Vickers, Dr John A.
1927-2023
Born at Smethwick, Staffs, and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and the University of Birmingham. Although accepted for the ministry and trained at Handsworth College, he was not ordained, but opted for a teaching career, the second half of which was spent in teacher training in West Sussex. He was active as a local preacher for 60 years.
His BD thesis on Thomas Coke, summarized in his 1964 Wesley Historical Society Lecture, was published in 1969 as Thomas Coke, Apostle of Methodism. His thesis for the Southampton PhD (1987) was on the development of Methodism in central southern England.
Taking early retirement in 1981 enabled him to undertake considerable writing and editing, including the collection of source material in volume 4 of the History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (1988), A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland (2000; expanded into an online version in 2007), two volumes on the 1851 Religious Census returns for Sussex (1989) and Hampshire (1993), Preaching from Hymns (2002), the Journals (2005) and Letters (2013) of Dr. Thomas Coke. He served his apprenticeship as an indexer by producing a general index to the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. In 1970 he was appointed indexer of the new edition of the Works of John Wesley and in 1976 was awarded the Wheatley Medal for his index to the first volume, containing Wesley's 'Appeals'.
As British Secretary of the World Methodist Historical Society 1972-1981 he initiated a series of residential conferences and a programme of publications. From 1996 to 2002 he was Wesley Historical Society Librarian. A Festschrift in his honour, Methodism and History (2010) included a bibliography of his publications.