HISTORY IS FULL of tales telling of noted men who fell from grace but none can have been so final as that of the Rev George Parkinson, curate of this parish, whose descent was so dramatic that news of it spread throughout the land. 

He had been born into a wealthy farming family in Nottinghamshire, in 1846 but chose to enter holy orders and in 1868, went to South Africa to study as a missionary at St Augustine's College, Canterbury, Natal, where he was ordained in 1870. Two years later, he returned to England to become curate at Greatford parish church near Bourne, and remained there until his appointment as curate at the Abbey Church in 1874 when he also became chaplain to the workhouse at a salary of £40 a year. 

Parkinson soon became a popular figure around town, gaining a reputation as an eloquent preacher whose sermons attracted large and appreciative congregations and he frequently took the chair at various church meetings such as those held on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. 

He also took an active role with the newly formed Bourne Athletics Club at a time when annual sports meetings on selected Bank Holidays were becoming popular and helped to organise the first such events at the Abbey Lawn in the summer of 1878. As secretary of a football club which was formed in the town in September 1877, he organised practice games and matches with clubs from neighbouring towns and for several years was also captain of the Bourne Cricket Club. But he never neglected his duties at the workhouse where he established a rapport with the inmates and even helped arrange entertainment for them at Christmas. 

Parkinson also proved his worth at the Abbey Church where he became priest-in-charge while standing in for a few months between incumbents following the death of the Rev Joseph Dodsworth in May 1877, his duties coming to an end with the arrival of the Rev George Massey in November 1877, when he left to become curate at St Andrew’s Church, Dowsby, but continued in his job as workhouse chaplain until he resigned suddenly in 1881. 

He had been left money in legacies by his rich relations in Nottinghamshire and despite having a wife and two young daughters, it was revealed that he apparently had a weakness for the ladies and for high living.  

But this sudden wealth was soon spent and after spells at Nottingham and Bristol, he found himself in the dock before the Quarter Sessions at Bath in Somerset in January 1888, accused of obtaining money from various tradesmen by false pretences. It appears that on the previous Boxing Day, he had called on several tradesmen, ordered goods and gave cheques, receiving change from the amounts written, but the cheques were eventually returned dishonoured. The sum involved was £3 10s. [about £400 today] and despite the gravity of the charges, he did not appear to take the proceedings very seriously, often making jokes from the dock and even objecting to one juror “because he did not like his countenance”. 

Parkinson pleaded not guilty to the charges and told the court that he had fully expected to be able to meet the cheques but the case was found proved and he was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour. He was released after his sentence and as he was still without means, the following year he found himself back in the workhouse but this time as an inmate, first at Marylebone in London, then in Kent and then at St Pancras, from where he was sent back to the workhouse at Bourne, thus becoming a pauper in his own parish. 

Parkinson soon made his presence felt and as one of the only literate inmates in the workhouse, he was able to complain if conditions did not suit him and when he found the food unpalatable, he protested to the Board of Guardians. They took no action and so he wrote to the newspapers giving the reasons for his grievance, a story that was carried by practically every newspaper in the country.  

"It does not happen often to a workhouse official to become an inmate of his own workhouse", reported one newspaper. “The union of Bourne, however, enjoys the distinction of possessing among its paupers a former chaplain to the Union, the Rev George Parkinson, a gentleman who finds himself at the age of forty-two, an inmate of a workhouse, I fear more by his fault than his misfortune. Mr Parkinson does not like his workhouse diet and he has addressed a memorandum on the subject to the Guardians and the local press. Here are a few items of which he complains: 

"1. Gruel - often so thin and watery that the oatmeal can with difficulty be detected. 2. Soup - usually little more than hot water with a little vegetable in it. 3. Meat pudding - filled with potatoes, seldom more than half an ounce of meat to sixteen ounces of pudding. 4. Tea - very weak and poor; if it were not for the milk the water would hardly be coloured." 

Parkinson, however, did not get much sympathy from the press because the report went on: "I should advise this reverend pauper, aged 42, to try, for a change, working for his living since he does not approve of the workhouse dietary." 

Although still an ordained minister, Parkinson was never again offered a post by the Church of England and their records of him end in 1891 but he did manage to find gainful employment elsewhere. The newspaper publicity over his complaints about the food attracted the attention of officials at the Abbey Church where he once worked as a priest and one of them, churchwarden Robert Mason Mills, offered him a job in his mineral water factory and helped find him lodgings in the town, first with a family in Union Row [now St Peter's Road] and later in Eastgate. 

But he never again enjoyed the high esteem in which he was once regarded in Bourne and he died almost forgotten, in 1908, aged 62.