Real-life ecclesiastical sleuths: Reverend Cancellor & The Eastbourne Manslaughter

Rev J H Cancellor, c1890-1. Sourced with thanks from Clare McMurtrie, one of his descendants.

At depth of night, this thought on home had shone;
‘Our distant child draws safe his sleeping breath.’
E’en then the cherish’d boy, th’ expected son,
Was dying through two hours – beaten to death.

Reverend John Henry Cancellor was born in London in about 1834. His father, another John Henry Cancellor, was a Master of the Court of Common Pleas, and his grandfather had been a stockbroker. The family mo...