Tragic Aftermath

Herbert was not in fact the only member of the Sowerby family in China at this time. His younger brother, Arthur Sowerby had also chosen the missionary path and married Louisa Clayton in 1883 in Shanghai. He too travelled up the Yangtze, as a member of the English Baptist society, and through the 1880s and 1890s was also in Shashi, as part of the Taiuyan Fu mission. 

Baptist Missionaries from the BMS website page about the Boxer Rebellion.

Arthur Sowerby was fortunate enough to be on leave in England when the Boxer rebellion broke out. For those missionaries remaining in Shashi, the rebellion was to have dreadful consequences. 

On July 9th 1900 in Taiuyan, Yuxian, the governor of the Shashi province commanded all the foreigners to be brought into his presence. According to Landor, and as quoted in Wikipedia, he then:

…enjoined the Europeans to prostrate themselves at his feet, accusing them of bringing vice, evil, and unhappiness in the Empire of Heaven. There was only one remedy for such evil, and that was to behead them all. The order was to be carried out in his presence.

Two Roman Catholic Bishops and three other missionaries were then led out, and were the first to be decapitated on the spot. Then one and all — men, women, and children — were mercilessly beheaded in the courtyard of the Yamen, in front of the hall in which they had been received in audience, and well in sight of the bloodthirsty official. [...] To satisfy their superstitious curiosity, the soldiers are said to have pounced on some of the bodies, still throbbing, of these unfortunates, and cut their hearts out for inspection by the bonzes and other learned men.

Insult — no greater could be given in China — was added to injury by taking the bodies outside the city walls and leaving them to the dogs instead of burying them.


By the end of the summer more foreigners and up to 2,000 Chinese Christians had been put to death. The Times reported that:

Out of the total of 91 China Inland missionaries in that province alone, when the trouble began 36 have escaped to the coast, 38 have been murdered, and 17 are still unaccounted for. Other missions have also suffered very severely, the American Board, the English Baptist Mission, and the Sheo-yang Mission having lost nearly all their Shansi Workers.

The Sowerbys had had a very narrow escape indeed. The family fascination with the Far East was not over though. Arthur himself returned to China, as did one of his children, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, who was to return to China not as a missionary, but rather following in the footsteps of his forebears as a naturalist and explorer. He survived internment by the Japanese in the second world war, and died in Washington in 1954. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical and Zoological Societies.