Mr Elija Hoole

Journals of Elijah Hoole describing his missionary work and life in India.

Born in Manchester, England, 3rd February 1798; educated at Manchester grammar school, 1809-1813; assisted in his father's shoemaking business; following private study, became a probationer for the Wesleyan ministry, 1818; appointed by the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS), 1819; lost his possessions in a shipwreck on the way to Madras [Chennai], India; arrived, 1820; a pioneer missionary in the area, serving at Bangalore [Bengaluru], Negapatam [Nagapattinam], Madras [Chennai], and Seringapatam [Srirangapatna]; elected a member of the committee for revising the Tamil version of the Bible, 1822; his Tamil translations included a hymnbook, 1825; left India owing to ill-health, 1828; returned to England, 1829; employed at Missionary House, London, 1829-1830; superintendent of schools in Ireland, 1830-1834; returned to London, 1834; Assistant Secretary of the WMMS, 1834-1836; married Elizabeth (d 1880), daughter of the lockmaker Charles Chubb, 1835; WMMS General Secretary, 1836-1872; Honorary Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews and of the Home for Asiatics, London; Doctor of Divinity; died on 17th June 1872.

Further Reading:

Hoole, E, Personal narrative of a mission to the south of India, from 1820 to 1828 (1829);

Hoole, E, Madras, Mysore, and the south of India: or, A personal narrative of a mission to those countries from MDCCCXX to MDCCCXXVIII (1844);

Hoole, E, The year-book of missions: containing a comprehensive account of missionary societies, British, continental and American, with a particular survey of the stations arranged in geographical order (1847);

Hoole, E, Dureisani-Tamil-puttagam = The lady's Tamil book : containing the morning and evening services and other portions of the Book of Common Prayer, in Romanized Tamil, accompanied by the English version in parallel columns, together with an Anglo-Tamil grammar and vocabulary (1859);

Telford, J, Makers of our missions. Pages from the lives of Methodist missionaries (1895).

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For permission to publish, please contact Archives & Special Collections, SOAS Library in the first instance

Copyright held by Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes

Official correspondence by Elija Hoole whilst a missionary in India can be found within the (Wesleyan) Methodist Missionary Society archive (MMS/India/Correspondence/Madras/FBN 20). Furthermore, the synod minutes will detail his work, and that of his colleagues, in the Madras district where they served (MMS/India/Synod Minutes/FBN 1).

For his period as one of the Secretaries of the WMMS there is correspondence in the outgoing correspondence (notably MMS/Home/Correspondence/Outgoing/FBN 24A) as well as information on the work he was involved in amongst the relevant committee minutes. A few letters by Hoole can be found within the Steele Collection (MMS/Special Series/Various Papers/FBN 46).

Lastly, there is an agreement made in 1866 between Hoole and Messrs Hall & Co for the building of a three-masted schooner [possibly the 'John Wesley II'] extant (MMS/Special Series/Ships' Papers/FBN 50).