David Hand - Career

Career

Ordained a deacon in 1942, Hand became a curate at Heckmondwike in Yorkshire in the north of England and was ordained a priest in 1943. He stayed at Heckmondwike until 1946, when he was inspired to go out to Papua New Guinea by the life and death of the Reverend Vivian Redlich, a missionary killed there during World War II.

Hand arrived in Papua New Guinea in 1946 and spent sixty of his eighty-seven years there. When he became a bishop in 1950, he was the youngest bishop in the Anglican communion, aged only thirty-two.

An eccentric, Hand's usual outfit was a loose shirt, shorts, "sensible shoes" and a wooden cross. On meeting an Australian journalist in 1972, Hand told him that "The secret of life in the tropics is Johnson's Baby Powder, lots of it." He could, though, dress more grandly. During a visit, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh took him for a member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Hand said he was "Church of England", but Philip asked: "Are you sure?"

Hand was one of the very few bishops of the modern world who had walked through equatorial jungle and climbed mountains to find people who had never before had contact with the outside world. In pursuit of publicity to gain support for his diocese, he employed a press officer, Susan Young, who smoked cheroots and flew a plane.