BANKRUPT VICAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1938, Page 10

BANKRUPT VICAR

EXAMINATION IN COURT A clergyman who has been a New Guinea missionary, an Army chaplain and a Transvaal mining parson, found difficulty in living on £425, his stipend and fees as vicar of St Paul’s, Haggerston, London. After a time he gave up the struggle and lived at the rate of £l2OO a year. The Rev Wilfred Henry Abbot suffered the usual fate of those who persist in spending beyond their income. He found himself in the Bankruptcy Court. The 71-year-old vicar explained to the Official Receiver, his liabilities of £397, and his lack of assets. “It cost me about £l2OO a year to live there,” he said. “Your personal expanses have been about £ll a week. You have lived very comfortably?” countered the Official Receiver. “Oh, yes, very delightfully,” boomed the vicar, who said he took in lodgers —young men from a London hospital —and charged them 28s a week. “I looked after them too well and lost money,” he said. . Later the vicar went to hospital for an operation. “I was very ill at the time,” he said, “and was removed from the common ward, where I was entitled to free treatment, to a private cubicle. When I came out I owed the surgeon £6O for fees.” Mr Abbot agreed that he had made no attempt to pay the surgeon, and that judgment was obtained .against him in January. To this, among other things, he attributed his insolvency.