49

On the south wall of the church is a memorial to Conrad Betts [49], George Allen, Frederick Bedford and Frederick Taylor, four working-class men from South London who drowned at Saltdean Gap beach in 1912. They were camping in Rottingdean in a group of around eighty with the Caius Summer Club, an activity organised by the Battersea-based Caius Christian mission: supported by Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Caius was one of many evangelist missions to the domestic urban poor, and the four victims lived within a few streets of each other, in Totteridge Road, Cabul Road, Albert Bridge and Wormwood Scrubs, Battersea. 

About thirty of the group had gone to Saltdean to swim, and Betts, who was among the first to get into the water,  seems to have called out for help due to cramp. The three other men attempted unsuccessfully to save him, and they were all washed further out to sea.  Dr, Whitehead, the leader of the mission, also tried to save them and was close to being drowned himself, as did the coastguard, who may well have been David Hennessy (grave [37]).  The body of Frederick Taylor may not have been recovered from the sea. 

That night, after receiving the sad news, Evensong at Caius Mission Church was 'in the nature of a memorial service'. The Times article reporting the accident included a sombre detail:

A painful incident occurred  outside the church. A respectably-dressed man approached two of the bystanders and inquired if there were any news from Brighton. He was told what had happened, and then asked, "Have the bodies been recovered?". "Up to the present all with the exception of Taylor's" was the reply. "That's my poor boy" he said. With a sob.

Georgiana Burne Jones gave a stained glass window to the small mission church as a memorial to the men, which was created by her late husband Edward Burne Jones. When the mission was closed and demolished, the window was moved to Cambridge University, to the Caius College library. This move is unlikely to have been in keeping with Georgiana Burne Jones's intention at the time of the gift: that the window as a precious piece of art be placed at the heart of the tragedy, among the working people of Battersea. 

_{A photograph which appears to show the recovery of the drowned bodies.}

_{Headline, page 7 of The Times, 5th August 1912}

A version of the hymn 'Let Saints on Earth in Concert Sing' which was sung at their memorial service can be heard HERE

_{The Burne-Jones window in memoriam of the drowned - now in Caius Library.}