ABSTRACT
The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society's (WMMS) Centenary Hall in Bishopsgate was no longer fit for purpose by the end of the century. Mission House extravagance was another complaint: the appropriation of so much of the 1839 Centenary Fund for Bishopsgate displeased some of those who struggled to keep British circuits solvent. In the Pacific the century was well advanced by the time Britain established Protectorates designed to guard the islanders from unscrupulous traders and labour-recruiters. Thomas Coke found the Irish Conference, over which he presided on twenty-three occasions, a fruitful recruiting ground. Between 1799 and the early twentieth century the Society promoted, directed and bore much of the cost of the body known as the Irish Mission (IM). The Irish circuits contributed to the funds of the Society through the Hibernian Auxiliary, but throughout the century the Society expended more on the IM than it received from the Auxiliary.
