Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/440

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Nuttall
D.N.B. 1912–1921
Nuttall

of the Church of England. He was ordained deacon on 18 February 1866 in the cathedral at Spanish Town, and priest on 8 April in the parish church, Kingston, where fifty years later (23 February 1916) his last sermon was addressed to a departing war-contingent. He was appointed ‘island curate’ of St. George's, Kingston, with a stipend derived from the government, and technically he retained the post till his death. In December 1869 notice was given that state-endowment (saving some life interests) would cease at the end of that year, and Nuttall, young as he was, took a leading part in the reorganization of the disestablished Church of England in Jamaica, helping to draft its canons and to settle its financial system, and engaging in public controversy with the governor, Sir John Peter Grant [q.v.]. He was made secretary of synod in 1870 and of the diocesan board of finance in 1874. Archbishop Tait recognized his work by giving him in 1879 the Lambeth degree of B.D.

In 1880, on the resignation of Bishop George William Tozer, the synod chose Nuttall as bishop of Jamaica, and he was consecrated by Tait in St. Paul's Cathedral on 28 October. From 1881 to 1891 he was also responsible for the supervision of the diocese of British Honduras, while his efforts among the West Indians working on the Panama canal caused that district to be transferred temporarily in 1885 to the diocese of Jamaica. In 1883 the first meeting of the provincial synod of the West Indies was held in Jamaica, five bishops attending, and Nuttall was mainly responsible for drafting its canons and constitutions. He was elected primate of the West Indies in 1893 in succession to William Piercy Austin, bishop of Guiana, and in 1897, in consequence of a resolution of the West Indian bishops passed (30 July) during the Lambeth Conference, he assumed the title of archbishop of the West Indies.

On 14 January 1907 Jamaica was visited by a destructive earthquake. At the moment the archbishop was attending a meeting of the West India Agricultural Conference; his coolness averted a panic, and his immediate organization and guidance of all the measures for relief and reconstruction were beyond praise. Throughout his fifty-four years in Jamaica he was intimately concerned in the daily welfare of the islanders—education, nursing, housing, agriculture—and was in constant consultation with the Colonial Office at home.

Nuttall married in 1867 Elizabeth Duggan, daughter of the Rev. Philip Chapman, a Wesleyan minister, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. In his later years, in spite of frequent visits to England, his health failed, though his hold on the diocese did not relax nor did his pastoral zeal abate. He died at Bishop's Lodge, Kingston, on 31 May 1916, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew, Halfway Tree. There is a portrait in oils at Bishop's Lodge. His publications, besides many charges and sermons, include The Churchman's Manual (1894) and The Jamaica Day School Catechism (1905).

[The Times, 3 June 1916; Frank Cundall, Life of Enos Nuttall, 1922; J. B. Ellis, The Diocese of Jamaica, 1913; Jamaica Diocesan Gazette, July 1924; H. Lowther Clarke, Constitutional Church Government, 1924; personal knowledge.]

E. H. P.


OATES, LAWRENCE EDWARD GRACE (1880–1912), Antarctic explorer, the elder son of William Edward Oates, of Gestingthorpe Hall, Essex, by his wife, Caroline Anne Buckton, was born at Putney 17 March 1880, during his parents’ temporary residence in London. As a boy Oates was delicate, and for three successive winters he was taken by his father to South Africa. After two years at Eton he was educated privately until 1898, when he was gazetted to the 3rd West Yorkshire (militia) regiment. Two years later he joined the army from the militia and was posted to the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, and in 1901 he went on active service in the South African War. He served with distinction, winning a name for his daring, and was mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in the field. Severely wounded in March 1901, he was invalided home for a short time, but returned to the front before the end of the year. Promoted lieutenant in 1902, he served with his regiment in Ireland, next in Egypt, where he became captain and adjutant in 1906, and later in India.

During his military career Oates devoted his spare time to hunting and steeplechasing. He was also a practised yachtsman with a passion for the sea. With these qualifications and a love of adventure which he had inherited from his father, who was a noted big game shot, Oates in 1910 applied for a post on the Antarctic expedition which Captain Robert Falcon Scott, R.N. [q.v.], was

organizing. Scott accepted him and put him specially in charge of the nineteen

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