Every Precaution Taken – Allaby’s Appointment at Mansfield.

February 1922

Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Monday 27 February 1922

Every Precaution Taken.

Allaby’s Appointment as Curate at Mansfield.

Speaking at St. Peter’s Church, Mansfield, yesterday, the Rev. H. F. Wilkinson acknowledged the kind expressions of sympathy which he had received from friends and acquaintances in the ordeal through which he had gone. It had been a time of trouble for him, but the kind words and thoughts he had received from all quarters had helped him through.

But what he had undergone was little or nothing compared with the burden which the widow and children of the one who had gone had had to bear, and from the time of the news of the tragedy he felt it was his duty to help them in whatever way he could.

“No one,” he proceeded, “can attempt to defend the sad life or the sad end of the clergyman who stood in this pulpit only a week ago. The life and the end are in themselves as great a condemnation as can be written in any page of human life, and we must leave the rest in the hands of God.

So far as St. Peter’s is concerned, every precaution was taken and every rule observed in the selection of the clergyman. But if such things as have been proved could have been done in Liverpool for nine months without anyone being aware of them, no one surely is to blame in Mansfield and this Church if after five weeks only no discovery is made or any suspicion aroused.”