Samuel Morton Peto, M.P. 

Samuel Morton Peto, M.P. (1809-89) was a wealthy railroad magnate and leading member of the Baptist church at Little Prescot Street and treasurer of the Baptist Missionary Society from 1846-49. He served as a Deputy to the Dissenting Deputies of the Three Denominations as well.  When the church moved from Prescott Street to the new chapel on Commercial Street in 1854, Peto laid the foundation stone on 11 August 1854.  Peto owned the successful engineering firm of Peto, Brassey and Betts, and was widely known in political and philanthropic circles. He wsa instrumental in the construction of Bloomsbury Chapel in central London and in bringing William Brock (1807-1875), Baptist minister at St. Mary’s, Norwich (1833-1848), to the new Chapel, where he ministered from 1848 to 1872. The impressive Bloomsbury chapel was a mixture of medieval Italian and English gothic architecture), the commonplace, sensual pleasure evoked by a single ‘bottle of beer’ was now superseded by the aesthetic pleasure derived from contemplating the sublime beauty of one of the finest roseate windows in any London church, embedded into the front facade between two impressive towers with matching spires. See Ernest Kevan, London’s Oldest Baptist Church (London: Kingsgate Press, 1933), 83, 151; E. A. Payne, The Great Succession: Leaders of the Baptist Missionary Society during the Ninetenth Century (London: Carey Press, 1938), p. 34; and Faith Bowers, A Bold Experiment: The Story of Bloomsbury Chapel and Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church 1848-1999 (London: Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 1999), 30-32.