# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Tucker, Alfred Robert

​TUCKER, ALFRED ROBERT (1849–1914), missionary bishop of Uganda, was born at Woolwich 1 April 1849, the second son of Edward Tucker, artist, of ​Windermere, by his wife, Julia Mary Maile. Alfred Tucker was given an art education, and in due course exhibited at the Royal Academy. He also gained a reputation as an athlete, and a famous walk of his of over sixty miles, including the ascent of Scafell, Bow Fell, Skiddaw, and Helvellyn, in twenty-four hours, is still remembered in the Lake district. He went up late to Oxford as a non-collegiate student in 1879, migrated to Christ Church in 1881, and graduated in 1882. In the same year he was ordained to the curacy of St. Andrew's, Clifton, and in 1885 became curate of St. Nicholas, Durham, where he remained for five years.
In 1890 Tucker wrote to the Church Missionary Society, offering his services as a missionary in any part of Africa. In response to his offer the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Benson, invited him to fill the vacant bishopric of Eastern Equatorial Africa. The first bishop, James Hannington [q.v.], had been murdered by order of the king of Uganda; and the second, Henry Perrott Parker, had died en route to that country. Tucker was consecrated at Lambeth on St. Mark's day (25 April) 1890, and sailed for the East African coast the same evening. In 1891 he was back in England, reporting the position, not only in Uganda but in the vast intervening territory now known as the Kenya Colony. The British East Africa Company was abandoning its attempt to represent British influence in Uganda; but Tucker's influence in obtaining special gifts from friends of the Church Missionary Society's Uganda mission enabled the company to continue for one year; and then, in 1892, the British government sent a special commissioner, Sir Gerald Herbert Portal [q.v.], to report. Eventually, in 1894, Uganda became a British protectorate.
In 1899 the huge diocese of Eastern Equatorial Africa was divided. What subsequently (1920) was known as the Kenya Colony, together with a part of the then German dominion, which from 1920 formed the Tanganyika Territory, became the diocese of Mombasa; while Tucker assumed the title by which he is best known, that of bishop of Uganda. It was his special work to organize the growing church which had been built up by the Church Missionary Society's Uganda mission, making it as far as possible self-supporting, self-governing, and self-extending. When he retired in 1911, after a vigorous episcopate of twenty-one years, there were over 100,000 Anglican Christians, with hundreds of churches and schools, and a regular synod of British and African clergy and elected lay members; the African clergy—of whom he himself had ordained forty-seven—, school teachers, and other helpers, being supported by their own people.
On his retirement Bishop Tucker was appointed to a canonry in Durham Cathedral. When the archbishops of Canterbury and York, together with the leaders of the Free churches, formed a united conference on ‘faith and order’ at Westminster in 1914, Tucker was one of the Anglican representatives; and it was just outside the Jerusalem Chamber, which he was entering to attend the first meeting on 15 June, that he was seized with sudden illness. He was carried into the deanery, and died within an hour. He married in 1882 Hannah Josephine, daughter of William Fisher Sim, of Southport, Lancashire, by whom he had one son. His chief literary work was his book, Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa, illustrated by his own sketches (2 vols., 1908).
[Private information; personal knowledge.]
E. S.