Shaw, Percy (1893-1971)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

PERCY SHAW: born in Oidham in 1893. His family moved to Blackpool when he was a lad, and became members of the Chapel Street cause. He was one of a group of young men from amongst whom came several ministers and local preachers. When he offered for the ministry of the Primitive Methodist Church, he was sent to Hartley College, from which he volunteered with several of his friends for the Royal Army Medical Corps at the beginning of the First World War. He was invalided out of the army after receiving shrapnel wounds while trying to rescue a colleague. This resulted in him having to seek a year’s superannuation after only twelve months in active ministry at Redhill. Subsequently he served in the foliowing circuits: Scholes, Grimsby I, Middlesbrough II, Blackheath (Staffs), Birmingham (Sutton Partk), Stockport Trinity, and Manchester (Withington). His notable ministry culminated in a six-year term at Castletown when he became Chairman of the Isle of Man District. 

It was due to his wife’s ill-health that he moved from this appointment in 1954 to Chester (George Street) in the hope that the move would benefit her, but as her condition deteriorated he retired the following year. For a short while he served as an active supernumerary at Gospel Oak, London, but this too had to be relinquished, and he moved to Blackpool. There he attended the church of his youth and became a trustee. For twelve years, until her death in 1967, he devoted himself to the care of his wife, doing all that was necessary for her personally as well as running the house. This was typical of the care with which he approached all his pastoral work. 

During the years of the depression, he organized a Football League at Middlesbrough to create an interest for those affected. During the Second World War his home was open house to all servicemen who came to Wilmslow. He was a meticulous administrator and a wise leader. His preaching reflected his wide reading in literature, history and theology absorbed by a thoughtful mind, and he continued preaching almost every Sunday throughout his retirement. On Sunday 23 May 1971 he conducted worship at the Springfield Greenlands Church in the Blackpool (North) Circuit, and preached on Romans 7: 24-25. He returned to his flat and laid on his bed to rest. It was there that he was found later in the day, having passed peacefully away in the seventy-eighth year of his age, and the fifty-sixth of his ministry.

Family

Percy was born on 27 December 1893 at Hollinwood, Oldham, Lancashire, to parents John William Shaw, a postman (1894) and Charlotte Katterns. He was baptised on 28 January 1894 at Bourne St. PM Chapel, Hollinhead, by Richard Robinson.

He married Margaret Bailey (1891-1967) in the summer of 1924 at Huddersfield, Yorkshire. Birth records identify three children.

• Joan M (b1927)
• George David (1929-1987)
• Edith (b1934)

Percy died on 23 May 1971 at Bispham, Blackpool, Lancashire.

Circuits

• Hartley
• 1915 Chaplain H.M. Forces
• 1919 Redhill
• 1920 sup one year
• 1921 Scholes
• 1924 Grimsby I
• 1928 Middlesbrough II
• 1931 Blackheath
• 1938 Birmingham Sutton
• 1939 Stockport Trinity
• 1944 Manchester Warrington
• 1948 Castletown
• 1954 Castletown
• 1954 Chester George St
• 1955 Blackpool (S)

References

Methodist Minutes 1971/186

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

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers