Moralee, George Douglas (1908-1984)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

GEORGE DOUGLAS MORALEE: born at South Shields, Co. Durham, on 7th September 1908. The son of a miner, he was brought up in the years of the depression on Tyneside, knowing the rigours of unemployment and the “Means Test”, a fact which greatly influenced his work in the ministry. The family was rooted in Primitive Methodism, included many local preachers, and his brother William who entered the ministry four years before him. 

Leaving school at the age of thirteen he had little education until the call to the ministry came to him. He entered Hartley Victoria College in 1931, absorbing and retaining all the scholarship offered to him there. He became a well-read man, not only in theology and allied subjects, but in the classics and poetry and other general subjects. He began his ministry at Liverpool in 1934, then served for three years in West Hartlepool as Chairman’s Assistant, and later served in the following circuits — Bridlington, Leeds Mission, Perth (Scotland), Liverpool North, Bebington, and Wolverhampton. He served for about fifteen years as an Industrial Chaplain, and was Prison Chaplain at Perth and at Walton Prison, Liverpool. With a colleague at Liverpool he held a lunch-time ‘question time’ at the dock gates. 

He retired to Melton Mowbray in 1975 and was always in great demand as a preacher and for Home Mission meetings. He had an evangelical approach to preaching, always confident, assured and positive. The pulpit was no place for doubts and questions but for proclamation. He was thorough and meticulous in administration. He possessed a gift for friendship. 

His first wife, Gladys, died after a serious illness leaving him with three small children. In 1951 he married Dorothy Angus and there followed thirty-three years of wonderfully happy family life. Despite increasing illness he was able to visit his daughter in California, where he died in hospital on 30th December 1984 in the seventy-seventh year of his age and the fifty-first year of his ministry.

Family

George was born on 7 September 1908 at South Shields, Co. Durham, to parents William Moralee, a coal miner, and Edith Annie Douglas.

He married Gladys May Todd (1905-1950) in the summer of 1938 at South Shields. Birth Records identify two children.

• Adrienne J (b1939) – married Peter A Bell in 1967
• Douglas S (b1942)

He married Dorothy May Angus (1916-2005) in the summer of 1951 in the Durham Western Registration District, Co. Durham.

George died on 30 December 1984 Los Angeles, California.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1934 President’s List
• 1936 The Hartlepools
• 1939 Bridlington Quay
• 1944 Leeds Mission
• 1947 Dundee &c
• 1951 Liverpool N
• 1958 Bebington
• 1967 Wolverhampton Trinity
• 1974 Supernum

References

Methodist Minutes 1985/81

W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers