John Thornton (philanthropist)

In 1756, together with Jonas Hanway, another merchant and devout Christian, Thornton became a founder member of the Marine society, a charity set up to house and clothe young men, at the same time as providing much-needed recruits for the Royal Navy in the Seven Years’ War. Two years later, they were among the founders of the Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes, in Whitechapel, London, the first charitable institution for the care and rehabilitation of prostitutes.

John Thornton travelled extensively and contributed to churches in different parts of England, including Holy Trinity which was to become the centre for the so-called Clapham Sect of Christian social reformers, of which Thornton was the founding father. Firmly believing in the importance of religious education, he used his considerable wealth to pay for the printing of Bibles, which he then arranged to distribute to churches across Britain and mission stations as far as New South Wales and the Caribbean colonies.

Thornton partly sponsored John Newton, the former slave ship captain who became an Anglican preacher and curate at St Peter and St Paul church, Olney, Buckinghamshire from 1764 to 1780, giving him £200 a year. In 1780, he offered Newton the living of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street – the fashionable London church where Newton became established as a noted preacher for over twenty years, and where he ended his days. He also aided religious leader Lady Huntingdon in setting up her training centre Trevecca College in Wales with an interest-free loan.

He was also appointed treasurer of a charitable fund raised in England from 1766 by American colonial preachers Samson Occom and Nathaniel Whitaker for Moor's Charity School, founded by Eleazar Wheelock in Lebanon, Connecticut for the education of native Americans. Wheelock also applied the fund to establish Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and in 1829 the school named one of its main buildings Thornton Hall. Thornton donated a sum of his own money so that Wheelock could build a mansion for the college president in 1771. It still stands in Wheelock Street, Hanover.

On 28 November 1753 Thornton married Lucy Watson (1722–1785), daughter of Samuel Watson of Hull, one of his father's business partners. They had four children, including Samuel Thornton (1754–1838), merchant and Governor of the Bank of England and of the Russia Company, and Member of Parliament; Jane Thornton (1757–1818), who later married Alexander Leslie-Melville, 7th Earl of Leven; Robert Thornton (1759–1826), director of the East India Company and Member of Parliament; and Henry Thornton (1760–1815), banker, economist and Member of Parliament, who also followed his father as one of the leaders of the Clapham Sect.

John Thornton sustained a fatal injury as a result of an accident at Bath and died on 7 November 1790. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Clapham.

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• Stephen, Leslie (1898). "Thornton, Henry" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 56. pp. 301–303.
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