Reverend David Howard

Missionary in Naini Tal, India

Died of a boil!

David Howard, Charles and Helen’s youngest son, went up to Clare College Cambridge in 1907, was awarded his B.A. in 1910, and then became a tutor in the Theological College in Montreal. He spent a year of training at Bishop’s College, Cheshunt, and was ordained in 1913 as assistant curate to the very large parish of St Bartholomew in East Ham, London. In October 1914 he was ordained as a priest by the Bishop of Chelmsford, at St. Mary's Church, Colchester.

Rev David Howard then departed as a missionary to India in October 1915, on the way there undergoing a submarine attack in the Mediterranean. From 1915 to 1931 he was a missionary of the SPG in Moradabad. In 1931 he was appointed to St Nicholas’s Church, Nainital, and to the care as Chaplain to the large number of boys and girls in the diocesan schools there. He was appointed to a canonry at Allahabad in 1933. On 13th June 1939, Canon David Howard sadly died in the Nainital hospital, of septicaemia from an infected boil. He was much respected as a leader of the Anglican Church in the United Provinces of India, and indeed he had been recently nominated for the vacant Bishopric of Lucknow. He was described in the Cambridge Independent Press, 16th Jun 1939, as:

“a great lover of the Indians and of the Indian Church, although he loved also to ride out on horseback into lonely hill places around Nainital, and administer holy communion to tiny groups of scattered Europeans. By his early passing, the Church in India has lost a very devoted servant, while many friends will remember with gratitude his vivacious, humorous and sympathetic spirit and his unswerving example of personal devotion to Christ and faithful service to his Church”