Charles Chase Parr was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at its Isis-Urania temple in London, on 27 November 1892.  He must have chosen a motto on or before that day, but it wasn’t recorded, and in fact his name is not on the GD Members’ Roll.  He wasn’t a keen member - never passed any of the exams new initiates were expected to take - and left the Order in August 1893.

 

Charles Chase Parr and GD member Florence ffoulkes were distant cousins; she was initiated several years after him.

 

 

THE PARR FAMILY

Parrs in Charles Parr’s time claimed descent from the same Lancashire family that produced Katharine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII and her brother William, Marquis of Northampton.  Charles’ daughter later claimed to be a direct descendant of the Marquis, but that’s impossible as neither he nor Katharine had any children that survived beyond infancy.  The earliest ancestor that Burke’s Landed Gentry’s 1852 edition was prepared to vouch for was a 17th-century John Parr who owned land at Rainford, near Liverpool.  A grandson of this John Parr - another John - moved to Liverpool around 1700 and became a businessman.  He had a son John who successfully continued the business.  The son John married Anne Wolstenholme, daughter of the rector of Liverpool, and served as mayor of Liverpool in 1773.  The mayor John Parr and wife Anne had several sons.  Charles Chase Parr was the eldest son’s grandson; Florence ffoulkes was the youngest son’s great-granddaughter.  I don’t knew whether either of them knew this!  Though they were probably aware of being related in some way.

 

John Parr and Anne’s eldest son (born 1757) was another John, generally called John Owen Parr to distinguish him from his father.  In 1775 John Owen Parr was still working in Liverpool, probably in the family business, but later he moved to London, where he continued as a businessman but also worked as secretary to a group of businessmen involved in trading with Africa.  In 1792 John Owen Parr married Elizabeth Patrick.  They had ten children.  Their sons did not work in business, they went into the professions.  The eldest - another John Owen Parr - became a Church of England clergyman and kept the family connection with Lancashire by serving as rector of Preston. His younger brothers Thomas Chase Parr and Samuel both went into the army run in India by the East India Company.

 

Thomas Chase Parr was Charles Chase Parr’s father.  Born in 1802, he joined the East India Company’s 4th Bombay Native Infantry (NI) and was probably in Bombay by August 1819 when his father died, in a very modern way, from injuries received when a carriage over-turned in a street in Kentish Town.  Thomas Chase Parr was nearly eaten by a tiger in 1825 but survived (it was shot by James Outram) to rise slowly through the ranks, making it to Major in 1839 and to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1846.  From 1854 to 1856 he was Commandant at Karachi, his most prominent appointment.  During the Indian Mutiny he was Colonel of the 2nd European Regiment but on census day 1861 he was back in England.   

 

Thomas Chase Parr was 44 when in 1846 he married Harriet Pott (probably born 1817) , a daughter of businessman Charles Pott.  In 1857 a second marriage took place which linked the two families: Thomas’ elder brother Rev John Owen Parr (rector of Prescot in Lancashire) married Harriet’s sister Mary Emily Pott. 

 

Harriet and Mary Emily’s father Charles Pott owned a vinegar-making factory in Southwark Bridge Road; he was elected to the Grocers’ Company in 1822.  In the 1820s he’d also been an early investor in the Phoenix Gas Company - his house in Southwark was one of the first in London to be lit by gas.  It was probably this man who was a supporter of the Southwark-based Surrey Dispensary.  And like many members of his family, he was an active supporter of the Foundling Hospital founded by Thomas Coram - lots of Potts are mentioned in the British History Online article on the building.  Charles Pott served the Foundling Hospital as treasurer, probably taking over from his wife Anna’s father, the barrister Samuel Compton Cox.  On census day 1851, Charles Pott, Anna, and Harriet’s younger sisters were actually in residence at the Foundling Hospital.  However, they had a country house as well: since the 1820s, Charles Pott had leased Freelands, in the Plaistow district of Bromley, from local landowner Sir Samuel Scott; and in May 1846, Harriet Pott and Thomas Chase Parr were married in Bromley.

 

Charles Chase Parr was the oldest child of Thomas Chase Parr and Harriet: baptised at St Pancras Old Church in March 1847 and probably born in the staff quarters of the Foundling Hospital.  Then came Alfred Arthur (1849), Harriet Bertha (1851), Willoughby (1853), Agnes (1856), Emily (1858) and Percivall (baptised early January 1860)  Thomas and Harriet took Charles and Alfred to India and they were all living in Bareda, Bombay in 1851 when Harriet Bertha was born there, but all the younger siblings were born in Bromley.  Although Thomas Chase Parr was still on active duty in India for perhaps as much as 20 years more, it was considered such a dangerous place to take children that the Parrs seem to opted for the strategy of Harriet and the children remaining in England, with Thomas Chase Parr coming back when he could - which seems to have been fairly often.  I don’t think Charles Chase Parr returned to India after those two or three childhood years; and he probably didn’t retain clear memories of it. 

 

On the day of the 1861 census, his father was on a long leave and back in England.  Thomas Chase Parr and Harriet were visiting Harriet’s brother, the Rev Arthur Pott, at his rectory in Northill, Bedfordshire.  Charles Chase Parr and his brother Alfred (both on holiday from Harrow School) and their younger siblings were at Freelands with their grandparents the Potts.  Charles Pott and Anna ran a fairly lavish household - they employed butler, footman, groom, cook, lady’s maid, two housemaids, kitchen maid, one nurse and there was also one nurse specifically to wait on the children.  Charles Pott was a wealthy man.  When he died in 1864, his personal effects alone were worth about £70,000 (contemporary values).

 

I think Thomas Chase Parr must have been back in India again on the day of the 1871 census.  Harriet Parr was living in Harrow and she told the census official that she was the head of the household.  She was employing a governess for her two younger daughters, as well as a cook, a parlourmaid and a housemaid.  Charles Chase Parr was living at home, able to contribute to the household expenses.  He was working, as a solicitor.

 

I can’t find any evidence that Charles had gone to university on leaving school.  In fact, university study of the law was not necessary to qualified as a solicitor at that time; solicitors learned and did the exams while on the job.  However, I do find it odd that Charles chose to be a solicitor, and have wondered whether - for a few years - money was tight in the Parr family.   One reference I found to Thomas Chase Parr suggested that he had lost money when a bank in Bombay failed, around 1868: Thomas Chase Parr was amongst those signing a petition to the House of Commons arguing for compensation on the grounds that the bank’s directors had broken the rules laid down for the Bank by Act of Parliament.  (They never change, do they? - bankers.)  Thomas Chase Parr certainly was not officially listed as retired until he was 76, in 1878; perhaps he couldn’t afford to retire until then.  He’d been promoted to General two years before: perhaps that helped ease the financial strain in the family.  However, with regard to the oddity of Charles Chase Parr’s line of work, I would suppose that a boy at Harrow School would go on to university at Oxford or Cambridge and then - if his family were wanting him to follow a legal career - would train as a barrister.  This was the career path followed, at least to start with, by Charles’ brother Percivall a few years later. 

 

Charles Chase Parr qualified as a solicitor in 1871 but the earliest evidence I found for his working as one was from 1879 and he was only listed as one in Kelly’s Directory from 1883 to 1885.  Perhaps it was not his choice to be a solicitor, or even to choose the law as a profession, but the Parr family were probably less wealthy  than the Potts, and couldn’t afford for their sons not to work.  Only certain types of work, however, would ensure the Parrs kept their middle-class status; so Charles might have been offered the choice of solicitor, clergyman, or following his father into the army (though the army could turn out to be a rather expensive investment).  Charles’ next brother, Alfred, went into the navy, another career which didn’t involve much financial outlay by parents.  The third brother, Willoughby, chose the Church of England option.  The Parrs’ financial situation seems to have been in better health, though, when they had to decide about Percivall.

 

If Charles Chase Parr would have preferred to be a sporting man-about-town, he wouldn’t be the only young man to have wished for such a life while not having the income to support it.  He did do what he could, though: in the memoirs of Raymond Blathwayt (journalist, writer and definitely  a man-about-town), Charles is named as one of a group of young men who frequented Jem Mace’s boxing saloon in St James’s Street in the early 1870s.  He was also a keen cricketer, though he was a late developer at the game - he never played for his school and it wasn’t until he became a member of West Kent Cricket Club (WKCC) that his skills blossomed in the less competitive atmosphere of weekend cricket.  He must have joined WKCC around 1874: he’s first mentioned in a team which played against Eton College in June of that year, though he didn’t actually get to the crease as the game was abandoned (rain, I expect).  He developed into “a very fine hitter” and appears three times in a list of WKCC’s highest-scoring batting performances.  Only three WKCC batsmen between 1822 and 1896 scored more centuries for WKCC than he did.  Charles’ brothers Willoughby and Percivall were also members of WKCC in the 1880s.  Willoughby wasn’t very good!  But Percivall was another big hitter; he was the best all-round sportsman of the three, playing football for Oxford University and England, and both sports for several amateur old-public-schoolboy teams.

 

Behind the sporting life, however, there must have been a more sober side to Charles Chase Parr, because he married a woman with deeply-felt religious beliefs and a serious commitment to church-based social work.  Katherine Anne Parr was the daughter of Joseph Millar, who at least in the early 1850s was a Wesleyan minister in Liverpool.  Both Joseph and his wife Ellen were born in the Liverpool area.  In 1872 Katherine and Charles were married in the Church of England church of St John the Evangelist Knotty Ash, but they had probably met in Harrow, because on the day of the 1871 census, that is where not only Harriet Parr but also Joseph Millar, Ellen, Katherine and her brother Gaskell were living.  On that day, Joseph Millar told the census official that his main source of income was as a landowner; and that he was a Wesleyan minister but not currently working as one.  I mention where Katherine and Charles were married, and that Joseph Millar was no longer employed by the Wesleyan methodists by 1871, because at some stage, Katherine Parr at least became a convert to Roman Catholocism. 

 

I wish I knew when this conversion happened, and whether Charles Chase Parr was also converted.  I haven’t been able to find out anything about it.  I think I can say that Joseph Millar was still a methodist at the time of his daughter’s marriage.  If anyone in the Millar family had become a catholic, having been brought up as a methodist, that would have caused a sensation amongst their friends (many of whom they might have lost as a result).  If it had been Joseph Millar who had undergone such a profound change in the nature of his Christian belief he would, of course, no longer have been eligible to work for his old employer.  However, his mentioning that he had worked for the Wesleyan ministry to the census official suggests a different story to me in his case: one of inheriting land and becoming able to live off the rents.  I think it is Katherine Parr who is the convert; and that her conversion took place probably in the late 1870s/early 1880s. 

 

My main sources for my belief that Katherine Parr at least was a Roman Catholic convert are the Who’s Who entry and biographies of Charles and Katherine’s daughter Olive Katharine, the writer Beatrice Chase.  All these sources agree that she attended the school run by the Roman Catholic nuns of the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, which was originally in a house in Marylebone High Street but moved to 11-12 Cavendish Square around 1890.  The biographies also agree that later in her life, Olive Katharine made the first moves towards becoming a nun in the Dominican Order, before changing her mind; and that she and her mother built small Roman Catholic chapel near their house in Devon.

 

Olive Katharine Parr’s being at a Roman Catholic school gives me a rough date before which this conversion must have taken place: Charles and Katherine’s elder daughter was born in 1874 and should therefore have been a pupil at the school in the 1880s, though none of the sources I found give exact dates.  I take it that her sister Hilda (born 1876) was a pupil there as well; though I haven’t found any proof in her case.

 

Two biographies of Olive Katharine Parr, now summarised on a web-page, mention the charity work done by Katherine her mother as well as Olive Katharine’s own.  No dates are given but mother and daughter were working together, so it will have been in the 1890s, with 1903 probably bringing their efforts to an end at least in London.  Katherine and Olive Katharine did their social work in the working-class districts of London (the biographies don’t say exactly where), and also in workhouses.  They may have been part of the project the Convent ran to teach working-class children.  In addition, Olive Katharine undertook the management of Cardinal Vaughan’s Catholic Children’s Crusade.

 

The biographies of Olive Katharine don’t mention Charles Chase Parr at all: both were written quite recently, nearly a century after he died, and both are by writers local to Devon and focused on its history.  I haven’t found any evidence that Charles Chase Parr became a Catholic; though that’s not to say that he didn’t do so, I just haven’t found proof.  My hunch is that he either remained within the Church of England; or continued to search for something to believe in - the sort of frame of mind that might encourage you to join the Golden Dawn when the chance arose.

 

The 1881 census was the only one on which Charles Chase Parr was working as a solicitor.  He, Katherine and their daughters were living in a house on The Common, Chislehurst, very near to where West Kent Cricket Club played their home games.  Percivall (still at Oxford University) was staying with them on that day and they also had a boarder, Houghton Baldwin, who worked for a firm trading with the Far East.  A nurse, cook and housemaid were employed.  Thomas Chase Parr (now retired) and Harriet were living at Powis Lodge, the house Anna Pott had lived in between Charles Pott’s death and her own (in 1876).  It was next to the station master’s house on Southborough Road in Bickley.  Charles Chase Parr’s sisters Agnes and Emily and son Willoughby were living with them.  Willoughby was curate of Bickley at the time and the household’s income ran to a governess, cook, parlourmaid, housemaid, nurse and gardener. 

 

In June 1883, Thomas Chase Parr died and this inevitably led to changes in the family, to Charles’ benefit if he didn’t like working as a solicitor.  On the day of the 1891 census, Charles Chase Parr and his family were described as living off “private means” - census short-hand for an income derived from investments.  To me it looks as though Charles had inherited enough from his father for him to persuade himself that he could stop work and still provide for his family - provided he made some economies.  The economies included moving himself, wife and daughters into Powis Lodge with mother Harriet and sisters Agnes and Emily.  Harriet Parr was still a home-from-home for her children (a nice reflection on her character, I think).  Even Percivall was living back home with her on that day: although qualified as a barrister he’d been working for W G Allen the publisher, and was a partner as well, with money invested; but the firm was in financial trouble and he may have lost or been about to lose his shirt over it.  Harriet was listed as head of this three-generation household, and she ran it with the help of a lady’s maid, a cook and one housemaid.  To my modern ears, that doesn’t sound nearly enough to cook and clean up after six adults and two schoolgirls, especially as the lady’s maid would not be about to do any housework; though it was not untypical of the manoeuvres between status, comfort and income that I’ve seen in other households involving GD members at that time.

 

It was as a man with private means that Charles Chase Parr was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn in 1892.  Who did he know who could recommend him as a possible candidate?  I have no idea!  I haven’t found any evidence that he was a freemason - in the GD’s first year or two, most initiates were.  And he wasn’t a member of the Theosophical Society (TS) - in the early 1890s, most initiates were already in the TS.  Sometimes the address new initiates gave the GD for correspondence has given me a clue; but not in Charles Chase Parr’s case.  He told the GD administrators (that is, William Wynn Westcott) to send letters to an address in Queen Anne’s Gate - but either he forgot to give the number at the time, or the information has disappeared from the GD records since 1892, because R A Gilbert’ book doesn’t give the house number.  I looked at Kelly’s Directory for 1892 and 1894 but they were only helpful in the negative sense.  No householder in the street had the surname Parr, and none had a surname I associate with the GD.  There were two solicitors’ offices in the street; but Parr was not listed as a partner in either and in any case I have a feeling that’s not the answer to the puzzle.  I can only suppose that Charles asked a friend who was not in the GD if he minded taking in letters to him.  He was not the only GD member to be wary of giving the people they lived with a chance to be curious, but I couldn’t help wondering if in Charles’ case, he was worried about what his newly-Catholic wife would say if she found out.  A belief in the one god was actually a requirement of those wanting to join the GD, and its rituals were based on the symbolism of the Christian Rosenkreuz legends, written by 17th-century German Protestants; but it might have been difficult to persuade Katherine Parr of those things.  Perhaps nothing that Charles saw or took part in at the GD was able to overcome his reservations. 

 

I do know of two GD members who have tenuous links with Charles Chase Parr and might have suggested to Westcott and Samuel Liddell Mathers that Charles would make a good recruit - Florence ffoulkes his distant cousin; and Hugh Elliot who had been at school with Charles’ younger brother Percivall.  But they both joined the GD after Charles had resigned.  A much longer shot is the Farr sisters, Florence and Henrietta.  The Farrs had lived in Bromley around 1860; but they moved away after only a few years and in any case I haven’t found any evidence that Charles knew them.  So it’s a mystery, who Charles Chase Parr knew in the GD.

 

Living off investment income has its problems, but it does give you time.  Though he had time to take his GD membership further, to do the study initiates were required to do to reach the GD’s second, inner Order and try some practical magic, Charles never did so.  He was willing to donate time to WKCC, however: though he didn’t actually play after the early 1880s, he was an active member of the club’s management committee for many years.

 

Just as Charles Chase Parr is missing from accounts of the life of his daughter Olive Katharine, so is any mention of Charles’ younger daughter Hilda.  My searches on the web and elsewhere didn’t come up with any information on her at all after census day 1891, and in the end I decided that she must have died young.  I found a death registration from the summer of 1894 for a Hilda Parr aged 18; I think this is Charles and Katherine’s daughter.  I suggest, too, that Charles’ only known poem may date from this time. 

 

Death at a young age came to Charles himself a few years later: he died on 3 January 1897, aged only 49.  His mother survived him by nearly a year. 

 

Around 1903, Katherine and Olive Katharine left London and settled in Venton, just outside Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Devon.  For more on their lives in Devon, see the websites I’ve listed in the Sources section.

 

I’ll end this biography with the text of Charles Chase Parr’s only published literary work - perhaps the only poem he ever wrote.  It’s undated, but I would suppose it was composed in the mid-to-late 1890s, an epitaph for daughter Hilda, or perhaps for himself.

 

 

LOVE MADE PERFECT

            By many devious paths through weary days

            Have I sought Love made perfect; in the spring

            When wakening birdds and hawthorn blossoming

            Made glad at dawn the dewy woodland ways;

            In summer noonday, when a golden haze

            Broods on the murmurous reaches of the tide;

            In autumn twilight on the mountain side

            Lulled by the dirges the wet hill-winds sing.

 

            Now in the winter midnight, as alone

            I mourn a life expended in vain quest,

            And listen to the fir-wood’s fitful moan,

            One steals beside me - an unbidden guest -

            And murmurs in mine ear with icy breath:

            “In me is Love made perfect: I am Death”.

 

 

 

BASIC SOURCES I USED for all Golden Dawn members.

 

Membership of the Golden Dawn: The Golden Dawn Companion by R A Gilbert.  Northampton: The Aquarian Press 1986.  Between pages 125 and 175, Gilbert lists the names, initiation dates and addresses of all those people who became members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or its many daughter Orders between 1888 and 1914.  The list is based on the Golden Dawn’s administrative records and its Members’ Roll - the large piece of parchment on which all new members signed their name at their initiation.  All this information had been inherited by Gilbert but it’s now in the Freemasons’ Library at the United Grand Lodge of England building on Great Queen Street Covent Garden.  Please note, though, that the records of the Amen-Ra Temple in Edinburgh were destroyed in 1900/01.  As far as I know, the records of the Horus Temple at Bradford have not survived either.

 

Family history: freebmd; ancestry.co.uk (census and probate); findmypast.co.uk; familysearch; Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage; Burke’s Landed Gentry; Armorial Families; thepeerage.com; and a wide variety of family trees on the web.

 

Famous-people sources: mostly about men, of course, but very useful even for the female members of GD.  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  Who Was Who. Times Digital Archive.

 

Useful source for business and legal information: London Gazette and its Scottish counterpart Edinburgh Gazette.  Now easy to find (with the right search information) on the web.

 

Catalogues: British Library; Freemasons’ Library.

 

Wikipedia; Google; Google Books - my three best resources.  I also used other web pages, but with some caution, as - from the historian’s point of view - they vary in quality a great deal.

 

SOURCES FOR CHARLES CHASE PARR

 

A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry Burke 1852 ed vol 2 p1052 re Parr of Grappenhall Heyes.

 

Charles’ grandfather JOHN OWEN PARR.  Beware, though! - there are several other John Owen Parrs, all descendants of this one

Remains, Historical and Lit...  Edited by Jeremiah Finch Smith.  Published 1866 by the Chetham Society of Manchester Grammar School.  P187 gives a date of death for John Owen Parr: 5 August 1819.  It also is the source of the information about the Africa trade committee.

 

The Remembrancer, or Impartial Repository of Public Events issue of 1775 by John Almon and Thomas Pownall.  Beginning pp205-06 John Owen Parr is one of a large number of men from the Liverpool business and professional community signing a lament addressed to George III on the trouble he’s having with the American colonies.

 

The Gentleman’s Magazine volume 126 1819 p189 list of deaths that had occurred during 1819.

 

Charles’ father THOMAS CHASE PARR

From Ancestry’s baptism lists: Thomas Chase Parr was baptised at St Nicholas Brighton on 17 Sep 1802.  DOB = 21 August 1802.  Parents were John Owen Parr and wife Elizabeth Mary.

East India Register and Directory 1819 p314.

James Outram: A Biography by Major-Genl Sir F J Goldsmid CB KCSI.  In 2 volumes, London: Smith Elder and Co 1880.  Thomas Chase Parr’s tiger incident is in volume 1 pp102-03.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of GB and Ireland volume 8 1846 p31 Major Thomas Chase Parr is a member of its Bombay branch.

The Gentleman’s Magazine vol 180 p88.

United Service Magazine 1849 issue 1 p141.

United Service Magazine 1854 p469 Thomas Chase Parr of the Bombay Infantry is in a list of those recently promoted to colonel.

Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons 1868 p231-232 in a section called Correspondence - Old and New Banks of Bombay. 

New Annual Army List 1869 p452 as a major-general.

Hart’s Army List 1870 p308 in a list of lieutenant-generals.

Times Wed 20 June 1883 p14a obituary of Thomas Chase Parr who had been put on the army’s retired list in 1878.

Modern English Biography by Frederic Boase; volume II I-Q p1359 Thomas Chase Parr D Powis Lodge Bickley 15 June 1883.

 

THE POTT FAMILY of Southwark and Bromley

For Pott family connections with the Foundling Hospital, see www.british-history.ac.uk, British History Online.

CHARLES POTT, Charles Chase Parr’s grandfather:

A possible reference to Charles Pott, Harriet’s father via www.nationalarchives.org to LMA, archives of the Surrey Dispensary of Southwark, records of the personal estate of Goswell Johnson of Bromley. 

Probably him, in a List of the Wardens of the Grocers’ Co 1345-1907, copy now at Harvard University.  On p48 a Charles Pott; and an Arthur Pott.  Both elected 1822.

Definitely him:

At a blog though no sources are given for the information on it: marysgasbook.blogspot.co.uk a page posted Aug 2009: Early London Gas Industry, list of subscribers to shares in the Phoenix Gas Co. 

The Gentleman’s Magazine issue of 1824 on p364: Domestic Occurrences in April has a list of private members’ bills currently before the House of Commons.  One concerns legislation to set up the Phoenix Gas Go.

The History, Antiquities, Improvements etc of the Parish of Bromley by Charles Freeman.  Published Bromley: William Beckley 1832.  On p103 a short section on the house called Freelands.

At www.kentarchaeology.org.uk a list of inscriptions at saints Peter and Paul, Bromley, orig published in The British Archivists volume 1 Sep 1914-June 1915.

At www.findagrave.com Memorial Number 113070083: burial of Charles Pott of Freelands who died 1 February 1864; and wife Anna 1788 to 24 December 1876.  Both burials are in the churchyard of Sts Peter and Paul Bromley.

 

CHARLES AND ANNA POTT marriage and children:

Familysearch England-ODM GS film number 598179.  Marriage of Anna Cox and Charles Pott 10 August 1809 at St Pancras Old Church. 

Familysearch has no baptism record for Harriet Pott, though it does have them for some of her siblings.  There is some information about Harriet and her parents in the familysearch ‘submitted genealogies’ section, posted by kpendleton 1038988.  Assuming the submitted genealogy is correct, www.thepeerage.com has a few brief details of Samuel Compton Cox, Master in Chancery, information taken from Burke’s Peerage 107th edition volume 2 p2178.  The only child of Samuel known of by thepeerage.com is Charlotte, who must be a sister of Anna Pott; Charlotte married Edward Leigh Pemberton 1795-1877, who was later an MP.

 

CHARLES CHASE PARR AS SOLICITOR

My information on Charles’ working life is very sketchy.  I went to the Society of Genealogists to look in their Law Lists for him but unfortunately they don’t have volumes for some of the years I needed: 1872 to 1883.

Law List 1872: Charles Chase Parr is not listed.

I found one reference to him in legal notices published in the Times: 8 April 1879 p15; I’d have expected him to appear a lot more in in it, as a busy London-based solicitor.

Kelly’s Directory street directory issues of 1880, 1883, 1888 and 1890 and law directory issues of 1885 and 1889.

 

 

THE BOXING

Through Life and Round the World by Raymond Blathwayt; seen via google, a copy now at UCLA Library.  Published London: George Allen and Unwin 1917 and dedicated to Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Harry de Windt as old friends of the author.  P37.  Around 1890, Percivall Parr had been a shareholder in W G Allen (as it was known then - the firm went bankrupt that year).

 

THE CRICKET

Scores and Annals of the West Kent Cricket Club 1812-96 compiled by Philip Norman data collected by Hugh Spottiswoode, up to the end of the 1896 season.  London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1897.  Pp38; 258-259; 266; 306; 357; 362 for the date of death; 367-68.  This is a very posh cricket club: the index is full of men with titles, and members who were at Eton, Harrow and the other well-known public schools.

 

ADDRESS CHARLES CHASE PARR GAVE THE GOLDEN DAWN which in R A Gilbert’s book lacks a street number: Kelly’s Directory street directory in issues of 1892, 1894.

 

KATHARINE ANNE MILLAR

Forenames like Katharine - or Katherine - or Catherine - or Catharine, to name but four spellings - are the bane of census users’ existence!  This particular Katharine or Katherine was registered as Catherine.  None of the records of her that I found used the ‘c’, however, she seems to have preferred the ‘k’ spelling all her life.  Sometimes with ‘e’, sometimes with the second ‘a’: not all public officials asked, I think - they just wrote.  MillAr/MillEr isn’t too helpful a name either.  In this case, MillAr is correct.

22 November 2013: I saw evidence that Joseph Millar was working for the methodists in Liverpool around 1850 in a snippet from www.trove.nla.gov, the Australian online newspaper project.  I could see that it was a marriage announcement: the ceremony took place at the Wesleyan church in Pitt St Liverpool on 29 September 1851 and was performed by Rev Joseph Millar.  However, I couldn’t get the website to download properly so I can’t give details of the publication date of the newspaper.

Wesleyan Methodist Magazine Series IV 1851 p487 list of ministers currently working in Liverpool includes Joseph Millar, based at the Brunswick Chapel.

I didn’t see any incidences to Joseph Millar as a minister after this relatively early date; but it might just be that the later information isn’t on the web.

 

Marriage of Katherine Anne Millar to Charles Chase Parr:

At www.lan-opc.org.uk, the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project, LDS Film 2147887: marriages 1837-1917 at St John the Evangelist Knotty Ash; p90 entry 180 6 February 1872.  I couldn’t help noticing that although the register was signed by Charles’ father, his mother and his sister Harriet Bertha; none of the Millar family signed it; perhaps not wanting to lend their Wesleyan names to a Church of England ceremony, or maybe there wasn’t room for everyone to sign.

 

Times 2 December 1925 p1b death notice for Katharine Anne widow of Charles Chase Parr and mother of Beatrice Chase.

 

OLIVE KATHARINE PARR, professional name BEATRICE CHASE

Convent of the Holy Child Jesus: website www.kingsfund.org.uk gives a detailed history of the 11-13 Cavendish Sq; the King’s Fund moved into it in 1995.  At least on the web, I couldn’t find anything about the Convent’s time at its previous address.

 

For information on Olive Katharine and on Charles’ wife Katherine, I used a biography at www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk which was based on two books on her, both published in Devon:

J Chard, 1994 The Mysterious Lady of the Moor.  Newton Abbot: Orchard Publications.

C Green 1975 My Lady of the Moor Ideford: Ideford Publications.  Also on the website are some photographs of Venton House, where Katherine and Olive Katharine lived from about 1903; and of the Roman Catholic chapel they built.  Note that they were both buried in the Church of England churchyard at Widecombe-in-the-Moor, in Olive Katharine’s case, against her wishes.

 

CHARLES CHASE PARR’S POEM

It appeared in The Irish Monthly volume 27 1899; editor Rev Matthew Russell,  published by M H Gill and Son of Dublin.  Seen on web via archive.org in a copy now in the library at the University of Harvard: p179.  On p160 there’s a review of Olive Katherine Parr’s Poems published London: R and T Washbourne.

 

OLIVE KATHARINE PARR AS BEATRICE CHASE:

Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13000 Assumed Names and Their Origins by Adrian Room; p102; her dates are 1874-1955.

Via the web to Mariale issue of 1930 an article on Catholic Authors in which Olive Katherine Parr is included. 

Further information on Olive Katharine’s prayer-work during World War I: via archive.org to Olive Katharine Parr/Beatrice Chase’s Completed Tales of my Knights and Ladies London/NY: Longman’s Green 1919.

 

The Catholic Who’s Who and Yearbook volume 35 1952.

 

Who Was Who volume 5 1951-60 p850.  Just noting that the people listed in Who’s Who write their own entry.

 

 

 

Copyright SALLY DAVIS

27 November 2013

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