London
Where did Jemima Luke live from 1852 to 1853?
Jemima Luke Jemima Luke ( 1813–1906 ) was an English writer of hymns , religious studies and biographies during the Victorian era . She is best known for her childrens hymn I think when I read that sweet story of old . Early life and education . Jemima Luke was born Jemima Thompson on 19 August 1813 in Colebrook Terrace , Islington , London to the philanthropist Thomas Thompson ( 1785–1865 ) , and his wife Elizabeth Pinckney ( d . 1837 ) . Her father , who had the same birthday as Jemima , made a fortune on the London Stock Exchange , and retired while still a young man . He was an early prominent member of the London Missionary Society , the British and Foreign Bible Society , and one of the founders in 1818 of the British and Foreign Sailors Society ( originally the Port of London Society ) , and in 1819 of the Home Missionary Society . Jemima was educated at home and began her literary career at the age of thirteen when she wrote some verses that were published anonymously in the Juvenile Friend magazine . She then studied under the well-known Christian writer Caroline Fry , who was editor of The Assistant of Education ( periodical ) . Career . Inspired by her fathers work with various missionary societies , Jemima decided after the 1837 death her mother to do missionary work in India , and managed to convince her reluctant father to sponsor her , but when she became ill just before embarking on the adventure , her father withdrew his support . Remaining at her fathers home in Taunton , Somerset , Jemima was teaching hymns to school children in nearby Blagdon , when one summer morning in 1841 while riding the stage from Taunton to Wellington , she composed some verses on the back of an envelope for a hymn that she named The Childs Desire . When her hymn proved to be very popular with the children she was working with , her father published it in the Sunday School Teachers Magazine ( 1841 ) , which led to her becoming editor from 1841 to 1845 of The Missionary Repository , a new missionary magazine for children . Her hymn next appeared untitled and anonymously in 1853 as hymn no . 874 ( in 3 stanzas of 8 lines ) in the widely read The Leeds Hymn-book , which led to subsequent publication in a number of Victorian hymnals . Because it appeared without a title in the Leeds book , it came to be known by the opening verse of I think when I read that sweet story of old, , or simply either The Old Sweet Story or The Story of Old . Although her fame generally rests on this one hymn , she went one to write several books , including , The Female Jesuit ( 1851 ) , The Broad Road and the Narrow Way , a Memoir of Eliza Ann Harris of Clifton ( 1859 ) , Winter Work ( 1864 ) , Sketches of the life and character of Thomas Thompson ( 1868 ) , which is a biography of her father , and her autobiography , The Early Years of my Life ( 1900 ) . Later years and death . Jemima married on 10 May 1843 in London the Reverend Samuel Luke ( 1809–1868 ) , a Congregationalist minister who became pastor in 1847 of the Orange Street Church near Trafalgar Square in London . They had two children – Jemima Elizabeth Luke ( 1844–1876 ) and Samuel Arnold Luke ( 1850–1903 ) – before moving in 1853 to Bristol City , when Jemimas husband became minister of the Hope Chapel at the Clifton Down Congregational Church . She remained in Bristol until her husbands 1868 death , after which she moved to Newport in the Isle of Wight , where she became known as a passionate nonconformist . She acquired a reputation in her later years as being one of the oldest passive resisters in England , generally protesting various issues regarding childrens education . She died at the age of 92 on 2 February 1906 at Newport . References . Bibliography . - Free , Richard William ( 1888 ) , Lux benigna , being the history of Orange Street Chapel : otherwise called Leicester Fields Chapel , etc. , W . B . Whittingham , London , 196 p . - Hadden , J.C . ( 2004 ) , Luke , Jemima ( 1813–1906 ) , in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press , online edition . accessed 28 April 2013 - Julian , John ( 1907 ) , Jemima Luke in A Dictionary of Hymnology ( revised edition ) , J . Murray , London . Online transcription available at www.hymnary.org . accessed 28 April 2013 . - Luke , Jemima ( 1868 ) , Sketches of the life and character of Thomas Thompson , Jane Nisbet & Co. , London , 259 p . - Luke , Jemima ( 1900 ) , The Early Years of My Life , Hodder & Stoughton , London , 162 p . - Parr , Lynn ( 1995 ) , English Hymn Writers : Jemima Luke in This England ( magazine ) , Autumn , 1995 . Online transcriptions available at www.ensignmessage.com and www.bluegrassmessengers.com . accessed 28 April 2013 External links . - Jemima Luke by Lynne Parr - Jemima Luke on Hymnary.org