Restoring the forgotten preacher
Jul 16 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post
Restoring the forgotten preacher
But, before his ordination, he found himself drawn to the free, passionate and socially aware Baptists and was accepted wholeheartedly into their number in 1846.
The following year he travelled to Liverpool and began preaching at the Myrtle Street Baptist Church, where he was made minister, the position he held for the rest of his life.
Liverpool was struggling with the huge influx of people fleeing the Irish potato famine. They were Catholics, but every part of the community was affected, as disease spread among the rich and poor.
In 1847, 116,000 Irish refugees had arrived at the Clarence steamship dock. Many carried the seeds of typhus in their bodies.
That year, 60,000 of them were treated for the disease and another 40,000 for dysentery and diarrhoea.
From the start it was obvious that Brown was a man with a generous spirit, expressed in fine passages of speech, using a vocabulary readily understood by the common man.
Although he professed no particular medical expertise, he understood that the general state of the people was worsened by drink as well as poor sanitation. Cleanliness was indeed next to Godliness.
A contemporary noted that Brown was simple and direct, “his voice ringing out in enthusiasm for righteousness and in scorn of everything that was mean or low”.
When he arrived at Myrtle Street, the chapel had 239 members. In 1884, two years before his death, it had risen to 849 members.
But it was his Sunday afternoon lectures at St George’s Hall and the Concert Hall on Lord Nelson Street that established his name with a wider public.
PEOPLE from all Christian denominations came to hear his sermons.
In the evenings, he would preach to outdoor crowds of 4,000, many of whom felt ashamed to attend ordinary church services because of their shabby clothes.
More practically, his church had begun a Workman’s Bank, which operated in a way similar to today’s credit unions, helping poor people save and preventing them from sinking into destitution.
His reputation spread to the USA, which he visited in 1873, and his work at home was recognised by his appointment as president of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, President of the Liverpool Branch of the Peace Society and chairman of Liverpool’s Seaman’s Friendly Society.
Brown married twice and one of his sons, J Sirret Brown founded the firm Brown and Backhouse, which built many properties including the Hotel Victoria, New Brighton.
In June 1886, shortly after his death, a public meeting at Liverpool Town Hall decided to raise £1,200 so that a monument to Brown could be erected. Francis John Williamson sculpted a figure from marble to a height of eight feet and it was rested on a plinth which carried the inscription: “He laboured for 39 years to improve the social and spiritual condition of his fellow men.”
It was placed before the Baptist chapel on Myrtle Street in 1889, where it stayed until 1940 when the building was demolished to make room for the Liverpool Radium Institute.
There was uncertainty about the ownership of the statue and it was put in storage during the war.
In 1954 Liverpool City Council found another site for the Grade 2 listed statue on Princes Road, Toxteth. But in 1988 it was pulled down by a rope attached to a car.
There was speculation that locals might have thought, wrongly, that Brown had been associated with the slave trade.
Now the great bearded figure lies on the ground in Croxteth Hall Park, a broken prophet.
Looking at him are Patrick Neill, founder of the Friends of Liverpool Monuments, and Wayne Clarke, minister of Dovedale Baptist Church, near Penny Lane, Liverpool.
Patrick is in negotations with Liverpool City Council about restoring the statue before its condition deteriorates too much.
Wayne, 46, who broadcasts on Radio Merseyside’s Daybreak religious programme, is writing a biography of Brown.
“The book is at the early stages, but it is being helped a lot by the fact that Brown wrote his memoirs,” he says.
“Although they were not meant to be published, his son-in-law had them published,” he says. “So we have a lot of first-hand accounts about his life and thoughts about his life.
“He was one of Liverpool’s greatest citizens of the 19th century. He thought this was the place where he was called to work.
“He was a very down-to-earth preacher, a man of the people. Although he looked very grand and fine, his speaking style was straightforward.”
“It was our grandfathers and great grandfathers, who raised the money so the statue could be built,” says Patrick.
“It wasn’t just Baptists who contributed to the fund.
“I would like to see him back in St George’s Hall or maybe Falkner Square where Brown lived.”
Meanwhile, he is at least staring at Heaven.
