Richard Povah, rector of St James's, Duke's Place, City of London, and having matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 3 July 1824, was soon after elected to a scholarship.

In this parish he established national schools, the first that were founded in the city, and during the severe visitation of the cholera in 1832 he assiduously devoted himself to the sick.

[4] He was in 1837, appointed rector of St Mary's, Whitechapel, a parish containing thirty-three thousand people, where, mainly through his personal exertions in the course of a short time, three new churches were built.

In connection with the district he founded a provident society, assisted in the commencement of a shoeblack brigade, with a refuge and an industrial home for the boys, and co-operated with others in the work of building the Whitechapel Foundation Commercial School.

[1] The London coal-whippers were indebted to him for the establishment of an office, under an act of parliament in 1843, where alone they could be legally hired, instead of as before being obliged to wait in public-houses.

[1] The rectory of Whitechapel had been held by him during twenty-three years, and on his removal he received many valuable testimonials and universal expressions of regret at his departure.