Richard Fishwick

Richard Fishwick (1745-1825) was one of the leading Baptist laymen in the north of England during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. He spent his early years in Hull, where he and his family worshiped in the local Baptist church. He was baptized by John Beatson in 1777, and the next year removed to Newcastle to join with another Baptist layman from Bishop Burton, Archer Ward (1753-1800), and his partner Samuel Walker of Rotherham, in forming the Elswick White-Lead Works. He enquired about the Baptists, only to discover that the congregation at Tuthill-stairs had recently been split by a Socinian wing, led by Caleb Alder and his son-in-law, William Robson. They would eventually form the Pandon-bank chapel, with Edward Prowitt, a former student at Bristol Academy, as their first minister (Prowitt had also briefly pastored at New Road, Oxford, 1784-1786, but resigned because he had already “adopted heterodox views”). Fishwick reinvigorated the small meeting at Tuthill Stairs, at that time led by Henry Dawson, who was succeeded in 1781 by William Pendered. Fishwick and Ward laboured incessantly for the next eighteen years in building a Baptist work in Newcastle, which culminated in the completion of a new chapel at Tuthill-stairs in 1798. That year Fishwick was chosen treasurer of the newly formed Northern Evangelical Society. He spent considerable sums of his own money helping to build Baptist chapels throughout the north of England. Both Fishwick and Ward were close friends and correspondents of David Kinghorn, Baptist minister at Bishop Burton, and his son, Joseph, once an apprentice to Ward and Fishwick and later Baptist minister at Norwich. In fact, Fishwick paid the majority of Joseph Kinghorn’s educational expenses during his time at Bristol Academy. Fishwick was a strong supporter of the BMS in the north, subscribing £5 to the Baptist Missionary Society in 1804-1805. Fishwick’s final years were not so glorious, however. Unwise speculations led to the loss of much of his fortune, and he moved to London in 1806 in greatly reduced circumstances. He joined John Rippon’s congregation at Carter Lane and died at Islington in 1825. See David Douglass, History of the Baptist Churches in the North of England, from 1648 to 1845 (London: Houlston and Stoneman, 1846), 218-219, 240-241, 243-244; John Bradburn, The History of Bewick Street Baptist Church (Newcastle-on-Tyne: [n.p.], 1883), 5; Frank Beckwith, “Fishwick and Ward,” Baptist Quarterly 15 (1953-1954), 249-268; Philip Hayden, “The Baptists in Oxford 1656-1819,” Baptist Quarterly 29 (1981-1982), 130; BMS Periodical Accounts, 3:142.