In 1866, cholera hit the East End of London. As is usual, it hit the slums and poverty-stricken the worst. Working class people were left to die. But Anglo-Catholic priest Charles Lowder, who had just established St Peter’s Church by the Wapping docks, was not prepared to bolt

He stuck to his guns, and worked tirelessly to raise money for supplies and recruit volunteers. A tented hospital was erected at the east end of the Church. Anglo-Catholics poured in to assist him nurse & minister to the sick & dying (including Pusey and the future Lord Halifax)

In the words of a later chronicler, 'Morning after morning they met for Communion in the newly consecrated St. Peter's, and separated for the appalling labours of the day, each recognizing that the day might be his last.' They then spent each day nursing the sick and abandoned

The area was among the most disgraceful slums in London. Lowder wrote 'It can be no wonder that in such districts as ours, where there is at all times so much poverty and distress ; where the drainage was as yet untouched by the improvements made in other parts...

; where our poor are so crowded from want of house-room (an evil, alas ! increasing instead of diminishing) ; where the alleys are so close, and the sanitary arrangements very defective... that when the cholera once broke out amongst us it should have proved most fatal'.

Eventually the cholera abated. Lowder survived. The East Enders didn't forget who had stayed with them in their trouble. He'd previously had been unpopular among many who were suspicious of his ritualism, but no longer. Henceforward he was known as the 'Father of Wapping'

"When, at length, the cholera vanished, it left Lowder completely master of the field. Nobody wanted to attack him or his methods any more. As he was seen time after time, carrying some cholera-stricken child in his arms to the hospital, the people began to call him "Father.""

His heroic work to tend to his people continued. He and his fellow members of the Society of the Holy Cross carried on with their 'church school, Sunday schools, an insurance scheme for dockers without work, coal for the old, a café for the poor but proud' - and so forth

It's a good job the cholera epidemic didn't take place in the context of the modern Church of England, because it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the vast majority of priests would all be shielding and leaving their flock to die alone and afraid