BURGLAR FRIENDS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21554, 17 January 1940, Page 8

BURGLAR FRIENDS

RESPECTED PRIEST In the Clergy House of Westminster Cathedral, the Right Rev. Monsignor ' C. E. Brown told an interviewer about “his friends the burglars.” Monsignor Brown, deputy-administrator at the Cathedral, has just been raised to the dignity of a Domestic Prelate to the Pope. In Westminster he is known as "the poor man’s friend.” Since Cardinal Hinsley presented him with the Papal brief and a cheque for £3OO subscribed by friends. Monsignor Brown has discovered that he has even more underworld admirers than he thought. “I have had lots of letters,” he said, “from people who are short of money. My callers have included at least one desperate character, a burglar.’* Rough Neighbourhood Monsignor Brown arrived in Westminster as plain Father Brown. 37 years ago. There were three priests at the Clergy House then. To-day there are 18. As the Cathedral was not finished he went to work at St. Mary s Church, Horseferry Road, helping the poor of the parish. "Westminster was a very rough neighbourhood then.” said Monsignor Brown. “It was full of thieves’ kitchens and slums; policemen walked in pairs for safety, and there were streets that no respectable person dare visit. "Chadwick Street was a mass of thieves’ kitchens, and there were lots of courts —Blue Anchor Court. Ship Court and Laundry Yard—where it was dangerous to venture in the dark. Millbank gardens then was a mass of tenements where eight to nine families lived in a house. "Other people lived more like animals than human beings, in lofts above old stables. It was not uncommon when visiting a sick person to have chickens come hopping into the room. "Many of the people were desperate characters, but they always respected the priest and never harmed me. "They would salute me as I walked by. “A Jesuit father who went out one night had his ribs broken, though. He was muffled up and the rowdies did not notice that he was a priest. "My only official connection with criminals was when I was running a boys’ brigade before the war in a warehouse near the church in Horseferry Road. I had to beg and borrow funds, and to help us along I let two rooms to the Prisoners’ Aid Society.”