Garrett, Charles
1823-1900; e.m. 1846
WM missioner and temperance advocate, born in Shaftesbury on 30 November 1823. (His grandaughter, Lucy M. Boston, recorded a family tradition that he was 'the bastard son of a West Country lord by a laundry maid'. (Perverse and Foolish, 1979, p.25)) He was educated at the local commercial school. As a young man he worked for the Anti-Corn Law League and during his ministry in Preston (1860-1863) was active in relief work among the victims of the Cotton Famine. He was involved in the founding of the Manchester and Salford Mission and later of the LiverpoolMission. Before the temperance cause was widely supported by WM, he campaigned tirelessly against the drink trade and other social evils and edited the Methodist Temperance Magazine. He was one of the founders of the Methodist Recorder in 1861. In wide demand as a preacher, he was President of the 1882 Conference. He died on 21 October 1900. He is comemorated in the name of Garrett Memorial Church at Shaftesbury (1907)
'Charles Garrett was a preacher of unique charm: so tender, so incisive, so evangelistic. His pathos compelled one's tears. Few could tell an anecdote in the pulpit with such high effect. Simplicity and reality and passion blended in a rare degree in the popular ministry of this sweet and saintly man.'
Dinsdale T. Young, Stars of Retrospect (1920) p.47
- Methodist Recorder, 25 Oct. 1900
- Roger Standing, The Forward Movement: Evangelical Pioneers of 'Social Christianity' (2015)