William Champneys

The Very Rev. William Weldon Champneys (1807–1875) was an Anglican priest and author in the 19th century.

He was the eldest son of the Rev. William Betton Champneys, B.C.L. of St John's College, Oxford, by his marriage with Martha, daughter of Montague Stable, of Kentish Town. He was born in Camden Town, St Pancras, London, 6 April 1807, and was educated by the Rev. Richard Povah, rector of St James's, Duke's Place, city of London, and having matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 3 July 1824, was soon after elected to a scholarship. He took his B.A. degree in 1828, and his M.A. in 1831.

He was then ordained to the curacy of Dorchester on Thames near Oxford, whence he was transferred three months afterwards to the curacy of and St Ebbe's Church, Oxford, and in the same year was admitted a fellow of his college. In this parish he established national schools, the first that were founded in the city, and during the severe visitation of the cholera in 1832 he assiduously devoted himself to the sick.

Later he held incumbencies at Whitechapel and St Pancras; and was a Canon of St Paul's Cathedral from1851. He was in 1837, appointed rector of St Mary's, Whitechapel, a parish containing thirty-three thousand people, where, mainly through his personal exertions in the course of a short time, three new churches were built. Here also he erected schools for boys and girls, and a special school for infants; but finding that many children could not attend in consequence of being in want of suitable apparel, he set up a school of a lower grade, which was practically the first ragged school opened in the metropolis. In connection with the district he founded a provident society, assisted in the commencement of a shoeblack brigade, with a refuge and an industrial home for the boys, and co-operated with others in the work of building the Whitechapel Foundation Commercial School. He was the originator of a local association for the promotion, health, and comfort of the industrial classes, and also of the Church of England Young Men's Society, the first association of young men for religious purposes and mutual improvement which was seen in Whitechapel.

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