Thomas Dennis

Thomas John Dennis (1869–1917) was an Anglican priest who was the main translator of the Bible into the Igbo language.

Childhood and education Dennis was born into a farming family in Langney in Sussex on 17 September 1869 and grew up in Cuckfield, Guestling and St Leonards. He was the eldest of eight children, four of whom were to follow him into overseas Christian mission.

He applied to join the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1889, and because he had not been able to complete his education, was sent to the CMS Institution in Clapham before attending the CMS training college in Islington. He studied at Durham University, completing a BA in 1902 as an unattached student.

Bible translation Dennis was one of the new generation of Evangelicals who were disappointed that the Niger mission was not a "Scriptural Mission". Most translation efforts were directed towards hymnals and liturgy, the only previous Bible translation work being an extremely literal translation of the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and some of the Pauline epistles. It was considered that he alone had anything near what could be regarded as the experience and training for translation work.

He also published a grammar of Igbo (1901), a literacy primer (1903, revised 1911),

Death In 1917 Dennis and his wife set sail for England on the Elder Dempster steamship Karina. On 1 August they were torpedoed off the south coast of Ireland just outside Queenstown and the ship sank. Mattie was rescued but Dennis drowned. One of their suitcases, containing a draft of the Igbo-English dictionary and part of an Igbo grammar, later washed up on the coast of Wales. A fisherman found it, broken open on the beach. He collected the papers and dried them out. The suitcase had Dennis's name printed on the outside, and also contained the address of a donor. The fisherman wrote to her, and she in turn contacted Mattie. By this means the dictionary manuscript was eventually returned to CMS,

Legacy The Dennis Memorial Grammar School in Onitsha is named after him.