Early Successes

This river cruise map shows Wuhan in the centre. The mission worked its way up to Shashi (now known as Jingzhou) and then to Yichang. The Sowerbys had commitments in all these places.

As the operation by the banks of the Yangtze grew, Ann Fanny Wombwell also played her part, opening a day school for girls, whilst her husband also taught Bible classes to the community. Slowly the mission was working its way up the river. A new station was opened at Shashi and later at Yichang, with Herbert overseeing the projects and reporting back on successes such as the four baptisms in Shashi. Ann Fanny meanwhile had taken over care of the Jane Bohlen Memorial School, which was was apparently doing well during the 1880s. It was reported that: 

 The woman's work and girls' school were in excellent condition. Mrs. Sowerby had been " the mainspring of it all," assisted in the teaching by the native Christian helpers. 

Ann Fanny Wombwell seems finally to have found herself a vocation in life. 

Herbert Sowerby and his family left China for an extended vacation on December 15th 1887, and reached London on  January 30th, 1888, where Ann Fanny may well have taken some time out to provide her father, George Wombwell junior, with some rather choice, pious, firmly theologically grounded, and likely thoroughly unwelcome advice, suggesting that there were reasons for George’s misfortunes that went way beyond his preferred notion of bad luck and which required a substantial reworking of his relationship with his higher power. The menagerist and his missionary daughter really had ended up at opposite extremes of the Victorian pole. 

Neither her income nor principles would have suggested to Ann Fanny that she should enlist the support of her husband or his family in bailing George junior out of his financial malaise. The superficial and transient sufferings of his daily life were merely signs to be heeded and understood, and acted upon accordingly. It was not this life that was the issue, but the next life. Not a message that George Wombwell junior would have necessarily appreciated.