“POISON PEN” LETTERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 742, 15 August 1929, Page 9

“POISON PEN” LETTERS

ESSEX VICAR ATTACKED BY ANONYMOUS WRITERS

Anonymous letters written to the Bishop of Chelmsford have caused the vicar of St. Paul's Church. Goodmayes. Essex, to issue a challenge to the “poison pen” writers. The vicar, the Rev. Francis Ottley. states that soon after he came to the parish, four and a-half years ago, he received some scandalous and libellous anonymous letters attacking his personal character. He has never been able to find out who wrote them. Now the attack has broken out in another direction, and people whose identity he can onlyguess at have been pestering the Bishop with letters concerning his (Mr. Ottley’s) church services. “I don’t mind in the least people making legitimate complaints or criticising me if they think fit.” he said, “but I do think it is a mean action not to make their grievances known to me as their vicar and to endeavour to prejudice me in the eyes of the Bishop by sending to his Lordship anonymous letters. “I have not seen those letters, and 1 am not aware of what was said in them. I do think the writers shonld have been manly enough to have met me face to face, instead of stooping to such underhand methods. So far as the regular worshippers at St. Paul’s are concerned the majority have no complaints to make. “Let the writers of these letters come forward. I am prepared to meet them.”