East Ender Millionaire Becomes Evangelist

The ‘East End’ of London – West Ham, Stepney, Millwall, Brixton, the Docklands, Whitechapel… just a few of the many well-known places there. 

It is the home of EastEnders – a popular TV series since 1985 with over six-thousand daily episodes. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall featured on the Albert Square set in the 2nd of June 2022 episode of the Queen’s Diamond jubilee weekend. Call the Midwife, another popular BBC period-drama series from January 2012, is based on the lives of nurse-midwives in the East End from the late 1950s. 

But turn the clock back to the mid-19th century into the reign of Queen Victoria. The East End of two-million residents was notorious for its extremes of over-crowding and severe poverty, rife prostitution and neglect by the authorities. A popular novelist of the day wrote: ‘Two million people there in the East End, have no institutions of their own to speak of, no public buildings of any importance, no municipality – they have nothing – a neglected, forgotten great city of East London. Nobody goes east, no-one wants to see the place!’ Many believed that the Lord Mayor’s annual parade was deliberately kept clear of the East End!

Enter the Charrington Brewing Family

Into the East End came Frederick Nicholas Charrington born in Bow Road, Stepney, on 4 February 1850. His father was a millionaire partner in the Charrington Brewery – one of London’s largest, aiming to satisfy the thirst of thousands of East Enders with alcohol in vast quantities, be they rich or sunk in poverty. Fred was heir to a fortune of one and a quarter million pounds – worth around £30 million today. Alcohol was meant to be the future source of his Charrington wealth, but he was to renounce it all when he came to a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ at the age of twenty, in the providence of God.  

The vast brewery of Charringtons dominated the flow of ale in the East End. Charrington premises and public houses dwarfed the squalid terraced streets of the Mile End Road district, from the City of London to Epping Forest in Essex. A constant stream of barrel-laden horse-drawn drays, delivered the ale to the hundreds of public-houses in the Charrington empire. Fred was being groomed the task of owning it all one day.  

Conversion to Christ

God changed Fred’s father’s plans for him. Public schools, Marlborough and Brighton were beginning to shape his future. In a year’s apprenticeship with the Queen’s brewery at Windsor, he shared rooms with a young curate, Joshua Stone - later the author of The Churches one foundation hymn.  On a continental holiday with his parents, Fred met William Rainsford, a pastor’s son. Both men separately and strongly encouraged him to read John’s Gospel, chapter 3. Fred promised he would.  He did…and believed ‘it was the turning point in my life, having been particularly moved by verses fifteen and sixteen'. The message went to his heart, ‘You must be born again’. Alone one night he bowed his head and felt an overwhelming sense that Christ had received him. ‘Thank God, I became a Christian. The Great Acceptance’, he wrote.

New Life – New Purpose

Fred Charrington’s outlook on life quickly began to change. He turned his back on the brewing industry, feeling the guilt of immense hurt and harm the brewery was causing to families all over the East End of London.

‘One evening walking home, as I approached this public-house a poor woman, with two or three children dragging at her skirts, went up to the swing doors, and called out to her husband inside, “Tom, do give me some money, the children are crying out for bread”. He rushed out and savagely attacked his wife, leaving her lying in the road.  I looked up and saw over The Sun public-house, a huge sign – CHARRINGTON.  My name. The man knocked his wife with one blow – that blow knocked me out of the brewery business completely. It was a crushing realisation that I caused the blow. I pledged that night that not one more penny of the Charrington Brewery wealth should come to me.’ 

Fred told his father about his decision. He tried to persuade his son to change his mind. Fred refused – so his father struck him out of the family-will in anger. Bitter in losing his son and heir from the Charrington’s Brewery, shortly after he had a horse-riding accident with fatal injuries. Fred was by his deathbed and his father uttered, ‘Fred, you have chosen the better way, that will never be taken away.’  They both prayed together, and his father passed away.  

Fred Charrington Evangelist to the East Enders

Fred now threw himself into all kinds of evangelistic work in the East End. The good news of the Gospel was spread. The notorious and feared Whitechapel Gang were in the net. They were intending to smash up his hired meeting halls and beat up the occupants. But many of this group were saved having heard the Gospel preached for the first time! Fred launched the Tower Hamlets and Whitechapel Shoe-blacks and Wood-chopping Brigade to give them employment. A wealthy Christian donated the cost of building a new 600-seat mission hall. Local Christians were organised to join Fred in open-air preaching. Tents and music halls were taken over for meetings. Audiences of 1400 regularly gathered to hear this Fred Charrington preach on Sunday evenings. It caused traffic chaos in London… it was unprecedented! Ira Sankey of the Moody and Sankey evangelist team from the United States came over and sang for him. The Daily Telegraph frequently reported on the East End ‘revival’.

Unafraid of attracting violent opposition, Fred opposed those who organised businesses harming the East End people, who he deeply loved. He was not popular in Poplar! Brothels and prostitution were still growing in number. There were 62 brothels in Whitechapel. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, applauded his work, supported it and protested to the authorities with much concern for her people of the East End. Fred was one of the original members of the London County Council …. to open the eyes of local politicians. 

The Great Assembly Hall – otherwise known as The Light House - was erected in 1886 with Fred directing. It drew the encouraging support of three influential evangelical leaders in London, Charles Haddon Spurgeon of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Church, Lord Shaftesbury, active social reformer in Parliament, and the Head of Barclays Bank, a Quaker. 5000 seats were regularly filled to hear gospel preaching. Crammed to the rafters on Sundays, Tower Hamlets Mission opened and continues today.   

Prayer Prominent 

Above all Fred’s plans and dedicated commitment to the East Enders, there was much prayer. Every Saturday evening the Big Prayer Meeting was held, and testimonies given by East Enders who had come to faith in Christ. Tract distribution was a daily activity. Challenging gospel posters were placed on prominent billboards around the district. Many would stop and read the message. The social needs of thousands in poverty, unemployment and homelessness were not ignored by Fred. Twenty-thousand meals for the starving were given out in one winter by his team. The Temperance Movement grew as it publicised the harm of alcohol still being distributed by the breweries in high quantities.

An Island for the Addicted

Fred never married, but in 1903 he purchased Osea Island – an island in the estuary of the River Blackwater off the coast of Essex, around fifty miles from London. His vision was to develop a place of respite and treatment for those in the East End who had been severely affected by alcohol addiction. He had a small home built for himself to be able to spend some time with the needy there. Numerous East Enders were helped in those times when ‘social services’ was an unknown agency. On Fred’s Island, personal and practical care was being received with the good news of the gospel, their greatest need.

Promotion to Glory: Fred Charrington’s work complete 

An illness put him in hospital and on 3 January 1936 he passed away to meet His Saviour, who changed his life when he was twenty-years of age. His time complete in the active service of the King of Kings. For sixty-eight years London had seldom seen such a light blazing for the Gospel, changing thousands of lives. Such compassion, concern and commitment for East Enders in London was shown by the former millionaire brewer’s son, who found Jesus and turned his back on riches to put his future in God’s hands to reach the lost in the East End. Losing his family inheritance, he had gained the vast and unimaginable wealth of God as his inheritance.

The news flashed round the world. The Daily Telegraph and the Belfast Times published detailed obituaries. ‘In everything he had done he always proved himself a Christian and a Gentleman’, wrote his biographer, Guy Thorne in 1912.

On Sunday, 8 January 1956, young missionary Jim Elliot and his four American colleagues were murdered by the feared Auca Indians of Ecuador as they sought to reach them with the Gospel, the Mid-Century Martyrs. Jim had earlier written these challenging words, 'He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose'. Fred Nicholas Charrington had proved that.