WM layman, born at Merriott, Som. He became a shopkeeper in Glastonbury and started a Bible class there in 1866. Moving to Bristol, in 1880 he established the Old Market Street Bible Class, with Savings Bank, Mutual Aid, Medical and Burial Societies incorporated. His evangelization through mass meetings, street canvassing, band processions and Saturday evening temperance assemblies, laid the foundation of later work by the Bristol Mission and Central Hall and is described in several autobiographical accounts (1883, c.1900, 1914). Among his socio-religious tracts and novels, the title of The Man in the White Hat (1885) provided the sobriquet by which he became well-known.