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‘The Miser of Headingley’: Robert Arthington and the Baptist Missionary Society, 1877–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Brian Stanley
Brian Stanley*
Affiliation:
Spurgeon’s College, London
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Extract

A gravestone in a Teignmouth cemetery displays the following inscription:

Robert Arthington

Born at Leeds                 May 20th, 1823

Died at Teignmouth       Oct. 9th, 1900

His life and his wealth were devoted to the spread of the Gospel among the Heathen.

That unassuming epitaph bears testimony to one of the most remarkable figures in the story of Victorian missionary expansion. The missionary movement from both Britain and North America depended for its regular income on the enthusiasm of the small-scale contributor, but the munificence of the wealthy was essential to the financing of special projects or the opening up of new fields. The role of, for example, the jam manufacturer William Hartley as treasurer of the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society, or of the chemical manufacturers James and John Campbell White in providing much of the finance for the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia Mission, is relatively well known.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 371 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 Beckwith, F., ‘The Headingley miser’, University of Leeds Review, 4 (1964), p. 117 Google Scholar; Samuel Souchall, ‘An uncommon life’. Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, 35 (1901), p. 277. I am grateful to the Baptist Missionary Society for permission to cite material from the Society’s archives, and to the Leeds City Libraries Archives Department for permission to cite material from the Arthington family letters.

2 See Dictionary of Business Biography, ed. D.J.Jeremy, 5 vols (London, 1984-) 3, pp. 96–9; J. McCracken, Politics and Christianity in Malawi 1875–1940 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 29–32.

3 Mortimer, J. E., ‘Leeds Friends and the Beaconite Controversy’, JFHS 54 (1977), pp. 52–66 Google Scholar; see also Allott, W., ‘Leeds Quaker Meeting’, Thoresby Society Publications, 50 (1966), p. 58.Google Scholar

4 Beckwith, p. 124; Chirgwin, A. M., Arthington’s Million: The Romance of the Arthington Trust (London, n.d. [1936]), p. 28.Google Scholar

5 Leeds City Libraries Archives Department, Arthington family letters (AT/G3), Maria Arthington to Robert Arthington, n.d. [June 1846]; Chirgwin states that the brewery closed in 1850.

6 Chirgwin, p. 15.

7 Stanley, B., ‘“Commerce and Christianity”: Providence Theory, the Missionary Movement, and the Imperialism of Free Trade, 1842–1860’, HJ 26 (1983), p. 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Southall, pp. 284–5; Beckwith, pp. 123–4; London, Baptist Missionary Society archives, BMS Committee Minutes, 18 Dec. 1900. All subsequent MS references are to the BMS archives, unless otherwise indicated. The Arthington correspondence is in box H/31.

9 Arthington family letters, Backhouse to Arthington, 4 Sept. 1856.

10 Arthington to Baynes, 19 Feb. 1885.

11 See Stanley, B., ‘Home Support for Overseas Missions in Early Victorian England c. 183 8–18 73’ (Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1979), pp. 304–36 Google Scholar; the Arthington family letters reveal close connections between the Arthingtons and some of the early Brethren, including George Müller.

12 Chirgwin, pp. 28–31.

13 Arthington to the Foreign Mission Committees of the Free Church of Scotland and Presbyterian Church of England, 23 Dec. 1877.

14 Arthington to BMS Committee, 22 June and 11 Sept. 1885.

15 Arthington to BMS Committee, 21 Jan. 1881; Arthington to Baynes, 12 Oct. 1885.

16 Beckwith, p. 120.

17 Arthington to Baynes, 6 May 1883.

18 Arthington to BMS Committee, 21 Jan. 1881.

19 BMS Committee Minutes, 15 Feb. 1881.

20 Arthington to BMS Committee, 5 Dec. 1887.

21 BMS Committee Minutes, 18 Jan. 1888.

22 Arthington to BMS Committee, 22 June 1885.

23 BMS Committee Minutes, 15 July 1885; Baynes to Arthington, 27 July 1885.

24 Arthington to BMS Committee, 11 Sept. 1885.

25 Baynes to Arthington, 30 Sept. 1885. Baynes’s comment was accurate with respect to Brittany and Norway, but less so with respect to the West Indies. See Missionary Herald, May 1885, p. 209, and June 1886, pp. 281–93.

26 Arthington to Baynes, 12 Oct. 1885.

27 Baynes to Arthington, 7 Dec. 1885.

28 Arthington to Baynes, 9 Dec. 1885.

29 BMS Committee Minutes, 20 Jan. 1886.

30 Slade, R. M., English-Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State (1878–1908) (Brussels, 1959). P. 32.Google Scholar

31 Bentley, W. Holman, Pioneering on the Congo, 2 vols (London, 1900) 1, pp. 58–9 Google Scholar; Sir Harry Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo, 2 vols (London, 1908) 1, p. 63.

32 BMS Committee Minutes, 15 May and 11 July 1877; Slade, pp. 33–4; Chirgwin, pp. 46–7.

33 Arthington to Baynes, 13 and 15 Nov. 1877.

34 Arthington to the Foreign Mission Committees of the Free Church of Scotland and Presbyterian Church of England, 23 Dec. 1877.

35 BMS Committee Minutes, 15 June 1880. The LMS Tanganyika (or Central Africa) mission originated in 1876 with a £5, 000 donation from Arthington.

36 Slade, p. 33; see Stock, E., The History of ¡he Church Missionary Society, 4 vols (London, 1899–1916) 1, p. 462, 3, P.94.Google Scholar

37 BMS Committee Minutes, 21 March 1882.

38 BMS Committee Minutes, 16 Feb. 1886.

39 BMS Committee Minutes, 24 Feb. and 13 March 1886.

40 Baynes to Strauch, 24 Feb. 1886, in BMS Committee Minutes, 24 Feb. 1886.

41 BMS Committee Minutes, 24 Feb. 1886, p. 65.

42 BMS Committee Minutes, 24 April 1885.

43 F. de Winton to Arthington, 12 Jan. 1887, and H. M. Stanley to Arthington, 14 Jan. 1887, in F. R. Spark, Memories of My Life (Leeds, n.d. [1913]), pp. 108–9.

44 Arthington to Stanley and to Baynes, 15 Jan. 1887, in Spark, pp. 109–10; H. M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa, 2 vols, 3rd edn. (London, 1890), 1, p. 47.

45 BMS Committee Minutes, 15 Feb. 1887, p. 335.

46 Arthington to Baynes, 21 Jan. 1887.

47 BMS Committee Minutes, 15 March 1887.

48 Arthington to Baynes, 27 June 1887.

49 Arthington to Baynes, 30 June 1887.

50 Slade, p. 88; R. Jones, The Rescue of Emin Pasha (London, 1972), pp. 112–13, 128.

51 W. Holman Bentley to Baynes, 24 May 1887, in BMS Committee Minutes, 20 July 1887, p. 486.

52 BMS Committee Minutes, 20 July 1887; see Arthington to Baynes, 6 Sept. 1887.

53 Slade, pp. 132–3. The BMS did not accept the offer.

54 See Porter, A., ‘Evangelical Enthusiasm, Missionary Motivation and West Africa in the Late Nineteenth Century: the Career of G. W. Brooke’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 6 (1977), pp. 23–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; compare idem, ‘“Commerce and Christianity”: the Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-century Missionary Slogan’, HJ 28 (1985), pp. 597–621.

55 Arthington to Baynes, 21 Jan. 1887.

56 One-tenth of the residuary estate was left to Arthington’s first cousins; BMS box H/32, last will and testament of Robert Arthington.

57 See Chirgwin, pp. 34–5 and passim.