The story of how a printer from Derby applied his trade and his beliefs to further the kingdom of God across India and beyond.
Apprenticeship, career and campaigns
William Ward grew up in 18th century England, and was apprenticed at the age of 13 to a printer and bookseller in Derby. He later went on to become a newspaper editor and then a printer.
But his energy was not restricted to his day-job – he became a committed political activist, particularly for the reform of parliament in the early 1790s and the reforms taking place in the early days of the French Revolution.
He helped found the ‘Society for Political Information’, and also ran a long campaign for the abolition of the slave trade.
Carey coincidence
Ward’s missionary career started before he was even baptised, due to a chance meeting with William Carey when Ward was visiting
William Ward
friends in London. Carey shared his desire to translate the Bible and invited Ward to join him to get it printed.
However, this invitation wasn’t taken up until six years later. After moving to Hull, Ward was baptised in 1796 and went to study for the ministry at Ewood Hall, a theological academy. In 1798 the BMS committee visited Ewood and recruited Ward to join Carey in India to print the Bible in Bengali for the first time.
Missionary in India
So, in May 1799, Ward sailed for India, along with Joshua and Hannah Marshman, arriving in Serampore four months later.
William Ward
"I can never convey to your mind that awful feeling of Christian solitude – that overwhelming loneliness, which I have sometimes experienced when standing 15,000 miles from a Christian land…
In 1800, Ward married Mrs Fountain, the widow of a missionary colleague who had died suddenly after only nine months of marriage.
Ward, Marshman and Carey worked closely together for over 20 years in their mission work, and became known as the Serampore Trio.
Triumph and tragedy at the printing press
Ward’s main role, apart from preaching, was to oversee the printing office in Serampore.
By March 1801 the first bound Bengali New Testament was finished and, after another nine years, Ward reported that the whole Bible had been printed and published in Bengali and large parts of the scriptures in Sanscrit, Orissa, Hindustani, Mahratta, Sikh and Chinese.
However, this flourishing work was disastrously brought to a standstill in 1812 when the printing press caught fire. The office was reduced to a shell and many years’ work was destroyed.
The day after the fire, Ward searched the ruins, picking out the pieces of equipment that had survived or could be re-moulded. The five presses were untouched, and within a day Ward had scouted out an old warehouse to convert into a new office. The news was relayed back to friends in India, England and America, and within 50 days funds had been raised to counteract any financial loss.
Campaign against Sati
Ward was also able to continue exercising the activist in him in India. The Trio campaigned against the Hindu practice of Sati (or Suttee), where a widow was burnt alive on the funeral fire with her late husband’s body.
To gather evidence of the scale of the atrocity they collected data on the number of occurrences within a 30 mile radius of Calcutta in one year.
"I have seen three widows, at different times, burnt alive; and had repeated opportunities of being present at similar immolations, but my courage failed me.
Other events
In 1817 Ward was joined by an assistant, William H Pearce, a printer from Birmingham. Pearce and some other younger missionaries set up a new mission base in Calcutta, and in 1818 he founded the Baptist Mission Press there which became the main location for the printing work when the Serampore Press closed in 1837.
Ward was also instrumental in helping to establish Serampore College, the first university in India for Indians, and published a ground-breaking study on the Hindu religion. He was active in sharing news of the work of the mission and visited Baptists in Britain and America, gathering support for the missionaries’ campaigns for schooling for Indian girls, to end Sati and to develop the new college.
"To a people like these poor Hindoos, “without hope”, how necessary the messages of mercy, the invitations, and promised succours of the gospel!
Death and new freedoms
On Thursday 6 March 1823, Ward complained of feeling unwell; he died later the next day of cholera. He was 53.
Ward’s work had immeasurable impact. Although his efforts were part of a team, he often gave the impetus to an idea or movement, and many of the results are plain to see: the slave trade was abolished in 1807; scripture was translated and printed in many oriental languages which had never before had this prospect; six years after Ward’s death in 1829 Sati was abolished in India; and in 1832 the Parliamentary Reform Act was passed.
"In the commission given by our Lord to his disciples, what an immense field did he open for the exercise of Christian philanthropy and heroic enterprise!
Quotes from William Ward's letters, 1821