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Bishop John Reginald (Jack) WELLER
Father: Edward WELLER
Mother: Edith Emma AYLWARD
Born: 1880-10-06
Died: 1969-10-27 (aged 89 years)
Buried: St. Leonard`s, Newland, near Malvern in Worcestershire.
= Married  =
on: 1916
Alexina CALEY
Died: 1934
= Married (2) =
on: 1938
at: St John
Frances BUTLER
Born: 1909
Died: 1992 (aged 83 years)
Children:   |
E A.
Born: 19xx
J P.
Born: 19xx

Further information for John Reginald WELLER.

Birth place: Blackwell Hall, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England.
Profession: Tea planter in Ceylon, lumberjack in Canada, ranch hand in the States, soldier in the Boer War, chaplain to seamen in Karachi, Colombo, Melbourne and Liverpool, and then bishop of most of South America.
Domiciles: South America, Nottingham, Malvern

Biography

<From Richard Morton Weller>

Bishop John Reginald (Jack) Weller, had a very colourful career.  Before ordination my uncle was a tea planter in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), lumberjack in Canada, ranch hand in the States, soldier in the Boer War, chaplain to seamen in Karachi, Colombo, Melbourne and Liverpool, and then bishop of most of South America. For good measure he was on the zeppelin Hindenburg when it nearly crashed.

A letter from Marlene Lawrence mentioned 19 crossings of the Atlantic (but he must have crossed an even number?). Presumably he had written to his brother, Marlene's grandfather Morton, from S America.

Anyway, he also crossed in the zeppelin Hindenberg and it was on the trip when radio contact was lost, an engine failed and as it didn't arrive in Europe on time it was thought it must have exploded or crashed.  I have several newspaper articles about the incident, referring to my uncle as 'The Flying Bishop'.


THE FLYING BISHOP

The English Sunday newspaper ‘The People’ had a headline in April 1936: ‘FARM LABOURER BECOMES “MY LORD BISHOP.”   A sub-heading ran “Flies Home From 4,000 Miles Diocese in This” and an arrow pointed to a photograph of the Zeppelin Hindenburg.

The airship had itself been headline news shortly before when it suffered the failure of an engine while crossing from the United States to Germany, significantly reducing speed.  Strong headwinds delayed it further, and then radio contact with Europe was lost and for a while it was feared that the craft had crashed into the Atlantic.  When the Hindenburg eventually landed safely at Friedrichshaven a ‘Daily Express’ reporter sought out the most interesting British passenger for comment.  They found the Rt. Revd. John Reginald Weller, Bishop of the Falkland Islands. He had expressed surprise at all the fuss, saying 

“one of the engines ‘conked out’ over the African coast, but the ship carried on perfectly smoothly on three engines.  It was a wonderful trip.  I enjoyed every minute of it.  Just think of it.  If I had come by sea the journey would have lasted a month.  Taking ‘plane from Valparaiso to Rio de Janeiro; thence to Germany by the Zepp, and on to England from here, the journey will have lasted six days. All for an extra cost of only £25.  Zeppelin accommodation is just as good as in a liner, and of course the air voyage is a wonderful experience.”

Bishop Weller’s return voyage could have been equally interesting.  He was invited to be chaplain on the Queen Mary for her maiden voyage to New York but had to decline because he was in Britain to recruit priests to serve in his enormous diocese.

Thereafter the newspapers called him ‘The Flying Bishop.’  The Hindenburg incident had alerted reporters to someone with an interesting life, hence the headline in ‘The People.’  His ministry was certainly unusual.  ‘The Nottingham Guardian’ mentioned that he ‘has the unique distinction for a bishop of living 2,000 miles from his cathedral.’  This was at Stanley in the Falkland Islands, being the only British territory in South America apart from British Guiana (the now independent Guyana.)  The Anglican diocese of the Falkland Islands stretched from Panama to Cape Horn and the islands of South Georgia, so it made sense for its bishop to live fairly centrally, in Buenos Aires.  However, he was seldom at home.  He was travelling so widely that in one four month period he rarely spent two nights in the same bed.  ‘The People’ mentioned 50-mile journeys on horseback in the Andes, dug-out canoes on tributaries of the Amazon, ‘motoring on swamp-like roads, ditched for hours until pulled out by oxen’ and frequent flights of 1,500 miles in propeller-driven aeroplanes and seaplanes.  Most of the 100.000 or so Anglicans were British expatriates and their families, and were scattered widely across the continent.  He was proud of the fact that his visit to the whaling stations on South Georgia was the furthest south any bishop had travelled.

Details of Bishop John – or Jack – Weller’s earlier life also provided plenty of interest for the press, as the report in ‘The People’ indicates.  Its reference to his having been ‘a poor farm labourer’ is hyperbole, in that his labouring was during the 1890s equivalent of ’a gap year’ today.  Jack’s intention on leaving Bedford School had in fact been to join the Royal Navy, but that was thwarted when he failed one of the eyesight tests during his medical.  Instead he worked his passage on a merchant ship to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and found work as a tea-planter.  He returned to Britain and volunteered for service with the British forces and was a trooper in South Africa in the closing months of the Boer War.

After that Jack crossed the Atlantic for the first time and spent the next seven years travelling around the United States and Canada, obtaining casual work for a few months at a time and then moving on.  At times he was indeed ‘a poor farm labourer’ but he was also a lumberjack, a social worker, a merchant seaman and a railroader. 

Like his siblings, Jack had a strong Christian faith nurtured by their devout mother, their father having died when Jack was nine, and in due course he felt that his true vocation was in ordained ministry.  He was entering what he referred to as ‘the family business,’ for his maternal grandfather had been Vicar of Chesham, Buckinghamshire, and by now three of his own brothers had been ordained. Jack returned to England, working his passage on a cattle ship, and was accepted for a three year degree course at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He gained his BA in 1913.  In those days just before the first World War it was not unusual for undergraduates to tour Europe during their long vacations, but Jack went one better and returned each year to the USA, again working his passage, and then helping to run summer camps. 

Following graduation at the age of 33, Jack was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Ely.   He then attended Cuddesden Theological College, Oxford, before ordination as priest in 1914.  He had decided that overseas mission work was more to his liking than a conventional curacy in an English parish, and was accepted to serve in India with the Cambridge Mission to Delhi, becoming Chaplain at Lahore and then Quetta.  In 1916 he married Alexina Caley of Windsor who joined him in India but it was not very long before her husband responded to an urgent appeal for army chaplains.  Jack was appointed to an Indian Regiment, with which he saw service on the North-West Frontier, and in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine.

When the war ended Jack and his wife returned to England.  He had a brief curacy at Dordon in the Diocese of Lichfield before moving to the very large and busy parish of Christ Church, East Greenwich in the Diocese of Southwark. 

In 1923 Jack became a chaplain in the Missions to Seamen.  He and Alexina spent five years ministering to seafarers in Melbourne in Victoria.  After all, Australia was the only one of the continents where he had not yet worked!  He returned to England and was Assistant Superintendent of the London Mission to Seamen before being appointed as Superintendent Chaplain of their Mersey Mission. During his three years in Liverpool he organised and oversaw the complete modernisation and extension of the mission’s accommodation and facilities for staff and visiting seamen but also endured the illness and death from cancer of his beloved wife.

It was also in Liverpool that in 1934 Jack accepted the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury to become Bishop of the Falkland Isllands. He was consecrated bishop in Southwark Cathedral by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, and in September set off for his diocese.  After three years he was given further responsibility as Bishop in the Argentine and Eastern South America with supervision of the Falkland Islands. 

During his time in Liverpool he had met Frances Butler, nearly 30 years his junior, who had been a volunteer helper at the Mersey Mission.  They became engaged during Jack’s visit to England in 1938 – leading to a headline in the Daily Mail: ‘Bride-to-be of Flying Bishop’ - and in November that year were married in St John’s pro-Cathedral, Buenos Aires.  They had two children, Elisabeth in 1941 and John in 1945.  This time the Daily Mail’s heading was ‘Son for 65-Year-Old Bishop’.

He retired and the family returned to England in 1946.  However, retirement it was not.  He was appointed Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Southwell (i.e the county of Nottinghamshire) and vicar of Edwalton.  In 1953 he moved to become vicar of Holme Pierrepont and Rural Dean of Bingham in the same diocese. He retired again (!) in 1958 and moved to Newland, near Malvern in Worcestershire, but once more he was persuaded to take on responsibility and became honorary Assistant Bishop of Worcester.  

When their daughter Elisabeth, nursing in Sydney, announced that she was getting married, he was determined to be present at the ceremony with his wife Frances.  However, his doctor said he was unfit to fly.  Undaunted, Jack took this literally rather than as an instruction not to go at all, and arranged to travel by cargo boat instead!  Meanwhile their son John was commissioned into the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment, but his father did not live to see him reach the rank of Brigadier.

On 27th October 1969, at the age of 89, Bishop John Weller, ‘the Flying Bishop,’ died peacefully at home a few hours after officiating at a Confirmation service.  His funeral and burial were at Newland.

Richard Weller (nephew) June 2002
<End>
For more information see; Dictionary of Falklands Biography; https://falklandsbiographies.org/biographies/weller_john


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