Maltby, Dr William Russell
1866-1951; e.m. 1893
WM minister born at Selby on 5 December 1866, the son of the Rev. William Maltby (e.m.1857; d. 1908). He was educated at Woodhouse Grove and Kingswood Schools and qualified as a solicitor. He spent one year at Headingley College before being sent into circuit. As Warden of the Wesley Deaconess Order from 1920 to 1940 he saw the college premises extended and a two-year course introduced.. President of the WM Conference in 1926, he was a strong advocate of Methodist Union and also of improving the status of women in the Church. He exercised a powerful ministry among students through university missions and conferences. The Methodist Church Music Society, the Methodist School of Fellowship and the Fellowship of the Kingdom owed much to his initiative and spiritual guidance. At the second Methodist Church Congress in 1931 he spoke on 'Christ - the Saviour of Man'. The theme of his preaching and of his books The Significance of Jesus (1929) and Christ and his Cross (1935) was the centrality of a personal relationship with Jesus. He died on 9 January 1951.
'Russell Maltby… with his inimitable wit and grace of spirit…. None who heard him could forget the lilt of that voice, the grace that was upon his lips and the humour that iresistably broke through his most serious uttrances.'
Nathaniel Micklem, The Box and the Puppets (1957) pp.50-1, 122
- Methodist Recorder, 18 Jan 1951; 15 Dec 1966
- Douglas J. Cock, Every Orther Inch a Methodist (1987) pp.88-9
- E. Dorothy Graham, Saved to Serve: the story of the Wesley Deaconess Order 1890-1978 (Peterborough, 2002), pp. 252-55, 420-24