Faith and Family

Rev Joseph Light Wyatt

Rev Joseph Light Wyatt (1841-1936) of Bishopsworth near Bristol was born into a large farming family of seven sons and two daughters. He trained as an SPG missionary at St Augustin's College, Canterbury, and came out to India in 1867 aged 26 to be assistant to Dr Caldwell at Idaiyangudi. The following year Joseph married Robert Caldwell's eldest daughter Isabella. She continued her work there in education. On completing ten years at Idaiyangudi and taking his first home leave, Wyatt was sent in 1880 to Tiruchirappalli ('Trichy'). There, among a predominantly Hindu population, they started the first SPG training institution for female teachers in the Madras Presidency, and Wyatt built a church ('All Saints') in the Worior district of the town. In 1894 he published "Bishop Caldwell's Reminiscences", and the following year they returned home where he resigned from the SPG and became a lecturer in Tamil at Cambridge, and in 1899 Rector of Brandon in Suffolk. He died there aged 95.

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