William Mitchell: The Missionary Man

This week's Times Past column by Jonathan Smyth features a Monaghan born missionary to India and Australia named William Mitchell.

The 19th Century produced a slew of missionaries who set out to seek new converts to Christianity around the world. One such preacher was William Mitchell whose early roots lay in Co Monaghan where the family lived until his father’s death. The future missionary was born there on 20th November 1803. And although there were lots of families of that name in the county at the time, in places like Monaghan town and Clontibret; the exact location of the family home is not given in records. However, William’s grandfather, Blaney Owen Mitchell of Dublin was a descendant of the lordly Blaney family of Co Monaghan.

His father, also named William, died after he was allegedly killed during a riot in Dublin. The boy’s mother had died at some other stage too, but there is no further information as to how or when it occurred. With the loss of both parents, he and his three brothers went to live with an uncle who owned Stackallen House, Co Meath. William’s grandfather with whom he later went to live in Dublin around 1810 was the celebrated attorney, Blaney Owen Mitchell. For a time, it looked like master William was about to become an apothecary but, after a few months training, he had had enough. He also attended Trinity College Dublin before going to England to prepare for the missions. His education for the mission took place in Buckinghamshire. The Church Missionary Society then provided him with further training at Salisbury, London and in 1825 the Bishop of London ordained him as a priest in the Church of England.

Family is everything

William met Mary Anne Holmes, and they were married in 1826. It seems they went to live in Ireland for a bit before William decided to take work as a missionary to the people of India. William and Mary had two daughters and a son. When Mary became ill, they all returned to England where she died in the Spring of 1831.

Soon after his first wife’s death he encountered a teacher named Frances Tree Tatlock and they got married on 24 January 1832. She was supportive of her husband’s missionary endeavours and together with the children they sailed for India to continue his work in Bombay. His second wife bore them a son whom they named Blaney in November 1832. They then had a second son named Samuel. William continued with his work in India until his health began to fail and in 1835, he returned to England. His wife and the children had already sailed for England in the previous year.

White man’s burden

The white man’s burden was a view adopted by people in those days when it came to ‘converting the natives’ in the nineteenth century. It was very much the world which is so authentically described Rudyard Kipling. And although I happen to think that Kipling is an excellent writer, it is the world of empire he happened to inhabit and that period naturally has negative connotations in modern day times. But nothing is ever that cut and dry and it is true that most missionary workers had genuine concern for the souls of their new flocks on the colonial continent. Racial prejudice and oppression have been highlighted better in recent times by more enlightened societies in a world that increasingly tries to turn the clock back to a more autocratic time in which citizens were given less opportunities to receive edifying knowledge. In the past, missions to India and Africa were sometimes framed as ‘civilizing missions’ under the auspices of the former British Empire.

First impressions

On 1 April 1838, William Mitchell, his family, and a governess named Anne Breeze arrived at Fremantle aboard a ship called the Sheppard. Incidentally , Anne Breeze later founded a school called Annesfield to instruct Indigenous children in Western Australia. The Mitchell family’s eldest daughter, Annie, who was then 12 years old kept an account of their arrival in Australia.

She wrote: ‘Our ship arrived near Garden Island on August 4, 1838. We landed at Fremantle. The first thing we saw was a huge whale on the beach. Local Aboriginal people were cutting pieces from it. We stayed in Fremantle for a week. Then we went to Government House in Perth. Sir James Stirling, the governor, and Lady Stirling welcomed us. We also stayed with Judge Mackie. After that, we went to Henley Park on the Upper Swan by boat. We then settled at the Mission-house on the Middle Swan … Only a few ships travelled between London and Western Australia. When a ship arrived, a cannon was fired. This let people know they could get their letters. About 700 to 800 people lived in Western Australia, mostly along the Swan River.’

She looks at the kind of food they ate and what they were lacking in: ‘Sometimes, we had no flour for weeks. We ate rice and salted pork. A leg of mutton cost seven shillings and sixpence. The only fruit came from ships arriving from the Cape of Good Hope.’

Rector of Swan

William came to the Swan Valley as only the second ever person to offer the locals pastoral services. When the Swan parish was founded, he was appointed its first rector and in 1841 the parish’s first purpose-built place of worship named All Saints’ Anglican Church, at Henley Brook opened. After two decades of service, he had another call from God to serve in Perth at the city jail on Beaufort Street. His work was important for the convicts, criminals and others who required spiritual sustenance. The work conducted by the clergy helped transform Australia’s penal colonies into ‘free settler’ societies by means of addressing people’s social needs. They did this through speeches and pamphlets and the lobbying of the government for such improvements and the clergies’ success in this area should not be underestimated.

After a profitable life, according to an Australian newspaper clipping, the Rev. William Mitchell died at the Deanery in Perth on 3rd August 1870. He was in his 67th year. His wife Francis lived until 1879. For more on Mitchell’s life and times check out ‘Mitchell amen : a biography on the life of Reverend William Mitchell and his family,’ by Frank Nelder Greenslade.

Fógra

The children of William Mitchell from his first marriage were Annie, born 1826; Susan Augusta, born 1828; William Owen, born 1829. From William’s second marriage the children were Blaney, born 1832; Samuel, born 1834; Francis Tree, born 1841; Charlotte, born 1843; and Andrew Forster, born 1846.