The Reverend John Pye Smith

On the 18th June 1806, nine years to the day before the Battle of Waterloo, a number of wealthy London merchants met in the New London Tavern to unveil a plan to safeguard the education of the sons of Protestant Dissenters. Such was the birth of Mill Hill School.

The two key figures at this meeting were Samuel Favell and the Reverend John Pye Smith. Favell was a leading light in the Corporation of London and he worked tirelessly for Parliamentary Reform, the Abolition of Slavery and Catholic Emancipation. He was also well known for his condemnation of the many cruelties embodied in Criminal Law at the time.

Pye Smith was a remarkably learned and serious minded man who, it was said, plunged a knife into his toy drum before his sixth birthday as a token of his determination to put away childish things. John Pye Smith’s political interests matched Samuel Favell’s and he was passionately engaged in promoting world peace and consideration for others. In his last address to the pupils of Mill Hill he begged them to have regard for their exceptional advantages which he said had been provided by Providence to enable them to render exceptional social service.