Born at Harlow 22 February 1805 – died in London on 14 August, 1848.
‘Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
Still all my song would be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!’
Sarah Fuller Flower was born at High Street, Old Harlow, Essex, younger daughter of Benjamin Flower, editor and the sister of composer Eliza Flower.
Her father Benjamin (1755 – 1829) was a nonconformist, journalist, political writer, editor and proprietor of the Cambridge Intelligencer, who had spent 6 months in Newgate for defamation. On his release he had married Eliza Gould and they settled down in Harlow where Benjamin became a printer. A daughter, Eliza was born on the 19th April 1803 and Sarah in 1805.
Sarah married William Bridges Adams in 1834. She had hoped to be an actress but her stage career was cut short by ill health (although she did get to play Lady Macbeth in 1837). After retiring from the stage she and her husband lived at 9, Woodbury Hill, Loughton. There she turned to writing. A friend of the poet Shelley she had a gift for lyric poetry, and also wrote 13 hymns, the most famous of which is Nearer My God, together with poems and many magazine articles. She also wrote verses for the Anti-Corn Law League.
Sarah worshipped at the Unitarian church in Finsbury, where she was influenced by the minister William Johnson Fox, a reforming journalist and social commentator. In 1841 he published, with Sarah, a book of music Hymns and Anthems.
Sarah died on August 14th 1848 at St Martin-in-the- Fields, of tuberculosis and is buried alongside her parents in the Baptist graveyard in Foster Street, Harlow. Her friends described her as ‘a woman of singular beauty and attractiveness, delicate and truly feminine, high minded and in her days of health, playful and high spirited.’ There were no children of the marriage.
Her husband William Bridges Allen (1797 – 1872) was himself a remarkable man, a civil engineer, and an ingenious and prolific inventor, especially in connection with the emerging railways. He is best remembered for his invention of the ‘fish-joint’ on rails. When he patented his new method of jointing rails, he referred to the jointing plates as Fishplates. The first large railway company to use them as standard was the LNWR, which introduced them in 1853.
Sarah authored several hymns in her lifetime, her most famous hymn being “Nearer, my God, to Thee”
There are many stories associated with this hymn. Some Titanic survivors said it was played by the ship’s orchestra as the ocean liner went down (though other survivors said it was a different song). Wallace Hartley, the bandleader on the Titanic, an employee of the White Star Line, who went down with the ship, was reportedly fond of this hymn and requested that it should be played at his funeral.
Another story concerns the death of American president William McKinley, assassinated in 1901. It was reported that among McKinley’s last words were “‘Nearer, my God, to Thee, e’en though it be a cross,’ has been my constant prayer.” On the afternoon of September 13, 1901, after five minutes of silence across the nation, bands in Union and Madison Squares in New York City played the hymn in memory of the fallen president. It was also played at a memorial service for him in Westminster Abbey, London.
The hymn was also played as the body of the assassinated American President James Garfield was interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, who had been shot on the 2nd July 1881.
William and Sarah are both remembered and a blue plaque can be seen on the site of the house they occupied at Woodbury Hill, Loughton,
Sarah’s elder sister Eliza completed the remarkable family. She was a composer, friend of Robert Browning, and wrote the music for all her sister’s hymns, and like Sarah was not to survive into old age. She died of consumption on the 12th December 1846 and is also buried in the family grave in Foster Street.
The Grave in Foster Street, Harlow
There is another local connection with the sinking of the Titanic.
Father Thomas Roussel Davids Byles (born 26 February 1870, died 15 April 1912)
He was born Roussel Davids Byles in Leeds, Yorkshire, the eldest of seven children of the Reverend Dr. Alfred Holden Byles, a congregationalist minister, and his wife Louisa. He attended Leamington College and Rossall School, Fleetwood, Lancashire, between 1885 and 1889, then went to Balliol College, Oxford in 1889 to study theology, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1894. While at Oxford, Byles converted to the Roman Catholic faith, taking the name Thomas. In 1899, he studied for the priesthood, and was ordained in 1902. He was assigned to St. Helen’s Parish in Ongar, Essex in 1905.
Invited to officiate at the wedding of his younger brother William prompted Father Byles to make the trip to America. He booked his passage on The Titanic.
On the 15th April, Father Byles was walking on the upper deck reciting his breviary when the Titanic struck the iceberg. As the ship was sinking, he assisted many Third-Class passengers up to the Boat Deck to the lifeboats. He reputedly twice refused a place on a lifeboat. Toward the very end, he prayed the rosary and other prayers, heard confessions and gave absolution to more than a hundred passengers who remained trapped on the stern of the ship after all of the lifeboats had been launched.
His body was never recovered. His brothers installed a door in memory of him at St. Helen’s Catholic Church in Ongar, and there is also a stained glass window.
