▶Date of birth:   1825       Place of birth:  India

▶Father:  Thomas Darling     Mother:  Margaret Burnet Lamb

▶Spouse(s):  Mary Easterby    Date(s) of marriage:  8 March 1852     Place(s) of marriage: Masulipatam (now Machilipatnam), Andhra Pradesh, India

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican), Missionary

▶Lifestory: The Revd. Thomas Young Darling worked for many years as a missionary in India, returning to continue his support of the Church Missionary Society when he returned to Britain, where he lived in the late 1880s in Pittville. Darling was born in India in 1825, the eldest son of Lieutenant Thomas Darling, serving on the subcontinent, and his wife Margaret Burnet (née Lamb). Darling attended the Church Missionary College, Islington, and was ordained Deacon in 1851, and Priest (Madras) in 1856.

For over twenty years, between 1851 and 1875, he served as a Church Missionary Society missionary in South India; ‘he was a pioneer and worked for over eight years before he could claim a single convert.  He baptised the first outcast in the district to become a Christian” (Western Gazette, 4 November 1932). In 1852 he married Mary Easterby, in India; they had two sons and three daughters, all born in India.

Darling returned to England on several occasions while he was posted in India and represented the Church Missionary Society at local events; he attended a Church Missionary Society meeting in Nuneaton in 1865, the following year he attended a Society meeting in Jesmond, and in 1867, serving in the Telugu Country, he represented the Society at a Missionary Tea Meeting at Six Hills near Loughborough. He also preached two sermons at Beccles in 1871; he strongly supported to need to provide a Christian education for Indian girls.

After his mission in India he returned to England and was licensed Curate of Herne Bay in Kent in 1875; he and his family were listed as living in Margate at the time of the 1871 census. The following year he was appointed Curate-in-Charge at Nether Hoyland, Yorkshire 1876, where he stayed for a year. From 1877-86 he served as Association Secretary of the Church Missionary Society for Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall (in 1881 the family lived in Exeter, where he temporarily had no cure of souls), and from 1886-9 in Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire; from 1887-8 he lived at 20 Clarence Square, Pittville, moving to nearby Tyndale House for 1889. In that year he was appointed Rector of West Compton, Dorset, and in 1890 took over as Secretary of the Dorset branch of the Church Missionary Society until failing eyesight compelled him to retire in 1907.

Travel records show that he visited India again in 1903. He remained as Rector of West Compton (otherwise Compton Abbas) until his death there in 1909, at the age of eighty-four. His estate at death was sworn as £845 17s.

▶Moved to Pittville from: Exeter (?)       Moved from Pittville to: West Compton, Dorset

▶Date of death: 8 December 1909       Place of death: West Compton rectory, Dorset

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes: “By 1926, 85,000 outcasts had become members of the church, and 47,000 were waiting for baptism” (Western Gazette)       ID: 2385

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden