Edwin H. Dodgson - Cape Verde and St Helena

Cape Verde and St Helena

From Tristan Dodgson moved to Cape Verde, where he was the first person to hold the unusual post of SPG chaplain at São Vicente (1890-1895). He, and his successor, the Rev. T. P. W. Thorman, found the work there discouraging. There was no church and the priest was obliged to use a room let for the purposes of worship. The principal work involved ministry to the English residents, mainly single young men in the service of the Brazilian Submarine Telegraph Company.

By 1895 Charles Dodgson was actively seeking an English parish for Edwin and Edwin himself resolved to return to England about this time, with a view to being a prison chaplain. However, he changed his mind and in 1896 he succeeded the Rev. Stephen Ellis as Vicar of St James Church in Jamestown, St Helena. St James is the oldest Anglican place of worship south of the equator, having been consecrated in 1772.

As at Tristan, so also at St James the Rev. Dodgson encouraged choral services and worked hard in the parish. Indeed this was the only time in his ministry when Dodgson had his own parish church. It appears that his relationship with the elderly Bishop of St Helena was difficult. Another member of the clergy on the island wrote, "I am afraid that poor Mr. Dodgson is not the comfort to the Bishop that was anticipated".

Though not geographically large, the Jamestown parish was very hilly and by 1898 Dodgson noted that he "did not feel equal to much locomotion" as his legs and back had been affected by ague in Zanzibar. He left St Helena in June 1899. He then returned to England, living initially with his sisters at The Chestnuts, Guildford. In 1901 his doctor informed him that his difficulty with mobility was due to damage in the spinal cord and that he hoped to "try a galvanic battery" to assist a cure.