| Admin_History | Fr Hathaway was born in London, 3 October 1814. He was the eldest child of William Silas Hathaway, a physician who lived and practiced in Wimbledon. He went up to Oxford in 1835, and there entered Worcester College, holding a scholarship until 1839, when he took his MA. He became a Fellow of his College in 1836, Dean in 1842, and Bursar in 1843.
In 1849 he accepted the incumbency of Shadwell, a chapel of ease to the Vicarage of Thorner, near Leeds. Impressed with the extreme Tractarian views which were being carried out at Edward Pusey's Church of St Saviour's, Leeds, he made every endeavour to catholicise the services and teaching of his church, but was gradually abandoned by his congregation.
He led an austere life: he slept on the floor, wore the pointed chain, and used the discipline. In Lent he fasted rigidly. His practice of poverty both as to food and clothing was equally severe.
Hathaway was 37 years old when he joined the noviceship at Hodder in March 1852. Due to the illness of the Professor of Rhetoric at nearby Stonyhurst, the Fr Provincial called Hathaway away from the Noviceship in 1854, before his time was expired, to take up this position. He was ordained in 1857 and soon after took part in a mission at Bristol. He made his Tertianship at Laon in 1860, and in 1865 made his solemn Profession. He was appointed to Farm St five years after his ordination and after that he lived for a couple of years in the Westminster House, serving the prisons at Millbank and Tothill Fields.
By the late 1860s the cough that had troubled Hathaway all of his life had become so distressing that the Superiors thought it better to send him to a warmer climate. On 29 October 1867 he arrived in Jamaica, and there he lived and worked until his death, 6 November 1891. |