Church Army Celebrates a Double Centenary
Members of the Church Army join in two 100th birthday celebrations this week. Along with many other people in the country and throughout the world the organisation joins in wishing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother a very happy 100th birthday. Fifty-seven years ago the Queen Mother became Patron of the Church Army and Her Majesty has taken a keen interest in the work of the organisation over all those years.
This week also sees the 100th birthday of Sister Ethel Tasker. Ethel was born in Hartlepool on 31 July 1900. Commissioned as a Church Army Evangelist by the Founder of Church Army Prebendary Wilson Carlile seventy-seven years ago, Ethel spent most of her active ministry working with girls who for one reason or another found themselves in trouble with the police.
For many years Sister Tasker found herself working in Croydon and Liverpool with girls who had attempted murder, suicide, committed larceny and worked as prostitutes.
In Croydon she worked at St Monica’s were she had 57 girls in her care ranging from the ages of five to sixteen all of who had been sexually abused. Sister Tasker explained “many of them had never had the chief thing they needed, love and affection. Someone who cared about them and worried over them”.
Sister Tasker was asked to move to Liverpool were for twenty-four years she worked at “Parkside” a home for young girls. Some of them had attempted murder, been known as thieves, tried to commit suicide or been running very lucrative prostitution services at an age when other girls were still playing with toys.
Forty years ago Sister Tasker returned in retirement to her native Hartlepool. There she linked up with St Paul’s Church and began a ministry of caring for older people in the community. The then vicars wife, Mrs Audrey Bullock, now a widow who still lives in the town visits Sister Tasker regularly in the nursing home were she lives to read to her.
