Arthur Wagner

Arthur Douglas Wagner (13 June 1824 – 14 January 1902) was a Church of England clergyman in Brighton, East Sussex, England. He served for more than 50 years at St Paul's Church in the town—first as a curate, then from 1873 as its vicar. As the only son of the Rev. Henry Michell Wagner (Vicar of Brighton for 46 years) and his wife Elizabeth Harriott, who died when he was a child, Arthur Wagner inherited considerable wealth. Following the pattern set by his father—who founded several churches in Brighton—he was able to pay for the construction and endowment of four churches in the town, three of which survive, and another in rural East Sussex where he owned a country estate. Like his father, he became embroiled in disputes and controversy: he held strongly Tractarian views and was often criticised for the advanced ritualism of the services he held at St Paul's, while his involvement in the Constance Kent affair caused national debate about priest–penitent privilege.

Wagner's influence in Victorian Brighton was considerable. "Not just a very rich clergyman of advanced religious beliefs", he was also greatly interested in church architecture and decoration. His wealth and his successful ministry at St Paul's allowed Wagner to found new churches in growing suburbs such as Hanover, Montpelier and the London Road/Lewes Road areas, which were notable both for their richly designed interiors and for their determinedly Tractarian tradition. The vast St Bartholomew's Church continues to serve a densely populated inner-city area; St Martin's Church, built shortly afterwards, is even larger and served a district partly developed by Wagner himself; the Church of the Annunciation combines a modest exterior with striking internal fittings; and he was involved with the design and fitting out of St Paul's Church, although his father paid for it. Arthur Wagner's influence was also seen in the "grandeur and artistry" of St Michael and All Angels Church, built for the ministry of one of his curates at St Paul's. Although his official status was never more than vicar of a single church, his influence was such that "he was acknowledged as virtual Bishop-coadjutant of Brighton".

Early life and ordination Arthur Douglas Wagner was the only son of Henry Michell Wagner (1792–1870), Vicar of Brighton from 1824 until his death, and Elizabeth Harriott Douglas (1797–1829). They had met in 1820 and were married in 1823. Both had an ecclesiastical background: Henry Wagner's grandfather Henry Michell was Vicar of Brighton during the 18th century and was an influential figure when the town's fashionability was at its height, and Elizabeth Harriott's father William Douglas and grandfather John Douglas were respectively the Precentor of Salisbury Cathedral and the Bishop of Salisbury.

Wagner's birthplace, Park Hill in Windsor, was owned by his mother's family. Born on 13 June 1824, he was named Arthur after Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, whose son had been tutored by Henry Wagner from 1817 and who later appointed Wagner as Vicar of Brighton. His baptism took place at St Mary's Church in nearby Winkfield on 6 August 1824.

The family's permanent residence from 1824, when Henry Michell Wagner became Vicar of Brighton, was the medieval vicarage in The Lanes. This was demolished and replaced by a new vicarage (still extant as part of Brighton and Hove High School, and now a Grade II listed building) in 1835. After Wagner's mother died in 1829, his grandmother Anne Elizabeth Wagner and maiden aunt Mary Ann Wagner moved into the vicarage and helped with his upbringing. He attended St Nicholas' parish church from an early age, and is believed to have gone to school for a time at an "academy for young gentlemen" in Montpelier Road, next to where the new vicarage was later built. which was not yet parished because it was administered as a chapel of ease by St Nicholas' Church, Brighton's ancient parish church.

Wagner's churches

Although his father paid for its construction, St Paul's Church on West Street was effectively Arthur Wagner's first church: he ministered there from the start and paid for many of the fittings himself. Soon, he was looking to expand the Church of England's reach in poor areas of Brighton, just as his father had done, by finding sites for new churches and paying for them to be built. His first two churches were built while Henry Michell Wagner was still Vicar of Brighton, a position he held until his death in 1870. to be replaced by an office building which severed the old street. Architecturally it was a "modest" building but "of distinction" because of its arched timber-framed roof and red-brick exterior.

The Church of the Annunciation, built to serve the Hanover neighbourhood whose houses included many built with the help of loans from Wagner, was his next church. It opened in 1864 on the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) Local architect William Dancy designed an Early English Gothic Revival building on an awkward, narrow and sloping site on Washington Street. It was similar on the outside to St Mary and St Mary Magdalene's Church. (and in the end only nine were built). The new plans (submitted in September 1873) provided for a shorter but wider and much taller church: . When it opened in September 1874, the new St Bartholomew's Church offered free seating for 1,500 worshippers—the first church in Brighton to be free of pew rents from the date of opening. Despite its vast size (the nave is the largest in any British parish church), the church cost £18,000—much less than St Peter's Church, built 50 years previously—because plain brickwork was used instead of the latter's Portland stone and certain planned features such as transepts were omitted. Much was spent on the ornate interior decoration, though.

Although built just after Henry Michell Wagner's death, St Bartholomew's Church was not planned as a memorial to Arthur Wagner's father: that distinction went to St Martin's Church nearby on the Lewes Road in the Round Hill area of Brighton, also planned and built in the early 1870s. At the time of his death, Henry Michell Wagner was planning to found another Anglican church in Brighton and had set aside £3,000 from his personal wealth, but had not decided on a location or any other details. Arthur Wagner and his half-brothers Joshua and Henry chose the site and agreed to fund the whole project themselves. The Round Hill area was being developed with high-density housing at this time, and the Wagner family planned to build the church on the west side of Lewes Road opposite the bottom of Elm Grove.

The Church of the Transfiguration, soon afterwards renamed the Church of the Resurrection, was built in 1876–77 and was situated just from St Paul's Church on West Street. Wagner intended to attract the town's fishermen and other poor residents to the church, realising that they were "awed by the size and grandeur" of St Paul's and its congregation, which by this stage consisted of fashionable high-class visitors and wealthy residents. Construction was problematical because the owner of an adjacent brewery objected, forcing Wagner to change the plans and have it built underground. Richard Herbert Carpenter was the architect. The church opened in 1878 but was never successful: it was converted into a warehouse in 1912 and demolished in 1966.

Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Wagner founded a religious order in Brighton in 1855. Named the Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it was linked with St Paul's Church: Around the same time, Wagner's cousin Rev. George Wagner—curate of St Stephen's Church—had established a "Home for Female Penitents" (prostitutes) on the Lewes Road. George Wagner died in 1857, at which point Arthur Wagner moved the home to Wykeham Terrace (adjacent to Queen's Square) and put the sisters in charge of rehabilitating the former prostitutes and taking in others who had been referred to the home by police officers or doctors. (Prostitution was a significant problem in mid-19th-century Brighton: more than 300 women and some children were known to work as prostitutes at that time, and there were nearly 100 brothels). Moving the home to Wykeham Terrace, where it took up nine of the twelve houses, allowed more than 40 women to be looked after, whereas the capacity at Lewes Road had been 12. but the women were offered proper healthcare, education, training for domestic service, and charitable help. and a much larger building designed by local architect F.T. Cawthorn was erected. It remained in use until the late 20th century. Short-lived stints as an old people's home, a school and a centre for the Church of Scientology ended in 1977, 1980 and 1984 respectively, at which point it was converted into flats called Rottingdean Place (opened in 1987). concerned his involvement with the trial of Constance Kent, who committed one of Victorian England's most notorious murders.

In 1861, Constance Kent entered a convent in Dinan in France after leaving a finishing school in the same town. Enjoying convent life but unable to stay at Dinan for ever, a mutual friend wrote to Arthur Wagner asking if he could accommodate her at St Mary's Home for Penitents as a paying guest. She moved there in August 1863. While living there she was confirmed and began to make confession regularly. Around Easter 1865, she confessed the murder of her half-brother to Arthur Wagner, described the circumstances and said she would give herself up to the police.

News of Kent's confession became public soon afterwards, and Wagner faced public condemnation. It was claimed he encouraged Kent to confess, and that he convinced her to surrender to the police. He repeatedly denied this, although he stated that he did not discourage Kent from going to the police after she told him she would. At her insistence, Wagner spoke to the Home Secretary Sir George Grey, 2nd Baronet and chief magistrate Sir Thomas Henry, to whom Kent gave a written confession. When the case was heard in May 1865, Wagner was cross-examined; his refusal to state what Constance Kent had said to him during her confession resulted in an "outburst of ultra-Protestant fury". Public disquiet at the use of Catholic-style ritual at St Paul's Church Anti-Catholic Liberal politician George Hammond Whalley falsely claimed in the House of Commons that Wagner had "got rid of" a young resident of St Mary's Home who had left money to the Home in her will—she was in fact an inmate of a home elsewhere in Sussex, and Wagner had only met her briefly—and the Central Protestant Association (an anti-High Church organisation) called for the Mayor of Brighton to bring before Parliament a statement condemning the "base and degrading confessional practices carried on ... by traitors" within the Church of England. A meeting they held in Brighton descended into violence. Later in May 1865, Wagner was assaulted in the street; and on another occasion he was shot at by an unknown assailant but suffered no injury. Only after national newspapers such as The Times and The Morning Post ran articles condemning the ultra-Protestant disturbances in Brighton did the furor die down.

Other work

Wagner had a lifelong concern for the lives of poor people in Brighton, and throughout his life he took practical steps to help them. During the 1860s he helped financially with the development of large parts of the Hanover neighbourhood, which was a densely populated area with much terraced housing. "One of his hidden charities" involved lending small amounts of money regularly to small-scale housebuilders who wanted to build these houses but could not afford large loans from conventional providers. In this way, large numbers of houses were built rapidly in streets such as Islingword Road and Whichelo Place. He was responsible for building about 400 houses in this area, none of which were to cost more than £120.

After his father Henry Michell Wagner's death, Arthur Wagner bought a small rural estate in East Sussex, and divided his time between Brighton and there. Totease House was situated on the edge of Buxted and was built in the early 19th century. St Margaret's Church at Buxted Park, the parish church of Buxted, was distant from the centre of the village and from the house, so Wagner paid for an additional church to be built. St Mary the Virgin's Church was built in 1885–87 and opened on 11 June 1887. The Gothic Revival design was the work of Edmund Scott (architect of St Bartholomew's Church) and F.T. Cawthorn. Nine years earlier, Wagner had built a house in the village to provide extra accommodation for the sisters of the Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in 1883 he built himself a new house with its own chapel which was shared with the Community's sisters. Both buildings survive, but the sisters' house passed into new ownership when they moved to their larger premises at Rottingdean in 1912. His last years were characterised by ill health and failing mental faculties, but he resisted calls to resign from his parish. His housebuilding activities in Hanover and Round Hill cost at least £40,000.

Arthur Wagner's tolerant personality and aversion to quarrel contrasted with his father, who enjoyed challenging his opponents and asserting his authority. However, Henry Michell Wagner was much more tolerant of ecclesiastical differences and traditional structures of authority. For example, the elder Wagner maintained excellent relations with all five Bishops of Chichester who worked with him during his years as Vicar of Brighton; but Richard Durnford, the incumbent during most of Arthur Wagner's time at St Paul's Church, found him to be "a difficult man who liked his [own] way". Both Wagners, though, tended to generate controversy and opposition but stood "impervious" and "unmoved" against it. In Arthur Wagner's case, this ability to remain aloof to opposition was helped by his remote, introvert nature and aversion to publicity: he did little beyond his church work, his lifestyle was simple and austere, and was described by one friend as humourless.

Death Wagner Hall next to St Paul's Church (left background) commemorates Arthur Wagner.

Arthur Wagner died on 14 January 1902 at Belvedere, the home he had occupied since his father's death in 1870. It was next to the old Vicarage on Montpelier Road in the Montpelier area of Brighton. The burial was attended by 3,000 people, and churches across Brighton held Requiems in his honour. He left an estate of nearly £50,000 at 1902 prices; the money was endowed to the churches he founded and to the Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Wagner is commemorated by the Wagner Hall, built in 1965 as a new church hall for St Paul's Church. It stands next to the church on Regency Road on the site of a Baptist chapel.

Publications Wagner published the following pamphlets: Parochial Sermons Bearing on the Subjects of the Day (1855) Reasons for Disobeying on Principle (1874) Christ or Caesar: an Open Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury (1874) Christ or Caesar, Part II: a Letter to the Lord Bishop of Chichester (1877)