The early years
Studying at Exeter College Oxford doubtless he felt the effects of the Tractarians of the Oxford Movement which reinforced his own High Church upbringing . He was ordained to the diaconate and then at the age of twenty four to the priesthood.  His curacies were in his native Somerset - he was born in Bath, and in 1851 he took up the curacy at St Barnabas, Pimlico shortly after this most famous west London Anglo Catholic church had been established.  Five years later he founded the SSC - Society of the Holy Cross - by which rules of celibacy, daily communion, study, meditation, abstinence and fasting he lived for the rest of his life.

His life's work begins
Of academic bent and reasonably well connected Charles Lowder might have sought and obtained a comfortable country or prosperous city living but this was not whence he was led. In 1856 at the age of thirty six he founded the St George's Mission in the most deprived dockland area of east London and it was there that he would spend the remaining twenty four years of his ministry.

Wapping, a depressed,  over crowded, grimy and dangerous area between the River Thames and the London Docks was the haunt of thieves, prostitutes and the dregs of society.  Drunkenness and unemployment walked hand in hand and those who could scrape a living did so by whatever means at their disposal.  Sickness was endemic and child mortality high.  No-one would choose to live in Wapping - Charles Lowder did just that.

To say that he and his Mission had more enemies than friends in those early days is to understate the situation. He suffered immediate physical violence, was spat on and treated with contempt.  Much of this active resistance was generated and encouraged by the owners of the gin houses and brothels who catered for the large influx of foreign seamen as well as the local population The last thing they wanted was someone preaching abstinence and morality in their midst.

Yet he persevered, founded a school and built a tin mission church dedicated to The Good Shepherd. His congregation just grew and grew. Prostitutes, many no more than children themselves, were helped to quit this way of life which for many meant death at a young age from the ravages of prostitution and drink. He founded a refuge away from Wapping and many were rescued and cared for elsewhere. In the cholera epidemic he went where others feared to go and the most abiding image is of Fr Lowder cradling in his arms a baby dying from cholera as he administers the last rites.

Condemned and admonished
One would imagine that he had the support of his church and his bishop and indeed insofar as the good works amongst the poor were concerned these earned him a grudging respect but Charles Lowder was to incur the wrath and condemnation which, in today's, terms is unbelievably cruel and bizarre.

Fr Lowder was a ritualist priest - not perhaps the first but one of the most sincere and dedicated to the belief of the catholicity of the English church.  It was the catholic sacraments that he celebrated and he did so with what had always been the ancient tradition of the English church with ritual and ceremony. Indeed the vibrancy of worship was such as attracted so many of his people in a way the dull and lifeless Anglican church of the 19th century would not.

Today throughout the Anglican communion and especially in the Church of England most worshippers take for granted the simplest of ritual and ornaments.  Few churches today do not have a cross, candles and an altar. Many have vestments and drapes of seasonal colours and even in the least exotic churches a simple surplice and stole bearing a cross design will be worn by a priest.  Yet in Victorian England such practices were not just frowned upon by the authorities but were made at times illegal and imprisonable. 

So it came as no real surprise that Charles Lowder fell foul of the bishop and the civil authorities,  Spies were sent to report on the 'goings on' and between 1859 and 1860 riots broke out, services were disrupted and the clergy attacked.   In the light of today's acceptance of ornaments and ceremony it is worth looking at exactly what Charles Lowder's crimes were.

A churchwarden at the mother church - St George in the East - under whose auspices Lowder worked acquainted the Bishop of London with Lowder's crimes.  It was said that 'much evil was done' by the 'ultra ceremonial and teaching'. 

A surplice had ben worn
candles had been lit
there was an altar cross
a stole had embroidered crosses
prayers had been sung
flowers had been present in the church
there had been a procession outside the church

and it got worse because it was reported to the Bishop that Lowder and his fellow priests:
bowed their heads at the name of Jesus
mixed water and wine in the cup
reverently (the complainant's word) cleaned the vessels after communion.

One might be inclined to think these to be rather petty complaints and unlikely to be taken seriously as a sign of evil by the Bishop so it is interesting to recall a letter written by Bishop Tait to Fr Lowder in May 1857:

"I wish it to be understood distinctly that no dresses are to be allowed at the celebration of Holy Communion. or at any other service other than those which are usually allowed in the Church of England, that candles are not to be lighted on the communion table unless when the day is so dark as to require them. That no cross is to be erected on the Communion Table or depicted on the wall behind it and that no processions are to take place without the church or chapel."

He went on to admonish Lowder that ladies and others? should be prevented  from prostrating themselves at the celebration of the Eucharist and that confession be not required of communicant on a regular basis.  He threatened to remove Lowder's licence if he did not comply.

St Peter' Church and parish founded
In the ensuing years Fr Lowder built us an enormous respect amongst the ordinary people in this forlorn area of London.  From the small tin church he went on to found and build the parish church of St Peter, London Docks which was consecrated in 1866 and large as it is was frequently overcrowded with the faithful of the parish. Charles Lowder became the first vicar.

His use of ritual through which he taught the catholic faith eventually not only became accepted but even the norm in many parts of the English church.  It may be said that to Charles Lowder we owe much of the freedom today to enrich the church with beauty, ceremony and dignity.

He died suddenly at Zell am Zee, Austria at the relatively young age of 60 in 1880 and was buried in the churchyard at Chislehurst, Kent.  Hundred travelled from Wapping to the funeral and those who could not afford the bus fare walked the 30 or so miles just to be there at the graveside of Wapping's saint.
 
 

There is more information about St Peter's on the St Peter's London Docks site including many pictures of the church
click here to go to the site