MEDHURST  ,

WALTER' HENRY (1796-1857), English Congregationalist missionary to China, was born in London and educated at St Paul's school . He learned the business of a printer, and having become interested in Christian missions he sailed in '816 for 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 . He 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 . There he continued till 1856, laying the foundations of a successful mission . His 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) marvellously correct and faithful to the original . With John Stronach 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 (1855—64) . The university of New York conferred upon him in 1843 the degree of D.D . Medhurst left Shanghai in 1856 in failing health, and died two days after reaching London, on the 24th of January 1857 . His son, Sir Walter Henry Medhurst (1822-1885), was British consul at Hankow and afterwards at Shanghai .