Thomas Pelham Dale (1821–1892) was an English Catholic ritualist priest and scientist, most notable for being prosecuted and imprisoned for ritualist practices.
In optics, the Gladstone–Dale relation is named after him and John Hall Gladstone.
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Biography
Thomas Pelham Dale was born at Greenwich on 3 April 1821 and grew up in Beckenham, Kent. He was the eldest son of Thomas Dale and his wife Emily Jane Richardson. After attending King's College London, in 1841 he went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and graduated in 1845. He was elected as a fellow of his college.
Dale was ordained deacon in 1845 and priest in 1846. He was appointed curate of the Camden Chapel, Camberwell, Surrey. In 1847 he became rector of St Vedast Foster Lane in the City of London.
With scholarly interests that were scientific as well as theological, Dale was librarian of Sion College in the City of London from 1851 to 1856. In science, Dale worked also with John Hall Gladstone on refraction. They published in 1863 a relation now known as the Gladstone–Dale relation.
In 1861, with Bishop Tait, Elizabeth Ferard (see 18 July in Church of England calendar) and two other women, Dale founded the North London Deaconess Institution based in King's Cross.
Originally an evangelical, Dale came to believe that ritualism was specifically appropriate to deal with the nature of secularism and forces hostile to Christianity of the time. He began to use eucharistic vestments at Christmas 1873.