The Immorality of Dancing
One Saturday evening in May 1870 at Murree Station, Bengal, a ball was held for the civil and military officers and their families stationed there.
People dancing at a ball from Dean's Shilling Story Books, 1876 - 12809.g.21 Images Online
The next morning, the ball’s attendees were surprised to find the Station’s Chaplain, Reverend William Whitmarsh Phelps, preaching his sermon on the immoralities of dancing and of attending such balls. He went on to make comments more generally on the financial situation of men and what he seemed to view as the excessive spending associated with balls commenting on the ‘probable inability of husbands to meet their wives' milliners’ bills.’
Many of the individuals in the congregation found his remarks to be inappropriate and out of line, and wrote to Robert Millman, Bishop of Calcutta, to complain about Phelps’s conduct.
The Bishop’s response to the complaints was prompt and decisive. He censured Phelps for his comments, stating that the very idea of dancing being immoral seemed absurd and that he found the Reverend’s comments regarding officers' finances to be impertinent.
'The Immorality of Dancing' - Newspaper article from the Boston Guardian, 11 June 1870 British Newspaper Archive
Phelps did not remain in Bengal much longer following the events in Murree. By 1872 he had left India on furlough, retiring from service on 16 July 1872.
The Reverend William Whitmarsh Phelps was born in Cricklade, Wiltshire, in 1826, the son of Reverend William Whitmarsh and Octavia his wife. He studied for the clergy at Queen’s College Oxford and received his M.A. in 1852. He was appointed an Assistant Chaplain on the East India Company’s Bengal Establishment on 2 August 1854 and was subsequently posted to Peshawar, Sialkot and Rawalpindi before being appointed as a Chaplain in 1866. He had been Chaplain in Mian Mir before being posted to Murree.
He married firstly in Lee, Kent, in 1857 to Amelia Matilda Hughes Hughes. The couple had no children and she died in Eastbourne, Sussex, in 1892. Phelps married for a second time the following year to Laura King. They had one daughter Laura Elizabeth Whitmarsh who was born in Eastbourne in 1894.
William Whitmarsh Phelps died on 6 October 1906 in Brighton Sussex, one month shy of his 80th birthday.
Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records
Further Reading:
IOR/E/4/828, p.103 - Appointment of Reverend W.W. Phelps to the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment
Boston Guardian 11 June 1870 ‘The Immorality of Dancing’ British Newspaper Archive
S. J. McNally, The Chaplains of the East India Company, p.87 entry for William Whitmarsh Phelps - Available in Asian and African Studies Reading Room OIR 253.0954