Prominent Edinburgh solicitor, a partner in Balfour and Nightingale. He was born in Edinburgh into a staunch Methodist family: the son of Robert B. Nightingale (1844-1901; e.m. 1868) and grandson of Charles Nightingale (1816-1904; e.m. 1830). His great uncle Thomas Nightingale (1814-1890; e.m. 1836) and his uncle Arthur Winfield Nightingale (1850-1884; e.m.1874), a missionary in central China, were also in the WM ministry.
He was a class leader, poor steward and Sunday Schoolteacher at Nicolson Square, and a circuit steward. He became a local preacher in 1897, remembered for 'his purposeful resonant voice and fine, free delivery in the pulpit'. He helped George Jackson establish the Albert Hall Mission (forerunner of the Central Hall) in the west of Edinburgh and was secretary of the Trust for forty years. He preached the closing sermon at the Livingstone Hall PM church in 1925. An Asquithian Liberal JP, he was concerned about juvenile delinquency and led a Sunday School in one of the mining villages.
A lay representative to Conference 1939-1952, he was Vice-President in 1943, sat on many connexional committees, including the General Committee for Overseas Missions 1939-1943, the Committee on Lay Administration of the Sacraments in 1945 and 1949, the Law and Polity Committee 1946-1951, the Rebuilding Appeal Committee 1946-1948, the Chapel Affairs Committee 1949-1960 and the Book Affairs Committee 1952-1956. He was a lay member of the World Methodist Council 1946-1952 and of the World Conference on Faith and Order in 1948. He died on 2 October 1961.