George Wombwell Junior Timeline

Since this story of George Wombwell junior seems to have take numerous side-turnings and digressions including up the Yangtze River, the Duaro Valley and to Bedford, Virginia, here is a timeline that illustrates some of the main events in his long life:

14 Dec 1822	George is born in Stoke Newington, probably in Lordship Road, the son of Zachariah Wombwell and Mary Webb
19 Mar 1823	He is baptized in Stoke Newington
1832	He is adopted by his Uncle, George Wombwell, founder of Wombwell’s menagerie and heads off on the road.
1833	His father, Zachariah Wombwell, dies in Stoke Newington
1847	At the height of his career, he is a member of the party that meets Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Prince Edward at Windsor Castle
1849	His mother, Mary Webb, dies in Stoke Newington
7th Oct 1850	He marries Fanny Eliza Kienlen at the New Gravel Pit Meeting House, Paradise Fields, Hackney
1850	His Uncle George dies and leaves one part of his menagerie to George, namely Menagerie Number Three
30 Mar 1851	George is recorded as a Wild Beast Merchant of Wombwell’s Menagerie resident at 79 Corn Hill, Ipswich
1851	His daughter Ann Fanny Wombwell is born in Hackney, London. George’s servant, Thomas Burrows, is crushed by an elephant but survives the experience.
1855	A run of disasters leads to the decimation of George’s Menagerie stock
28 Apr 1855	George’s Menagerie Number Three is auctioned off for a pittance at Nova Scotia Gardens.
2 May 1855	The other Wombwells write to the Times disassociating their own Menageries from any involvement with George’s
18 June 1855	Bankrupted, George is removed from his caravan next to Cremorne Gardens to Whitecross Prison
30 July 1855	George appears in court. He may have been bailed out by members of the Wombwell family, and then worked for them as a hired hand.
26 Oct 1858	Jamrach’s famous Bengal Tiger escapes and wanders off down the Ratcliff Road. George may have been involved in its subsequent purchase.
7 April 1861	He is resident with his wife and daughter at 1 Grove Cottage, Poplar All Saints, and recorded as a photographer and artist.
6 Aug 1863	Death of his first wife, Fanny Eliza Kienlen in Hackney.
1866	Mrs Wombwell commissions George to bring an elephant back from Paris for her. After various disasters, George succeeds in bringing the elephant back to London, where it immediately dies.
22 Feb 1869	George marries Elizabeth Adella Cresey in Yarmouth, Norfolk. Born in 1849, Elizabeth is twenty-seven years younger than George.
1870	Their daughter, Amelia Gertrude Wombwell is born in South Shields, Durham.
2 Apr 1871	George is resident in Stockton, Durham, now a musician. His daughter Ann Fanny Wombwell is now living in Hampstead, London, with Mrs Wombwell, the partner of his Uncle George.
3 Apr 1881	George is living at 132 Provost Street, Shoreditch, Hoxton Town. George is still a musician, and his wife is working as a dressmaker.
11 Apr 1881	His first daughter, Ann Fanny Wombwell marries Herbert Sowerby in Shanghai, China. They are members of the China Inland Mission but shortly after join the American run Protestant Episcopal Mission.
Feb 1882	Ann Fanny Wombwell and Herbert Sowerby head up the Yangtze River to Wuhan and begin their work there.
5 Apr 1891	They are living at 107 Provost Street. His daughter Amelia has now become a shirtmaker.
1894	The marriage is recorded of Amelia Gertrude Wombwell and Jacob Valentine in the civil registration records. Jacob is a member of the Sephardic Jewish community and it is possible they went through a religious ceremony a few years earlier, since their first daughter seems to have been born in 1892. Ann Fanny Wombwell and Herbert Sowerby complete their missionary service in China and possibly return to England to discover that whilst they have been making conversions, George has been leaking them.
4 Jan 1897	The Daily Mail publishes a full-length profile of his life and sets up a subscription fund for him.
5 Mar 1897	The Daily Mail reports that its Subscription Fund has raised three pounds and fifteen shillings.
1897	His second wife, Elizabeth Adella Cresey dies in the Infirmary
Prob 1890s	George is visiting his Bradley relatives probably to get help in writing down memories for sale for publication. The full story of Peto the elephant is thus preserved.
1900	The entire family of Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell are now settled in Virginia, USA, all to become naturalized American citizens.
31 Mar 1901	George, now a musician and widower, is living at 22 Ottoway Road, Hackney
3 Mar 1909	George’s obituary appears in the newspapers, reporting his death in Tottenham, Edmonton
1923	His first daughter, Ann Fanny Wombwell dies in Bedford, Virginia, USA
1958	His second daughter, Amelia Gertrude Wombwell dies in Shoreditch, London.

George Wombwell Junior Makes His Final Appearance

The last census record for George Wombwell junior  is in 1901, in Hackney:

He died, as we know, in Edmonton, in 1909. Hence his second daughter and family were very much in the area as he entered the final years of his life, apparently either powerless or unwilling to do anything about his ongoing state of penury. It was thus  left to the Bostock family, who had taken over the menagerie by this time to provide George with a small additional stipend to keep the wolf away.

It could be of course that there had been a rupture between George and Amelia Gertrude as a consequence of her inter-faith marriage, but with a large family of their own, and just a tailoring business to support themselves, it is doubtful whether they had too much to offer George junior beyond tolerating his tales of the glory days of the Wombwell menagerie, and his half-century long run of bad luck.

As for George himself, he had if nothing else lived a full and eventful life. Born in 1822 in the reign of George IV, his adult life spanned the entire reign of Queen Victoria, along with the extraordinary imperial and economic expansion that accompanied it. It was a time of opportunity, speculation and entrepreneurship, but also an era that was unforgiving of failure, as George junior was to experience to his cost.   

The Children of Jacob Valentine and Amelia Gertrude Wombwell

1901 census for central Hackney. By now the Valentines had moved outside the heartlands of the Jewish community to Clifden Road. The 1911 census records the family in Winchester Road, Edmonton, Middlesex. Jacob was not present on the day of the census, and Amelia Gertrude is listed as a tailoress. 

Amelia Gertrude Wombwell and Jacob Valentine had six children, namely:

i. Gertrude Adela Valentine, born 1892 in Islington, London. She married George James Evered in Poplar in 1915. They had three children: Gertrude Frances, George and Benjamin.

ii. Benjamin George Valentine, born 1894 in Hoxton, London.

iii. Leah Valentine, born 1898 in Clapton, London, died 1988 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. They had at least one child, Lawrence Edward Maund.

iv. Esther Rosina (or Roseno) Valentine, born 1900, Hackney, London.

v. Joan Frances Valentine, born 1903 in Tottenham, London.

vi. John Herbert Valentine, born 1905 in Tottenham, London, died 1977 in Shoreditch. He married Doris Mary Hall in 1942 in Bethnal Green. They had a son, John Henry Valentine.

These children are all x1 removed fourth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen, their children her fifth cousins, and they are an entirely unexpected family link to the Sephardic Jewish community of the Iberian peninsula and quite possibly to Lamego in the heart of the Douro valley in Portugal (see: http://www.ianhandricks.com/136/valentine-part-1/)

Jacob Valentine died in 1926, but Amelia Gertrude Wombwell lived on until 1958 when she passed away in Shoreditch, by which time the Wombwell menagerie in its entirety had itself faded into history, a curiosity merely of a bygone age.

The Migration Cycle

1871 census for Christchurch, Spitalfields. Benjamin Valentine is at the bottom of this page. Jacob Valentine, then aged ten appears on the following page. The return provides a snapshot of the Jewish community and their professions.

As time went on, the Jewish community began to make their way up the economic ladder, spreading out into areas such as Golders Green, and forming new vibrant communities that contributed at all levels of society, just as Oliver Cromwell had been advised all those years before by Menasseh ben Israel. From the outset of the Tsarist inspired pogroms to the dispersal of the East London communities, in other words from arrival to integration, hence took around three to four generations. It is an instructive case.

As the Jews moved out of Spitalfields, they were replaced by a new generation of immigrants, this time from Bangladesh, and the area has become ‘Banglatown’. All the same old arguments and rhetoric were then dusted off and tossed back into the mainstream political debate with wearisome repetition. 

But if the case of the Jewish community provides any lessons, it is that assimilating large migrant communities probably takes not very much less than a century, and even then does not actually require any extinguishing of prior historical and cultural identity. Multiculturalism is a much maligned term but the Jewish community remain an exemplar of how individuals and groups can mediate between different identities in precisely the way that multilinguals switch between languages. 

So when Jacob Valentine married Amelia Gertrude Wombwell, whatever scandalised reactions they may or may not have provoked in their own family circles, what was happening was an entirely natural evolution, in which a member of the Sephardi community as part of this process of assimilation took a further step down the road and married into a local English family. This might be seen as an instance of how cultural enrichment.  For Jacob and Amelia and their families, life was however most likely far too full of challenges and obstacles for them to reflect on such abstract matters.  

A New Life for the Ashkenazis

Some things never seem to change.
From The Migration Museum Website.

For the new wave of Ashkenazi migrants, their new home, truth be told, cannot have been a very welcoming one. They were now living in the poorest, most insalubrious, unhygienic areas of London surrounded by the high crime rates, and generally riotous life of the London Docklands. 

It was in this very part of the East End that Jack the Ripper plied his gruesome trade between 1888 and 1891, and there were plenty who were prepared to point the finger of blame for the murders at the mysterious and closed-off community of the East London Jews.

Eventually, the Government responded with new laws like the 1905 Aliens Act, restricting further immigration. Racial tension though was never far away, not least when Oswald Mosley’s black-shirted acolytes took to the streets in the nineteen thirties to further inflame community relations and strike fear into the hearts of the immigrant community. Government restrictions and attempts to limit Jewish immigration to Britain continued, regardless of Hitler, both before and after the Second World War. 

This then was the world in which Jacob Valentine and Amelia Gertrude Wombwell moved, their children inhabiting a strange grey area of identity, half-Sephardi, half English living in the midst of the Ashkenazi community.

A New Wave of Migration

The censuses of the late nineteenth century show members of the Valentine Family moving around East London in the Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Mile End Town, Whitechapel and Spitalfields areas. 

From the Migration Museum Website

Spitalfields in particular was to become the centre of the Jewish community, though it should be stressed that the majority of the population was made up of new immigrants who were Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, and a world away in many respects from well-established British Sephardi like the Valentine family. Before long, there were to be over 40 synagogues in Spitalfields alone.

A BBC profile reports that more than 2 million Jews left Eastern Europe between 1881 and 1914, as a result of persecution, with about 120,000 staying in the UK. By 1900 they formed around 95% of the population in the Wentworth Street district of Spitalfields. 

As with all such mass migrations, the Jewish community not only presented a visibly exotic spectacle, but were an easy target for locals to vent their general dissatisfaction with their own lives upon. All the familiar rhetoric emerges concerning their failure to assimilate, to speak English, and their turning of areas of London into foreign ghettos. And all the same reasons for this happening were just as equally evident. They settled in the poorer areas as close as possible to their point of embarkation as they could, in this case right next to the London Docks, and close also to an already established Jewish community, which included Sephardis like the Valentines. As refugees, and as should hardly surprise any observer, they clung together, to their culture, their language and faith as they struggled to make sense of their new lives, and the often traumatic conclusion to their old lives in the East.

The Sephardim of England

Now that the laws allowing Jews to settle in England had been changed, more Portuguese and Spanish Jews  made their way to London, thriving in their new environment, and establishing fınally in 1701, the Bevis Marks Synagogue.

Interior of Bevis Marks Synagogue. From Wikipedia.

The most famous offspring of this community was to be Benjamin Disraeli.  

(See: http://www.sephardicstudies.org/uk.html for more).

It seems likely, though not certain, given their long association with the Bevis Marks Synagogue that they were of Portuguese, rather than Spanish origin. 

The next major wave of Jewish immigration took place in latter part of the nineteenth century, as Jews fled from the Russian pogroms. By the time Amelia Gertrude Wombwell and Jacob Valentine got married, Jewish communities were heavily concentrated around Whitechapel and Spitalfields, exactly where the Valentine family seemed to be conducting their business. Jacob trained up to be a tailor, but both his father, Benjamin and one of his brothers were working as cigar makers, one of the most popular professions of the Jewish community. 

Whether Benjamin Valentine chose to pay a visit to George Wombwell junior for an inter-faith summit meeting as this unusual courtship developed is another matter. And whether he would have got much out of George beyond anecdotes about elephant and tigers another question again. What is unquestionable however is that the economies of neither family would appear to have been in very good shape.

The Maranno

On the 18th July, 1290,  King Edward I unilaterally issued an edict expelling all Jews from England, the culmination of a lengthy period of persecution of a people who were characterised as extortionists and money-lenders and diabolic haters of Christ. The 1218 edict of Henry III requiring all Jews to wear a special marking badge has, in this respect, a particularly chilling premonitory quality about it.

And there matters rested. In the late fifteenth century, the Inquisition began its work, and the Jews of Spain and Portugal were expelled, fleeing to other European countries, and to the realms of the far more welcoming Ottoman Empire. 

Spitalfield, London in the nineteenth century. Spitalfield had a very large
Jewish community, including members of the Valentine family.
From the Ultimate History Pages

It was a Portuguese Rabbi,  Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), who finally persuaded Oliver Cromwell, to adopt a more welcoming approach. Not only did the Jewish merchants have the potential to benefit the economy, Cromwell himself, for all his Puritanism, by and large, held the belief that an individual’s relationship with God was his own business. For Menassah ben Israel, who was based in Amsterdam, it was the last act of his career. He died there in 1657, the very year that Edward I’s edict was quietly buried in the archives. 

Menassah and perhaps also Cromwell would have been aware that there was a Maranno community already in London. These Maranno were Sephardic Jewish immigrants, who bypassed the existing laws by concealing their true religion, which they reverted to with the liberalisation of the laws. 

One of their number seems to have been a Daniel Henriques Valentine (1645-1679) who married Judith Judita. He in turn was the son of  The "Sephardi' Henriques Valentines (born 1620, place unknown) who is seen as the founder of the family line. These were the direct ancestors of the Jacob Valentine who was to marry Amelia Gertrude Wombwell.

Amelia Gertrude Wombwell and Jacob Valentine

The Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London.
It has been holding services for over 300 years.

Amelia Gertrude Wombwell, the daughter of George Wombwell junior and Elizabeth Adella Cresey married Jacob Valentine, a tailor, in July 1894. Jacob was born in Bishopsgate in 1861, the son of Benjamin Valentine and Esther Hartell. 

These names cannot help but arouse some curiosity, and some further investigation reveals that Benjamin and Esther were married in 1847 at the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London. 

Benjamin was the son of Emanuel (de Moses) Henriques Valentine (1769–1824) and Leah Rodrigues (1770-1844).  This  line of Valentines, were all born in London and married, generation by generation, at the Bevis Marks synagogue. The origins of the Valentine family in London are explored in considerable detail on the website of Ian Handricks.

So, George Wombwell junior's first daughter, to summarise all this, married Herbert Sowerby, a Protestant missionary to China. His second daughter, Amelia Gertrude Wombwell then married a Sephardic Jew from a family who would have escaped from the Spanish inquisition and made their way, hook or crook, to London, there to make their way within the growing Jewish community of the City.

The marriage of Amelia Gertrude Wombwell and Jacob Valentine took place in 1894, the very same year when Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell terminated their involvement with the Protestant Episcopal Mission in China. 

Should Ann Fanny then have returned to England, as seems likely, along with Herbert Sowerby, it would have been to discover that her half-sister had now wedded into the Sephardic Jewish community of London. Along with the treatment they had suffered at the hands of certain members of their own Mission whilst striving to convert the Chinese to the true path of Christianity, it must have been yet another blow to discover that her perennially unreliable father had now succeeded in allowing her half-sister to marry into another faith entirely. Appalled? Disgusted? Scandalized? We have no idea. 

George Wombwell Junior and Elizabeth Adella Cresey

After this lengthy digression into the missionary career of Ann Fanny Wombwell, it may be worth repeating that after the death of Fanny Eliza Kienlen in 1863, and the disintegration of his menagerie and subsequent imprisonment for bankruptcy, George Wombwell junior dusted off his cornet, and began his musical career in the menagerie bands. Our last sighting him was in the North of England, in Stockton, in 1871, and having exerted, at a guess, a certain roguish charm and ability to turn a good tale, he had succeeded in seducing an impressionable girl still in her early twenties into marriage. This was Elizabeth Adella Cresey (1849-1897), a Suffolk girl from Bury St. Edmonds, the daughter of a miller's carter. They got married in Yarmouth, Norfolk in 1869, Elizabeth just twenty years old at the time, with George junior now closer to fifty than forty. Ann Fanny Wombwell's step-mother was hence just a mere two years older than her. 

In the 1881 census, George and Elizabeth were back in London living at 132 Provost Road, Hoxton Town, Shoreditch:

1881 census

Not much seems to have changed when the 1891 census came round. The family were living now at 107 Provost Road. George continued to play his cornet, and Elizabeth supplemented their income by working as a dressmaker. Their daughter, Amelia Gertrude Wombwell, born in 1870 in South Shields, Durham, had by now been trained up by her mother as a shirtmaker. Not for this side of the family, the adventures of a missionary life in China, nor indeed the glamour of the menagerie.

1891 census

Rather, the endless enervating struggle to make ends meet in the unforgiving environment of the East End. Elizabeth Adella Cresey as we know from the Daily Mail profile ended her days in the infirmary in 1897, worn out no doubt by the challenge of keeping the family afloat.  

The Lion of Wombwell

On the 8th March, 2015 there was an auction in Derby of assorted Victorian and Edwardian items. The painting above was entitled The Lion of Wombwell and was a watercolour with the dimensions, 27cm x 37cm. The auctioneers put down an estimate of 70 to 100 pounds for the sale, suggesting that they did not value the painting very highly for either its artistic or historical value. It was dated - hardly very helpfully - as twentieth century. They were unable either to provide any information about the artist, beyond his name:
Herbert Sowerby.

Otherwise Engaged

https://www.tes.com/lessons/xhy3B93t5h9qmQ/the-boxer-rebellion-1900-1901. This contemporary political cartoon from the time of the Boxer Rebellion. is highly prescient, since it was disputes between western powers about how to carve up colonies and spheres of influence that were a major factor in the start of The First World War. 

The founding of Wombwell’s menagerie had proved quite a pebble to throw into the pond of a simple Essex farming family, and more than rippled down subsequent generations. In the case of Ann Fanny Wombwell, she virtually vaulted across the social class structure, only to find herself by the banks of the Yangtze River.

The family and community she married into in a sense represent both the best and worst of Victorian Britain.  On the one hand, the scope, energy, erudition, science, and urge to explore and understand the world around them of families like the Sowerbys is astounding by any standards.

The co-opting of these talents by the Church and governments of the time is in retrospect rather less worthy of admiration. Certain sectors of Victorian society had by now convinced themselves that they represented a superior civilization and value-set that the rest of the world should be only too grateful to be the recipients of. The missionaries brought with them education in the form of the schools they founded; they brought the advanced medical understanding of the time; and of course, naturally, they brought their Bibles and catechisms.

As far as China is concerned, their conversion rate was low to the point of utter insignificance, though elements of the local population were happy enough for a while to take advantage of the educational and medical carrots that were put in their way. The idea though that the Chinese would be won over from their own extraordinarily rich culture and traditions into Christian practice was profoundly optimistic. They did however have a seemingly limitless capacity for interference and provocation.

In China, such policies came to a head in 1899 with the commencement of the Boxer rebellion, and the massacres that accompanied it. This gave at least some food for thought to the governments of the western world, as to whether the missionary operations really served national interests. 

Since China was not actually part of the British Empire, the interests of the British were largely commercial, and aimed through political pressure and enticements of various types to maximize profits , which included a rather dubious involvement in the opium trade. The problem with the missionaries was that their awareness of such finely nuanced strategic policies was profoundly limited, and they became in the end as much as a liability as an asset, and were seen as such by many political operators. Of course, the Boxer Rebellion horrified all and sundry, and revived the concept of the ‘yellow peril’ in the popular imagination in the media, a media to whom the concept of cultural imperialism would hardly have entered their mindset.

The Western powers were to continue however to repeat the same experiments and hope for different results, bemused that undeveloped and unenlightened peoples should so stubbornly seek to hold to their own traditional values and ways of life. Yet, if projects of this type could not even achieve a conclusive outcome in a country as close as Maria West’s Ireland, it would be thought that there might have been more seriously sceptical voices raised as to the likelihood of such methods achieving useful results in a country like China.

These considerations aside, at least we know why one of George Wombwell junior’s daughters was not around to tend to him in the long years of his decline. And all things considered, she did have quite a reasonable excuse. She really was ‘otherwise engaged’. And in that most optimistically Victorian of pursuits, on a civilizing mission to the world.

The Children of Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell

Offices of the North China Daily News in
Shanghai to whom Herbert Sowerby imprudently
sent his views on the the Shanghai Bishopric.
The newspaper was closed by the Chinese
Communist Party in 1951.

It should not be overlooked that whilst supporting Herbert Sowerby in his missionary endeavours and quarrels, and playing her own part in evangelizing Chinese females (who were for the most part strictly off-limits to male missionaries), Ann Fanny Wombwell gave birth to six children during the couple’s time in China. It was not a small family that left Shanghai in 1894, and given their connections with the American Protestant Episcopal Mission, it is also a possibility that they simply sailed straight to America.

Either way, their children were:

i. Dr. James Herbert Sowerby (1882-1948, born in Wuhan, China, died Bedford County, Virginia). He married Ellla Maria Schmidt (1892-1967).
ii. Grace Ai-ling (or Arling) Sowerby (1883-1975, born in Wuhan, China, died Hyattsville, Prince Georges, Maryland). She married Harold Curtiss Abbott (1886-1971). They had two children: Helen Abbott, and Ruth Ai-Ling Abbott. Of these two children, Ruth married Stephen Joseph O’Donald. They had five children.
iii. Eleanor Margaret Sowerby (1885-1965, born in Wuhan, China, died Bedford County, Virginia). She married Wyatt Lockett Watson. They had three children.
iv. George Seguier Sowerby (1887-1946, born in Wuhan, China, died Virginia). He married Rachel I. Roberson.
v. Frederick Henry Sowerby (1890-1965, born in Wuhan, China, died Bedford County, Virginia). He married Nellie Brett.
vi. Alice Amelia Sowerby (1893-1969, born in Wuhan, China, died Greensboro, Guilford, North Carolina). She married Carl Argle Barkley (1894-1967). They had two children.

These were the grandchildren of George Wombwell junior, and fourth cousins x1 removed of Hetty Jane Owen. Their children of whom there are many, and grandchildren, plenty of whom are also recorded, grew up as American citizens, fifth cousins of Hetty Jane and sixth cousins respectively of Harold and Olwen Eldridge.

The Sowerbys Depart for America

Although the facts state that Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell concluded their service in China in 1894, we do not know their next move. It would have been strange indeed if they had not returned to England to see their respective families, including an elderly George Wombwell junior. In his 1897 interview with the Daily Mail however, George made no mention of Ann Fanny, and whilst on the one hand, he may have felt that his daughter should have provided him with some concrete rather than merely spiritual support, she, equally, may have been still harbouring resentment about his desertion of her after the death of her mother, Fanny Ann Kienlen, and his subsequent marriage to his much younger second wife. It is entirely possible that their relationship was damaged beyond repair. 

To what extent George was aware of, or even interested in, the dramas that had unfolded in China is yet another matter. The misfortunes of his pious daughter and her mercilessly abused husband may, for all we know, just have afforded the old man just a certain grim satisfaction. 

From the FindaGrave website

In either case, with six children in tow, the Sowerbys would hardly have been able to enjoy any extended stay with George, by now reduced to single room accommodation of an advisedly squalid character. It would have been to Herbert’s family that they would now have proceeded.

All this is admittedly hypothetical. The next firm records for the couple come from the 1900 USA census for Michigan. By 1910, they were permanently settled in Bedford, Virginia where they were to live out their days, and where their children were to grow up as American citizens. 

Ann Fanny Wombwell died in 1923 in Bedford, and Herbert three years later, in 1926. It had been a long journey for Ann Fanny. The grand-daughter of an Essex cow-keeper, Zacharias Wombwell, and the daughter of a failed menagerist who lost her mother at an early age and was effectively deserted by her father, she succeeded in climbing up the social ladder into a well-known Victorian family, only to find herself under the most bizarre circumstances running a girls’ school up the Yangtze river before becoming a naturalized citizen of the USA. 

But, like her father, she had certainly accumulated some memories to contemplate in the last years of her life.

Indefatigable Missionaries

See his Wikipedia Entry for more.

The indefatigable missionaries (including Herbert Sowerby's brother, Arthur) were not to be overly discouraged by outbreaks of carnage accompanied by mass beheadings, and soon resumed their activities.

It cannot or at least should not have come as a major surprise when trouble boiled over again in the shape of the Xinhai revolution of 1911 broke out, resentment boiled over again in Shashi. Naturalist, explorer, and also military man, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Herbert Sowerby's nephew, headed into the area on an expedition to rescue as many foreign missionaries as could be managed. Against all odds, his expedition succeeded in struggling back to Beijing early in 1912.

The foreign missions continued to be active in China all the way through to 1953, when Mao Tse Tung, not finding himself with the time on his hands to examine the fine distinctions between the associated theologies and creeds of Catholics, Lutherans, Protestants, Baptists, Jesuits, Presbyterians, Methodists, and more, decided there was a much easier course of action. He decided to expel all of them, lock, stock and barrel, from China. 

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.

Mr Sayres Despairs

View from Golden Island, 2011. The Yangtze maintains to this day a majestic beauty.
It was into this remote wilderness and ancient culture that the Missionaries sought to bring
their Christian value set.  

One member of the mission, William Sayres meanwhile purported to be in despair and resorted to a statistical analysis to back up his diagnosis of the mismanagement of  the Protestant Episcopal Mission, settling on a one-to-one comparison with the achievements of the Mission with their Presbyterian rivals:

These are the figures last year:

Presbyterian Mission--
Missionaries 55, Native Preachers 16, Native Assistants 134, Communicants 3,302, Stations 10, Scholars 2,092, Expense of Mission $98,240.

Protestant Episcopal Mission--
Missionaries 13, Native Preachers . . . , Native Assistants . . ., Communicants 400 [Annual Report 1884 says 326.], Stations 2, Scholars Expense of Mission $44,000.

From the above you will notice the Presbyterian Mission have over four times more missionaries in the field than we have; five times the number of stations and the communicants exceeds by more than eight fold. Why is this? We were on the field three years in advance of the Presbyterians. What a showing ours is after nearly forty-nine years of labour and expense. 

All these complaints however were to no avail, and it was reported finally on October 29th 1884, that William Jones Boone had been consecrated in Shanghai with Herbert Sowerby in attendance. Boone was to die of tuberculosis just seven years later in 1891, by which point the mission of Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell was entering its last chapter. Which, as it happened, was just as well for them. 

The Attacks Continue

Figurines on Golden Island on the Yangtze, 2011. Missionary attitudes towards Chinese culture and history varied wildly, and at their worst were racist and dismissive.

A chief mover in the assault on the Rev. W. J. Boone and his acolyte, Herbert Sowerby, was Ferdinand McKeige, a prolific and energetic contributor to the ongoing discussion, who never seemed to tire of singling out Herbert Sowerby for further criticism and invective:

I would like to state here, that in replying to Mr. Sowerby's letter, I had not the slightest intention of bringing Mr. B. prominently before the public, but simply to show Mr. Sowerby he could not write such a disingenuous letter without running the risk of being replied to. ..

The editorial in the Star in the East of June 6 (if its statements were untrue) ought to have brought forth an unequivocal denial from someone connected with the mission, thereby correcting what is the general impression and belief among missionaries, that ritualism does exist at St. John's and that the College is a poorly managed affair at the best. No attention, however, was given the article until June 11, when Mr. Sowerby, over the nom de plume of "A Member of the Mission," sent to the North-China Daily News for publication one of the most disingenuous letters I have ever seen… 

Every member of the Shanghai mission is aware of the fact that it is believed by outsiders that ritualism exists at St. John's. I have before me the entire correspondence in regard to this matter as it appeared in the Southern Churchman; there are eight letters and two editorials. 

This of itself is abundant proof that Mr. Sowerby knew that absurd reports were actually facts. If Mr. Sowerby's letter was not an attempt to dodge the truth, then I do not know what to call it... If Mr. Boone was not the originator of Mr. Sowerby's letter, he was a party to the statements it contained...

The accusations about Boone’s mission continued to mount: Gambling at the Mission School in Shanghai, drunken native staff, opium use, incoherent preaching by Mr Boone and physical fights between staff were just some of the accusations that now received a public airing. Another member of the mission, William Sayres concluded with a full-fronted personal assault on the Reverend Boone:

I shall not go here into further particulars regarding studies, further than to point out the absurdity of Mr. Boone's being in charge of what he knows so little about. His ignorance of the language is well-known in China, among both foreigners and natives. I do not believe he is able to read an ordinary Chinese book or newspaper, and I will venture to say that he does not even know by name the books used in the College, and could not give a list of them. Nay more, I believe that he could not give the name of any book used in the college. I mean, of course, Chinese book.

In response to this sensitive assessment of the prospective Bishop's virtues, another correspondent was inspired to pen the following generous and charitable assessment of the Chinese character more generally:

I am convinced, after a residence of six years in China, almost every day of which I have been brought in contact with Chinese in connection with business matters, and have had every opportunity to observe their traits of character--that they need very careful watching, the man that looks upon a Chinaman as a fool, is indeed a fool himself--it has been the great mistake of more than one Missionary in this land to accept the honesty and morality of a Chinaman upon a profession of faith, and this one thing has done much to retard the progress of the work. 

The missionaries, it seemed had a special term for locals who made false professions of faith in order to benefit from missionary largesse. They called them ‘rice Christians’. It is not entirely surprising in the light of all this that there were certain groups of Chinese who had decided that they had very much had their fill of the Missionary sense of humour, and indeed their presence more generally. 

The Knives Come Out

Approaching the Three Gorges Dam and Yichang, 2011, 

in the heart of the Missionary lands.

The next response to Herbert’s contribution showed just how vicious the missionaries could be when it suited them, as well as how the Protestant Episcopal Mission itself seemd to have degenerated into a state of civil war:

On the 13th of June last there appeared in the columns, of your paper a letter from "A Member of the Mission," in which, after giving Mr. Boone's pedigree, he goes on to say, "Whereas certain absurd reports are believed to be current as to ritualism at St. John's College, it may be well to add that Mr. Boone's election is not only satisfactory to the members of the mission, but is also spoken of in the leading Church paper." 

The above statements, coming as they do from one clergyman under the sanction of another, I have never seen excelled in point of disingenuousness. The writer has evidently sought to make the public believe that the reports which are current on the subject of ritualism were without foundation. "A Member" cannot be ignorant of the correspondence of members of the mission in regard to, this very matter, no less than five of its members having taken part in it. [Appleton, Graves, Sayres, Thomson, and Boone (through Mr. Kimber.)] 

How then can he write, "certain absurd reports are believed to be current"? 

This is easily understood when it is known that "A Member" is a candidate for priest's orders and his passing the necessary examination depends in a measure upon the leniency of the Bishop-designate. [Came to China (a Baptist by profession) a member of the China Inland Mission, after remaining in this mission about eighteen months, left and joined the American Bible Society, remained one month, and became connected with the P. E. Mission.] 

With this in view, one is forced (although unwillingly) to the conclusion that it was a diplomatic move, and not a wish to correct any false impressions…

I am prepared to state, and I do so advisedly, that "A. Member's" letter was submitted to the Rev. Wm. J. Boone for approval before its publication and its appearance in the columns of your paper is positive proof of Mr. Boone being a party to his own eulogy…

F. McKeige

The knives were well and truly out. And Herbert Sowerby’s transfer from the China Inland Mission to the Episcopal Mission, it is revealed had come via a short stay of a month with the American Bible Society. What was more, he was initially a Baptist. 

The implication is clear – Herbert was nothing more than a calculating denominational opportunist, interested only in climbing the church career ladder.

Meaningless Mummery

China Inland Mission Headquarters in Shanghai. Herbert and Ann Fanny
Wombwell were members of this Mission when they got married in 1881.

The Southern Churchman editors were none too sympathetic to Herbert’s doubtlessly well-meaning contribution. In a commentary dripping with sarcasm of a distinctly less than ecclesiastical nature, they opined that:  

To begin with, a contributor who signed himself "A Member of the Mission" wrote in, detailing the various accomplishments and supposed qualifications for the post of the new Bishop, the chief among which seems to be that, in accordance with the American humourist's recommendation, he was very careful in the choice of his parents, being himself the son of a Bishop. If grace were hereditary this might count for something, but we believe the most advanced ritualists only contend that apostolic grace comes down to us through episcopal fingertips, and not by natural succession. 

This ingenious writer goes on to say: "Whereas certain absurd reports are believed to be current as to ritualism at St. John's College, it may be well to add that Mr. Boone's election is not only satisfactory to the members, but is also thus spoken of in the leading Church paper," &c. To this another correspondent of the morning journal, signing himself "Justice," rejoined the following day: "It would have been very much more satisfactory to the friends of missions, particularly those connected with the P. E. Church, had the writer of the letter in your to-day's issue made a positive denial of the existence of ritualism at St. John's College. 

Even worse for Herbert Sowerby, and indeed for Ann Fanny Wombwell, the editors concluded, in a rather menacing tone that:

Taking the correspondence all round it shows up the local members of the P. E. Mission in a very unenviable light and we cannot refrain from expressing a desire that they would all look out for some honest secular employment and cease to hinder the progress of Christ's gospel by mystifying the poor heathen Chinese with their meaningless mummery.

For Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell, such performance appraisals can hardly have improved their sense of self-worth or feeling of appreciation for their sacrifices and for the services they had rendered. And it was not to get any better.

Herbert Sowerby Takes A Stand

At this point, Herbert Sowerby made his ill-advised decision  to enter the debate, communicating his own views, initially to the editor of the North-China Daily News. Herbert had the following to say regarding the suitability of William Jones Boone for the Bishopric of Shanghai.

Bishop Schereschewsky at prayer: It was his resignation that precipitated the crisis in the ranks of the Protestant Episcopal Mission. 

News was received by to-day's U.S. mail officially confirming a telegram received some weeks since that the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. had elected, subject to, the usual, confirmation by the several Dioceses, the Rev. Wm. J. Boone, M.A., as Missionary Bishop of Shanghai in succession to Bishop Schereschewsky lately resigned. 

The following facts maybe of local interest. Mr. Boone is the second son of the late Bishop Boone, the first Missionary Bishop of the Anglican Church, and who was consecrated so long ago as 1844, since which time many missionary bishops have been sent forth from England and the United States. Bishop Boone was one of the earliest settlers in Shanghai, and with others lived in the Chinese city before any house of the present settlement was built there. Mr. Boone was born in 1846; he was educated in the United States, graduated at Princeton College in 1865, and after the usual theological studies was ordained Deacon in the United States. Soon afterwards he was appointed missionary to China in 1869, and was ordered Priest in St. John's Church, Hankow, by Bishop Williams (now of Tokio) in 1870. He was stationed at Wuchang for some eight years, and then in 1879 was removed to St. John's College and appointed by the Bishop as Dean of the Theological Department, where he has been steadily working for the past five years. 

Whereas certain absurd reports are believed to be current as to ritualism at St. John's College, it may be well to add that Mr. Boone's election is not only satisfactory to the members of the mission, but is also thus spoken of in the leading Church paper:--"The Rev. Wm. J. Boone, Missionary Bishop elect of Shanghai, is a worthy son of his predecessor in the same office. He is a prudent and trustworthy man, and has the confidence of the friends of foreign missions. The House of Bishops may well be congratulated on electing to the office one who is already familiar with the work."

Yours truly,

A MEMBER OF THE MISSION. 

(Rev. H. Sowerby.)

This seems on the surface to be a fairly innocuous contribution, but it was to provoke some explosive responses, as we move into the month of June in 1884, not least because it seems that Herbert Sowerby initially chose to conceal his identity as the author of the missive. 

This would explain the initial response of a Mr F. McKeige that:

I regret very much that "A Member of the Mission" should have written that "Mr. Boone's election is not only satisfactory to the members of the mission "--without first consulting its members. He would then have had authority to write as he did, if all were in accord.

And this was merely the opening salvo.

A Pragmatist Replies

Margaret Hospital in Wuhan

Writing back to the Southern Churchman, where all this voluminous correspondence was published, Mr Graves wrote from Geneva in September 1883 with a historical parallel, and with a functional justification for the teaching of English that is peculiarly modern in its tone:

When Christianity came into the Roman Empire she found that education was founded on the great classics of antiquity. So far from rejecting these, she taught her children in them, thankfully acknowledging their value, and not forgetting to correct what was wrong in them by Christian teaching. And when Julian forbade Christians to study those books be was considered as having done a, grievous wrong to them, and his prohibition is cited as an act of persecution. 

In China all education for 2,000 years has been founded on the Confucian and Mencian classics. They lie at the root of all the civilization and culture which China possesses, and to call them "impotent," with the results before one's eyes in a mighty empire and an extensive literature, convicts whoever says it of entire ignorance of these great books and of their influence.

These classics are not books to be banished or prohibited. They are full of moral teaching; they are free from immorality, which cannot be said of the Latin and Greek classics; more than this, they are the books which are absolutely required for any entrance to the examinations of the scholars of the empire, so that not to know the classics is to cut oneself off from any chance of public life either as a teacher or as an officer of the government. 

English is studied because it is the language which is everywhere spoken in the East, and because there is a demand for it in China. It is the mercantile tongue and the medium of communication between all nations as they meet in the Chinese ports, and it throws open to the learner all Western knowledge at first hands, and not through the bald translations (few enough, too) which are accessible.

The Southern Churchman in their next editorial were by and large supportive of this view, stating that, realistically:

Christians take the sects of Protestant Christianity to the heathen, and with them their way of looking at things; but it is not likely that our way is going to be their way. They will work out for themselves their own forms. We must remember that theology is only our way of looking at the Bible. Theology, therefore, is not inspired; the Bible is inspired, but not our way of looking at it.--Each Christian nation has its own theology; and the Chinese will have their way, when once they begin to think for themselves and read the Bible with their own eyes. Our Western modes of thought are not going to be their methods; but both will be true, so far as both teach Christ as the only Saviour, to be received by the soul by faith and to be exhibited in a holy life.

By the standards of the time, these seem to have been liberal views indeed. 

A Purist Speaks

St John's College, Shanghai, from its Wikipedia Entry

As the great Protestant Episcopal Mission debate developed in 1883, a certain Mr Appleton expressed his umbrage at the time and effort being wasted in teaching the Chinese English, and furthermore, introducing the Chinese to the literary products of their own culture, specifically referring to the running of St. John’s College in Shanghai, under the management of William Jones Boone, the proposed candidate for the Bishopric:



There are others things I do seriously object to, if I, a novice, may be allowed an objection. In the college no less than five teachers are employed who are openly non-believers. What their belief is I do not know; but I do know that they are not confessing Christians. Let me be just, however. There are two, sides to the question. It is argued that a Chinaman is not educated unless he knows the Chinese classics, and, furthermore, that none but these heathen can properly teach these classics. 

Here a question is suggested; Are missions intended to teach the impotent Chinese classics? 
Once more: Does the study of English tend to promote the cause of Christianity among the natives? You will understand that this is a principal feature of St. John's College, though I believe this branch is partly self-supporting. Apropos of this subject I clip the following from a religious paper published in Shanghai:

These last (viz., English, and the three 'R's') are all useful in their way and are no doubt much appreciated by juvenile celestials who look, forward to one day entering foreign Hongs as office boys, shroffs or compradores. 

But for missionaries to engage in elementary instruction of this description is in our opinion from a Christian point of view practically so much time wasted… Let those Chinese who desire to see their sons become acquainted with the English language provide them with suitable teachers, and let missionaries look to their marching orders and confine themselves mainly to preaching the gospel. 

From the perspective of the dogmatic Mr Appleton, the role of the missionaries was very simple – it was a direct method of conversion of the Chinese to Christianity through their own language, and with no diversions into any other kind of cultural or linguistic side avenues. 

Internal Divisions

Not only did the China Missionary groups compete with each other for customers in their ethereal free market economy, they also managed to conjure up all kinds of internecine disagreements amongst themselves.  

From his Wikipedia Entry

In the case of Herbert Sowerby, his own particular entry into controversy resulted from the proposed appointment of the Rev. William Jones Boone as Missionary bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of China. 

This episode spawned an entire published volume of correspondence objecting to the appointment and the ‘wretched management of the church’ more generally.

Boone was accused again and again of ritualistic practices (akin to Catholicism) and all manners of other incompetence that clearly rendered him unfit for the position, and as the letters concerning the appointment bounced forwards and backwards some rather interesting positions regarding the whole Protestant Episcopal Mission enterprise reveal themselves. Herbert Sowerby seems to have made just one contribution to the debate, probably one that he came to regret, and which may have been another contributory factor in the decision of the family to leave China.

Protestant Missions in China, 1904

The Yale University Library includes in its holdings a full directory of the Protestant missions functioning in one way or another in China in 1904, listing both organisations and members in the field. This absolutely extraordinary document is almost Pythonesque in proportions. It does however give some indication into the organisational shambles of the missionary enterprise as a whole, not to mention the absolute fragmentation of the Christian faith into national-religious sects. And if missionary activity eventually provoked severe reactions from the local population, their patience worn down to a thread by the constant knocks on their doors, the directory list may at least provide some explanation for the savagery with which the missionaries were sometimes treated.  

And as an interesting side-note to this voluminous list, it may be noted that there is only one mention of any organisation that is actually 'British'. This absence provides just another clue to ongoing identity debates about what it means to be British, and suggests that religious affiliation has never been a binding imperative.

Either way, depending on where you lived, if you were Chinese, and looking for an alternative to your traditional beliefs and way of life at the turn of the twentieth century, it would appear that your options included participation with any of the following well-meaning groups:

1. American Friends Mission
2. American Norwegian Lutheran Mission
3. American Presbyterian Mission
4. American Protestant Episcopal Mission
5. American Reformed Presbyterian Mission
6. American Southern Baptist Mission
7. Basel Missionary Society
8. Berlin Foundling House
9. Berlin Missionary Society
10. Bible Christian Mission
11. British and Foreign Bible Society
12. Canadian Methodist Mission
13. Canadian Presbyterian Mission
14. Central China Religious Tract Society
15. China Baptist Publication Society
16. China Inland Mission
17. China Missionary Alliance
18. Chinese Tract Society
19. Christian and Missionary Alliance
20. Christian Catholic Church in Zion
21. Christian College in Zion
22. Christians’ Mission
23. Christian Vernacular Society of Shanghai
24. Church Missionary Society
25. Church of England Mission
26. Church of Scotland Mission
27. Cumberland Presbyterian Mission
28. Danish Lutheran Mission
29. Educational Association of China
30. English Baptist Mission (including Rev. A. Sowerby and wife)
31. English Methodist Mission
32. English Presbyterian Mission
33. English United Methodist Free Church
34. Finnish Free Church Mission
35. Foreign Christian Missionary Society
36. Friends’ Foreign Mission
37. German China Alliance Mission
38. Gospel Mission
39. Hauge’s Synodes Mission
40. Hildesheim Mission for the Blind
41. Independent
42. International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations’ Secretaries
43. Irish Presbyterian Church Mission
44. London Missionary Society
45. Lutheran Brethren Mission
46. Medical Missionary Society
47. Methodist Episcopal Church South, USA
48. Methodist Episcopal Mission
49. Methodist Protestant Church Mission
50. Methodist Publishing House in China
51. Mission for the Chinese Blind, Peking
52. Missionary Home and Agency
53. National Bible Society of Scotland
54. North China Tract Society
55. North West Kiangsi Mission
56. Norwegian Lutheran Mission
57. Norwegian Mission in China
58. Norwegian Missionary Society
59. Presbyterian Church of New Zealand Mission
60. Reformed Church in America
61. Reformed Church in The United States
62. Rhenish Missionary Society
63. Scandinavian American Christian Free Mission
64. Scandinavian China Alliance Mission
65. Scandinavian Missionary Alliance
66. Seamen’s Church and Mission Society
67. Seventh Day Adventist Mission
68. Seventh Day Baptist Mission
69. Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among The Chinese.
70. South Chihli Mission
71. Swedish American Missionary Covenant
72. Swedish Baptist Mission
73. Swedish Holiness Union
74. Swedish Mission in China
75. Swedish Missionary Society
76. The John G. Kerr Refuge for Insane
77. Unconnected
78. United Brethren in Christ
79. United Evangelical Church Mission
80. United Free Church of Scotland
81. United Society of Christian Endeavour for China
82. Wesleyan Missionary Society
83. Woman’s Union Mission
84. Yale University Mission
85. Young Men’s Christian Association of China, Korea and Hong Kong
86. Young Men’s Christian Association of Hong Kong
87. Young Men’s Christian Association of Tientsin.

Well, nobody can say that the Western colonialists did not offer some diversity to their Chinese interlocutors. At a later point in history, those same Western countries were to prove slightly less tolerant when the cultures and values of such countries as China started to impact on their own ways of life in their own cities, towns and villages. That though is another story.