We Remember ... Heroes of the Faith at St. Michael's - Gerald Cutler

GERALD WARING CUTLER
1875 - 11 April 1935

Gerald Cutler was St. Michael’s first Peoples’ Churchwarden, elected into that post in 1909. However, before that formal election he held the post unofficially for a couple of years and, together with his fellow warden Percy Singer, had thrown himself enthusiastically into fundraising for the temporary church (later the old Church Hall) and for the new permanent church. Whether as the coconut shy man at the parish Fete; wearing his ‘serenest smile’ at the Town Hall Social Gathering or making a speech at the laying of the Church Foundation Stone he was in the thick of all the activities of the fledgling church.

Born in Kensington in 1875, Gerald Cutler was a solicitor based in Duke Street, St. James’s. He married Mabel Alice Austin in 1903 and they lived in Sutton Court. During World War l he served as a Captain in the Army Ordnance Corps.

He resigned as churchwarden in May 1911, in part because his wife was ill. The affection with which he was held in the Parish is shown by a rather ornate verse composed to mark his retirement as warden. It began:

‘O comfortable Cutler, courteous, kind –
The pattern and the flower of wardenry!’

He died on 11 April 1935 in Hove, Sussex.