Bill Baddeley

William Pye Baddeley (20 March 1914 – 31 May 1998) was the Dean of Brisbane from 1958 to 1967.

He was born in Shropshire on 20 March 1914, the brother of Hermione Baddeley and Angela Baddeley;[1] and educated at Durham University.[2]

He was awarded curacy of St Pancras (1949–58), for whose restoration he is credited with having raised £60,000 (worth £1.5m as of 2019 adjusting for inflation),[3] among other incumbencies before becoming Dean of Brisbane. Upon his return to England he was Rector of St James's, Piccadilly from 1967 to 1980, during which period restoration of Sir Christopher Wren's spire was completed after bombing in the war.[4] He was Chaplain to the Royal Academy of Arts (1968–80), Chairman of the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children (1968–92) and a Life Governor of the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children from 1955.[5] He was also active in Australian civic life, being active in the arts as President of the Brisbane Repertory Theatre (1961–64) and Director of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (1963–67), and making television and other media appearances to which "the Australian public responded, as had his English audiences, to his joie de vivre"; as Sir James Killen recalled, "There was nothing sedating about his sermons."[6]

He died on 31 May 1998.[7] He was survived by his wife, Shirley (née Wyatt), daughter of Lt-Col Ernest Wyatt CBE,[8] a niece of Field Marshal Sir Claud Jacob, first cousin of Lt-Gen Sir Ian Jacob, and a direct descendant of both Robert Caldwell and twice-appointed Apothecary to the Household John Nussey, who was master of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London.[9] They had one daughter.