James John Dowdle (20 December 1840–21 July 1900) was a Commissioner in the Salvation Army known as the "Fiery Fiddler" and the "Saved Railway Guard". He was the first Salvation Army Commissioner to be Promoted to Glory.

Dowdle was born in a two-room cottage in Upton Lovell in Wiltshire in 1840, the youngest of two children of woollen factory worker Priscilla née Hinton (1820-1898) and Henry Dowdle (1815-1868), an agricultural labourer. A big and mischievous youth who "loved a scrap", he left school aged 12 to train as a wheelwright under an uncle, but did not find the work to his taste. He next tried farm work, but found he liked that even less, so he moved to London where he worked in a goods yard for the Great Western Railway, then in 1861 as a porter before quickly working his way up to guard.

Dowdle found employment as a labourer with a builder and evangelist named Stevens, and when the two were called to do some work at the former public house 'The Eastern Star' in Whitechapel, intended to be the headquarters of the newly-formed The Christian Mission, Dowdle first encountered William Booth, its founder and General Superintendent. Dowdle was an early convert to the Christian Mission, joining the following Sunday after hearing Booth preach. In 1866 Dowdle was a member of the Paddington corps and later that year he became the Mission's first full-time paid evangelist when it extended its ministry outside the East End of London for the first time with his appointment to run the Corps in Poplar in London.

In 1869 General Booth officiated at the marriage ceremony of Dowdle and Sarah Ann Stevens (1840-1912), daughter of Dowdle's former employer. The newly-weds took on the running of a shop in Shoreditch where they served cheap dinners to the poor on weekdays and on Sundays led evangelistic meetings in a former music hall behind the shop. In the 1871 Census Dowdle's occupation is listed as "Labourer".

At this time the Army's mission was to prevent child prostitution and to convert the poor, prostitutes, gamblers and alcoholics to Christianity. Dowdle served in Chatham (1873-1875), Middlesbrough (1875), Stockton-on-Tees (1875-1876), Leeds (1876), Bradford (1877-1878) and Plymouth (1878).

When the 51st Corps of the Salvation Army was formed at Plymouth in July 1878 Captain (later Major) Dowdle, together with his wife and his "Hallelujah Fiddle", held the first meeting in the Central Hall in Phoenix Lane late in August 1878. Here, congregations averaged 500 people a night with one convert describing himself as being "the vilest villain out of hell without being in it." However, Dowdle did not always receive an enthusiastic hearing. In Plymouth forty men arrived at a meeting carrying brimming chamber pots and stormed the hall to drench Dowdle with urine.

During his ministry in Bradford in 1877 Dowdle took over the run-down former theatre Pullan's Theatre of Varieties as a venue for his services. He stated that:

“Some of the vilest characters in the town have been saved. Over 600 have given in their names as getting converted, such as gamblers, drunkards, infidels, blasphemers, adulterers, theatre and music-hall goers, comic singers, clowns, stage players- some who had played and sang upon the very stage where they got converted.”