by Linda Banks
After graduating with a B.A. in 1888, George began an internship with the Bolton Infirmary in London, working among the inner-city poor. Over the next few years, he continued his training and in 1891 gained a Social Apothecary Licentiate in London, in 1892 a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery and in 1893 a Master of Arts. After a time he became house surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital and then director of the Islington Medical Mission in the working-class East End of London. These positions were good preparation for China to which, despite opposition from his family, he felt increasingly called. On 7 February 1899, George applied to CMS and was accepted for Foochow. During the months before he left, he undertook some occasional cross-cultural and theological courses at the nearby CMS Training College in Islington.
4.2 The Soul-Lighted School with a Bible motto above the entrance.
Shortly after her arrival in Foochow towards the end of November 1901, Amy rented a building on Nantai Island as a temporary location for the Blind School and arranged for the 17 blind boys from Lieng Kong to join her. Sadly, two of the boys unexpectedly died and she also had difficulty finding blind teachers to assist her who would be fully committed to the work. Such challenges led her to write: ‘Why God has given me this work to do I know not, the very last kind of work I would choose but I am perfectly certain He has given it to me to do and I really do want to do it joyfully.’ 13
She was encouraged by the provision of a larger rented property in Hualin Lane that was closer to the dispensary.
During the summer, Foochow, which in hot months was vulnerable to plague, suffered a major epidemic followed by an outbreak of cholera. This resulted in 1300 coffins being carried out of the city in one day. Dr Wilkinson, Amy and the Chinese nursing team were kept extremely busy. The strain on medical facilities propelled George’s plans to open a small men’s ward and add a new women’s ward that included an operating room.
Dr Wilkinson offered his construction workers to help Amy build her new Blind School on land she purchased between the hospital and the northern wall of the Old City. Wanting her school to reflect Chinese rather than Western architectural styles, she insisted it have an attractive, curved, pagoda-style roof. The whole building was designed as a place for blind boys to live, learn and work. She employed a matron who was both a committed Christian and experienced in working with children. Over the years Amy had been working with the blind, a picture that kept coming into her mind was of heaven as a place where everything would be fully restored, one in which crying, illness and pain would be no more. She often talked to the boys about this. After much reflection, she decided on a name for the new home for the blind boys – in spoken English, ‘The Soul-Lighted School’.14 Inscribed above its entrance were the words ‘They Shall See His Face’ – a quote from Revelation 22:4 which continues ‘and His name shall be on their foreheads.’15
院書光靈
Amy, like many single female missionaries at the time who were focused on their calling, had not expected to marry. This was even less likely in a province where there were so few male missionaries, most of whom were married.16 Since there is no hint of a romantic relationship in any of her previous correspondence, presumably she had little experience in this area. Possibly because of an all-or-nothing approach to her work, she may have appeared too threatening for most potential suitors. Amy’s growing relationship with George, however, was nurtured through their mutual work, as her personal correspondence to Isabel over the following year indicates.
Today I have been busy with out and in patients at the Hospital and this evening have been busy with a baby of 7 months who has bronchitis. I really do not know how I am going to do School and Hospital work. Of course Dr Wilkinson will come and see any serious cases, but then I have to carry out all his orders …
I find it very difficult to get letters written with 9 paid people in connection with the Hospital and Blind School … I am very happy indeed here, happier than I have ever been in spite of having so much to do. I will enclose a copy of Dr Wilkinson’s house and you will see how the bow windows and roof look. It is very much like the place we planned …
I now have something of great importance to tell you and dear Auntie, I am engaged to be married to Dr George Wilkinson, 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 true and good man he is. A most considerate Christian, a thorough missionary, and a clever doctor, I can see how wonderfully God has been working out His Plan and Purpose, I will only have to move next door. I think I sent you a photo of the house … not thinking I would ever live there. He will help me with the Blind School and I trust I may be of some help to him in his medical work. Oh I am very happy about it and I feel sure mother and Aunt Lizzie will be very happy about it. He is not an honorary missionary, nor has he private means. His father is dead. Mother and sisters and several brothers in England, but none of them in sympathy with him. Do pray for him when you pray for me. I hope some day you will know him. He gives us such helpful Bible readings every fortnight … I want to write heaps but there are so many I must write to about this …
I think the wedding will be middle of October. There is nothing to wait for any longer as it only seems like just going next door. We have been working together all these months and we hope to go on doing so. You will probably want to know what I am going to do about a trousseau etc. I am not going to have one, but am writing to Aunt Lizzie about a few things I must have. One is a wedding dress. I think white Persian lawn …They say I must ask all my missionary friends but I don’t want anything grand … he is so good and true.17
In further letters she wrote:
The more I know George the more I see how fortunate I am. He has already been awfully nice and thoughtful about my friends out here and he looks upon friendship as a very sacred thing … No, George does not have a large banking account or a long line of Ancestors but he is true and good and God is binding us together in the bonds of His own love …
I am at Kuliang but only staying in this house for a week and then go to Minna Searle. I have not seen George for a week and he was to have come up this morning, but a letter came instead saying he felt he could not with a clear conscience leave the work until Thursday, so we must be patient. I would far rather put God and the work first and I am glad he would, for I know he is simply longing to come up.
I feel that you can understand so well what it means to be loved by a good man … I know I spent weeks in prayer about the matter, but I am fully convinced it is of the Lord. It was so wonderful the way in which He took me into Foochow City and right to the very spot where I should see so much of Dr Wilkinson … I never would have grown to care for Dr Wilkinson if I had not seem him day by day faithfully doing his work and so truly caring to win the people for Christ … the photo I sent is a bad one, it is difficult to get a good one out here. He has shaved off his beard, he looks very much younger, he is 36 years old, and I am 35, so that is just right.
The wedding was fixed for 11am on 1 October at St John’s Episcopal Church, Nantai Island, with Archdeacon Wolfe and Rev. Martin performing the ceremony. After a wedding breakfast at the Wolfe’s, the couple were to leave on their honeymoon, by houseboat to Kucheng.
It is three weeks today to the wedding day. I am on [Nantai] Island at present seeing about the making of my wedding dress. I suppose I am very foolish but I cannot help thinking of the wedding of the girls [her sisters] and their trousseaus when Father was alive. The few things I have got I had to get myself and my dear boat, the proceeds of the sale of it is going to pay for what Aunt Lizzie got in Sydney … [PRIVATE: I was really disappointed … She is a dear old thing but no taste. The Orange Blossom was one common spray, the black dress a thick flounced canvas which would suit Mother. In Foochow the missionaries sometimes ask each other out to Dinner in the evening and at Xmas and … one can wear a suitable frock … but alas a thick-old fashioned canvas! Then the dressing gown. I asked
for a flannel and she sent something like hers with dreadful red satin instead and very coarse lace on the neck. Oh dear, and the price of the things, 11 pounds, for just those and nun’s veiling, and vests, etc. … everything is so expensive … I thought I didn’t care a pin about a trousseau but I would like to have a few new underclothes. We will be pretty cramped in a boat going upriver and it will be funny for a man to see my things, but he is such a dear fellow and so awfully nice about everything and he understands. Mrs Wolfe is so kind and going to ask the missionaries and give them tea and cake afterwards. There will be over 80 of course. Most of our own missionaries are up country but I am friends with all the Americans and they seemed to make up their minds to come, invite or no. The two bridesmaids, Minna Searle and Marta Barr, are to wear white and buttercup ribbons.18
4.3 Recent photo of St John’s Church, Nantai, where Amy and George were married.
Amy and George spent the first part of their honeymoon on the island of Sharp Peak, and they concluded it with a 250-mile tour of inland medical mission stations by sedan chairs, from Kucheng in the west through several small villages to Deng Doi in the east, where Amy caught up with her earlier co-workers. Their marriage brought with it not only a change in Amy’s personal status but in her position with CMS. At that time, a female missionary who married had to formally resign from the organisation. She could no longer remain on the official ‘roll of missionaries’ and from then on was generally referred to as Mrs, or sometimes Mrs (Dr), George Wilkinson. The Society wanted to stress, however, that it retained ‘a lively interest in her work, and continued to include reports from her in its publications.19 Amy knew that in marrying George she would lose her formal missionary status, but George always regarded her as a partner in their work. An advantage was that from now on she could decide without reference to CMS where to direct her energies. This meant that, once Miss Massey had returned from furlough, Amy could devote herself full-time to the work of the Blind School and travel on its behalf whenever and wherever she wished. Yet, publicly, the loss of her link with the Oxley family, and no longer being referred to by her first name, was an ongoing struggle.
院書光靈
On returning from their honeymoon, Amy and George were caught up with final preparations for the official opening of both the hospital and new Blind School that were set to take place on Monday 1 December 1902. Those invited were local civic dignitaries, including the Chinese viceroy and British consul; representatives of missionary societies; CMS colleagues and local Christians; staff from other hospitals; and teachers and pupils from the Blind Boys School. There was an impressive fireworks display, which for the Chinese always heralded something important. In the dedication service, addresses were given by Bishop Hoare from Hong Kong, Archdeacon Wolfe and George himself. Musical items were provided by the Blind School.
The new facilities for the school gave Amy the opportunity to further develop her vision for educating the blind. During her recent furlough, she had spent time at the Sydney Industrial Blind Institution – precursor of the Royal Blind Society – whose commitment to the whole person and helping the blind become self-supporting had enlarged her outlook. Up till now, her work with the blind boys had been largely instinctive, feeling her way rather than implementing a program. Now she had a clearer template and outcomes for what she wanted to achieve, one based on the Sydney Institution’s motto of ‘Teaching Independence Through Industry’.20 Her more picturesque Chinese equivalent of this was ‘Feed your Mouth with your Hands’. Amy now saw the school as a safe space that enabled the students to become well-rounded and self-sufficient adults, training them for specific occupations and finding placements for them in the wider workforce. For her, of course, it also involved seeing the boys as made in the image of God, developing their spiritual growth and character, and having a definite purpose in his world.
Amy organised the school into kindergarten, junior primary and senior primary departments. In the kindergarten, activities were primarily focused around play. In the junior school, students learned their national language, abacus, singing and Christian beliefs. In the senior school, they also studied history, geography, English, music and writing.21 As one would expect in a Chinese setting, relationships between students and teachers were respectful, tempered by a loving, family atmosphere. Amy rejected the title ‘Principal’ and insisted she be called instead ‘Auntie Teacher’, a term that endeared her to the students.
After their morning studies, afternoons were given over to various kinds of work and play.
This afternoon I sat down for some time and watched them; one boy was making a bamboo hen-coop, and I really marvelled at the quickness with which he twisted the bamboo in and out; two boys were making bamboo blinds, one of them singing hymns the whole time; three boys were making rope, each knowing his part – three working as one; three boys were making basket-lids, and I can hear them chattering away all the time; one boy was making string; seven very small boys making twisted string, and I was surprised suddenly to hear [one] six year old singing, ‘Hark! the herald angels sing’ really very correctly. One boy was splitting bamboos, and another was here, there, and everywhere – ‘little Quicksilver’ I call him, as it is difficult to get him to sit still for five minutes. Then I pass through to the school room, and the hum of voices soon told me that no one was wasting his time there.22
Amy saw play as developing the boys’ gross motor skills. Traditionally, Chinese children were often restrained so they would not harm themselves. The school playground now gave them a large and secure area to engage in organised games, such as seesaw, tug of war, sung exercises like Hokey Pokey or Oranges and Lemons, climbing high and low bars, flag drills and races. There was also opportunity for unstructured activities during the boys’ free time. All these forms of play were used to develop posture, agility, cooperation and confidence.
4.4 Students at the Blind Boys School on seesaws and parallel bars.
As the blind can develop a heightening of other senses, such as hearing, music education was an important part of the school’s curriculum. This strategy built on the Chinese tradition of the blind becoming travelling musicians. So Amy sought to incorporate singing, reading music and playing keyboard instruments, such as the accordion and organ, into her instruction as much as possible. As music came naturally to Amy, this was a great joy, especially when she could accompany a choir on the harmonium. Already known for her skill in playing a tin whistle, people who knew her were ‘therefore not astonished to see in the CMA publication a picture of a drum-and-penny-whistle band, composed of boys from the blind school.’ 23
4.5 An older student at the Blind Boys School serving in Cha Cang Hospital, Foochow.
Drawing on her own early experience as a pupil-teacher, Amy realised she could call on senior boys in the school to assist newer ones in learning Braille – not only teaching them to read but giving them experiences as close as possible to what they were reading. They could also help other boys gain work and play skills. As well, a few of the older boys began to undertake pastoral work among patients in the hospital next door.
Amy’s first ever student, Ling Kai, was an outstanding example of this. Despite some occasional lapses in his behaviour, the worst of which was experimenting with opium, he had continued to make progress – educationally, vocationally and spiritually. After helping to translate most of the New Testament into Braille, in 1903 he became a ‘missionary’ teacher and began work among the blind in one of the inland provincial cities (whose dialect Amy also helped to translate into Braille). As this was a paid position, Ling Kai no longer required financial support (which until then had come from her cousin Isabel) and became an embodiment of the school’s goal of making its students financially self-sufficient. When, two years later, a school for blind girls was finally opened on Nantai Island, Amy taught Braille to its first principal, Emilie Stevens from Tasmania, and Ling Kai moved back to Foochow to assist as a teacher.24
Apart from the occasiona
l illness during this time, Amy and George also suffered a serious personal setback. In the summer of 1903, Amy wrote to her friend, Margaret Griffiths, in England.
Well I am getting stronger, but am feeling the heat, which has been rather greater than usual. Unfortunately I had a fall some weeks ago and that brought on a miscarriage, but I am thankful to say I have made a very good recovery, and I think the rest at Kuliang will quite set me up again.25
Overall, Amy was encouraged by the growing number of students voluntarily offering themselves for baptism and confirmation. Undergoing these public ceremonies was a huge step in Chinese culture because it was viewed as a rejection of family and tradition. Student numbers were also increasing steadily – from 16 in 1901 to 35 in 1902, 41 in 1903, 47 in 1904 then 55 in 1905. Amy’s early dream of having a school filled with at least 50 students had become a reality.
院書光靈
During these years, work at the hospital also continued to grow. On the medical side, the expanded outpatients department saw a steady growth in numbers, and there was now more room for longer-stay patients. Since George viewed his role as that of a teacher as well as practitioner, he opened a hostel to train three medical students. After recruiting a Chinese doctor, Dr Ding, to assist him, a new dispensary was opened in another location in the city. Looking towards the future, George drew up plans for a new men’s hospital, with 50 beds. The foundations were laid in mid-1904 and it was completed the following year. This led to his first significant contact with high-ranking government officials and business people. By 1905, the hospital contained four large general wards and seven smaller ones, and outpatient attendance increased to 10,000, many coming from a long distance.26
For George, the spiritual side of the hospital’s work was also important. He had introduced a brief half-hour service on Mondays, at which he often spoke, and a Communion service on Friday evenings. At these gatherings, his medical staff and trained Bible Women shared their faith and gave patients copies of a Gospel or other Christian literature. Some patients, while they were in hospital or after they had left it, decided to give up their household gods, publicly professed their new beliefs and asked to be baptised.