SEARCHING through the bookshelves of one of our local charity shop recently I was delighted to find a book called Dockland Saga, by Sir Reginald Kennedy-Cox.

Sir Reginald who died in 1966 was indeed a man of many parts.

Although we perhaps remember him best here in Salisbury for his association with the old playhouse (he was also chairman of the Salisbury Arts Theatre Board), his great work for which he was deservedly knighted in 1930 was for the Dockland Settlement in London’s East End of which he was the founder.

He was a pupil of Malvern School when he decided that during holidays he would go to a mission that had been started by his college in the London dock area slums.

It was years later, when he had become famous for his plays, that he went to the Old Bailey to gather something of criminal court procedure for a play and there saw a young man condemned to death for a murder committed during a drunken brawl.

This upset him so much that he forsook his plays and went to live at the Mission to do what he could to help prevent such appalling tragedies as that.

Following the 1914-18 war Sir Reginald’s love of mankind and his enthusiasm was such that fellow officers decided to throw in their lot and go with him to the East End Slums.

Sir Reginald bought property, coined the word “Dockland” and began the Dockland Settlement which, through the years, became a haven of friendship, warmth and refuge from the squalid poverty outside.

Sir Reginald Kennedy-Cox lived in Salisbury and was a churchwarden at St Thomas’s Church (the colourful painting of the arch over the Doom Painting was one of his generous gifts to the church).

 

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