lived a father and mother and their three children with one bed, one table, three chairs, a kettle but no oven, sharing an outside wash house and lavatory with others in the area.

22,000 people lived in this confined area, sharing rooms with no adequate washing and lavatory facilities. Often, as many as three families lived in one house. The properties were poorly maintained and infested with bugs, fleas and vermin.

Jellicoe preached against such squalid conditions describing them as, 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace’.

He regarded the conditions as, 'the Devil's holiday, a kind of perpetual festival of All Sinners. It has been produced by selfishness, stupidity and sin, and only Love Incarnate can put it right. The slums produce something much more terrible than discomfort and discontent. They produce a kind of terrible excommunication and fiendish plan on the part of the Power of Evil to keep people from the happiness for what God made them, and from seeing the beauties of His world'. And he concludes: 'It is not more policemen who are wanted in places like Battersea and Somers Town, it is God Incarnate in the hearts of loving human beings'.

He decided it was his Christian duty, as a priest, to lead the fight against such evidence of evil. So with a capital of £250, he founded in 1925, the St Pancras Housing Improvement Scheme.

The following year, the Society bought eight slum properties and reconditioned them for residents. A year later, he was offered the opportunity of purchasing 69 houses and an open space of 16,000 square feet, for a deposit of £25,000 with the balance being paid in five months. With the help of the Minister of Health, Neville Chamberlain, and such supporters as John Galsworthy and Lord Cecil, the money was raised.

In 1930, the old houses in Sidney Street were finally dynamited and new blocks of flats built. But before this happened, he records how: ‘We had previously built a large bonfire, ten feet high, and on the top of this pyre had placed large models of a bug, a flea, a rat and a louse, all stuffed with fireworks, and these were solemnly burnt.'

Soon, news of Jellicoe's unique ministry began to spread, and he became a much sought after speaker to inspire clergy in other cities to take seriously the problem of inadequate housing.

Sadly, he died of exhaustion at the early age of only 36 years.

The Times newspaper, in its obituary, said: ‘He would not rest until his people had homes fit to live in, and the rehousing schemes started by his society have already provided many excellent flats with gardens, trees, ponds, swings for the children and other amenities’.

It also noted that he was, 'as much at home in the coal merchant's cart as in the cloisters of Magdalene College’.

As regards his premature death, Archbishop Temple said, ‘There are some with whom it seems to be a necessary quality that they should die young...Mozart among musicians, Keats and Shelley among the poets; and among the saints, with many another, Basil Jellicoe',

I'm sure Fr. Basil Jellicoe would be horrified to be considered a 'saint', even by an Archbishop. He was just a parish priest caring for his flock.

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In 1923, the year that Jellicoe was made deacon, Frank Weston, the Bishop of Zanzibar spoke at the Anglo Catholic Congress in London and said, 'You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums ... it is folly — it is madness — to suppose you can worship Jesus in the Sacrament and Jesus on his throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children’.

Whether or not Jellicoe was at that conference, and heard these powerful words, we do not know.

Certainly, his very brief life is an example of what Bishop Weston had in mind.

Although those words were originally directed towards the Anglo Catholic wing of the Church, I believe that they are relevant to all Christian men and women, whatever their tradition of churchmanship.

It is all too easy for us to worship Jesus behind closed doors of the church on a Sunday, and to turn our backs upon the presence of Jesus in the world outside.

But you and I come to church on a Sunday to worship God and recharge our batteries - through the words of scripture, the sermon, prayer and through the receiving of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ – we come, in order to go out and to meet and serve, what John Robinson calls ‘the incognito Christ’, in the lives of those with whom we live and work.

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lf we do not do this, then we are too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use.

For me, the most important words of this service are those of the dismissal, ‘Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord'.