18.2 The Rev. Oscar Muspratt. (1906–2000)
Muspratt’s father Frederic, himself once a ‘man of the cloth’, took his family
from the UK to Jersey in a home-made gypsy-style caravan
6 at the turn of the
last century to escapee the ‘tedious restraints of Church life’.
7 Like Robert,
Muspratt was born there (in 1906) and for a time he too lived in St Helier—
next to the local Vicarage. But his upbringing was far less privileged than
Robert’s. His father had no qualms about teaching his young son the finer
points of a rugged outdoor life—the hard way. He and his elder sister helped
on their father’s home-made 30ft fishing boat, subsequently lugging a heavy
basket door-to-door and selling their freshly caught lobster to make ends
meet. But besides the accident of birth, both men also suffered the loss of an
admired elder brother early in life, Oscar being just eleven when his brother
‘Freddie’—himself just nineteen—was killed in action at the battle of the
Somme. But the Muspratt’s had family in Australia, and in 1920 they
de-camped Jersey when another older brother, Eric, took over an aunt’s
pineapple plantation in Queensland. Once again there was hard work for
Oscar but he moved on to a succession of other tough jobs; running a dairy
farm, harvesting wheat in New South Wales, then becoming a docker in
Melbourne. And although up to this point his education had been both
sparse and intermittent, he had by now managed to save some money and was
able to attend university at Melbourne where, like Robert, he studied
chemistry. But during the summer holidays when he again took a job wheat
harvesting in NSW, an accident badly damaged his left leg and made him
reflect on his life. This led him to change his course to theology, eventually
being ordained in Australia in 1929 and thereby abandoning over a hundred
years of family scientific tradition.
8
Muspratt began his ministry as a 23-year-old curate in Caulfield, a suburb
of Melbourne, moving from there to Panton Hill, a Bush Parish covering
some 500 square miles. But in 1936 he returned to England to study theology at Cambridge under Regis Professor of Divinity, Rev. Dr. C. E. Raven,
where he met Margaret Hooton of St Pauls Road, Cambridge, who became
his wife in 1937, the couple spending that year in Switzerland at Adelboden
and Grindelwald near Interlaken where Muspratt was a young chaplain.
Returning to Australia he served in Fitzroy, the worst slum area in Melbourne
where he helped organise a scheme through which many of the drunks and
‘down and outs’ could get help from the state by arranging a permanent
address for themselves via the Salvation Army—a scheme which lasted some
time and of which he was always proud. On the outbreak of the Second
18 Penn, Buckinghamshire 1949–1976
457
Muspratt’s father Frederic, himself once a ‘man of the cloth’, took his family
from the UK to Jersey in a home-made gypsy-style caravan
6 at the turn of the
last century to escapee the ‘tedious restraints of Church life’.
7 Like Robert,
Muspratt was born there (in 1906) and for a time he too lived in St Helier—
next to the local Vicarage. But his upbringing was far less privileged than
Robert’s. His father had no qualms about teaching his young son the finer
points of a rugged outdoor life—the hard way. He and his elder sister helped
on their father’s home-made 30ft fishing boat, subsequently lugging a heavy
basket door-to-door and selling their freshly caught lobster to make ends
meet. But besides the accident of birth, both men also suffered the loss of an
admired elder brother early in life, Oscar being just eleven when his brother
‘Freddie’—himself just nineteen—was killed in action at the battle of the
Somme. But the Muspratt’s had family in Australia, and in 1920 they
de-camped Jersey when another older brother, Eric, took over an aunt’s
pineapple plantation in Queensland. Once again there was hard work for
Oscar but he moved on to a succession of other tough jobs; running a dairy
farm, harvesting wheat in New South Wales, then becoming a docker in
Melbourne. And although up to this point his education had been both
sparse and intermittent, he had by now managed to save some money and was
able to attend university at Melbourne where, like Robert, he studied
chemistry. But during the summer holidays when he again took a job wheat
harvesting in NSW, an accident badly damaged his left leg and made him
reflect on his life. This led him to change his course to theology, eventually
being ordained in Australia in 1929 and thereby abandoning over a hundred
years of family scientific tradition.
8
Muspratt began his ministry as a 23-year-old curate in Caulfield, a suburb
of Melbourne, moving from there to Panton Hill, a Bush Parish covering
some 500 square miles. But in 1936 he returned to England to study theology at Cambridge under Regis Professor of Divinity, Rev. Dr. C. E. Raven,
where he met Margaret Hooton of St Pauls Road, Cambridge, who became
his wife in 1937, the couple spending that year in Switzerland at Adelboden
and Grindelwald near Interlaken where Muspratt was a young chaplain.
Returning to Australia he served in Fitzroy, the worst slum area in Melbourne
where he helped organise a scheme through which many of the drunks and
‘down and outs’ could get help from the state by arranging a permanent
address for themselves via the Salvation Army—a scheme which lasted some
time and of which he was always proud. On the outbreak of the Second
18 Penn, Buckinghamshire 1949–1976
457