Henry T. Hodgkin

Henry Theodore Hodgkin (H. T. Hodgkin; 21 April 1877 – 26 March 1933) was a medical doctor and a British Quaker missionary who, in the course of his 55-year life, co-founded the West China Union University in Chengdu, co-founded and led the first Christian pacifist movement, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and founded the Pendle Hill Quaker meeting and training center, in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

Early years

Henry Theodore Hodgkin was born on 21 April 1877 in a very affluent Quaker family of Darlington in County Durham, North East England. He was the son of Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin (1843-1926), banker and mayor of Darlington, and of Mary Anna Pease, both from Quaker families. The Hodgkins lived in the majestic Victorian manor of Elm Ridge in Darlington.

After Leighton Park School he studied first in King's College, Cambridge, then in St Thomas' Hospital, London, to become a medical doctor (M.B. B.Ch [Cantab]). Extremely tall, with exceptional charisma and personality, he became President of the English Student Missionary Union from 1902 to 1905. This organization's aim was to recruit missionaries among British students.

Missionary work in China

After completing his studies in 1905, Henry Hodgkin left immediately for Chengdu, in the Sichuan province, China, as a missionary of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association, a Quaker organisation which later became the Friends Service Council; he stayed in China until 1909. During his stay in Chengdu, he succeeded Omar Leslie Kilborn as editor of The West China Missionary News in May 1909, a position he held until January 1910. He helped set up the West China Union University, a Protestant university sponsored by several Protestant churches until its closure in 1926; after 1926 the Chinese professors took over from the foreign professors, and perpetuated their work so well that this university has now been incorporated into Chengdu's various universities.