Introduction

Biography

Thomas was one of 10 child­ren born to Me­tho­dist par­ents.

He be­gan work­ing part time in a cot­ton mill at age 10, and left school by age 13, though he took pri­vate les­sons and at­tend­ed a tech­ni­cal school.

He stu­died for the Wes­ley­an Me­tho­dist min­is­try for three years at the Rich­mond Theo­lo­gic­al Col­lege in Lon­don, and en­tered the min­is­try in 1908.

He served five years in Lon­don’s East End, at the Old Ford Mis­sion in the Pop­lar and Bow Cir­cuit.

In World War I, he was a chap­lain with the Queen’s West­min­ster Ri­fles in the Somme and Ar­ras cam­paigns in France. There he caught trench fe­ver, which laid him up for some time. Af­ter re­cov­er­ing, he was sta­tioned at Ab­be­ville un­til the war’s end.

Following the war, he con­duct­ed a five month speak­ing tour in Am­eri­ca. Up­on re­turn to Eng­land, he was ap­point­ed to the Bux­ton Road Church in Hud­ders­field, then be­came Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Lam­beth Mis­sion in Lon­don in 1922. He was there 32 years.

In ad­di­tion to writ­ing ov­er 250 hymns, Tip­la­dy pio­neered the use of films in ev­an­gel­ism, help­ing found the Re­li­gious Film So­ci­ety of Lon­don. In 1931, he vis­it­ed Am­eri­ca as a de­le­gate to the Ecu­men­ic­al Con­fer­ence of Me­thod­ism in At­lan­ta, Georg­ia, and there read a pa­per on “The Press and Mo­tion Pic­tures as In­ter­na­tion­al and Ethi­cal Fac­tors.”

His oth­er works in­clude:

• Songs of Pil­grim­age (H. R. Al­len­son, 1914)
• The Cross at the Front: Frag­ments from the Trench­es (New York: Flem­ing H. Re­vell, 1917)
• A Sol­dier’s Re­li­gion at the Front, 1918
• The Soul of the Sol­dier: Sketch­es from the West­ern Bat­tle­front (New York: Flem­ing H. Re­vell, 1918)
• The Kit­ten in the Cra­ter, and Oth­er Frag­ments from the Front, 1917
• Social Chris­ti­an­ity in the New Era (Flem­ing H. Re­vell, 1919)
• The Church and the Peo­ple Out­side (South­west Lon­don Mis­sion, 1923)
• The In­flu­ence of the Bi­ble on His­to­ry, Li­te­ra­ture, and Ora­to­ry (Re­vell, 1924)
• Hymns for Lam­beth: Tunes Ar­ranged and Com­piled (Ep­worth Press, 1930)
• Songs of a Ci­ne­ma Church (Me­thu­en, 1933)
• Spiritual Ad­ven­ture: The Sto­ry of The Ideal Film Ser­vice (Unit­ed So­ci­ety for Chris­tian Li­te­ra­ture, 1935)
• Hymns of Praise: A Sup­ple­ment of 20th Cen­tu­ry Hymns (Fea­ther­stone Press, 1946)
• The Bi­ble Stands Up to Life