Slemsman Index: S-U
Samuel Dudley Sedgley
1912-1914
B.A. Classics (1st Class)
Samuel Dudley Sedgley, the eldest son of Samuel Dudley Sedgley and Elizabeth Wilson, was born in 1893 in Southport, Lancashire. He had six younger siblings, one brother and five sisters. The family moved initially to Manchester and then to Burnage, a move which probably coincided with Samuel Sedgley senior taking a position on the staff of the Manchester Evening News.
A young Samuel was able to attend Manchester Grammar School through a combination of scholarships. Initially, in 1906, he was granted a Mynshull Scholarship, a fund originally established to apprentice poor Manchester boys but by the early 20th century used to provide Manchester Grammar School places. He was then granted two foundation scholarships by the school, one in 1907 and another in 1909, enabling him to continue at Manchester Grammar until he finished Sixth Form.
On leaving Manchester Grammar School in 1912, Samuel was able to attend the University of Manchester through an Oliver Heywood Scholarship, a fund established in 1887 to provide successful students with two years funding at £50 per year. During this time, he lived at St Anselm’s Hostel and prepared to take Holy Orders. Samuel graduated with first class honours in Classics in 1914 but circumstances prevented him from being ordained. Unable to become a clergyman and classed as medically unfit each of the three times he offered for Military Service, Samuel instead found work as a teacher. Initially working at Westcliffe-on-Sea High School and Kingston Grammar School, he was by 1917 working at Arnold House School, Westminster. In the same year he married Beatrice Atherton, the 18-year-old daughter of a Munitions worker and sometime afterwards they returned north, where Samuel was appointed to Blackpool Grammar School. His final appointment was to Liverpool Collegiate School.
Samuel Dudley Sedgley died tragically in April 1919 following a stroke. He was 26 years old. His death followed that on his brother, Thomas, also a University of Manchester Graduate, who was killed in France in 1916. In paying tribute to him, Manchester Grammar School wrote ‘He worked not to pass examinations, but because he found his classics supremely interesting… he would not himself have spoken of teaching as a profession: to him it was a vocation.’
Walter Sellers
1907-1911
Ordination Student
Walter Sellers was born in 1887 to a working class family from Macclesfield. His father Thomas- a well known local figure- had married Elizabeth Bullock in 1885, and the couple had five children together before her death, probably in childbirth, in 1896, after which Thomas remarried to Mary Ellen Clulow. The 1901 census records Walter, aged 14, working as a Card Lacer in a silk factory. He lived in the family home at Clowes Street, Macclesfield, with his father, his stepmother, his grandmother and three of his younger siblings.
Whilst a Sunday school teacher at Hurdsfield, Macclesfield, Walter caught the eye of the new vicar Rev. Allworthy. Described by friend and fellow Slemsman Spencer Wade as ‘a devoted churchman with an eye to ordination,’ Walter requested and was allowed to join Wade in his studies with Allworthy. When Allworthy opened St Anselm’s Hostel in 1907, Walter was considered to be too old to undertake a University education but was granted a place at the Hostel to study for ordination. He was ordained as a deacon in December 1911 and appointed to St James’, Gorton, Manchester, being further ordained as a priest in 1913. In spring 1915, Walter was appointed to the curacy of St. James’, East Crompton, in north Manchester, and at around the same time was a chaplain at Strangeways prison.
Walter joined the army in 1917, becoming a chaplain in the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry where his brother, Reginald, already served as a signaller. Sadly, Reginald was killed in September 1918. For his actions in the First World War, Walter was awarded the Military Cross in the 1919 Birthday honours, although he later declared ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea how I won it. It came with the rations like so many others.’
At the end of the war, Walter returned to East Crompton, where he remained until his appointment to St. Mark’s, Hulme, in 1925. A further appointment to St Mark’s Glodwick in Oldham followed in 1928. Walter remained at Glodwick until 1938 when, shortly after his marriage to Ella Wharton, he was appointed as vicar of Northborne, Kent. In 1951, Walter was given a new appointment as vicar Rector of Ringwould, Kent, and Rural Dean of Sandwich. Although ill health forced him to give up the position of Rural Dean after a year, he remained in Ringwould. Among his activities there he was chairman of the local youth club and vice-president of Kingsdown Gardeners society. Forced by ill-health to retire in 1957, Walter and Ella moved to Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire. Walter died there in 1966. He was outlived by Ella who died in 1971.