Nutter Thomas

Arthur Nutter Thomas (11 December 1869 – 10 April 1954) was the Anglican Bishop of Adelaide, South Australia from 1906 to 1940.[1]

Early life

Thomas was educated at Pembroke College of the University of Cambridge in England and was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1893, a master's degree in 1895 and a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1906.[2] He was made deacon on 20 May 1894, by Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield, at Wakefield Cathedral;[3] ordained priest the following year; and consecrated a bishop on Candlemas 1906 (2 February) at Westminster Abbey, by Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury.[4] He arrived in South Australia two months later with his wife, Mary Theodora (née Lewis). On retirement he had spent over 34 years as a bishop, the longest for an Anglican bishop in Australia at that time.[5]

Thomas's episcopacy as Bishop of Adelaide was contemporaneous with the 40-year incumbency at St George's Church, Goodwood of Canon Percy Wise, with whom he had a long and frosty relationship, Thomas being a traditional Anglican, a follower of the Book of Common Prayer, and Wise being radically Anglo-Catholic.

References

1. Reed, Thomas T (1969). A history of the cathedral church of St. Peter Adelaide. Adelaide: Lutheran Press. p. 55.
2. "Thomas, Arthur Nutter (THMS888AN)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. "Ordinations on Sunday Last". Church Times (#1635). 25 May 1894. p. 565. ISSN 0009-658X. Retrieved 9 March 2020 – via UK Press Online archives.
4. "Consecration of bishops". Church Times (#2246). 9 February 1906. p. 167. ISSN 0009-658X. Retrieved 9 March 2020 – via UK Press Online archives.
5. Renfrey, Lionel E. W. (1990). "Thomas, Arthur Nutter (1869 - 1954)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press. ISSN 1833-7538. Retrieved 14 November 2009 – via National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.