Hacking, Thomas M.M. (1890-1944)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

THOMAS HACKING, M.M.; born at Accrington in 1890. He entered Hartley College in 191s, but in his third year heard the call to national service and enlisted in the R.A.M.C, There he quickly found opportunities for Christian service and became an unofficial ‘Padre’ to his unit. Officers and men alike trusted him with intimate confidences and found in him their spiritual mentor and guide. He was mentioned in dispatches and won the Military Medal. After the Armistice he was left in sole medical charge of a liberated French village, and for his services to stricken French civilians he was awarded the ‘Médaille d’Honneur’. He valued such honours, but valued more the regard of the men of his own unit. For them to this day

His name a great example stands, to show
How strangely high endeavours may be blest
When piety and valour jointly go.

Returning to his work in the Ministry, he served in rural, industrial, and suburban circuits. In each, his large-hearted generosity, his understanding of human nature, his kindly judgements, his capacity for friendship, his high sense of his call to the Ministry, and, above all, his acute sense of the presence of God, gave him an honoured place in the hearts of his people, and led those people to God and his circuits to prosperity. 

He read widely and deeply, and as a result his work in the pulpit bore the mark of craftsmanship as well as passion. He loved all sorts and conditions of men, and because of that love became a great and understanding pastor. His death came with startling suddenness, but he died as he would have wished, in the full work of the Ministry, on 25th June 1944, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. He was a man of God, and Methodism and the Kingdom of God alike are richer for his life and work, and his twenty-nine years of ministry will long be remembered.

Family

Thomas was born on 16 November 1890 at Accrington, Lancashire, to parents James, a cotton weaver, and Ann.

Before entering the ministry Thomas worked as a tailor.

He married Frances Ellen Simpson (1887-1978) in the summer of 1922 in the Chester Registration District, Cheshire.

Thomas died on 25 June 1944 at Bredbury, Cheshire.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1915 H.M. Forces
• 1919 Tarporley
• 1922 Clun
• 1926 Hull V
• 1931 Earlstown
• 1936 Manchester

References

Methodist Minutes 1944/146

W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers