From Boxer Bombs to the Rock of Ages

Image is of an execution of three Boxers during the 1900 Rebellion. (London Stereoscopic Company)

The Boxer Rebellion, a bloody uprising in China at the turn of the 20th century against foreigners, is a relatively obscure historical event with far-reaching consequences that nevertheless is often remembered because of its unusual name. Who exactly were the Boxers? They were members of a secret society made up mostly of peasants in northern China known as I-ho-ch'uan ("Righteous and Harmonious Fists") and were called the "Boxers" by the Western press; members of the secret society practised boxing and callisthenic rituals that they thought would make them impervious to bullets and attacks, and this led to their unusual but memorable name.

Beginning in the late 1890s, the Boxers began attacking Christian missionaries, Chinese Christians and foreigners in northern China. These attacks eventually spread to the capital, Beijing, in June 1900, when the Boxers destroyed railroad stations and churches and laid siege to the area where foreign diplomats lived. It is estimated that that death toll included several hundred foreigners and several thousand Chinese Christians.

The Qing Dynasty's Empress Dowager Tzu’u Hzi backed the Boxers, and the day after the Boxers began the siege on foreign diplomats, she declared war on all foreign countries that had diplomatic ties with China. 

Meanwhile, a multinational foreign force was gearing up in northern China. In August 1900, after nearly two months of the siege, thousands of allied American, British, Russian, Japanese, Italian, German, French and Austro-Hungarian troops moved out of northern China to take Beijing and put down the rebellion, which they accomplished.

The Boxer Rebellion formally ended in September 1901 with the signing of the Boxer Protocol, which mandated the punishment of those involved in the rebellion and required China to pay reparations to the countries affected.

Source : ThoughtCo.

Nestled in a bosky section of Ladywell cemetery lies the flattened headstone of a former Methodist missionary to China, close to a pocket of graves of other divines whose missionary zeal serving in the Far East is well documented.* Born in Ireland in 1852 John Hinds devoted forty three years of missionary endeavour in mainland China as part of the Methodist New Connexion. Married in Shanghai in 1882 to Linda Ellen Cooke d.1935 (also interred here) many effulgent obituaries followed his death in Forest Hill in 1928. He survived an accident crossing an ice bound river and during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 a shell fell close to the room he was in, narrowly avoiding death. The generous tributes below attest to a life of unstinting and single minded devotion to promoting the Christian gospel at a time of rapid and at times violent social and revolutionary change in China which exploded in the aforementioned events that opened the new century at the heyday of European Colonial hegemony in China.

The above excerpt is from the United Methodist of March 1928.

A fuller account of the Reverend John Hinds life and missionary work can be found here

The popular Christian hymn 'Rock of Ages' was sung at the graveside as the coffin was lowered into the ground.

In his book Hymns That Have Helped, W. T. Stead, British newspaper editor and a pioneer of 19th century investigative journalism ( who attended a funeral in the cemetery in 1888)  reported "when the SS London went down in the Bay of Biscay, 11 January 1866, the last thing which the last man who left the ship heard as the boat pushed off from the doomed vessel was the voices of the passengers singing "Rock of Ages"

The photo of the Hinds headstone in Ladywell cemetery (it is the scrolled embellished one) was taken by Phill Barnes-Warden.

* Charles Stedeford (1864-1953) was born in Bristol. He entered the Bible Christian ministry in 1883 and served as President of the United Methodist Conference in 1928 and as Secretary of the Missionary Society for twenty-eight years.

Source : United Methodist July 1929. 

He gave the funeral oration for the Rev. John Hinds.

His son John Britton Stedeford, born 1857, entered the ministry in 1878. He was General Sunday School Secretary 1899-1904 and was President of the BC Conference in 1906 and of the UM Conference in 1915. He wrote a Guide to Church Membership (1917) for the UM. He died in Oxford in October 1929. He is interred in Ladywell cemetery.

The Reverend John Innocent d.1904 was another prominent Methodist missionary to China who is buried in Ladywell cemetery - His life story was told in this 2013 post 

Rev John Innocent (1829-1904) - Methodist Missionary to China and Frie​nd to General Gordon

The Reverend John Innocent (1829-1904) was a trail blazing Methodist Missionary to China and friend to General Gordon. Many thanks to Mike Guilfoyle for the following account.
 

Born in 1829 in Sheffield John Innocent was sent to work as a grinder aged 16 years and made up for his lack of formal schooling by attending night school. His conversion to Methodism set him upon a life long committment to the tenets of preaching and celebrating the Christian Gospel through social action. Having been made a Minister of the Methodist New Connexion, (a branch of Wesleyan Methodism) he moved to Jersey, having married Jane in 1856.  Although Jesuit missionaries had brought Christianity to China in the 16th century, China only opened up to Christian Missionaries following the Second Opium War in 1860, Innocent travelled with W.N Hall to establish the pioneer mission field at Tienstin (now Tianjin) before becoming the Nestor (leader) of the mission whilst 'struggling' to learn the Mandarin Chinese language..   One of his achievements there was to found what is now China's oldest hotel, the Astor Hotel in Tianjin.

Shortly thereafter he became acquainted with Captain Charles George Gordon who was serving with British Forces prior to his leading the 'Ever Victorious' Imperial Chinese Army to defeat rebel forces during the Taiping Rebellion. Innocent noted that he had no more generous and sympathetic a friend than the young officer, who later distinguished himself as General 'Chinese' Gordon before finally being beheaded in Khartoum. The missionary expansion suffered many setbacks with periodic anti-Western massacres as at Tienstin in 1870. This event prefigured the major uprising in 1900 against the imperialist ambitions of the Western powers known as the Boxer Rebellion. The widespread outbreak of famine in 1872 meant that efforts at humanitarian relief occupied the work of the mission. The Rev Innocent experienced the sudden deaths of his daughter Annie and son George, through illness, both of whom weere en route to China to undertake missionary work. Returning to England in 1897 with his family he lived for a time in retirement in Nottingham, before moving to Forest Hill.

Innocent died on the 27th November 1904 and the funeral service was held at Trinity Church, Forest Hill. He was laid to rest at Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries on the 1st December and it was stated that 'friends from far and wide followed him to his last resting place. His 40 years of dedicated and heroic missionary work were recognised by many inside Methodism and his biographer G.T Candlin( 1909) commented that " Not many men can be classed with John Innocent, Among Missionaries he shines very much alone'.

His red marble grave (with his wife Jane Innocent) lies along the pathway from that of the poet Ernest Dowson in the Brockley section. Not far from the grave of another prominent visitor to China , the British Diplomat Horatio Nelson Lay who died in 1898 in Forest Hill.

For those readers interested in the life and work of the Rev Innocent .The splendid online biography of John Innocent, a story of mission work in North China by G.T Candlin published in 1909 is highly recommended.