Thomas Dixon (nonconformist)

Thomas Dixon, M.D. (1680?–1729) was an English nonconformist minister and tutor.

Dixon was probably the son of Thomas Dixon, ‘Anglus e Northumbria,’ who graduated M.A. at Edinburgh on 19 July 1660, and was ejected from the vicarage of Kelloe, County Durham, as a nonconformist. Dixon studied at Manchester under John Chorlton and James Coningham probably from 1700 to 1705. He is said to have gone to London after leaving the Manchester academy. In or about 1708 he succeeded Roger Anderton as minister of a congregation at Whitehaven, founded by presbyterians from the north of Ireland, and meeting in a ‘chapel that shall be used so long as the law will allow by protestant dissenters from the church of England, whether presbyterian or congregational, according to their way and persuasion.’ In a trust-deed of March 1711 he is described as ‘Thomas Dixon, clerk.’

Dixon established at Whitehaven an academy for the education of students for the ministry. He probably acted under the advice of Edmund Calamy, whom he accompanied on his journey to Scotland in 1709. During his visit to Edinburgh, Dixon received (21 April 1709) the honorary degree of M.A. The academy was in operation in 1710, and on the move of Coningham from Manchester in 1712, it became the leading nonconformist academy in the north of England. Mathematics were taught (till 1714) by John Barclay. Among Dixon's pupils were John Taylor of the Hebrew concordance, George Benson the biblical critic, Caleb Rotheram of the Kendal academy, and Henry Winder, author of the ‘History of Knowledge.’

In 1723 Dixon moved to Bolton, Lancashire, as successor to Samuel Bourn. He still continued his academy, and educated several ministers; but took up also the medical profession, obtaining the degree of M.D. from Edinburgh. He is said to have attained considerable practice. He died on 14 August 1729, in his fiftieth year, and was buried in his meeting-house. A mural tablet erected to his memory in Bank Street Unitarian Chapel, Bolton, by his son, R. Dixon, characterises him as "facile medicorum et theologorum princeps".

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