Christopher Newman Hall - Later Life, Memorial & Legacy

Later Life, Memorial & Legacy

In the 1860s Newman Hall became Chairman of the Congregational Union, and was awarded a Doctorate in Divinity from Amherst College in the USA. Newman Hall became involved in W E Forster's educational bill and met with Gladstone personally. At a service conducted by Rev Henry Allon at Christ Church, on Easter Monday 1880, Newman Hall married his second wife, Miss Harriet Knipe - daughter of Henry Knipe, barrister-at-law and J.P. His first marriage had ended in a controversial divorce case which had eventually led to a decree nisi in February 1880 - a time when divorce was rare. Neither marriage was followed by children. In 1892 he received a second Doctorate of Divinity degree - from Edinburgh University.

In 1892 Newman Hall resigned as pastor at Christ Church whilst continuing with his interests in social and evangelical work. Non-party, but broadly Liberal in his political views, few preachers of any denomination have exercised so far-reaching an influence. Towards the end of his life he completed an autobiography, in which he set out his philosophy in these words: The Christian Church, as tribunes of the people should be ever ready to plead the people's cause...Christians should be in the forefront of the battle of philanthropy. By this time he had many books to his name, including two books on travel The Land of the Forum and Vatican, and From Liverpool to St. Louis, and a book of poetry entitled Pilgrim Songs in Cloud and Sunshine.

Christopher Newman Hall is buried with his father John Vine Hall (d.1860), and wife Harriet (d.1922), in a polished red coffin tomb at Abney Park Cemetery, the garden cemetery founded in Stoke Newington in 1840 by Congregationalists as a model for non-denominational burial.