Bowker, Joseph Henry (1867-1951)

Obituary from Minutes of the Methodist Conference

Born at Blackburn in 1867. He was reared in the Christian faith and fellowship at Paradise Chapel in his native town, and entered the ministry of the United Methodist Free Church in 1888.

His college days were spent at Victoria Park, Manchester, and he also attended classes at Owen’s College.

While he was a diligent and painstaking student, academic study never came easily to him, and to the end of his days he was sensitively conscious of the limitations of his early training.

The same diligent and painstaking habit was manifest throughout his ministry.

He read widely and carefully, he positively laboured at his sermons, but never acquired the ease of free extempore speech.

Every word had to be read, measured and exact. Yet he could be a powerful and penetrating preacher, and he positively glowed when he spoke of the love of God which could transform the hard hearts of men into kindliness and grace.

The same painstaking habit marked his pastoral work in that long ministry fulfilled in such places as Lincoln, Leeds, London, Derby, Macclesfield, Preston, Heckmondwike and Greetland.

His last ministry was at Bradford, from whence he retired to Rickmansworth.

His outstanding characteristic was his rock-like integrity of character. He was known as a man whose word could be trusted, and in whom implicit confidence could be reposed.

That was perhaps born of the sturdy northern stock from which he came, but it was nurtured by his faith in the truth of the Gospel.

Behind a somewhat dour exterior there was a shy, sensitive spirit, continually touched to finer issues.

He had a radiantly happy home life, and passed to the fuller life triumphantly in his eighty- fifth year on 16th October 1951, having served the Church over sixty-three years.

©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes 1952

Family

Joseph was born in Blackburn in 1867, to parents Henry Slater and Alice Anne Bowker both of whom appear to have died when he was an infant.

He married Harriet Ann Lilburn (1879-1939) on 27th August 1892 at Saxon Street UMFC chapel in Lincoln. They had two children

• Henry Alan (1897-1946
• Alison (1904-1979)

Joseph died on 16th October 1951 in Rickmansworth.

Circuits

• 1886 Victoria Park College
• 1888 Lincoln Saxon Street
• 1891 Leeds West.
• 1894 London II
• 1897 Derby Becket Street
• 1900 Macclesfield
• 1906 Preston I
• 1911 Leeds, Wortley and Kirkstall
• 1918 Heckmomdwike
• 1922 London Forest Gate
• 1925 Greetland
• 1930 Bradford South East
• 1935 Rickmansworth (Supernumerary)
• He was a District Secretary in 1919-1921 and 1927-1930

References

Oliver A Beckerlegge, United Methodist ministers and their circuits: Being an arrangement in alphabetical order of the stations of ministers of the Methodist New … and the United Methodist Church, 1797-1932

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers

Minutes of the Methodist Conference 1952 p125