Henry Frederick Mercer

Henry Frederick Mercer (30 March 1872 – 22 February 1949) was a British priest in the Church of England who became Dean of Perth, but whose career ended in disgrace when he was convicted and imprisoned on numerous occasions for fraud. He died in Wandsworth Gaol in 1949.

Early life Mercer was born in 1872 in Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, the son of Thomas Atherton Mercer, an accountant, and his wife Mary (née Darricott). He was educated at Giggleswick Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge, but only remained there for five terms.

Clerical career Mercer attended the London College of Divinity, and was ordained deacon in 1895 and priest in 1896. In 1907 he was appointed as Rector of St Columb's Church, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria. At this point Mercer was much in favour, and Archbishop Clarke agreed to be the patron.

Mercer's reputation for bringing men back into the church led to the Bishop of Perth, Charles Riley, inviting him to become Dean of Perth in 1912. On arrival in England in January 1917, he became chaplain at No 2 Auxiliary Australian Hospital in Southall, London.

Criminal convictions and disgrace Mercer's subsequent career was chequered: he was a temporary Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1917, and a Captain in the Royal Air Force in 1918–19. By 1921 he was teaching in an English school in Calcutta, styling himself 'Dr H.F. Mercer (late Captain A.I.F.)', neither of which was accurate.

In 1927 Mercer was sentenced for fraud in Zürich. In 1930 Mercer and Beatrice Carey, who was calling herself Mrs Mercer, were charged in Birmingham with obtaining credit at the British Legion Club in Southport with intent to defraud; Mercer was sentenced to six months' imprisonment with hard labour. This had followed an incident shortly before in Birmingham, when Mercer was charged with having obtained credit by false pretences at the Stork Hotel, but on that occasion the case was dismissed. In 1933 he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to 18 months' imprisonment for false pretences, where he had induced hotelkeepers to give money for advertisements and photographs in guide books that had never appeared. His first wife died in 1908; the following year in Geelong he married Jean Miller Tannock, whose sister would become the conservative politician, Dame Elizabeth Couchman. His wife and daughter having been left in Perth in 1916, they returned to Melbourne and, in 1919, unsuccessfully applied for a free passage to England. Mercer had deserted his wife by 1925, and she died in Armadale in Melbourne in 1947. Mercer referred to her as his wife (although there is no evidence of a divorce from Jean Mercer), and she is recorded as such in the 1939 register. She died in 1952, and her death was registered under both surnames. The daughter married twice and died in 1973.