Amy Isabel Oxley Wilkinson

Amy Isabel Oxley was the seventh child of John and Emma Oxley. Her forebears included a famous explorer and noted missionaries and clergy. Her father was a magistrate in New South Wales and later a representative of NSW in its parliament. Her mother “organized the domestic duties and children’s education, especially as her husband was often away on business” (Banks, They Shall See His Face, 1. All quotations are from this book). She grew up at “Kirkland,” the home of her paternal grandparents.

Childhood and youth: Preparation for life and ministry   

Life at “Kirkland” largely reflected upper middle-class Victorian values and routines. A live-in tutor taught the school age children the basic subjects connected with ‘reading, writing, and arithmetic,’ history and geography.  Activities like swimming, riding, and shooting, as well calisthenics, rounded out the curriculum. Popular children’s games of the period … were considered worthwhile educational play. Amy’s sisters learned the piano and singing … By making doll’s (sic) clothes, they were also taught to darn, sew, and knit. 

Routines at “Kirkland” sought to naturally integrate the Christian faith into the children’s lives. Morning and evening prayers, as well as Bible reading, were part of their everyday experience. Involvement in the life of … their local church, was a highlight of the week. This was often followed by extended family gatherings at nearby “Denbigh,” home of her late grandfather, Thomas Hassell, and his wife Anne Marsden, matriarch of the whole clan. Sunday lunch was full of engrossing stories about the lives and exploits of her distinguished forebears (Banks 2-3).

Such a childhood surely helped to shape Amy intellectually, physically, socially, and spiritually, and was surely the foundation upon which her later life and work were built. As we shall see, Amy replicated this pattern in her Blind Boys’ School.

A few years later, business setbacks forced Amy’s father to move his family into the center of Sydney, where their spacious home offered “genteel” accommodation for short and longer-term lodgers. Not long after this, Amy contracted scarlet fever, which was highly contagious and often life-threatening. “This early brush with death was her introduction to sickness and medicine, something that would become a lifetime focus” (5).

In 1875 ,she began to attend Glebe Public School, “the first educational institution in the area that was already gaining reputation for being progressive” (5). Amy was invited to become a pupil-teacher in this school. During a one-year course, like other trainees she was apprenticed as a teacher in the classroom. The family moved again to help care for her aunt. “During that time, rowing on the river that bordered the suburb became one of her favorite pastimes … She also enjoyed riding, swimming, shooting, and even sailing on a nearby river” (6). Such vigorous activity equipped her with a strong and disciplined body.

Further preparation for future ministry

In 1886, after she had been teaching for three years, she applied to the new Sydney Hospital for Sick Children for training. In the year before matriculation, she continued to help her aunt. She also began to attend a variety of interdenominational meetings, including “parlor meetings” on Sundays for visiting Christian workers. She started her training at the children’s hospital in Glebe, which catered mostly to “the children of poor and destitute families” (7).

She “began learning how to care for children with infectious and other deadly childhood diseases, congenital abnormalities, and conditions caused by malnutrition, as well as recovering from surgery after accidents… Amy learned the importance of getting to know and treating children personally” (8).

In 1890, she read Hudson Taylor’s influential article, “To Every Creature,” and attended a lecture by Mary Reed, the first Australian to go as a missionary with the China Inland Mission (CIM), on “Why I Went To China, and What I Saw There.” She also got to meet with missionaries preparing to out with Mary Reed to China. Finally, she was able to spend time with the Rev. Robert Stewart, a pioneer missionary with the Anglican Church Missionary Society, (CMS), who emphasized the powerful role that medical and educational work was playing in the mission to Chinese. Encouraged by an invitation from Stewart to join Nellie and Topsy Saunders, who were about to go to China with the Church Missionary Association, Australia’s branch of the CMS, she applied to the CMA. She was accepted, and, with the Saunders sisters, became among the first students of the Marsden Training Home in Sydney.

Over the next two years, she spent her time “studying the Christian faith, sharing with other committed young women, and preparing for missionary work… The program of study included the Bible, church history, and apologetics; practical subjects like missionary geography, first aid, and music; and electives on elementary and obstetric nursing” (11). Later, she “joined the course on obstetric nursing, which she passed with honors” (11).

Finally, in 1894, she was designated to Fukien (now spelled Fujian) Province in China. Anglican work in the province had begun in 1842, but at that time there were only sixteen Anglican missionaries there. Her departure was delayed for a while, so she stayed home working with the “Gleaners’ Unions,” an organization that raised money for missionary support. On August 1, 1895, the shocking news came of the massacre of missionaries at the missionary retreat center in the hills above Kucheng. Her friends and erstwhile missionary training classmates, Nellie and Topsy Saunders, were among those slaughtered by an anti-Western gang.[1] Though she was grief stricken, Amy’s resolve to go to China did not waver. In an article she wrote titled, “The Love of God as the Great Missionary Motive Power,” she explained why she remained firm in her determination to serve God among the Chinese.

Early years in China

Vivid descriptions, found in her letters and in reports by those who knew her, provide first-hand reports of her life and work in China. The authors of her biography quote extensive passages from these accounts.

Amy left Australia in December of 1895. Despite the pain of saying goodbye to her friends, she wrote, en route, “I found Jesus sufficient for everything” (15). When she arrived in Fuzhou a month later, winter was in full force. “It has been cold enough for thick dresses … hot bottle in bed, two blankets, and an eiderdown” (17).

Amy immediately plunged into full-time study of the local dialect of Chinese. Like thousands of missionaries before and after her, she found the language to be “difficult.” “And I do need the grace of God to learn it. I have a teacher, Ding Sing Ang, and I study between four and five hours a day. No one does more without in the end breaking down.” Nevertheless, she continued, “I am so glad I am here; every day I feel more glad” (18).

As she lived among the Chinese, Amy saw more and more clearly the pitiful plight of women:

I am so glad to be in China, for I begin to see how much these people need Jesus. When you come like this and see the women either shut up in homes in pain or ill-health from their little bound-up feet, or else field women who have to work morning till night, carrying heavy baskets full of refuse [to use as fertilizer], or working in the fields up to their knees in mud and water, it is then you see and realize difference between a Heathen and a Christian land – again the helplessness of the people, no joy in the life to come, no joy for the ones left here because the spirits of the departed one will come back and torment them if they are not fed, paper money put on their graves and crackers let off at certain times of the year… . 

[Seeing a sorrowing woman in the cemetery across from her window, she wrote] I just longed to go and tell her of the Saviour … From my window I can see thousands and thousands of graves and it is overwhelming to think of the wailing that has gone on year after year and to think of those who passed into the great unknown (18-19).

She and two other female missionaries, Miss Searle and Miss Newton, lived together on a station thirty miles from the nearest missionary. In their dispensary, they were treating about 150 patients a week, and keenly sensed the need for a hospital and a physician, at least two days a week. Chinese women would come to see this foreign house. Some would ask for medicine and, finding it to be useful, brought their friends to the missionaries, who combined medical treatments with gospel proclamation:

It is possible here to have an audience at a few moments’ notice and open the church doors and then play some hymns on the baby-organ, and in come all sorts and conditions from the proudest man in the long blue [scholar’s] coat to the dirtiest child imaginable and the people will listen by the hour while the gospel is preached to them … The people are very willing to receive us into their homes, and there are more invitations than we can accept (25).

At this time, though the educated elite claimed to follow the ethical teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism, the majority were poor and ignorant, and in the grip of the worship of ancestors and local deities. Foreign missionaries encountered, and were deeply moved by, social problems such as opium addiction, infanticide, foot-binding, and lack of schooling, especially for girls. In each case, in various ways, they actively sought to remedy these obstacles to the well-being of the people whom they loved.

During her first year in Deng Moi, Amy encountered a blind boy in a ditch who had been abandoned by his father because he was useless. A mother of another blind boy appealed to her: “He is my only son. I am a widow, and he is blind: do good deeds, and open his eyes and give him to see.” Any wrote: “Alas! His sight was beyond restoring, and the fact left a lasting impression on my mind. To be blind in China is a terrible thing. To be blind and of poor parentage is even more terrible. My sympathy was drawn out as I thought about them being blind of God’s beauteous world around and blind of Heaven’s own light!” (23).

Shortly afterwards, a typhoon led to Amy’s evacuation to Amoy (now Xiamen) further down the coast. While there, she was invited to visit a blind school. It was run by a Miss Graham, with the English Presbyterian Mission, who had brought out a blind Scotsman, a Mr. Cooke, who was to teach the blind Chinese. He showed her an English Braille Bible. She then adapted the Braille system to the romanized version of the Fuzhou dialect, into which parts of the Bible had been translated. She was the first person to turn the romanized version of the Fuzhou dialect Bible into Braille. The British and Froeign Bible Society agreed to print Romans and the Prayer Book version of the Psalms in this version. 

Upon her return to Deng Doi, she rented a small house. One side she used for a tiny classroom, and the other contained a combined kitchen and dining room. Her first student was Xiao Ning Kai, who was the only son of the widow who had earlier asked her for help.

Besides treating sick people and teaching blind boys, Amy itinerated in the villages around Deng Moi in her two-masted boat, “The Messenger of Peace,” using her dinghy, “The Active,” to go ashore. Years of sailing and rowing on the river had prepared her for this type of travel, unusual for a woman in China. At one village, she wrote, “hundreds heard the Gospel, over 15 children gave their names as willing to attend day school. Over 20 people were treated and a family publicly burned their idols. Our hearts were thankful” (25).

We should note at least two things here: Contrary to much practice by evangelicals in the past one hundred years, they did not ask their listeners to “make a decision for Christ,” but to take some other action to indicate interest in God. Most commonly, missionaries counted only those who had submitted to baptism after lengthy instruction and an interview by a missionary or Chinese pastor to assess the candidate’s readiness (See below). 

Second, though we don’t know the full content of the preaching they heard, at least one family spontaneously burned their idols, a radical step in Chinese society. Perhaps one major reason for their success was that the missionaries did not labor alone, but had the help of a Chinese catechist, who had for two years been Miss Searle’s language teacher. The use of Chinese co-workers was common from the early years of ministry in China. Hudson Taylor’s method of training new missionaries after initial language study was to send them out with an experienced Chinese evangelist.

In July, 1898, a fellow missionary wrote: 

Miss Oxley is Senior Missionary… there is medical work twice a week, with an average of at least eighty patients each time… Preaching goes on before and during the dispensing [of medical care, including medicines]. God is blessing the remedies used to heal many; and there are signs of spiritual results, too… There are two day-schools in this village… Miss Oxley has a women’s class on Tuesday and Sunday afternoons, which one of the others takes when she is itinerating. She had the joy of seeing 11 women, whom she had been preparing for some time, baptized in the chapel last Sunday” (27).

In a process sometimes called “redemption and lift,” Chinese Christian women began “to see the sin of foot binding and really it is beautiful the way they are unbinding in spite of the pain and the ridicule of the neighbors” (28). Most of these women would have not only attended church meetings but also attended the women’s school that she opened. Similarly, Amy sought the material benefit for the blind students, whom she taught to knit, to darn, and to do mat-working. She regularly appealed for donations for such expenses. In her letters home, she also asked for flannelette to make warm clothes for the boys in the cold of winter.

Like most missionaries, Amy and her associates pursued a policy of constructing buildings for the exclusive use of church meetings. These they called “churches.” A new one was opened in Deng Moi in 1898, the funds having come almost entirely from donations by CMA supporters in Australia and Tasmania. Again, like many Protestant missionaries, they also built a school building, which was opened in 1899.

While she was preparing for furlough, the Boxer Uprising took place, causing much anxiety, but Amy and other missionaries were given safe lodging in Fuzhou until the crisis was over. 

Furlough

After six years of exhausting work in China, Amy sailed for Sydney in 1901. In common with many missionaries before and after her, she found it hard to readjust to life at home. She found that her friends had trouble relating to her experiences in China. The daily challenges of missionary life did not interest most of them.

She did have many opportunities to present her ministry at different meetings around New South Wales, “in churches, schools, public halls, YWCA meeting, and homes” (36). Audiences enjoyed seeing her in Chinese dress, handling the curios she had brought back, and hearing her describe “the rescue work among the blind and abandoned children,” and they were willing to contribute money for the construction of a school for the blind boys (36). 

One report said, “A most interesting address … dealt with three different features of the work – the educational, the evangelical [evangelistic] and the medical. Miss Oxley expressed herself as thoroughly charmed with the work, despite its almost insuperable difficulties. One of the greatest of these, she explained, was connected with the mastery which had to be gained over the peculiarities of the language… Miss Oxley is a ready and captivating speaker, and she treats her subject in a homely style” (36-37).

Amy did find a warm and understanding welcome with her cousin and aunt, with whom she could be herself. She returned to China in October, 1901, refreshed and with renewed vision. While on the voyage, she learned that she would not only resume teaching the blind boys, but also replace the head nurse at a dispensary at North Gate in Fuzhou.

Second term in China

When she arrived, she found that Dr. George Wilkinson was now in charge of the dispensary. After obtaining a B.A degree at Cambridge, he began an internship with the Bolton Infirmary in London, which served the inner-city poor. Over the next few years, he earned a Social Apothecary Licentiate, a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, and a Master of Arts degree. He served as a surgeon in Middlesex Hospital and then director of the Islington Medical mission to the working- class people of East End London. After being accepted by the CMS in 1899, he attended courses in Theology and Cross-Cultural Studies at the CMS Training School in Islington. Like Amy, therefore, he received excellent preparation for missionary work in China.

Amy was immediately thrown into intense service to people hit by a major outbreak of the plague. She and George worked closely together both then and afterwards when she bore responsibility both for the blind school and also the dispensary. She wrote, announcing the news of their engagement, that he was “a man whom I have met at all times of the day and night in connection with the medical work for six months and as the days have gone by I have found out what a good and true man he is. A most considerate Christian, a thorough missionary, and a clever doctor… He will help me with the Blind School and I trust I may be of some help to him in his medical work… He gives such helpful Bible readings [i.e., messages] every fortnight” (42).

George was not well-to-do, and his family were not happy with his forsaking a predictable and prominent future as a physician in England, but “he is true and good, and God is binding us together in bonds of His own love… I know I have spent weeks in prayer about the matter, but I am fully convinced it is of the Lord” (43). George was 36 at the time, and Amy was 35. Both were mature Christians and proven Christian workers.

They were married on October 1 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Fuzhou. Marriage changed Amy’s status as a member of CMS, which, like other missions, required her to resign from the mission, though they continued to print her reports in their publications. She could now make decisions on the shape and pace of her work without reference to the CMS, however.

After returning from their honeymoon, George and Amy participated in the opening of the new hospital and blind school, funds for which had come from George’s supporters as well as Amy’s. In accordance with Amy’s wishes, the school was built in a Chinese style, though inside, of course, everything reflected its purpose as an institution offering a well-rounded program for the students.

While at home, Amy had visited the Sydney Industrial Blind Institution, which aimed to equip its students to become productive, self-supporting members of society. She wanted to provide a safe place for them, where they could feel that they were being treated as image-bearers of God, and loved as individual persons, in sharp contrast to their previous experience. Amy established an environment where “relationships between students and teachers were respectful but tempered by a loving, family atmosphere. Amy rejected the title ‘Principal’ and insisted she be called instead ‘Aunt Teacher,’ a term that endeared her to the students” (46-47).

In contrast to Chinese families and schools, “Amy saw play as increasing the boys’ gross motor skills” through both structured and unstructured activities. “All these forms of play were used to develop posture, agility, cooperation, and confidence” (47). Her own early experiences as a pupil-teacher showed her the potential of older students helping the younger ones. Consequently, she trained some of them to assist the younger boys with learning Braille and learning work and play skills, and even to do pastoral work among patients in the hospital. Her first and best student, Ling Kai, who eventually helped Amy to translate the New Testament into Braille, served as a “missionary teacher,” and then assisted Amy in a new school for blind girls.

Amy was especially encouraged to see a steady stream of boys offer themselves for baptism, and to witness the numerical growth of the boys’ blind school from 16 in 1901 to 55 in 1905.

Meanwhile, George expanded the out-patient work of the hospital, began to train Chinese to become doctors, and oversaw the construction of a new men’s hospital with fifty beds. Nor did he neglect the spiritual needs of his patients. He initiated, and regularly spoke at, a Monday worship service, during which the Chinese staff also shared their testimonies and distributed Scripture portions and Christian literature. He also began a Friday Communion service for believers.

Their constant labors often kept Amy and George from spending time together, so they took vacations in a rented house in Kuling. They often itinerated together in surrounding areas, which also gave them time together.

In 1905, Amy gave birth to a daughter, Isabel Oxley. Sadly, Isabel was often sick, leading George to do further studies in tropical medicine and hygiene during this furlough in England.

As he became aware of the large and growing number of opium addicts, George began to develop new ways to deliver them from this dreaded affliction. He administered pills with decreasing amounts of morphine, depending upon the severity of each patient’s addiction. The success of his treatment led to invitations from surrounding villages for his services and showed the Chinese the connection between healing and the Christian faith. Their ministry to opium addicts and to blind boys gained the attention of senior Chinese officials, who presented them with a lacquer board honoring their work and listing the names of local donors who had donated beds.

Furlough (1907-1914)

For the nine months that they spent in London, George worked as a surgeon to cover the cost of a three-month professional course at the London School of Tropical Medicine. Amy was happy finally to meet George’s family. “At the annual Conference of the Medical Mission Association in London, George was one of the international speakers representing the four largest member societies” (54).

From England they sailed for Australia, where George was now able to meet Amy’s family and friends and introduce Isabel to them. Being “in the country for over two months to rest, read, walk, ride, and simply ‘be’ a family – which was very difficult for them to do in China – restored their health and hearts” (55). Then George began his deputation work for CMS.

Speaking at a variety of meetings, he shared his optimism that the old order in China was passing, and a new openness to things Western provided opportunities for the church, if it would grasp them. He spoke at a variety of meetings.

Renewed ministry in Fuzhou

Not long after they returned to Fuzhou, their son Marsden Oxley Wilkinson was born. For quite a while, Amy was naturally tied up with caring for her children. With Isabel often “sickly and prone to fits, Amy hardly had time to come for air” (59).

George, meanwhile, applied what he had learned while gaining his diploma in tropical diseases by writing a report for the CMS about the main tropical diseases in Fujian: Cholera, smallpox, liver disease and elephantiasis, malaria (especially in the countryside), and dengue fever.

He also resumed his care for opium addicts. As with physical illnesses, he addressed the moral and spiritual issues as well, through preaching, lantern lectures, and Christian literature. He and his team gave patients “a sheet containing on one side the Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments, [Apostles’] Creed and the Golden Rule, and on the other two hymns” (62). They also handed out copies of John’s Gospel.

In the early spring of 1910, the government asked Amy to present the work of the Blind Boys’ School at the international Nanking Exhibition to be held in May. She included several graduates from the school in her presentations. As a result, more opportunities for promoting the school opened up, especially for the Blind Boys’ Band. Twelve boys traveled from one city to another, singing hymns and demonstrating the fruits of their education by reading the Chinese Classics and even writing. The scholars marveled at their skills, and wondered “why the ’foreign child’ [Amy] troubles to teach these things to blind boys.” They responded, “The one true God, the heavenly Father, has sent us. He is love” (65).

In 1910, a new outpatient building was added to the hospital. The vice-president of the Provincial Assembly and representatives from the foreign settlement attended the opening ceremony. The Anglican bishop and the American consul “gave addresses on the importance of medical missionary work in China” (66). The next year, the Medical Union College opened its doors, sponsored by the Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Methodists. George continued teaching courses to the “small but increasing number of medical students” (66).

The Revolution of 1911 brought changes to China, including a fragile democracy, new medical centers, and boarding schools for both girls and boys. In April of 1913, the new government ordered the observance of a national Day of Prayer, declaring, “Let us all take part. Representatives of the provincial authorities are requested to attend the services, which will be sincerely carried out by the entire Chinese and Christian forces of the nation” (68). By 1913, the school had eighty students. 

Amy’s Blind Boys’ School also continued to grow. In March of that year, Ling Kai, the first pupil whom Amy taught, was promoted to Mandarin status for his scholarly translations in Braille and for his long-proven teaching abilities. Thirteen older boys also formally graduated from the school” (67). At the ceremony, “a quartet sang ‘Holy, Holy, Holy in Chinese… Two boys played the cornet, two the violin and they sang as a chorus ‘Hallelujah’” (68).

Amy’s reputation as an educator of the blind spread far and wide. In 1913, she received an invitation to attend and speak to the Triennial International Conference on the Blind to be held the next year at Westminster in London. Prominent experts, including Helen Keller, came from all over the world to discuss ways to improve the condition of sightless people. Amy spoke on the challenges and process of translating the Braille Bible into the Fujian dialect. Her main address introduced the Blind School, including its history and current condition, as well as mentioning its growing popularity among all classes of Chinese society. With captivating detail, she took the audience on a “tour” of the school, illustrating all aspects of its educational program.

Amy was also given the honor of speaking at the Keswick Convention in the Lake District.

1915-1920

The outbreak of World War I changed their plans to sail from England to Australia. Instead, they stayed longer in England where, like many other missionaries, for several reasons, they settled their children into the care of relatives so that they could attend schools there. The decision was most painful, but they believed that their children could receive a better education, and live more safely, than in China.

Returning to Fuzhou in early 1916, they found that the hospital had received large gifts and honors from high government officials. Over the next couple of years, they also had to deal with more epidemics than usual, stretching their resources to the limit. George had to take some time to recover from dengue fever, so he asked Ling Kai to write the annual letters to supporters about the spiritual side of the hospital’s work, an indication of the trust he placed in this mature evangelist and teacher.

An interview that Amy had given for the journal, Outlook for the Blind, told how she had solved a major problem by teaching the boys how to make Chinese straw matting, which could be used in the production of furniture. She had secured orders for various products made by the boys from factories in England and America that helped financed the Blind School.

To promote the work of the school further, Amy wrote “a booklet to describe the growth, practices, and goals of the school” (77). Its title was “The Soul-Lighted School of Foochow.” As in her address to the international conference, she takes an imaginary Chinese visitor on a “tour” of the school on a typical day, and then describes in detail the scope of the curriculum: academic content, training in a trade, music, singing, and games, athletics, and sports. Some were further trained to become teachers or evangelists.

Amy also organized concerts for the Boys’ Band in other cities in Fuzhou and surrounding provinces. They performed more than twenty times over the next two years, bringing news of the Blind School to many classes of people and officials who had not heard of it before. Gifts to the school by those who heard these concerts not only covered the expenses of the long tour, but “provided enough money to carry on the school’s work for six months” (87).

Amy returned to Australia in August of 1918. She first visited family and old friends. An article in The Sydney Morning Herald noted her return with an article entitled “Teaching Blind Boys: A Missionary Starts with one Child and how has 95” (83). Clearly, the work she had done with the support of Christians in her homeland had gained much recognition and honor.

While she was away, the hospital celebrated its twentieth anniversary. George wrote that “the work ‘has now won an established position in this central city and indeed in a great deal of the northern part of the province as well.’ This acceptance was despite limitations imposed by equipment, financial constraints, and treatments that some patients would not allow” (85).

Amy and George were planning to go on furlough soon, so Amy appointed a new principal to replace her, the Rev. E.M. Norton, a CMS missionary from England with years of experience teaching at Trinity College in Fuzhou. For his part, George “arranged for his Chinese colleague, Dr. Ting, to supervise the Cha Cang hospital while he was on furlough” (87).

Civic leaders in Fuzhou had petitioned the government for Amy to receive the Order of the Golden Grain, the highest honor awarded to foreigners in China. More than a thousand guests assembled for the ceremony, including the Governor-General, the mayor of the city, and the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. The award itself was ordered by the President of the Republic of China. “The last and most impressive of many speeches was by Mr. Guok [the Confucian leader] himself. The old man’s gratitude for what had been done for these helpless boys struggled with shame that it had been left for a foreigner to do it” (87-88).

Three complimentary boards were presented. They were “six by two-and-a-half feet with beautifully composed characters. On one was written, ‘Those who restore to others that which they lack are worthy of great honor.’ On a second, ‘Light, Clear, Brilliant, Help the world.’ And on a third, written by the president of the Republic in Chinese, on gold silk with an official seal.” Amy commented, “It is an honor to the school to have received these marks of distinction from the Government, and their real value lies in the fact they indicate an awakening of China to an appreciation of what is being done for the blind in Christ’s name” (90).

Further demonstrating the high esteem and gratitude that their work had gained, “before leaving with Dr. Wilkinson for England on a well-earned furlough, the military and civil governors of the Province presented Mrs. Wilkinson with a special medal for good works” (90).

1921-1949

When they arrived back in England, Amy and George realized that further separation from their children was not possible; they were simply needed too much at home.

Sadly, they sent a letter of resignation to the CMA, which was equally sadly accepted. George set up a private medical practice in the front room of their rented house in Beaconsfield, near London, to help meet living expenses. Amy took care of household responsibilities, including caring for young Marsden. Without the kind of domestic help she had had in Chinese, she found her work load to be very heavy.

The CMS annual exhibition, the first since the end of the war, provided her with an opportunity once more to promote the blind school. This was a huge event, which a quarter of a million people attended in May and June. Its theme was, “Africa and the East,” and it aimed to demonstrate “the worthwhileness of missionary work today.” Eight blind boys came from China to represent the school at the part of the exhibit displaying the work of the school. Their musical performances captured the attention and won the affection of thousands of visitors and brought greater attention to Amy, about whom the bishop of London wrote, “through her Christly work as foundress of the Boys’ Blind School, and as guardian mother to these lads now in our country is an effective argument for the Christian mission” (94). Amy was especially honored to be presented to Queen Mary when she visited the CMS exhibition.

For Amy, the Exhibition was only the starting point of a five-month, five thousand miles tour of one hundred and thirty towns and cities across England. Events were generally held in large public venues such as town or guild halls, … in parks, gardens, on piers, and occasionally in large churches or chapels. There were often afternoon and evening concerts, with separate performances for children and adults …  

Newspaper accounts indicate the presence of local aristocracy and professional people at all these events. Typical comments about the evening include references to “beautiful singing,” “novel instruments,” and “impressive reading of Scripture.” There is frequent mention of “very large attendance … and “enthusiastic response” (96-97).

Despite being exhausted by all the travel and work involved with the tour, Amy felt that it was an enormous success. The school gained wide recognition, many more people saw the value of overseas missions, the boys learned new trades, and the sale of tickets not only covered all costs but also made a substantial contribution towards the financial stability of the school in coming years.

While in England, Amy and George heard of the widespread anti-Western demonstrations taking place in China in 1926. Later, news came that the school and hospital had been destroyed by leftist agitators. Both institutions had been rebuilt and reopened by the end of 1928, however.

Meanwhile, the contacts Amy had made with the British foreign service office in London led to her being asked to assist Chinese who had moved there with translations, filling out documents, finding jobs, and accessing community services. Beginning in 1923, Amy began to spend more and more time with the Chinese living in East London, including students, seamen and their families. Over the next few years, she visited them in their homes, and then rented a hall for them, hosting English classes, “children’s clubs, Scouts and Cubs, Sunday school, and church services,” for which she received a small stipend from the British embassy and the London Chinese Evangelical Mission.

Always a skilled organizer, Amy mobilized a team of volunteers to assist her, so that “by the early 1930s she was reaching up to three thousand men, women, and children a year” (103). Amy and George moved to a house closer to his new practice in Fulham. Over the years, they welcomed many Chinese into their home, as well as many China Inland Mission workers, some of whom Amy mentored for later service in China.

On the weekends, George helped, sometimes using his expertise in freeing people from opium addiction, a major problem in Chinatown. He also worked with their mission outreach to poorer and working-class Jewish immigrants. 

Back in China, more stable conditions led to the expansion of both the hospital and the blind school. The hospital now had several doctors, more nurses, and midwives. The training program for nurses that George had started was recognized as one of the best in China.

World War II brought disruptions, as the German blitz targeted not only military installations and industrial sites, but also residential districts in an attempt to demoralize the people. Likewise, in Fuzhou, the Japanese army wrought destruction wherever it advanced. Both the school and the hospital were ransacked and badly damaged. 

In March 1949, Amy learned that she had cancer. She died on June 6 of that year. George, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, was moved to a retirement home for doctors. He died on November 18, 1951, and was buried next to Amy.

Evaluation and legacy

Amy Oxley and George Wilkinson exemplified the best of Western missionaries. Each displayed unusual intelligence and competence, Amy in her pioneer initiatives in educating blind boys and translating the Braille Scriptures into two dialects of Fujian, and George in his treatment of opium addicts. Both were outstanding organizers and administrators: Amy built the Blind Boys’ School from one student to more than a hundred, and George founded a hospital that constantly grew in the number of patients and in the variety of care offered. Amy and George knew the multiplying power of training Chinese to participate in the work, and each of them successfully raised up Chinese leaders and teachers.

Amy, especially, excelled in promoting the Blind Boys’ School both in China and in the West. Using a variety of methods, including vivid writing, music, tours, exhibits, and artifacts, she captured the attention of Chinese and Westerners alike, pointing out the needs of blind children in China and showing how these unfortunates could be effectively helped to lead independent and productive lives. Amy took advantages of newer educational theory and techniques to give her boys a well-rounded program that developed their minds, bodies, and souls.

When they had to settle permanently in England, rather than withdrawing from ministry to Chinese, they pioneered full-orbed service to emigrants from China, something that has broadened out into a major emphasis of Christian ministry to Chinese since the 1990s.

Unlike many, perhaps most, of the Social Gospel-oriented missionaries who came to China in large numbers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the Wilkinsons knew that people had spirits as well as bodies, and diligently engaged in evangelism, Bible teaching, and pastoral care for the Chinese whom they served. They trained Chinese evangelists and teachers as well, knowing that they would be much more effective in communicating the Christian message to their countrymen.

In other words, though they were “specialists” within the Church Missionary Society, they did not relegate gospel ministry to their CMS colleagues who worked in churches, etc., but partnered with them as being equally committed to the fundamental calling of the missionary – to lead Chinese into the saving  knowledge of Christ and growth into Christian maturity within Christian congregations that corporately manifested the love of God to their neighbors.

To be sure, like all of us, they had faults. For example, in 1899, early in her missionary career, Amy wrote: “I do long to be more full of God’s Holy Spirit, and there is such a lot of daily sin to be confessed. One thing I often fail in and that is hasty words, often indignations that I have no right under any circumstances to speak hastily.” True, there were provocations to her anger, for she continues, “These sick people often make me completely out of patience with them. Perhaps I have and with much care and trouble succeeded in washing a clean wound, an abscess that has been filled with earth, and in four days it is really beginning to improve, to find the patient does not turn up. Then he comes again hand filled with mud!!! And he expects me to go through everything again. Then my nerves seem to tingle and I tell him what a goose he is. And then I wish I hadn’t” (30).

Nevertheless, during all their missionary career, through economic hardship, epidemics, violent civil unrest, and war, they lived as consistent followers of Christ. Their character and conduct showed what Christian discipleship should like.

As a result, they won the affection of the missionaries and Chinese among whom they served, leading Chinese citizens and government officials, and their supporting public in Australia and England.

When the authors of their biography visited China in 2016, they were warmly welcomed by the leaders of the Blind School, now a government institution. Their hard work continues to bring healing and hope to the blind in China.

G. Wright Doyle

[1] For a full description of this chilling event, which led to a surge in applications for mission work in China, see Robert and Linda Banks, Children of the Massacre: The Extra-Ordinary Story of the Stewart Family in Hong Kong and West China. In Through the Valley of the Shadow, pgs. 1-21, these authors describe the life and death of Eleanor and Elizabeth Saunders.