Preachers
George Fox, Founder of the Society of Friends
The name of George Fox belongs to the list of practical philanthropists; for Fox may be said to have given himself body and soul to the good of his fellow-men, and to have lived the life of a martyr to the cause to which he felt called to consecrate himself. He was born in 1624, the year in which Jacob Boehmen died. We are the more inclined to notice this coincidence because the character and work of George Fox suggest a comparison between the two men. Both men were pietists and mystics; but in this alone are they alike. When we look at their life-work, we are at once reminded of their nationality. The German is speculative, the Englishman is practical; the one turns his dreams and visions into books, and the other into acts.161
George Fox’s early life was spent near his native place, Drayton, in Leicestershire, with a man who combined the occupations of shoemaker and dealer in wool and cattle. After eight years’ service with this master, the young shoemaker, then at the age of nineteen, clad in a leathern doublet of his own making, went forth into the world as a preacher and reformer. He was led to adopt this life by what he regarded as a voice from heaven. He had been to a fair, and was grieved by the intemperance of two of his youthful friends whom he saw there. In his “Journal” he speaks of the effect this sight produced upon his mind, and the resolve to which it led him. “I went away,” he says, “and when I had done my business, returned home; but I did not go to bed that night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down, and sometimes prayed and cried to the Lord, who said unto me, ‘Thou seest how many young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth; thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all, and be a stranger to all.’” After living the life of a wandering preacher for a few years, he was induced to return home for a short time, but the voice from heaven forbade his resisting, and summoned him again into the Lord’s vineyard. In 1648, when only twenty-four years of age, he began to preach in Manchester, and to gather round him a number of adherents. From Manchester he went on a tour through the northern counties of England. Two years after this his followers began to be known by the name of Quakers. This term was first used by Justice Bennet of Derby, before whom Fox was cited for disturbing the peace. In 1655 he was summoned to appear before Cromwell, who dismissed the Leicestershire shoemaker as a harmless enthusiast, whose attempts at moral and religious reform could not do anything but good among the people. In fact, Cromwell, a sturdy Puritan and a religious enthusiast himself, was deeply moved by the spiritual fervor of the simple-hearted preacher; for Fox, who never feared the face of any man, did not fail to speak his mind to Cromwell on religious matters. As the preacher left the room, the Protector said to him, “Come again to my house, for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other.”
In the reign of Charles II., when the anti-puritan reaction set in, Fox fared far worse than before. Time after time he was thrown into prison for speaking in the “steeple-houses” (churches) and disturbing public worship. It was not at all an uncommon thing for the rough preacher, clad in his leathern doublet, to stand up in church while service was going on, and rebuke the lukewarmness of the minister and the formalism of the worshippers. This he conceived to be part of the mission to which the spirit-voice had called him. Nor did he expect to be allowed to discharge it without bringing down the hand of the civil authorities upon his own head. But he had counted the cost, and was prepared to suffer. A large part of his time was spent in jail, where he underwent terrible hardships from want of food and clothing. Nothing, however, could daunt his ardor, or make him “disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” He was no sooner at large than he began again to deliver his message, calling on men to listen to the voice of Christ within, and to reform their lives. Surely nothing could have been more pure, more simple, and more unselfish than the life of this devout and eccentric preacher of the gospel of love, peace, and truth; yet he was hounded from jail to jail by the bigots of his day as if he had been a common vagrant or thief. The sufferings he endured at the hands of furious mobs are often recorded in his journal. These he bore with the utmost meekness, as a firm believer in the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. Once when he had been half killed, and the mob stood round him as he lay upon the floor, he says, “I lay still a little while, and the power of the Lord sprang through me, and eternal refreshings revived me, so that I stood up again in the strengthening power of the eternal God, and stretching out my arms among them, I said, ‘Strike again! here are my arms, my head, my cheeks!’ Then they began to fall out among themselves.” The distinctive principles of the Society of Friends, of which George Fox was the founder, are too well known to need description here. In 1669 Fox married the widow of Judge Fell. After visiting Ireland, America, Holland, Denmark, and Prussia, this apostle of the seventeenth century returned to England, and died in London, January 13th, 1691, at the age of sixty-seven.
Spite of all his so-called vagaries, his want of education and culture and grasp of intellect, the Leicestershire shoemaker, by dint of moral earnestness and undaunted courage, succeeded in laying the foundation of a religious society, which in proportion to its numbers has exerted a greater moral influence than any other denomination of Christians. His “Journal,” which is one of the most singular records of mental experience and missionary adventure ever written, was first published in 1694. His “Epistles” were printed in 1698, and his “Doctrinal Pieces” in 1706.
Thomas Shillitoe, the Shoemaker Who Stood Before Kings
The term “calling,” as applied to the trade or occupation a man follows, is, or rather was, originally supposed to indicate a belief that he is called and appointed of God to follow it. This belief underlies the teaching of the Church Catechism.162 How far it prevails nowadays it would be hard to tell. The term seems to have survived the belief which gave rise to it; for one does not often meet with instances outside the Christian ministry in which men regard their daily avocation as a veritable “calling.” This, however, was the case with Thomas Shillitoe, who was evidently as well satisfied of his “call” to be a shoemaker as of his Divine commission to stand before kings and rulers as a witness for the truth of God. This devout man would have had no hesitation, we apprehend, in the simplicity and strength of his conviction about the matter, to speak of himself as “called to be” a shoemaker. He was a member of the Society of Friends, a follower, and indeed a very close follower, in the spirit and method of his life-work, of the apostolic George Fox. Shillitoe’s “Journal” will often remind the reader of the records and experiences of the shoemaker of Leicestershire.
Thomas Shillitoe was born in Holborn, London, in 1754. His father, who had been librarian to the Society of Gray’s Inn, became the landlord of the “Three Tuns” public house, Islington, when Thomas was about twelve years of age. “Merry Islington” was then a village, and a favorite resort of idlers from the great city. Sundays were the busiest days of the week, and were chiefly spent by the boy in waiting on his father’s customers. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice to a grocer, whose failure very soon compelled Thomas to return home. About this time he began to attend the meetings of the Society of Friends. This led to serious thought and prayer, and the resolve to lead a Christian life and unite himself with these earnest Christian people. “His father, finding he was thus minded, was greatly displeased, and told him he would rather have followed him to the grave than he should have gone among the Quakers, and he was determined he should at once quit his house.” But the youth was prepared for such a severe trial as this by that strong faith in Divine Providence which formed the most marked feature of his character throughout the rest of his life. Nor was his faith unrewarded, for, on the very day on which he bade good-by to his father’s roof, a situation was offered him in a banking-house in Lombard Street. Here he remained until he was twenty-four years of age.
He was at this time very anxious to become a preacher, but dreaded the danger of “running before he was sent,” and therefore he waited for the Divine voice bidding him “Go forth.” But before he could be made fit for this great work he must learn to humble himself and take up the cross. The banking-house and its surroundings must be forsaken; he must go forth like Moses into the land of Midian, like Paul into Arabia, and be prepared by simpler ways of life for the stern duties of the ministry of God’s word. And so it came to pass, he tells us, that one Sunday while in earnest prayer that the Lord would be pleased to direct him, “He in mercy, I believe, heard my cries, and answered my supplications, pointing out to me the business I was to be willing to take to for a future livelihood as intelligibly to my inward ear as ever words were expressed clearly and intelligibly to my outward ear—that I must be willing to humble myself and learn the trade of a shoemaker. This caused me much distress of mind, as my salary had been small, and having been obliged to make a respectable appearance, I had but little means to pay for instruction in a new line of business. Yet believing I was to keep close to my good Guide and He would not fail me, I entered on the work, though for the first twelve months my earnings only provided me at best with bread, cheese, and water, and sometimes only bread, and sitting constantly on the seat made it hard for me, yet both I and my instructor soon became reconciled to it.” His diligence and thrift enabled him in a short time to open a shop of his own in Tottenham, and to employ workmen. It was not long after this that he received his first call to go forth from his home and preach. It was no easy matter to obey such a call at this time. His young wife knew nothing of business, and the foreman was not very trustworthy. Still the good man went out on a sort of missionary tour in Norfolk, and returned home to find, as he avers he always did find on returning from such a mission, that the words of Divine promise spoken to his inward ear were verified: “I will be more than bolts and bars to thy outward habitation, more than a master to thy servants, for I can restrain their wandering minds; more than a husband to thy wife, and a parent to thy infant children.”
After continuing at the craft as a master-shoemaker for about twenty-seven years, Shillitoe in 1805 found that he had saved enough to put him in a position to relinquish business, and to devote himself more fully to the Christian and philanthropic work to which he believed he had been called of God. He paid several visits to Ireland, visiting the “drinking-houses” in every town to which he went, and endeavoring to reform the shocking abuses he met with in such places. First of all he would speak with the “keepers” of these houses, and plead with them to abolish the evils he saw around him; and then, turning his attention to the company of drinkers, revellers, and dancers, he would speak to them in such tender loving tones, that they were constrained to cease their rioting and listen to the faithful servant of Christ. He and his companion were rarely molested while engaged on these errands of mercy. In some instances crowds followed them to listen to their message, and where the company began by jeering and insulting the visitors, they soon settled down into a quiet and respectful demeanor. When at Clonmel in 1810, Shillitoe writes in his journal: “My companion used often to say it seemed as if the Good Master went into the houses before us to prepare the way.“ Not content with visiting the ”drinking-houses,” we read, “it was his practice to visit either the magistrates or the bishops and priests, and sometimes he did not feel clear until he had spoken faithfully to all.”163 To the bishops, Roman Catholic or Protestant, he spoke in the most uncompromising manner about their responsibility for the influence of their teaching and conduct upon the people. Six hundred visits of mercy were paid to the drinking-houses of Dublin alone in the year 1811. The year after this his “Journal” records a remarkable visit which he and a fellow-worker paid to “an organized company of desperate characters, who for nearly fifty years had infested the neighborhood of Kingswood, who lived by plundering, robbing, horse-stealing,” and were a terror to the locality. Even these men listened patiently to correction and instruction from the lips of Thomas Shillitoe, and thanked him and his friend for their good counsel.
From the lowest and humblest members of society he sometimes turned his attention to the highest and most influential. He could not think of kings and emperors without remembering their grave responsibility before God for the good government of their people, and feeling that it was his duty to speak to them upon the subject. In 1794 he and a friend named Stacey went to Windsor intent on seeing and speaking with King George III. It was early morning, when the King was in the habit of visiting his stables. Shillitoe was about to follow the King into one of the stables, when he was stopped by an attendant. George III., hearing their remarks, came out; when Stacey said, “This friend of mine has something to communicate to the King.” On which his Majesty raised his hat, and his attendants ranging on his left and right, Thomas Shillitoe advanced in front, saying, “Hear, O King,” and, in a discourse of about twenty minutes’ duration, pressed upon the monarch the importance of true religion in persons of exalted station, and the influence and responsibility attached to power. The King listened with respect and emotion, “tears trickling down his cheeks.”164 It was certainly a more difficult thing to pay such a visit to the Prince Regent; but even this the prophet-like Quaker accomplished at Brighton in 1813, and again at Windsor in 1823, when the gay Prince had become King George IV. The missionary zeal of Shillitoe carried him into Europe and America, where he never flinched from delivering his message to men in any position, high or low.
In Denmark he obtained an audience of the King, and spoke to him some plain words regarding the desecration of the Sabbath, and the evils attendant on Government-licensed lotteries. In Prussia he ventured to speak to the King in the garden of the Palace of Berlin, and was graciously received, the monarch promising to profit by the admonition he received. In Russia he saw the Czar Alexander in 1825, and spoke to him “of the abuses and oppressions that existed under his government.” Alexander, who had great respect for the Friends, received his visitor very kindly, and conversed with him for a long time on religious subjects in the most frank and familiar manner.
After fifty years’ faithful ministry, of the most singularly pure and disinterested character, this good man died at the age of eighty-two, 12th June, 1836.
John Thorp, Founder of the Independent Church at Masbro’
The conversion and ministry of John Thorp, a shoemaker at Masbrough, Yorkshire, may be set down among the most extraordinary incidents connected with the eighteenth century religious revival. Thorp’s conversion was an indirect result of the preaching of the Methodists, and occurred in such a singular manner as to make the story worth telling, even if it had led to no other results; but in Thorp’s case the results of conversion were very noteworthy. Southey in his “Life of Wesley“165 gives the following account: ”A party of men were amusing themselves one day in an ale-house at Rotherham,166 by mimicking the Methodists. It was disputed who succeeded best, and this led to a wager. There were four performers, and the rest of the company were to decide after a fair specimen from each. A Bible was produced, and three of the rivals, each in turn, mounted the table and held forth in a style of irreverent buffoonery, wherein the Scriptures were not spared. John Thorp, who was the last exhibitor, got upon the table in high spirits, exclaiming, ‘I shall beat you all!’ He opened the book for a text, and his eyes rested on these words, ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish!’ These words at such a moment and in such a place struck him to the heart. He became serious, he preached in earnest, and he afterward affirmed that his own hair stood erect at the feelings which then came upon him, and the awful denunciations which he uttered. His companions heard him with the deepest silence. When he came down not a word was said concerning the wager; he left the room immediately without speaking to any one, went home in a state of great agitation, and resigned himself to the impulse which had thus strangely been produced. In consequence he joined the Methodists, and became an itinerant preacher; but he would often say, when he related this story, that if ever he preached by the assistance of the Spirit of God, it was at that time.” In the theological controversies which sprang up in the society at Rotherham, Thorp took the Calvinistic side. This roused the ire of the Arminian Wesley, who sent off the Calvinistic cobbler to labor in a circuit a hundred miles away. But though Wesley had the power to drive Thorp from Rotherham, the autocrat had no power to drive the cobbler away from his Calvinism. Wesley then dismissed Thorp from the Connection, and he returned to the scenes of his conversion and first Christian work, to take charge of a body of people who left the Methodists and formed an Independent Church, 1757-60.167 This little society rapidly grew in numbers and influence, and is at the present time a large and flourishing church at Masbro’. One of its first members, Mr. Walker, an iron-founder, was a leading patron of the school, which afterward developed into Rotherham College under the presidency of the learned Dr. E. Williams.168 “Thus to the pious zeal of an obscure shoemaker the Dissenters are indirectly indebted for their valuable academical institution.”169
Thorp was regularly ordained to the pastorate, and a chapel was built for his ministry, where he preached till his death, at the age of fifty-two, 8th November, 1776. He was a friend of the pious and eccentric John Berridge,170 Vicar of Everton, who gave his watch to Thorp as a token of esteem. John Thorp’s son, William, was a far more famous preacher than his father, and held a conspicuous place at the beginning of this century as pastor of the Castle Green Church, Bristol. Representatives of the family belonging to a third and fourth generation of preachers still hold an honorable position as Established or Free Church ministers.
William Huntingdon, S.S., Calvinistic Methodist Preacher
One of the most eloquent and famous preachers in London at the close of the last century and the beginning of the present, when eloquent and famous preachers were by no means rare, was William Huntingdon, whose portrait may be seen in the National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, London. Huntingdon’s father was a farm laborer in Kent named Hunt. How the name Hunt grew into the more dignified Huntingdon (or Huntington) we cannot tell; probably through some whim of his own, for this eccentric man took liberties with his name, as the reader will see presently. He seems to have combined shoemaking with his other avocations, for one notice speaks of him as by turns hostler, gardener, cobbler, and coal-heaver.171
He was not favored with any early education, but by careful self-culture of his first-rate natural gifts acquired the rare art of speaking with an ease and elegance and force that pleased all sorts of hearers. Long after he had begun to attract crowds by his eloquence he worked for his daily bread as a cobbler. Many a sermon was made with his work on his lap and a Bible on the chair beside him. A chapel was built for his ministry in Tichfield Street, London, and when it proved too small, the congregation moved to a larger building erected in Gray’s Inn Road.
In his diary, 22d October, 1812, H. C. Robinson172 says, “Heard W. Huntingdon preach, the man who puts S.S. (sinner saved) after his name. He has an admirable exterior; his voice is clear and melodious; his manner singularly easy, and even graceful. There was no violence, no bluster; yet there was no want of earnestness or strength. His language was very figurative, the images being taken from the ordinary business of life, and especially from the army and navy. He is very colloquial, and has a wonderful Biblical memory; indeed, he is said to know the whole Bible by heart. I noticed that though he was frequent in his citations, and always added chapter and verse, he never opened the little book he had in his hand. He is said to resemble Robert Robinson of Cambridge.”173
In regard to the S.S. which he persisted in writing after his name. Huntingdon says, “M.A. is out of my reach for want of learning; D.D. I cannot attain for want of cash; but S.S. I adopt, by which I mean ‘sinner saved.’” He married as his second wife the wealthy widow of Alderman Sir J. Saunderson, once Lord Mayor of London. His death occurred in 1813, at Tunbridge Wells.174 One of his best known works is entitled “The Bank of Faith,” an extraordinary record of his own personal experience in illustration of the doctrine of special providence. His sermons, etc., were published in no less than twenty volumes.
Rev. Robert Morrison, D.D., Chinese Scholar and Missionary
A maker of wooden clogs and shoe-lasts is hardly a shoemaker, in the commonly understood sense of the term, yet he stands in a very close relation to the gentle craft, and for this reason we may not unfairly claim Robert Morrison of Newcastle as a member of the illustrious brotherhood of the sons of St. Crispin. Dr. Morrison was the pioneer of modern missions to China, and did for the people and language of that country what another shoemaker did for the people of Bengal. The youthful Northumbrian had only a plain elementary education, and after he became an apprentice, spent all his spare time in reading religious books. At the age of nineteen he gave up his humble trade and began to study under a minister, who passed him on in two years to the academy at Hoxton, where he made such progress, that in a short time he was sent to London to study Chinese under Sam Tok, a native teacher, with a view to his becoming a missionary to China, in connection with the London Missionary Society. In 1807, he sailed for that country, and his rare gifts as a linguist were shown in the publication of a Chinese version of the Acts of the Apostles, after only three years’ labor, in 1810. The Gospel of Luke appeared in 1812, and the entire New Testament in 1814. With the help of William Milne he issued the Old Testament shortly after the last date. His labors were not confined to the translation of the Sacred Scriptures. His greatest work was a “Dictionary of the Chinese Language,” published in 1818 by the Hon. East India Company at a cost of £15,000. He also edited a Chinese grammar. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by the University of Glasgow.
In 1817, Dr. Morrison accompanied Lord Amherst in his embassy to Pekin, and afterward, as the last great work of a noble life, founded an Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, to whose funds he left the bulk of his property. On his return to England in 1823 for rest and change, his great gifts and labors as a linguist and a missionary were cordially recognized in many quarters. The Royal Society made him a member, and King George IV. honored himself, as well as his distinguished subject, by seeking an interview with him. In 1826 he returned to the field of his missionary labors. On his death at Canton in 1834, England lost her best Chinese scholar, and one of the most devoted, self-sacrificing, and useful missionaries who ever left her shores.
The Rev. John Burnet, Preacher and Philanthropist
The eloquent and popular minister of Camberwell Green Congregational Church, the Rev. John Burnet, who divided his time and energies between preaching and philanthropic labors, is claimed by the craft as one of the most gifted and useful men who have sprung from their ranks.175 He was of Highland descent, and was born in Perth, 13th April, 1789. His early education at the High School of Perth must have given him great advantage over most youths of the souter fraternity. How long he plied the awl we cannot say. Soon after his union with a Christian Church in Perth his friends discovered his gifts as a speaker, and encouraged his adoption of the ministry as a profession. To this end they supplied him with funds, and for a time he studied with much advantage under the Rev. William Orme of Perth. In 1815 Mr. Burnet removed from Perth to Dublin, and soon afterward became an agent of the Irish Evangelical Society. His labors at Cork proving acceptable to the Independent Church there, he was invited to become their pastor, and for fifteen years was well known by all the Protestants of the district as an eloquent and faithful preacher. The growth of his congregation led to the building of a handsome new chapel for his ministry in George Street. But his labors were not confined to these localities (Cork and Mallow). His biographer states that “he continually visited the other towns and places in the South of Ireland, preaching in the court-houses, market-places, and frequently in the halls of the resident nobility and gentry—all the Protestants gladly giving him the requisite facilities. On these journeys he had usually a free pass by the mails and coaches, but he travelled a good deal on horseback.”176
It would have been an easy matter for Mr. Burnet to enter Parliament, if he could have been persuaded to quit the ministry and devote himself entirely to political life; for he was popular with the Liberals of his day, had rare gifts as a speaker, and was thoroughly acquainted with politics. But the best efforts of his friend Joseph Sturge, and the offer of ample means to maintain the position of a member of Parliament, failed to induce him to accept the flattering offer. He was constantly employed as a platform speaker, and never refused his aid to any cause “affecting the rights of the people or the progress of humanity.”
For many years he was on the Committee of the Bible Society, the London Missionary Society, the Irish Evangelical and the British and Foreign Sailors’ Societies. Yet with all this public work he never neglected the duties of the pastorate, but occupied his pulpit efficiently from Sunday to Sunday, and held several meetings during the week for the instruction of his people. In 1845 his brethren of the Independent Connection showed their esteem by electing him to fill the chair of the Congregational Union.
In 1825 Mr. Burnet was summoned to give evidence before a committee of the House of Lords on the state of the Catholic population in Ireland. At first he declined to attend, saying that he could not leave his work, for he had no one to supply his place in his absence. But a second summons made it clear that he was bound to obey orders, and he accordingly went up to London and gave the committee the benefit of his extensive acquaintance with the religious condition of the South of Ireland. His visit to London brought him again into the company of his old friend Mr. Orme, who introduced him to the congregation, of which Mr. Orme was the pastor, at the Mansion House Chapel. On his death in 1830, Mr. Burnet was invited to succeed his friend as the pastor of the church. This pastorate he held for thirty-two years, till the day of his death. In 1852 the new and costly building opposite Camberwell Green was built, the congregation removing thither from the old “Mansion House.”
Mr. Burnet was best known for his philanthropic labors, chiefly in connection with the anti-slavery cause. In this work he labored side by side, and on intimate terms of friendship, with Wilberforce, Brougham, Zachary Macaulay, Lord Macaulay, Sir T. F. Buxton, and other advocates of freedom for the slave. “His labors,” it is said, “in committee were continuous and valuable, and his good sense and sound judgment were not seldom needed in the conduct of this great movement. He went frequently on deputations to the Government, and was obliged to spend much time at the House of Commons to be near the anti-slavery leaders in all times of difficulty, and by this means became acquainted with the leading public men of the day, who admired his straightforward character, readiness, and humor.” He died at the age of seventy-three, June 10th, 1862.
John Kitto, D.D., the Biblical Scholar
Very few illustrious men have been so heavily handicapped in the race of life and the pursuit of knowledge as the eminent Biblical scholar, John Kitto, who was born at Plymouth, 4th December, 1804.177 Added to poverty, the want of proper food and clothing, he had to endure in early life the deprivation of natural guardians and friends, terrible cruelty from a master under whose care he was placed, and, worst of all, the entire loss of the sense of hearing, so that from the age of twelve to the day of his death he never could hear a sound of any description. Deeply pathetic is the story of his early life as told by himself in his journal and letters. His father was a working mason at Plymouth, who had lost a good business by intemperate habits. When John was only four years old, his grandmother, who could not endure the sight of his misery at home, engaged to bring him up. This good woman was the guardian angel of Kitto’s childhood, and did more, perhaps, than any one else to mould his character. It was a sad day for him when she was compelled by poverty and illness to break up her home and go with her little ward to live with his parents. He had already become fond of reading, and had even tried his hand at writing tales for the amusement of his childish companions and the more serious purpose of earning a few pence to buy books. One day, when working with his father, he fell from the top of a house thirty-five feet high, and was carried home in a state of unconsciousness. After lying in this state for a fortnight, he awoke to discover to his dismay that he was absolutely deaf. He had asked for a book which a neighbor had lent him just before the accident, and when his friends found that he could not hear their reply, one of them took up a slate and wrote upon it. “Why do you not speak?” he cried. “Why do you write to me? Why not speak? Speak, speak!“ ”Then,” he tells us, “those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words, ‘You are deaf!’ Did not this utterly crush me? By no means. In my then weakened condition nothing like this could affect me. Besides, I was a child; and to a child the full extent of such a calamity could not be at once apparent. However, I knew not the future—it was well I did not; and there was nothing to show me that I suffered under more than a temporary deafness, which in a few days might pass away. It was left for time to show me the sad realities of the condition to which I was reduced.”
At the age of fifteen he was sent to the workhouse, scarcely understanding what was being done with him. On realizing his true position in this place, “his anguish was indescribable.” Yet in Kitto’s time this place was hardly like an ordinary modern workhouse. It had long borne the name of The Hospital of the Poor’s Portion, was founded in 1630 by Gayer, Colmer, and Fowell, and endowed in 1674 by Lanyon with £2000, and in 1708 was converted into a poorhouse by Act of Parliament. It had apartments for boys, who were admitted on Hele’s and Lanyon’s charities. Young Kitto was kindly treated by the guardians, even being allowed to go out every day, and for a long time to sleep at home. His occupation was the making of list shoes, in which he became so proficient that he was sent out as an apprentice to a shoemaker in the town, who treated him so savagely that the humane guardians quashed the agreement and took him again under their care. But even in this wretched situation, where he was often compelled to work sixteen or eighteen hours a day, the poor deaf boy managed to go on with his studies; and in his interesting work called “The Lost Senses,” published twenty years afterward, he remarks, “Now that I look back upon this time, the amount of study which I did, under these circumstances, contrive to get through, amazes and confounds me.”
About a year after his return to the poorhouse, certain gentlemen in Plymouth, who had come to hear of his superior abilities and passion for reading, drew up a circular asking for funds to enable him to devote his time entirely to study. This appeal was so successful that the poor workhouse boy was placed under the care of a good friend, named Mr. Barnard, to board and lodge, and allowed to go to the public library for the purpose of reading and study. His course as a student was now fairly open. In a few years he published his first book, “Essays and Letters,” with a short memoir of the author. In 1825 his friend Mr. Groves of Exeter was the means of sending him to the Church Missionary Institution, London, where for a time he was employed as a printer. For two years he resided at Malta in the service of this Society. After this, an arrangement was made with his friend Mr. Groves which proved of the utmost possible service to the diligent student, whose mind had long been set on travelling as a means of increasing his knowledge. Mr. Groves asked Kitto to accompany him to the East. Five years were spent in a journey through Russia, Persia, and Asiatic Turkey, during which “the deaf traveller” obtained the vast stores of information of which he made such good use in the various works written on his return to England. In 1833 he was engaged by Mr. Charles Knight, the well-known publisher, to write for the Penny Magazine, and wrote for that journal a number of articles entitled “The Deaf Traveller.” He contributed many articles also to the Penny Cyclopædia. His best known works are “The Pictorial Bible,“ ”The Pictorial Sunday Book,“ ”Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature,“ ”The Lost Senses,“ ”Journal of Sacred Literature,” and “Daily Bible Illustrations,” a work of great value, in eight volumes. In 1844 the University of Giessen conferred on him the diploma of D.D., and in the following year he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Notwithstanding his immense labors and the great value of his writings, he was, toward the close of his life, considerably embarrassed by pecuniary difficulties, which were alleviated, but not entirely removed, by a Government pension of £100 per year. John Kitto died and was buried at Cannstatt, in Germany, 25th November, 1854, at the age of forty-nine.