William Garland Barrett

William Garland Barrett was one of six LMS missionaries who came to Jamaica in 1835, four settling in the south and two in the north.  Barrett was stationed at Four Paths, in Clarendon. According to Bryan Stanley, not long after their arrival, Barrett and other non-Baptist missionaries in Jamaica became critical of the BMS missionaries, alleging the phenomenal growth of the Baptist churches was at the expense of “spiritual discipline and purity.” Their chief complaint centered upon the practice by some of the Baptist missionaries of selling “tickets” each quarter to the communicant members of the various Baptist churches as a means of controlling current members and new communicants. The phenomenal growth of the Baptist churches in Jamaica in the 1830s required such a method (which the Baptists actually borrowed from the Methodists). Although subject to occasional abuse, the chief cause of the “breach” between the Baptist and non-Baptist missionaries in Jamaica may have been the overwhelming success of the Baptist interests in relation to the efforts made by the LMS missionaries. Samuel Green argued in 1842 that Barrett’s complaints were “purely retaliatory.” Patricia T. Rooke takes a similar line, describing Barrett as “a highly strung man, given to hysterical malice and suffering some personal and nervous strain not assuaged by the lack of success of his mission in Jamaica.” Barrett returned to England in 1848 due to poor health and settled in Hertfordshire, becoming pastor of an Independent chapel at Royston. His son, William Fletcher Barrett (1844-1925) became a pioneer in the area of psychical research. See John Clarke, Memorials of the Baptist Missionaries in Jamaica (London: Yates and Alexander, 1869), 231; Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792–1992 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1992), 85; Samuel Green, Baptist Mission in Jamaica: A Review of W. G. Barrett’s Pamphlet entitled A Reply to the Circular of the BMS Committee (London: Houlston and Stoneman; and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 5; Baptist Magazine 34 (1842), 586; Patricia T. Rooke, “Evangelical Missionary Rivalry in the British West Indies: A Study in Religious Altruism and Economic Reality,” Baptist Quarterly 29 (1981-1982), 348; Richard Noakes, “The ‘Bridge which is between Physical and Psychical Research’: William Fletcher Barrett, Sensitive Flames, and Spiritualism,” History of Science 42 (2004), 419-423.