Radical Roots  Sarah Fuller Flower Adams

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams – radical English poet and hymn-writer, best known for writing the hymn “Nearer My God To Thee”, reportedly played by the orchestra as the Titanic sank in 1912.

Born in the Essex village of Old Harlow in 1805 into a family of dissenters and non-conformists, Sarah was the daughter of radical editor Benjamin Flower and his wife Eliza. Friends of the family included Harriet Martineau, radical Unitarian preacher William Johnson Fox, and the poet Robert Browning. In 1834, Sarah married William Bridges Adams, an author, inventor and engineer.

A Unitarian by faith, Sarah worked as a poet, hymn-writer and actress. In her writing, she called for women’s equality, workers’ rights and supported other liberal and radical causes.

Struggling with illness throughout her life, Sarah died in 1848, aged just 43, and was buried at Foster Street Cemetery, Harlow. At her grave, the mourners sang her hymn “He sendeth sun, he sendeth shower.”