TISDALL, WILLIAM ST CLAIR TOWERS (1859-1928), was the son of William St Clair Tisdall (1831-92), of county Meath, Ireland, who served in the 47th and 15th Regiments and the 2nd Waikato. The son graduated at the University of New Zealand (B.A., 1878; M.A., 1879) and was appointed incumbent of Wakefield, Nelson (1882) and lecturer at Bishopdale College. In 1885 he was appointed principal of St John's College, Lahore, India, and later of the C.M.S. college at Amritsar. Two years later he was head of the Mohammedan mission at Bombay, and in 1892 secretary of the Persia and Baghdad mission. In this service he was stationed at Isfahan for a few years and, having suffered in health, he had to go to England.

He was James Long lecturer in oriental religions (1900-05) and from 1910 lecturer in Hebrew at the C.M.S. College at Islington. He was vicar of St George the Martyr at Deal (1910-26), and during the Great War did duty as chaplain to the forces encamped in the vicinity. As an accomplished linguist and philologist Tisdall received the honorary degree of Edinburgh University in 1903. Amongst his publications were The Triglott Gospel of St John, Religio Critici, Mythic Christs and the True, and many gospel translations into Kurd, Urdu, Persian, Punjabi and Gujarati. He married Marian, daughter of the Rev W. Gray, secretary of the C.M.S. Tisdall died on 1 Dec 1928.

Their son Arthur Walderne St Clair Tisdall (1890-1915) was a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and won the chancellor's gold medal. He was awarded the Victoria Cross and was killed in action at Gallipoli on 6 May 1915.

Verses, Letters and Remembrances of Arthur Walderne St Clair Tisdall, 1916; The Times, 4, 5 Dec 1928; Otago Daily Times, 19 Jan 1929.

Reference: Volume 2, page 196

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