Walter Henry Medhurst

Walter Henry Medhurst (麦都思, Màidūsī) was the London Missionary Society minister who brought the first modern printing press to Shanghai and served on the Municipal Council elected in 1854.

He trained as a printer, reached Southeast Asia in 1817, and from 1823 ran a press in Batavia. In 1843 he moved to Shanghai and brought the press with him, naming it the Mohai Shuguan (墨海书馆). It reprinted Western-learning and religious books. He also acquired a large block of land in the area of present-day Shandong Road for the mission’s headquarters, and the neighbourhood took the name Maijiaquan (麦家圈), “Medhurst’s compound”.

In 1845 he travelled through Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui and published an account of the silk and tea districts through his own press. In March 1848 he and two other missionaries went to Qingpu without permission under Qing rules; a clash with grain-transport boatmen there became the Qingpu incident.

During the Taiping years he helped study and translate Taiping documents and argued for British neutrality. In 1854 he was elected to the first Municipal Council. He died in 1857; the Society later founded the Medhurst College (麦伦书院) in Shanghai in his memory in 1904.