In all the Earth: United Kingdom

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Updated to full except for the last three paragraphs. A temporary post. Usual rules.

In All the Earth: The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom was the target of the first concentrated international missionary activity. It is impossible to gage interest in Britain before the publication of Food for Thinking Christians. Previous to its publication the only letters appearing in Zion’s Watch Tower were doctrinal in nature, and few names and few or no locations were noted.

At least by 1850 there were readers of The Bible Examiner in Scotland; a letter from William Glen Montcrieff a noted Scot Conditionalist appeared in the May 1850 issue. Letters from other British Conditionalists appear in The Bible Examiner too. There had been some notice of the work in The Rainbow. A British clergyman and Barbourite, Elias H. Tuckett, wrote three articles for Rainbow. There may have been some small residual interest from that.[1] Barbour mailed his Coming of the Lord tract to the British journal The Christadelphian, which reviewed it negatively.[2] Later The Rainbow reviewed The Three Words, though somewhat negatively. The book saw a very limited circulation in England.[3] There is also some indication that Paton mailed material to his relatives in Scotland, but this seems to have born no fruitage. Yet, a prominent adherent in Newark, New Jersey, claimed dedicated interest in England and elsewhere. “We have,” he said, “members all over America, England, Australia, I think, and probably in Germany.”[4]

Russell asked John Corbin Sunderlin and later J. J. Bender to travel to the United Kingdom to publish Food for Thinking Christians and to direct a massive circulation campaign. Sunderlin had prior experience as an itinerate photographer and may have been chosen on that basis. Less is known of J. J. Bender. Historians including Watch Tower writers have never profiled him. Joseph J. Bender was a traveling sales agent for and later owner of a chemical company.[5] In most city directory listings he is noted by the initials “J. J.” but his full name is given in J.F. Diffenbacher’s Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities for 1881-1882. Bender had published The Standard Class-Book for Sunday-School Teacher’s Minutes in 1871, which was favorably reviewed by The Sunday School Journal that year.[6] In May 1886, He and a partner purchased The Bookmart, a magazine published in Pittsburgh devoted to book and autography collecting.[7]

Sunderlin was in Britain by July 11, 1881, when he registered with Gillig’s American Exchange in London, “a familiar and popular resort with Americans in the English metropolis.”[8] He would receive his mail and make currency exchanges a Gillig’s. It appears that the British edition of Food for Thinking Christians saw publication before the American edition of September 1881, but this is uncertain. Sunderlin arranged with William Cate, a London printer, to publish the booklet.[9]

Sunderlin returned to America aboard the S.S. Abyssinia, suffering from what was called “over-exertion incident to the arrangements for the distribution of ‘Food’ in Great Britain and Ireland.”[10] Russell more closely defined this as Rheumatic Fever.[11] There was a gap between Sunderlin’s return on September 8^th and Bender’s arrival. Bender arrived in mid-September, registering at Gillig’s on September 17 1881. He would remain in Brittan until early November.[12] Sunderlin seems to have had the preliminary arrangements well in hand before Bender’s arrival. By October 1, 1881, Bender could report from Edinburgh:

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