ANOTHER FACT.—It appears from the testimony of George Turner, and James Russell, of Redcross-street, of Richard Jessop, of Cattle-street, and William Williams of the Mint; that the _Revd. John Church_, on the 16th of November, 1809, attended at the funeral of Richard Oakden, a clerk in the Bank, who was executed before Newgate on the 15th for a certain horrible crime. The hearse and coach set out from the Hat and Feathers public-house, kept by a Mr. Richardson in Gravel-lane, to which place Church and his company returned to partake of a jovial dinner. In the course of the evening the latter behaved with great indecency.
The following bad character has also been given of Church, by Mr. George Gee and his wife, who keep a cake shop in the New Cut. I have heard them both declare it to be true:
“Mr. Church the Minister lodged at our house a year and a half, and left last year at Lady-day.”
“We were in hopes that we were about to have a godly praying minister in our house, and to be sure, the first night he had somewhat like prayer, { 21} and that and once afterwards, were the only times he ever went to family prayer in our house. Nor could they have any prayer as he would be frequently out almost all hours of the night, and would lie in bed till ten o’clock in the morning. Several times he and his wife would have skirmishings and fightings between themselves, while their children would be left to run about the streets out of school hours, and allowed to keep company with children, that would swear in our hearing most shockingly. His children were always left to be very dirty, and would be sent sometimes three or four times in the morning for spirituous liquors of all sorts, as for reading good books or even the Bible, he scarce ever thought of it, but would spend a deal of his time in loose and vain talk, in walking about, and in fawning on young men, that was his chief delight.”
“Sundays and working days were all alike to them, for they would send out to buy liquors and whatever else they wanted, on Sundays as well as other days.”
“The house would be frequently more like a play-house, (I might say a bawdy house) than a minister’s house, where a set of young people would come, and behave more indecently than ought to be mentioned. Even one Sunday morning they made such an uproar, as that they broke one of the windows, and after that, they would go with him to his Chapel, and after that he would give the sacrament to such disorderly people, let their characters be ever so loose.”