South Yorkshire Times, November 4th 1944
New Vicar at Denaby Main
The Venerable Maurice Clarke, M.A., Archdeacon of Madras, has been offered, and has accepted, the living of Denaby Main and the service of institution and induction is to take place in All Saints Church, Denaby at 6 p.m. on Thursday November 23rd 1944.
Mr. Clarke is a Yorkshireman and his early years were spent at Horsforth, near Leeds. When the last war broke out in 1914 he was training for Holy Orders, but he immediately joined up as a Private in the Royal Field Artillery and was billeted in the Grand Stand of the racecourse at Doncaster for a time before serving in France and Flanders, and being wounded. Later he was given a commission but returned to his studies when the war was over and took his degree and the Diploma in Theology at Durham University, before serving his first curacy at St. Margaret’s Church, Anfield, Liverpool. In 1925 he accepted work with the Universities Mission to Central Africa and took charge of the mining station at Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia on the Congo border.
In 1927 he went out to India, where he has worked in the Diocese of Madras until his return to England at the end of May of this year. During the whole of his stay in India, Mr. Clarke has always been in very close touch with the soldiers but he has also had a very wide experience of missionary work In South India. He was appointed Officiating Archdeacon in June 1938, and for nearly two years was left in full charge of the Madras Diocese, he was also made an honorary Canon of St George’s Cathedral, Madras.
As Mr. Clarke raised a patrol of Scouts in 1907, before there was any such thing as a scout organisation, he may be said to be a pioneer of the Scout movement. He took his ‘Gilwell’ course and received his Wood badge in 1922 and was Scout Commissioner in Secunderabad and Hyderabad in the Deccan, India, where he was presented with a gold Scouts’ badge.
Mr. Clarke has accepted the living of Denaby Main because he wants to be “healthily occupied” and as he will be working single-handed in the parish, and there is a population of 10,000, it certainly looks as though he will obtain his desire.