Philip J. Saffery

Philip J. [P. J.] Saffery (1800-69) succeeded his father as pastor of the Baptist church in Salisbury, serving from 1826 to 1836. He attended Bristol Baptist Academy, 1818-20. He ministered at Hastings after leaving Salisbury before joining the Baptist church at Waltham Abbey in the 1840s. About this time he became the field representative for the Baptist Missionary Society for the north of England, and in 1843 moved to Leeds, joining the church at South Parade under the ministry of J. E. Giles. As letter 207 demonstrates, Saffery traveled extensively throughout the north of England in the 1840s raising funds for the BMS. Saffery removed to Hammersmith in the early 1850s. Shortly thereafter he ended his relationship with the BMS and became a field representative for the Religious Tract Society. No obituary appeared after his death, the date of which is unknown, but it is sometime in the 1870s, as evidenced by the dates of letters between Saffery and his mother and sister, which can be found in the Saffery Papers, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. See W. T. Whitley, ed., A Baptist Bibliography, 2 vols. (London: Kingsgate Press, 1916-1922) 2:242; W. Jackson, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Baptist History at Waltham Abbey (London: Elliot Stock, [1880]) 15, 17; John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology (London:  John Murray, 1908), 112, 986-997.