It is 70 years ago since the colourful life of Harold Francis Davidson, the 'prostitutes' padre', came to an end. James Morton looks back at an incredible story


It is sad that so much of the amusement district of Skegness was destroyed last month by a massive fire. The news reminded me of one of the East Anglia’s more celebrated clergymen, one who spent much of his time embroiled in litigation. He was Harold Francis Davidson MA (Oxon), the rector of the Norfolk parish of Stiffkey.



Like William Gladstone half a century before him, Davidson saw his life’s work as saving prostitutes. His critics, and there were many, suggested that the self-styled ‘Prostitutes’ Padre’ was simply saving them until later. One joke of the time was: what is the registration plate of the rector’s car? Answer: RU 16.



Every Sunday night after Evensong, he left his congregation at Wells-Next-The-Sea and came to London. Girls on the Soho streets were gathered up by him, kissed, cuddled and, it was said, seduced. He seems to have been very attracted to the waitresses in Maison Lyons on Coventry Street with their starched dresses and black stockings.



Then, in 1931, one of them, Rose Ellis, wrote to the Bishop of Norwich complaining of the rector’s behaviour. The Bishop promptly instructed private detectives to find out if the conduct of the rector was that of shepherd or wolf. On 4 February, Rose Ellis withdrew her complaint, saying ‘I made charges when I was hard up’, and that she had been plied with port by a journalist. But now the baton passed to the 18-year-old Barbara Harris, who, in terms, claimed that Davidson had tried to rape her. The Bishop convened the Norwich Consistory Court. Davidson fought back, publishing his version of events in the Empire News and the Daily Herald. The Bishop was not amused and brought proceedings, following which the two papers were fined £100 and £50 respectively for contempt of a Consistory Court.



The case against Davidson was heard at the Church House, Westminster on 29 March 1932. Harris stood up well under cross-examination – Davidson did not. The end came when he was shown a photograph taken shortly before the court first sat, in which he posed with a girl. He claimed she had been wearing a swimsuit, but it was clear she was naked. When this was pointed out, he claimed the shawl she was wearing must have slipped. The verdict against him came on 8 July.



From then on his life was one long sideshow, sometimes sitting like Diogenes in a barrel on Blackpool’s Golden Mile, protesting his innocence and raising money to appeal to the Privy Council. In September 1932 he was prosecuted for obstruction when the police said there had been between 1,200 and 1,400 people trying to get in to see him.



In the summer of 1935, Davidson could once more be found in Blackpool in a glass coffin with his daughter Pamela surrounded by blocks of ice and claiming he would starve himself until the Bishop changed his mind. He was promptly charged with attempting to commit suicide, then a criminal offence. Found not guilty at Preston Quarter Sessions, he sued Blackpool corporation for malicious prosecution and was awarded £400 damages. The writer Richard Whittington-Egan remembers as an 11-year-old paying his sixpence to see him every day and that Davidson, who had ‘an exceptionally beautiful speaking voice’, seemed to enjoy their chats.



From there it was to journey’s end in the amusement park in Skegness in 1937 where, virtually destitute and with a terrible fear of animals, he appeared as ‘A Modern Daniel in the Lion’s Den’ in a sideshow run by Captain Fred Rye at Rye’s Pavilion, Sea View Pullover. Armed only with a walking stick, he would step into the cage with five-year-old Fred (the lion) and a lioness, Toto, for two or three minutes to continue a rant against those he saw as his persecutors. He was a great success, with gawpers paying 3d to see him. He took time off one weekend to travel to London, where he was fined £7 for trespass at Victoria Station. He refused to pay the fine and when the local police came to arrest him, he invited them in the cage with him. Naturally the local papers had been alerted.



Then, on Wednesday 28 July, he was killed by Fred. What exactly happened in the moments before Davidson’s death are not entirely clear, but possibly he may have stepped on the neck of Toto, who was in the same cage. Other versions have it that Davidson, thinking the lions were too docile, poked Fred with his stick, at which the animal took exception. Whatever exactly happened, Fred had him by the neck instantly and shook him like a rag doll. The 16-year-old assistant lion tamer Irene Somner, left in charge that afternoon, bravely went into the cage to get Fred to release the former rector, holding the animal with one hand whilst she beat him with a stick. People were not so squeamish then as now.



Fred lived to roar another day and immediately Rye billed him as ‘See the Lion that Mauled and Injured the Rector and the Plucky Girl who went to his Rescue’. Davidson died on the Friday afternoon and the show closed temporarily. It reopened on the Sunday when double admission was charged and closed only for the hour of his funeral.



At the inquest there were suggestions the lions had not been fed to make them more aggressive, but it was ‘death by misadventure’ said the jurors, who, when invited by the coroner to comment on the question of negligence, declined to do so. Now, 70 years after his death, efforts are being made to discredit Barbara Harris’ testimony and clear Davidson’s name.



James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist