Donald William Alers Hankey

Donald Hankey was born in Brighton, Sussex, the youngest child of Robert Alers Hankey and Helen Bakewell Hankey. The senior Hankey returned to England with his Australian wife after having made his fortune sheep farming in South Australia. Maurice Hankey was one of Donald's brothers. As his father and his three older brothers had done, Donald attended Rugby School and from there he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in the autumn of 1901 when he was not yet seventeen. After what he...See more

Donald Hankey was born in Brighton, Sussex, the youngest child of Robert Alers Hankey and Helen Bakewell Hankey. The senior Hankey returned to England with his Australian wife after having made his fortune sheep farming in South Australia. Maurice Hankey was one of Donald's brothers. As his father and his three older brothers had done, Donald attended Rugby School and from there he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in the autumn of 1901 when he was not yet seventeen. After what he later remembered as "the two most miserable years of my life" at Woolwich Academy, Hankey received his commission as a second lieutenant, joined the Royal Garrison Artillery and was ultimately stationed in Mauritius until serious ill-health led to his return to England on extended sick leave at the end of 1906. With his military career apparently cut short, three considerations entered into Hankey's view of his future. One was his long-standing attraction to an eventual career as a Church of England clergyman; another was a recently formed fascination with the challenge of ministering in some way to the manifold needs of the urban poor; and finally, a comfortable legacy at his father's death (1906) gave him the means to make these two objectives practicable. Accordingly, he spent four months in residence at Rugby House, a mission in one of London's roughest pockets of poverty, and at the same time enrolled in a "crammer" at Charterhouse with the aim of gaining admittance to university and ultimately to ordination in the Church. Rugby Mission opened Hankey's eyes to what it might take to work effectively with young people in the slums, but he did succeed in entering Oxford. Having resigned his army commission and having treated himself to a four-month holiday on the Continent, Hankey began his theological studies as a member of Corpus Christi College. His three years at Oxford were fruitful. His theological studies gave focus to his convictions, and he produced what was eventually published as The Cross, a short book on the Atonement. Still more crucial, however, was Hankey's introduction to life at the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission, established and maintained by Oxonians in what was then a notoriously squalid London neighborhood south of the Thames. His connection with Bermondsey became one of the most decisive influences in Donald Hankey's life. After Oxford (and after a return visit to Mauritius by way of Kenya and Madagascar), Hankey entered the clergy school in Leeds, but found it stultifying and soon gravitated back to Bermondsey where he plunged into the demanding work of the Oxford mission's several boys' clubs. But what Hankey had assumed would be his path to ordination in the Church of England continued to lead him in unexpected ways. For various reasons, as he accustomed himself to the life of an Oxford missionary among the noise and stench of Bermondsey, it came to seem all too congenial and curiously unchallenging. Accordingly, (dressed as a labourer, an identity he sometimes assumed in London's mean streets), Hankey sailed for Australia as a steerage passenger, seeking first of all hard manual work and also the chance eventually to establish a wholesome refuge for London's hopeless poor somewhere in the vast reaches of the sub-continent. Farm work, travel, and a series of articles on "Australian Life" for the Westminster Gazette occupied this interval. See less