Richard Francis Weymouth

Richard Francis Weymouth was an English schoolmaster, philologist, and Baptist layman born in 1822 near Devonport, Devon. He studied at University College London and later became the first recipient of the University of London’s Doctor of Literature degree. Over the years he built a reputation as both a gifted teacher and a serious language scholar.

Much of his career was spent in education. He taught in Surrey, later led a school in Plymouth, and in 1869 became headmaster of Mill Hill School, helping guide it during an important period of revival and reorganization. He was also a fellow of University College London and taught there before retiring in 1891.

Weymouth is remembered most for his work on the Greek New Testament and for the translation later published as The New Testament in Modern Speech in 1903, shortly after his death in 1902. That translation, based on his own textual scholarship in The Resultant Greek Testament, was one of the early efforts to present the New Testament in more natural modern English.