A catalogue of bizarre, novel and sometimes downright offensive tips from English clergymen for achieving a better life has been uncovered by the British Newspaper Archive.
The catalogue of quirky tips includes advice to “thrash drunks” be they man, woman or child and to lie about your new wife’s cooking skills.
Researchers at the British Newspaper Archive discovered the tips and hints once given by the churchmen. According to the Rev AJ Waldorn of Brixton, the key to marital bliss in 1913 was pastry-based diplomacy.
In the Western Gazette he advised: “Whatever you do, don’t spoil your wedding day by telling your wife what ripping tarts your mother makes.”
If a bride’s puddings are not up to scratch, he says, simply “swallow the bride’s pie, and tell her it’s a dream of delight, and then take a pill on the sly”.
The Rev WG Roberts, of Horsley St Clements, was another advocate of diplomacy for maintaining domestic harmony.
He warns against judging a woman “by her lips or nose or the quality of her dimples”, highlighting that just “because a woman is well dressed it doesn’t follow that she is clever”.
One vicar in 1904 told his parishioners to “thrash the drunks” to prevent “suffering from softness”.
He argued a better solution was for a man who has a drunken neighbour to “thrash him for being a scandal to the neighbourhood”, and to “thrash anyone in his home who drinks immoderately, whether man, woman, son, or daughter”.