William George TORR

TORR, WILLIAM GEORGE (b. Tavistock, Devon, England, 26 May 1853; d. Brighton, SA, 13 Sept 1939). Methodist educator.

Torr was brought to SA at the age of two. The family settled at Burra where his father worked in the copper mines. Torr was educated in local schools and at Stanley Grammar School, Watervale. After a year working on a sheep-station in Tas he returned to SA and was appointed to the one-teacher school at Ulooloo, some 60 kilometres north of Burra. This was followed by a period at the Model School, a training institution, in Adelaide. In 1879 he became headmaster of the Moonta Mines Public School, then one of the largest institutions within the state system. The Torr family belonged to the Bible Christian Church in Burra and William became a local (lay) preacher at about the age of eighteen. In 1885 the Bible Christians set about establishing a boys' school in Adelaide in memory of James Way (q.v.), the first superintendent of the church in SA. Torr was offered the position of headmaster. He accepted on condition that he should spend some time in Britain studying at his own expense. His first wife, from a leading pastoral family, had died leaving him with the resources to go overseas. Torr was away for five years, studying at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin. He graduated in Arts and Law, LLD (TCD), and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1891 but never practised.

Way College eventually opened in 1892. Under Torr's leadership the school had three divisions: the 'University' course prepared students for the public service, commerce and tertiary study; the 'Practical' division supplemented a basic education with courses in such areas as carpentry and horticulture. A third division trained older students for the Bible Christian ministry. The College lasted only eleven years. With Methodist Union in 1900 it was merged with long-established Prince Alfred College. Torr then became an itinerant evangelist conducting missions throughout Australia and in New Zealand. Under the nom-de-plume 'Old Oxford', he began writing a weekly article, 'Talks to Young Men', for the Methodist weekly, the Australian Christian Commonwealth. He continued to do so until his death in 1939, contributing 1927 articles in all.

In 1909 Torr opened the Methodist Training Home at Brighton, near Adelaide, where some young men were prepared for entry to the ministry and others as lay workers and preachers. This was eventually handed over to the Methodist Church in 1920 and shortly afterwards became the church's first theological college. Torr combined a commitment to Christ with an openness to the literary, textual and historical study of the Bible, when these were controversial issues in Methodist circles. He had been strongly influenced while at Oxford by the Primitive Methodist layman, Arthur S Peake, whose devout Methodist piety was united with an analytical approach to the scriptures. Peake's influence, not least through his editing of a one-volume commentary, was such that Torr played an important role in mediating the new view of the Bible to the ministry of the Methodist Church. The prescription of Peake's Commentary as required study for probationary ministers by the General Conference of 1923 was for Torr 'a triumph for modernism'. Despite his use of this word he remained an expositor of the traditional evangelical doctrines of the Church.

Torr married three times. His interests were broad, especially in the area of science and religion, and over the years he became a recognised conchologist, his particular specialty being chiton shells. There is a memorial window to him in the Brighton Uniting Church. ADB 12; A D Hunt, This Side of Heaven: A History of Methodism in South Australia (Adelaide, 1985); P M T Tilbrook, The Life and Times of Dr William George Torr (Adelaide, 1972)

ARNOLD D HUNT