CHARLES H. WELCH
26
The priory of St. Saviour's was called `Bermond's Eye' and was founded by Alwin Childe in 1081. Upon the
decease of Alwin in 1094, William Rufus gave to the monks his manor of Bermondsey, and built for them a new
great church. In after years, the church of St. Mary Magdalene was built by the priors of Bermondsey, which is now
the parish church, and in which Dr. Bullinger as a young man was Curate.
Dr. Bullinger in his monumental work, `Figures of Speech used in the Bible', refers to others who had explored
the subject before him, and among them mentions Benjamin Keach (1640/1704) and his book `Troposchemalogia;
or a key to open the Scripture Metaphors and Types'. Another work by this author is entitled `The Jewish Sabbath
Abrogated', which shows the trend of his thoughts. Keach was the minister of the oldest nonconformist Chapel in
Bermondsey, and it was situated in Horsleydown. Two doors East of the churchyard of St. John's, Horsleydown in
Fair Street, and possibly in the house in which I was born, Thomas Guy, the founder of Guy's Hospital, was born in
the year 1645. Two hundred and thirty-six years after, in 1881, Guy's Hospital was instrumental in saving my life
after a severe burn, the scars of which mark my body until this day.
Owing to a minor industrial crisis, the whole of my parents' possessions were stacked into the one room they
then rented, and into that very lowly home I made my entry on April 25th in the year 1880. At that time my father
was a follower of Bradlaugh the atheist, and was also an ardent advocate for `free education' which did not become
law for some years after.
The influence of Bradlaugh necessarily meant that as a family we lived `without God'. Honest as the day, kindly
as the summer sun, and with a sense of liberty that was in some things in advance of the times, my parents were all
that a boy could wish, except for the fact, though I realised it not at the time, that the Bible was never opened and its
message entirely unknown. I remember once picking up a book and opening it at random, but seeing that it dealt
with Christian themes, with something like a sense of guilt at even glimpsing at such a book, I put it down as a work
with which I could have neither part nor lot. That book was The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. What the
effect would have been had I read it, and come under its sway is but an empty speculation. The Lord had His own
way and time when He would lead me to see my need of a Saviour, and in view of His ultimate purposes, His time is
always best.
I grew up therefore in entire ignorance both of the Word and of its Gospel message. I do remember wishing that
a teacher at school had not explained the Lord's Prayer in the light of the added verse, Matthew 6:14, for it seemed
to give the other boy a somewhat unfair advantage in the interminable schoolboy quarrels that arose, but apart from
this, and some outlandish names from the books of Chronicles and Kings, the Bible was a closed book to me.
In order better to appreciate the grace manifested to me, it will be necessary to go back to the birthplace, South
of the Thames. From the approach to the Tower Bridge, the main thoroughfare, Tooley Street extends Westward to
London Bridge, and Eastward to Greenwich (see map on end paper). Some ten minutes' walk from the place of my
birth was a district made famous or infamous by Charles Dickens in his novel Oliver Twist. It was known as Jacob's
Island, and although much had been done to rid the neighbourhood of the tragic evils that existed when Dickens
wrote of it, it still remained a sore spot in the vicinity.