The Home Office Baby was an 1884 publicity stunt perpetrated by the Reverend John Mirehouse, the eccentric rector of Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England.
Mirehouse was in dispute with Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt over the provision of a local graveyard; the churchyard had been closed without a new cemetery being made available in the parish and the rector had difficulty in finding burials for people who had died. Mirehouse mailed the corpse of a still born infant to Harcourt, marked "perishable". It arrived at the Home Office on 2 November. [1]
At the inquest the coroner, Mr Braxton Hicks, said "he thought it was unnecessary for him to say anything more than he had done, as the act of Mr. Mirehouse was one of the most indecent he had heard of for a long time, and ought to be reprobated." [2]
Later that month, ecclesiastical lawyer Walter Phillimore gave the opinion that Mirehouse had committed no offence known to the canon law of the Church of England and could not be disciplined.
Wraysbury is a village and civil parish in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in England. It is under the western approach path of London Heathrow Airport. It is located on the east bank of the River Thames, roughly midway between Windsor and Staines-upon-Thames, and 18 miles (29 km) west by south-west of London. Historically part of Buckinghamshire, Wraysbury was made part of the new non-metropolitan county of Berkshire in 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972. The Wraysbury Reservoir is located to the east, administratively wholly in the Spelthorne district of Surrey, although it was historically divided between Buckinghamshire and Middlesex.
Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt was a British lawyer, journalist and Liberal statesman. He served as Member of Parliament for Oxford, Derby then West Monmouthshire and held the offices of Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under William Ewart Gladstone before becoming Leader of the Opposition. A talented speaker in parliament, he was sometimes regarded as aloof and possessing only an intellectual involvement in his causes. He failed to engender much emotional response in the public and became only a reluctant and disillusioned leader of his party.
Charles Thomson Ritchie, 1st Baron Ritchie of Dundee, was a British businessman and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1874 until 1905 when he was raised to the peerage. He served as Home Secretary from 1900 to 1902 and as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1902 to 1903.
A civil parish in England is the lowest unit of local government. There are 284 civil parishes in the ceremonial county of Cumbria, with most of the county being parished. At the 2001 census, there were 359,692 people living in those 284 parishes, accounting for 73.8 per cent of the county's population.
Bishopsbourne is a mostly rural and wooded village and civil parish in Kent, England. It has two short developed sections of streets at the foot of the Nailbourne valley 4 miles (6 km) south-east of Canterbury and centred 9 miles (14 km) from Dover. The settlement of Pett Bottom is included in the civil parish.
Burton Coggles is a small village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. The population is included in the civil parish of Bitchfield and Bassingthorpe. The village is situated 7 miles (11 km) south from Grantham, and between the B1176 road and the East Coast Main Line.
The Local Government Act 1894 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level under the Local Government Act 1888. The 1894 legislation introduced elected councils at district and parish level.
Great Ponton is an English village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, 3 miles (5 km) south of Grantham on the A1 trunk road, which bisects the village. The tower of the parish church is a roadside landmark. The 2001 census recorded a population of 333, of whom all were of white ethnic origin and 87 per cent described themselves as Christian. The average age was 40. The population of the civil parish had risen to 379 at the 2011 census. It was estimated at 369 in 2019.
Colsterworth is a village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England, less than half a mile (0.8 km) west of the A1, about 7 miles (11 km) south of Grantham, and 12 miles (19 km) north-west of Stamford. The village with the hamlet of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth had a recorded population of 1,713 at the time of the 2011 census, in an area of 1,465 hectares.
Angle is a village, parish and community on the southern side of the entrance to the Milford Haven Waterway in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The village school has closed, as has the village shop. There is a bus link to Pembroke railway station.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the third most senior public prosecutor in England and Wales, ranking after the attorney general and solicitor general.
St. James' Church, Standard Hill was a Church of England church in Nottingham.
The Parish Church of St Peter, Great Berkhamsted, is a Church of England, Grade II* listed church in the town of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, in the United Kingdom. It stands on the main High Street of the town and is recognisable by its 85-foot (26 m) clock tower.
George Tiernay Mirehouse was an English gentleman and amateur cricketer who appeared in 13 first-class cricket matches for Cambridge University, Somerset and the Marylebone Cricket Club in the 1880s. Primarily a right-arm medium-fast bowler, Mirehouse took 22 first-class wickets at an average of 27.54.
The parish with its parish church(es) is the basic territorial unit of the Church of England. The parish has its roots in the Roman Catholic Church and survived the English Reformation largely untouched. Each is within one of 42 dioceses: divided between the thirty of the Canterbury and the twelve of that of York. There are around 12,500 Church of England parishes. Historically, in England and Wales, the parish was the principal unit of local administration for both church and civil purposes; that changed in the 19th century when separate civil parishes were established. Many Church of England parishes still align, fully or in part, with civil parishes boundaries.
Henry Lewis Hobart was an English Anglican priest who became Dean of Windsor and thus Dean of Wolverhampton.
A rector is, in an ecclesiastical sense, a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations. In contrast, a vicar is also a cleric but functions as an assistant and representative of an administrative leader.
William Bakewell was a solicitor and politician in the early days of the Colony of South Australia.
The Kew Mortuary or Dead-House is a small, shed-like building, approximately 3.75 by 2.25 metres and 2.8 metres high, attached to the back of Caxton House, 110 Kew Green, just to the east of Kew Bridge on Greyhound Lane facing Westerley Ware. This Victorian mortuary building retains an original slate slab.
Christ Church, Marylebone, also called Christ Church, Lisson Grove, and Christ Church, Cosway Street, is a Grade II* listed former Church of England church, built in the 1820s in Marylebone in the City of Westminster to designs by Thomas and Philip Hardwick.