Walter Henry Medhurst
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Walter Henry Medhurst (Chinese: 麥都思, 1796-1857), English Congregationalist missionary to China, was born in London and educated at St Paul's School.
As a young man Walter Medhurst learned the business of a printer and typesetter. Becoming interested in Christian missions he sailed in 1816 to join the London Missionary Society's station at Malacca, which was intended to be a great printing centre. He became proficient in Malay, in a knowledge of the written characters of Chinese, and in the colloquial use of more than one of its dialects.
Walter Medhurst was ordained at Malacca in 1819, and engaged in missionary labours, first at Penang, then at Batavia - and finally, when peace was concluded with China in 1842, at Shanghai where he founded the London Missionary Society Press (墨海書館) together with William Muirhead, Joseph Edkins, and William Charles Milne. There he continued till 1856, laying the foundations of a successful mission.
Rev Medhurst's principal labour for several years, as one of a committee of delegates, was in the revision of existing Chinese versions of the Bible. The result was a version (in High Wen-li, Traditional Chinese: 深文理) marvellously correct and faithful to the original. With John Stronach, and the assistance of Wang Tao, he also translated the New Testament into the Mandarin dialect of Nanking. His Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries (each in 2 vols.) are still valuable, and to him the British public owed its understanding of the teaching of Hung-Sew-Tseuen, the leader of the Tai-ping rising (1851-64).
The University of New York conferred upon him in 1843 the degree of D.D.
Rev. Dr. Medhurst left Shanghai in 1856 in failing health. He died two days after reaching London, on the 24th of January 1857 and was buried at the Congregationalists' non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery where his white stone obelisk monument can still be seen today. His son, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst (1822-1885), was British consul at Hankow and afterwards at Shanghai.
Significant works
Walter Medhurst was a prolific writer, translator, and editor. The list below is incomplete.
- A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language: According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms: Containing about 12,000 Characters (ISBN 1-86210-067-5)
See also
Reference
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