Charles Vince (Baptist)

Vince was born in Farnham, Surrey, into a Congregationalist background: his father was a carpenter and builder. He attended a local school, run by a nephew of William Cobbett, became an apprentice to Mason & Jackson, the firm for which his father worked, and joined the local Mechanics' Institute. After a Baptist conversion, he entered Stepney College in 1848. He was then assigned to the Mount Zion Chapel, in Graham Street, Birmingham.^[3][4][5] He has been described as a "charismatic preacher".^[6]

As a figure of the Birmingham "civic renaissance" (or "civic gospel"), a movement promoted by Dawson's supporters, Vince spoke for causes including the Reform League, the National Education League, and the Liberal Association. He was also personally popular as a minister.^[7] He defended the radicalism of George Edmonds in an 1868 funeral sermon for him.^[8]

Vince was an influential participant in Birmingham's social institutions, and a member of Birmingham's first school board. He died on 22 October 1874, at age 51, and was buried at Key Hill Cemetery, Hockley.^[3][9]

• Lessons for Christian labourers from the lives of the Jesuits (1861)
• The Child's Book of Praise (1863)
• Lights and Shadows in the Life of King David (1870)
• The Unchanging Saviour, and other sermons (1875)
• Christian Hymns for Public Worship (1876), with Henry Platten^[10]

Vince left a widow and seven children.^[11] They included Charles Anthony Vince (born 1855), an academic, head of Mill Hill School, Liberal Unionist and local historian of Birmingham;^[12] and James Herbert Vince.^[13] The fourth son, W. B. Vince, was a solicitor and worked for the Birmingham Post before dying young.^[14]