Hugh Stowell Brown was not English, but a proud Manxman, born on Sunday the 10th of August 1823 in the island’s capital, Douglas, the son of a low church Anglican minister. His father was never convinced of the value of infant baptism and when Hugh
went to study to be a Church of England minister his conscience wouldn't
allow him to continue. He abandoned his training and became a Baptist. Travelling across to England, passing through Liverpool on the
way, he went to work as a civil engineer and was part of the early work of the
Ordnance Survey, and all OS maps of York are based on his work as a young
man. He then worked as a railway engineer in Wolverton, and was
baptised at Stony Stratford Baptist Church.
When he first went to Myrtle Street Baptist Church in Liverpool in March 1847 he
was there to take morning and evening services during a pastoral
vacancy, but something about the young man appealed to the congregation
and they invited him to stay and before long they asked him to be their
minister. He had a place to study at Bristol Baptist College but he
never went there, and with minimal training and very little experience
he became minister of one of the largest churches in Liverpool town
centre. Through his forty years at Myrtle Street the church grew every year
and saw hundreds of baptisms. The church building was enlarged twice and
grew in reputation. What made Myrtle Street attractive was Brown's
preaching, which was lively and Biblical and most of all down-to-earth,
full of topical references and suggestions for practical living the life
of faith. The church attracted the educated and the well-to-do, and Brown's daughter
married the politician William Sproston Caine, a member of the church.
Caine, like most Baptists of his time, was a Liberal and served in
Gladstone’s government.
Liverpool was a town of great poverty at that time and Brown realising that the poor were not well represented in the church, discovered that this was mainly because they felt they could not attend church without wearing their 'Sunday best', and they had no suitable clothing. So Brown started a series of 'lectures for the working men of Liverpool' in a public hall so there was no expectation of dressing well. The success of the lectures led to his reputation spreading and he travelled all over Britain to preach, and later went to America and Canada. Known as a friend of the poor, he founded a Workman's Bank where those without wealth could have access to banking facilities so they could save their money and budget properly. Brown worked for the abstinence movement among people afflicted by drunkenness, and founded a society to help the widows of seafarers and in 1878 he became president of the Baptist Union.
Brown first married Alice Chibnall Sirett in 1848, who was the mother of all his children, and died in 1863; secondly, he married Phoebe, sister to Liberal politician William Sproston Caine, who died on the 25th of March 1884. Hugh Stowell Brown passed away on Wednesday the 24th of February 1886 after he had suffered an apoplexy, which was a bursting of blood vessels in the brain. He died peacefully and pain free in his own bed at 29 Falkner Square, at the relatively young age of 63. His funeral was held just 4 days later on Sunday the 28th of February and the route to the Necropolis was lined by 10,000 people. Shortly after his death in June 1886, a public meeting at Liverpool Town Hall decided to raise £1,2000 to erect a statue of Brown, one of only three Liverpool clergymen to receive that honour. It originally stood on Myrtle Street outside the church, opposite the Philharmonic pub, before it was re-located to Princes Park in 1939 when the church that he preached at was closed. In 1988 it was moved again and became lost to public view - until 2007 when the statue was found in the stables of Croxteth Country Park. The sculpture, which is made from marble and stands 8ft tall, has now been restored to its former glory and has been moved back to its original location from 126 years ago.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/01/a-liverpool-exemplar-sir-henry-william.html
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