BMS Jubilee, 1842

BMS Jubilee, 1842 – The BMS held its Jubilee Meeting at Kettering, 31 May-2 June 1842. The Jubilee year, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the BMS, was primarily designed as a fundraiser for the financially strapped BMS (several letters below detail various fundraising efforts by Baptist churches and organizations in England as part of the Jubilee). More than £32,000 was raised, enabling the Society to erase its debt and begin construction of new headquarters in Moorgate. Nevertheless, the BMS experienced deficits every year between 1842 and 1849. See Baptist Magazine 34 (1842): 373-388; Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1992 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1992), 213-214; Ernest A. Payne, The First Generation: Early Leaders of the Baptist Missionary Society in England and India (London: Carey Press, [1936]), 18-19.