Author: Whytehead, Thomas
Biography:
WHYTEHEAD, Thomas (1815-43: ODNB)
His father Henry Robert Whytehead (1772-1818) was a clergyman, curate of Thormanby, Yorkshire, and rector of Goxhill, Lincolnshire. He and his wife Hannah Diana Bowman had nine children before his early death; Thomas, born at Thormanby on 30 Nov. 1815 and baptised there on 12 Jan. 1816, was the youngest of their four sons. He went to Beverley grammar school and then studied with his elder brother Robert (1808-63), an outstanding undergraduate at St. John’s, Cambridge (BA 1831) and then a clergyman, to prepare for university. He followed his brother at St. John’s (matric. 1833, BA 1837, Fellow 1837-43, MA 1840) and was also ordained deacon (1839) and priest (1840). His academic record was even more stellar than Robert’s: among other prizes, he won the Chancellor’s medal for English verse twice (1835, 1836), another for Classical epigrams (1837), and the Hulsean prize for an English essay (1835). He became a Fellow of his college and a lecturer in Classics at Clare, and in 1841 was admitted to an equivalent Oxford degree. From a curacy at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, he volunteered for missionary work in 1835. He was appointed chaplain to the bishop of New Zealand and principal of a newly founded college there, and sailed in Dec. 1841. His first collected volume of verse, Poems, was published in 1842, with a second edition entitled Poetical Remains edited, with a memoir, by his nephew Thomas Bowman Whytehead, in 1877. Whytehead was taken ill in Sydney, Australia, but recovered enough to proceed to New Zealand, where he died at Weimate, Bay of Islands, on 19 Mar. 1843. As a poet of great promise who died young, Whytehead was mourned and memorialised both at Cambridge and in New Zealand. He left a substantial bequest of £681 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, part of which was applied to the purchase of land for the building of the new college, St. John’s, at Weimate. In 1848 funds were raised for scholarships in New Zealand in his honour. St. John’s Cambridge commissioned a full-length portrait of him for the ceiling of the chapel. (ODNB 5 Jan. 2025; ACAD; findmypast.com 5 Jan. 2025; CCEd 5 Jan. 2025; Yorkshire Gazette 29 July 1843; Church and State Gazette 13 June 1845; LES 4 July 1848) HJ