Subject

Born Birkenhead. Vicar of St Philips Lambeth 1898 - 1910.

Biblical Studies: The Rev. W. H. Hornby Steer, MA, St John's College, Cambridge, Senior Curate of St Jude's Church, South Kensington, has been appointed Vicar of St. Philip's Lambeth, a parish with a population of nearly 12,000. He was ordained by the late Archbishop Benson in 1886, and was licensed to the Curacy of Christ Church, Tunbridge Wells, where he remained until 1892. He then came as Senior Curate to St. Jude's ... , at the time when the Rev. Prebendary Eardley-Wilmot entered upon his duties there as Vicar. ... Steer is a lecturer of the London Diocesan Church Reading Union, and is one the committee of several Church societies.

'Moral Mapping of Victorian and Edwardian London' by Thomas R.C. Gibson-Brydon, 2016, carries a contemporary word portrait of Rev. Steer, who was a vicar at St Phillip's in Lambeth in 1899: ".. a tall man with a good profile, strong in cut-line, clean shaven ... a dignified ecclesiastic. When I was shown into the Vestry a few minutes afterwards the surplice had been thrown on one side, the cassock was half unbuttoned, and, still with a good strong face of his own, he was just an ordinary mortal sweltering, like everybody else on that hot July afternoon. We began to talk, but one of the women who had brought her children to be baptised was still waiting, and ... he asked if I would excuse him as the woman was waiting to be churched.  Of course I agreed, and on went the surplice again; the man vanished (or was obscured) the cleric reappeared ... In two or three minutes he was back again, an ordinary, hot, untidy man. His age is about 32; he has only been in the parish for about a year, and has made the plunge into it from the wealth of S. Jude's, S. Kensington. He looked a little harassed by his new responsibilities, but appears to welcome them on the whole, excepting the worry of raising funds."

Old Herefordians Club, 2nd Annual Handbook, 1938-1939 contains an obituary for Steer.