On Saturday 30^th May, I attended the Dover History Showcase at the Dover Maison Dieu to showcase the Dover Wesleyan Methodist Scrapbook. This was the second time that the scrapbook has been displayed at the Maison Dieu and once again it attracted great interest from local historians and visiting members of the public. The scrapbook is an important item in the CCCU archives and special collections as it documents the history of the Wesleyan Methodists in Dover and surrounding villages.

Last year when I took the scrapbook to Dover, the stories behind three items in the scrapbook were shared at the Opening Event of the Maison Dieu which had undergone a National Lottery Heritage Funded restoration project. This year I was able to share more research about another item, a ticket for a popular lecture given in the Maison Dieu (Town Hall) by Reverend Peter McKenzie on 28 October 1891.

Reverend Peter Mackenzie

Reverend Peter Mackenzie was born in Perthshire in 1824 and worked as an agricultural labourer, in a dairy, and as a coal hewer at Haswell mine.¹ before training for the ministry at Didsbury College in 1858. A charismatic preacher, he worked with ten circuits of which eight were in the North of England and attracted large congregations. Due to his popularity and success, the Wesleyan Conference allowed him to accept invitations to give lectures further afield including this one in Dover on the Proverbs of Solomon.

Ticket from the Dover Methodist Scrapbook CCCU Library and Archives, DMS/S/51/3

Vigorous and Humorous

Mackenzie used humour and dramatic effect and “could rouse a crowd to uncontrollable enthusiasm”².  When he died in 1896, he left “three year’s engagement unfulfilled”³. “Widely known, vigorous, and humorous”, Mackenzie “moved about the platform or the pulpit until he was often bathed in perspiration… he never preached two sermons in one day in the same shirt or collar”.⁴

The lecture in 1891 was not the first that Mackenzie had given in Dover, having visited in 1889 to talk about “The Tongue” and its misuses for lying and swearing.⁵ The Dover Chronicle reported that he was a man of the people who “lacks the graces of a finished orator, his manner on the platform is odd, not to say uncouth, his pronunciation is not so refined as it might be, but his matter is excellent, and his earnestness, humour and readiness carry his audience completely with him”.⁶ His talks were given at several towns in Kent including Gravesend, Ashford, Rochester, Deal and Tonbridge.

A Packed and Attentive Audience

The Lecture on the Proverbs of Solomon and Others given in 1891 lasted an hour and was given to a packed and attentive audience. The Proverbs were treated “in that discursive way for which he is famed, giving apropos anecdotes”. After a vote of thanks, Mackenzie was given a round of “Kentish fire” (applause).⁷

William Riley describes Mackenzie as “a great soul – tender hearted to such an extent that he would empty his pocket to help the poor” and that he was a great friend to cabbies and railway porters.⁸ His work as a travelling preacher is said to have “outdistanced” that of any of his contemporaries⁹ and he joked “There will be no rest for Peter Mackenzie till he is dressed in a wooden suit, and tucked in with a shovel”¹⁰. He vowed to work until he dropped, which he did five years after visiting Dover.

Thank you to the Friends of the Maison Dieu who invited me to the event. If you would like to know more about the Dover Wesleyan Methodist Scrapbook and its contents, please email library.canterbury@canterbury.ac.uk.

You can read more about the Dover Wesleyan Scrapbook and its associations with the Dover Maison Dieu in this blog post The Dover Wesleyan Methodist Scrapbook at the Maison Dieu | Library.

Notes

1. Zweig, F, Men in the Pits, 1948. ↩︎
2. Dinsdale, Stars of Retrospect, 1920, pp. 46-7. ↩︎
3. The Christian Ensign, 2 April 1896. ↩︎
4. The Christian Ensign, 2 April 1896. ↩︎
5. Dover Express, 27 September 1889. ↩︎
6. “Lecture on the Tongue” Dover Chronicle, 28 September 1889. ↩︎
7. Dover Chronicle, 31 October 1891. ↩︎
8. Riley, W. Sunset Reflections, 1957, p. 73. ↩︎
9. Starr, W. The People’s Life of the Rev. Peter Mackenzie: The Man and His Work, 1897, p.72. ↩︎
10. Starr, W. The People’s Life of the Rev. Peter Mackenzie: The Man and His Work, 1897, p.75. ↩︎