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‘Lights in Dark Places’: Women Evangelists in Early Victorian Britain, 1838-1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Donald M. Lewis
Donald M. Lewis*
Affiliation:
Regent College, Vancouver
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Extract

Twenty years ago, Olive Anderson called for more detailed study of how the role of women changed in the nineteenth century, pointing out that only such careful investigations ‘can show how far the conventional stress upon feminism has been well judged’. She noted the contemporary strength of the churches as ‘the great arbiters of public attitudes toward social issues’ and argued that the beliefs and practices of popular religion (‘the religion of the unsophisticated laity in general’) were ‘full of change and diversity’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 27: Women in the Church , 1990 , pp. 415 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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References

1 Anderson, O., ‘Women preachers in mid-Victorian Britain: some reflexions on feminism, popular religion and social change’, HJ, 12 (1969), p. 467 Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 Record (19 Nov. 1858).

4 R.C.L.Bevan, Country Towns Mission Magazine (1 Dec. 1858), p. 142. It is important to appreciate that there were hundreds of other lay agents employed by the Anglican ‘Scripture Readers’ Association’, the Church Pastoral-Aid Society, and by local churches. All together there may have been as many as 1,500 such agents working by 1860.

5 The Ranyard Bible Mission had 222 workers in 1870; the Country Towns Mission had some 52 women at work in 1866. See Lewis, Donald M., Lighten Their Darkness: Tlie Evangelical Mission To Working-Class London, 1828-1860 (Westport, Conn., 1986), p. 279 Google Scholar, and Country Town Mission Magazine (1 July 1866), p. 77.

6 Although the mission was begun in 1857, it was not until June 1859 that the society was properly organized and a governing committee established.

7 See Prochaska, F. K., ‘Body and soul: Bible nurses and the poor in Victorian London’, HR, 60 (1987), pp. 336’48 Google Scholar; Prochaska, F. K., Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth Century England (Oxford, 1980), pp. 126’30 and 132’3 Google Scholar; and Lewis, , Lighten Their Darkness, pp. 220—3 Google Scholar.

8 Anderson states that ‘Within the next few years [after 1862] full-time, paid and finally trained women religious workers appeared in Great Britain, first as Bible women and Scripture readers, then as parish visitors, “mission ladies”, and deaconesses’: ‘Women preachers’, p. 468. Prochaska assumes that Ellen Ranyard was the first to employ women as evangelists in this manner. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, p. 126.

9 When Nasmith met with the directors of the Liverpool City Mission in 1837 he ‘recommended the formation of a Ladies Branch in aid of the Society as the most effectual means of increasing its funds’. Liverpool, Modern Records Centre, Maritime House, Mann Island, Pier Head, Minute book of the Committee of the Liverpool City Mission, 287 LCM, box 1, file 1, entry for 29 May 1837. On Nasmith, see Campbell, J., Memoirs of David Nasmith (London, 1844 Google Scholar).

10 London, London City Mission Headquarters, 175 Tower Bridge Road, Minute Book of the London City Mission Committee, entry for 10 Feb. 1836.

11 The LCM’s subscription lists in 1838 reveal that 38 per cent of its subscribers were women, and that figure rose throughout the century (to 42 percent in 1870 and to 57 percent in 1901). Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, p. 38.

12 LCM Minute Book, 10 Feb. 1836.

13 For a discussion of this society see Lewis, , Lighten Their Darkness, pp. 35—42 Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 40.

15 Prochaska, , Women and Philanthropy, p. 110 Google Scholar.

16 Prochaska has argued that ‘The London City Mission was exceptional in using paid male “missionaries”’. This is correct when contrasting the society’s work with that of voluntary district visitors, but not accurate in reference to the workers employed by the large city missions in this period, all of whom were men. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, p. 109.

17 The London City Mission was quite adamant that its agents should not offer direct charitable relief, although in practice its agents directed people to the agencies which could meet their needs. See Lewis, , Lighten Their Darkness, p. 169 Google Scholar.

18 LCM Minute Book, 10 Feb. 1836.

19 Lewis, Lighten Their Darkness, p. 221.

20 See Lewis, , Lighten Their Darkness, pp. 56’7 Google Scholar. Nasmith’s resignation from the London City Mission was accepted on 17 March 1837. (LCM Minute Book, 17 March 1837.) On 16 March 1837 he founded the British and Foreign Mission. (Country Town Mission Magazine, 1 May 1858, p. 49.)

21 The ‘British and Foreign Mission’ was so named because initially Nasmith had an inter national vision for it. In 1845 (six years after Nasmith’s death) it reported that it had established a mission in the Cape of Good Hope and another ‘to the English, Irish, and Welsh labourers on the railroads in France’: Record (18 Aug. 1845). The society changed its name several times: in 1842 to the ‘British and Foreign Town Mission Society’; in 1844 to the ‘Town Missionary and Scripture Readers’ Society’; and about 1850 to the ‘Country Towns Mission’. It is significant that by 1868 the full name of the society was: ‘The Country Towns Mission for employing Missionaries, Scripture Readers, and Female Agents, in the Cities, Towns, Villages, and Agricultural Districts of England and Wales’, Country Town Mission Magazine, ns, 11, 1 (Jan. 1868), p. 1.

22 Record (18 Aug. 1845).

23 Country Town Mission Magazine (1 May 1864), p. 53.

24 Ibid.

25 Valenze, D., Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, 1985), p. 51 Google Scholar.

26 The 1840s was an especially difficult time for the Town Missionary Sociery in this regard. In 1846 it adopted the rule which Nasmith had long resisted when it agreed to guarantee that half of its committee members would be Anglicans. See Lewis, , Lighten Their Darkness, p. 57 Google Scholar.

27 Report of the Town Missionary and Scripture Readers Society (1849), pp. 57–8. Colporteurs were said to have been used effectively in the French Reformation and the revival of their use was attributed to Robert Haldane: Record (16 May 1853).

28 Report of the Town Missionary and Scripture Readers Society (1849), p. 61.

29 Ibid.

30 Quarterly Record of the Town Missionary Society (Jan. 1849), p. 20.

31 Country Towns Mission Record (1853), pp. 111-12.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid. (Oct. 1854), pp. 94-5.

34 The London City Mission Magazine (Nov. 1860), p. 322 took offence at Mrs Ranyard”s The Missing Link (1859).

35 Like the London City Mission, the Town Missionary Society had an agent set aside as a ‘Training Missionary’ to instruct new recruits. Clough was based in Bedford and had served in this capacity for over ten years. ‘Report of the Town Missionary and Scripture Readers’ Society for 1849’, Quarterly Record of the Town Missionary Society (Jan. 1849), p. 60.

36 William Clough, ‘The Importance and Necessity of Employing Female Agents in Connexion with City and Town Missionaries’, Country Town Mission Magazine (1 Feb. 1860), p. 313.

37 Country Town Missions Magazine (1 May 1864), p. 54.

38 Country Town Missions Magazine (1 May 1864), p. 54.

39 Prochaska, , Women and Philanthropy, pp. 126’7 Google Scholar.

40 Country Towns Mission Magazine (1 May 1864), p. 54.

41 Ranyard, E. H., The True Institution of Sisterhood (London, 1861), p. 15 Google Scholar.

42 PRO, Ranyard Mission Manuscripts, Council Minutes, entry for 23 July 1860.

43 Country Town Mission Magazine (May 1864), p. 54.

44 Prochaska, , Women and Philanthropy, p. 135 Google Scholar.

45 Clough, , Country Town Mission Magazine, p. 314 Google Scholar.

46 For a discussion of this’rebuking theme’, see Lewis, , Lighten Their Darkness, pp. 62’71 Google Scholar.

47 Quarterly Record ofthe Town Missionary Society (Jan. 1849), pp. 21–2.

48 Prochaska, , ‘Body and Soul’, p. 336 Google Scholar.

49 Prochaska, , Women and Philanthropy, p. 38 Google Scholar.

50 For instance, in 1860 the Glasgow City Mission had about 120 women canvassers who regularly solicited a significant amount of that society’s funds each year. Thirty Fourth Annual Report of the Glasgow City Mission (Glasgow, 1860), p. 10.

51 Prochaska’s figures for the percentage of women as total subscribers for the London City Mission and die Scripture Readers’ Society. In 1838 they were 38 per cent for the London City Mission and 24 per cent for the Scripture Readers Society (1845 figures). Figures around the turn of the century were similar (57 per cent for the L.C.M. in 1901 versus 43 per cent for the SRA. in 1895). Prochaska, Cf., Women and Philanthropy, pp. 232, 234 Google Scholar.

52 Olive Anderson quite rightly notes the impact of the 18 $9 Revival and of the Holiness Move ment on the popularity of women preachers in the 1860s. This writer is only contending that some British evangelicals were moving towards supporting broader ministry roles for women well before the impact of either the Revival or the rise of the Holiness Movement.

53 Holcombe, L., Victorian Ladies At Work: Middle-Class Women in England and Wales, 1850-1914 (Newton Abbot, 1972), p. 6 Google Scholar.

54 Marsh, Catherine, English Hearts And English Hands: or, The Railway and the Trenches (London, 1858), pp. 1’6 Google Scholar.

55 See Anderson, O., ‘The Growth of Christian Militarism in mid-Victorian Britain’, EHR, 86 (1971), pp. 58’60 Google Scholar.

56 Prochaska, , Women and Philanthropy, p. 171 Google Scholar.

57 Mrs Ranyard, ever the great publicist, did much to keep women informed about the expanding roles of women overseas.