One of 10 child­ren born to Meth­od­ist par­ents, Tip­la­dy be­gan work­ing part time in a cot­ton mill at age 10, and left school by age 13, though he took pri­vate less­ons and at­tend­ed a tech­ni­cal school. He stu­died for the Wes­ley­an Meth­od­ist min­is­try for three years at the Rich­mond The­o­lo­gi­cal Coll­ege in Lon­don, and en­tered the min­is­try in 1908. He served five years in Lon­don’s East End, at the Old Ford Miss­ion in the Pop­lar and Bow Circuit. In World War I, he was a chap­lain with the Queen’s West­min­ster Ri­fles in the Somme and Ar­ras cam­paigns in France. There he caught “trench fever,” which laid him up for some time; af­ter re­cov­e­ry, he was sta­tioned at Abbe­ville un­til the war’s end. Foll­ow­ing the war, he con­duct­ed a five month speak­ing tour in Amer­i­ca. Up­on re­turn to Eng­land, he was ap­pointed to the Bux­ton Road Church in Hud­ders­field, then be­came Su­per­in­tend­ent of the Lam­beth Mis­sion in Lon­don in 1922 and was there 32 years.

In addition to writing over 250 hymns, Tip­la­dy pi­o­neered the use of films in evan­gel­ism, helping found the Re­li­gious Film So­ci­e­ty of Lon­don. In 1931, he vi­sit­ed Amer­i­ca as a del­e­gate to the Ecu­men­i­cal Con­fer­ence of Meth­od­ism in At­lan­ta, Georg­ia, and there read a pa­per on “The Press and Mo­tion Pic­tures as In­ter­na­tion­al and Eth­ica­l Fac­tors.” His other works in­clude:

• Songs of Pil­grim­age (H. R. Allen­son, 1914)
• The Cross at the Front: Frag­ments from the Trench­es (New York: Flem­ing H. Re­vell Com­pa­ny, 1917)
• A Sol­dier’s Re­li­gion at the Front, 1918
• The Soul of the Sol­dier: Sketch­es from the West­ern Bat­tle­front (New York: Flem­ing H. Re­vell Com­pa­ny, 1918)
• The Kit­ten in the Cra­ter, and Other Frag­ments from the Front, 1917
• Social Christianity in the New Era (Flem­ing H. Re­vell Com­pany, 1919)
• The Church and the Peo­ple Out­side (South­west Lon­don Miss­ion, 1923)
• The In­flu­ence of the Bi­ble on His­to­ry, Li­ter­a­ture, and Or­a­tory (Re­vell, 1924)
• Hymns for Lam­beth: Tunes Ar­ranged and Com­piled (Ep­worth Press, 1930)
• Songs of a Cin­e­ma Church (Me­thu­en, 1933)
• Spiritual Ad­ven­ture: The Sto­ry of “The Ideal” Film Ser­vice (Unit­ed So­ci­e­ty for Christ­ian Li­ter­a­ture, 1935)
• Hymns of Praise: A Sup­ple­ment of 20th Cen­tu­ry Hymns (Fea­ther­stone Press, 1946)
• The Bible Stands Up To Life

Sources

Hymns

1. Above the Hills of Time
2. Beyond the Wheeling Worlds of Light (1935)
3. Night Has Drawn Its Curtain (1933)
4. We Leave Thy House, but Leave Not Thee