Harold Davidson - Financial Difficulties

Financial Difficulties

Davidson first hit the headlines in 1925 when he fell into debt. Stiffkey and Morston had been sold by the Marquess in 1911 and the two new landowners refused to pay the tithes, forcing the rector into debt. He was prosecuted for not paying poor rates of £39 11s 1d on the tithes paid to the church. The local Justices of the Peace ordered him committed to jail and Davidson was unable to find the £100 sureties to keep himself on bail pending an appeal because, he said, locals "were afraid of offending certain persons with whom I have got into difficulties through taking a strong line of action". Davidson won a temporary order from the High Court to prohibit his arrest.

The High Court ruled that he should not have been asked to pay rates on church property when he had not received the tithes to pay them with. Many clergy suffered the same difficulty at the time due to an overhaul of the tithe system to placate landowners who objected to paying them. The rector still retained some of his after the changes and he was allowed to declare bankruptcy as an alternative to jail. The terms of the settlement obliged him to pay a large part of the income of the rectory to his creditors. All his income went through trustees from that time and what wasn't paid to creditors went directly to his wife. Hence it seems improbable that he could have spent it on girls in London, as was later claimed at his trial. His money in London came from other bona fide charity sources for which he had to make account.