Walker, Mary Jane (Deck)

Author

b Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk 1816, d Cheltenham, Glos 1878. She grew up in Bury St Edmunds, and has been known mainly for the men in her life, as the younger sister (by some 14 years) of fellow-hymn writer James Deck (qv), and later as the wife of Dr Walker, the evangelical Rector of Cheltenham whom she married in 1848. Their two sons were also ordained. It was her husband who in 1855 compiled Psalms and Hymns for Public and Social Worship which featured 9 of hers, signed M.J.W. and including 3 for Passiontide; no other has enjoyed the success of the one included here, which is found in several current evangelical books, although Julian names two different ones as being ‘the most popular’. Her hymns seem to have been written after her marriage, and therefore probably in Cheltenham; one recurring theme is that of the journey of faith. No.703.