Place Name
John Kitto (December 4, 1804 – November 25, 1854) was a self-taught biblical scholar of Cornish descent. He was born in Plymouth, the son of an alcoholic Cornish stonemason, his family spent much of his childhood in and out of workhouses. His erratic education was made more difficult when aged 12 he fell from a rooftop and landed on his head leaving him profoundly deaf. Despite these setbacks his intelligence shone through and encouraged by friends he wrote articles for local newspapers. A library job brought him into contact with Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, the Protestant missionary, who has been called the “father of faith missions”. Groves impressed by the young man, offered him employment as a dental assistant and later join him on a pioneering mission to Baghdad during which time he served as tutor to his employers’ two sons. On his return to the UK, via Constantinople, Kitto wrote a series of travel articles for the Penny Magazine. Heavily influenced by Groves’s Christianity he used his knowledge of the Middle East to interpret Biblical stories bringing new insight to the subject. His Pictorial Bible and Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature became standard works for a century. The name was approved in 1878 as part of the Haberdashers’ Company’s Hatcham Barnes Manor Estate which was laid out between 1875 and 1900.
