COPYRIGHTED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 78, 29 September 1938, Page 19

COPYRIGHTED

A PARISH MAGAZINE

RECTOR IN THE NEWS

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative^

LONDON, September 1. The word "copyright" appears in parentheses with notes in the September issue of St. James's parish magazine, Wednesbury, Staffs, the previous issue of which received national Press^publicity because of allegations of wife-beating in the town.

It is stated at the rectory that the magazine is for sale only among parishioners and that the notes are not for publication in the Press.

It may be recalled that indignation ran high in Wednesbury following criticisms made by the Rector of St. James's, the Rev. G. I. Sodcn, in his parish magazine. Among the Rector's allegations- were that "wife-beat-ing is a common pastime, that the general standard of knowledge and intelligence is low, that council houses have been turned into verminous pigstyes, and that people wallow in dirt, gamble, and drink deeply, pick and steal, lie and slander."

A challenge to the Rector's statement was issued by the chairman of the Health Services and the Education Committees, who asserted that if tho statements were true or if they were only partially true, they constituted a condemnation of his own Church.

Interviewed, Mr. Soden said that what he had written was perfectly true, but it was a very difficult thing to prove it. , m When told at the time that the Town Council had decided to complain to the Bishop of .^Lichfield about his allegations, he remarked: "That is a thoroughly mean, and un-English action, trying to invoke my Bishop against me for exercising my right of free Speech. I-shall' stick'to < my'-guns."