BEAYS, John Hopkins

BEAYS John Hopkins, 1852

Joined: 19 July 1852

Died: 13 December 1869

Years served: 17

Districts served:

1852 - 1859 / Ealing, Greenford & Sudbury
1860 - 1869 / Old Kent Road

Photocopies enclosed:

· Report on “Ealing”, LCM Magazine April 1859, mostly written by John H Beays

Extracts from LCM Committee Minute Books:

July 5, 1852: The examining Sub-Committee reported that they had examined John Hopkins Beays. This candidate is a National School Master and is an intelligent man. He has been a communicant for 25 years. His scriptural views are correct and the Sub-Committee were satisfied as to his piety. They consider that he possesses many important qualifications for our work. He has read a good deal, and is a little independent in his tone and thought. They recommend that he be sent to the Examiners. The testimonials of Beays were then read after which he was called in and examined by the Committee and on his withdrawal it was agreed that he be sent to the Examiners.

July 19, 1852: Read the Examiners’ letters in the case of John Hopkins Beays of Stratford, when it was agreed that he be accepted as a Missionary on the usual probation. Salary £80.

December 20, 1869: Reported that Mr Beays, the Missionary of the Old Kent Road district, had fallen down dead at a meeting on Monday evening last.

Obituary London City Mission Magazine, February 1870, page 42

The second death occurred on December 13th, only nine days after that of Mr. Santo. It was that of Mr. Beays,

THE MISSIONARY OF THE OLD KENT-ROAD DISTRICT,

under the Superintendence of the Rev. A. W. Snape, the Vicar of St. Mary Magdalene, in that locality. He dropped down dead in a moment at a public meeting of a Working Man’s Club, in the institution of which he had taken a very prominent part. Lord Lyttelton, who was in the chair at the time, very nobly himself went off immediately to a neighbouring hospital, and brought back with him very promptly two medical men, but all they could do was to pronounce life to be extinct. Thus was his work most solemnly ended, at the age of fifty-eight, after eighteen years’ active work - first at and around Ealing - and subsequently in the district in which he died. Mr. Beays was a man who had received considerable advantages of education, and in this respect was very different to Mr. Santo, whose educational advantages had been very limited - so limited, in fact, that, in answering on his admission the question put to candidates, “What books have you read?” he found a difficulty in enumerating three books - and those, although admirably chosen for the purposes of devotion, yet not specially adapted for mental and intellectual training - Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest”, and Alleine’s “Alarm to the Unconverted”. But Mr. Beays’s difficulty in answering the question was to know what to insert and what to omit, and so he began his answer, “It would be difficult for me to name one half of the hundreds of books which I have read”. He was a certificated master of

the National Society, and had been employed as a schoolmaster before he became a missionary. It was somewhat remarkable how he had managed to co-operate with, and gain the esteem of clergy of a different school of theology to that ordinarily associated with Evangelical efforts like his own. This was shown before his connexion with the Mission, and also during portions of his mission life. And we trust it was effected without compromise of his own principles, while we consider it peculiarly to his credit that, when removed from Ealing, through the failure of local support, to one of the very worst districts in all London, he never once made a complaint of the rough character of the work assigned to him there, but threw his whole heart and soul into it, although his health was by no means strong. Another evidence of the real interest which Mr. Beays felt in Mission-work was that he sacrificed a much higher income as a schoolmaster to enter upon it. Nor is it otherwise than to his honour that, with a reduced income, he managed to keep up an insurance on his life, as well as to save some small sum. It was usual with him to give a great prominence in his teaching to all practical truth. Possibly it would have been better if he had been somewhat more careful always to base this upon doctrine, and he was, on several occasions, recommended from the Mission-house to this effect. But he was, nevertheless, most sound in his religious belief, in proof of which it will be sufficient to those who know the parties to state that he secured the full confidence of his minister and superintendent, the Rev. A. W. Snape, who, in announcing to the Mission his sudden death, employed the strong expression that he did not think he could have felt the death of his own brother more than he did that of Mr. Beays . . .

[Obituary continues]

/ You may copy, distribute, display and make derivative works based on this information only if you give London City Mission credit as the owner of the original source material. /

BEAYS John Hopkins 1852.doc Page 1