John Townsend

John Townsend (24 March 1757 – 7 February 1826)

He found that William Huntington, who resided in Kingston, was influencing his congregation by his antinomian views, so he resigned his charge, and in October 1784 became minister of the Jamaica Row Chapel in Bermondsey, London. By 1815 the institution was greatly oversubscribed. (A second building was opened in Margate in 1876, and the entire school moved there from London in 1906; the institution, by then known as the Royal School for Deaf Children, closed in 2015.) Townsend was also involved in founding the London Missionary Society in 1794, and the British and Foreign Bible Society (for which he suggested the name) in 1802. Townsend died in Bermondsey on 7 February 1826.

Publications Townsend also published: "Three Sermons addressed to Old, Middle-aged, and Young People" (London, 1797) "Nine Sermons on Prayer" (London, 1799) "Hints on Sunday-schools and Itinerant Preaching" (London, 1801) An abridgement of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (London, 1806) A life of Jean Claude, prefixed to a translation of his "Defence of the Reformation" (London, 1815)