Rutter, Richard Maddern (1887-1952)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

RICHARD MADDERN RUTTER: born at Newlyn, Penzance, in 1887. The call to preach came early in life, and when still a youth he went as a hired local preacher to Banbury. Entering Hartley College, when barely nineteen years of age, he maintained a consistently high position in examinations, and throughout his ministry this studious disposition manifested itself in his attachment to Study Groups and his membership of Education Committees. 

The fact that forty-three years of his ministry were spent in only seven circuits is an eloquent testimony to his diligence as a pastor, his capacity as an administrator, and his appeal as a preacher whose disciplined mind and warmth of heart carried his message to his hearers with clarity and conviction. 

Nothing gave him greater pleasure than when, having laboured in Sale, Bolton, St. Ives, Wallasey, Swinton, and for ten years in Eccles, he was invited to return to his native town of Penzance where, as in every place, his catholic interests made a deep impression on the life of the community. 

Often eschewing the conventional and pedestrian ways of the Church, he welcomed every opportunity of commending the faith and considered nothing alien to him that affected the welfare of his circuits. The literary and musical gifts which enriched his service were recognized by his appointment to the Committee responsible for the publication of the new Sunday-School Hymn-Book. 

From first to last a faithful and devoted minister and pastor, indefatigable in his duties and enterprising in his methods, he died on August 24, 1952, in the sixty-sixth year of his age and the forty-fourth of his ministry, a week after completing six years’ ministry among his own people.

Family

Richard was born in 1887 at Newlyn, Penzance, Cornwall, to parents William Joseph Rutter, a fisherman (1891), and Elizabeth Jane Maddern.

He married Grace Daniel (1885-1962) in the summer of 1913 at Penzance, Cornwall. Birth records identify one child.

• Lewis Daniel (1916-2002)

Richard died on 24 August 1952 in the Penzance Registration District, Cornwall.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1909 Manchester V
• 1914 Bolton I
• 1920 St Ives
• 1925 Birkenhead
• 1931 Manchester VIII
• 1933 Swinton &c
• 1936 Eccles
• 1946 Penzance

References

Methodist Minutes 1953/123

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers