Lucy Maud BAIRD [1888-1978]

Lucy Baird’s work as a missionary nurse is covered in ‘The First 25 Years of the BCMS’ report.  She also features in Jill Doggett’s ‘The Yip Family of Amah Rock’. 

She began with the BCMS in 1925 and was still serving in 1947 when the report was published.  She certainly would have left China by 1949, when the Communists took over.  At the end of 1929 Miss Baird went out as a nurse to Nanning, Guangxi Province, China, where she managed Dr Lechmere Clift’s Medical Mission hospital there when he left in January 1930 until his successors, Dr Hugh Rice and Rev W Stott, took over in June. It was a turbulent time with rival factions fighting in the province, but she managed ‘ably and courageously’.  In July of that year she was removed to Wuchow with two other nurses for her personal safety, and in August the two men were also removed.  Their capture would have involved the Society in a heavy ransom.

In April 1931 the hospital reopened and the team returned and a situation of peace then prevailed in Nanning.

Miss Baird must have been on furlough in Britain in that year because Jill Doggett’s account records her first meeting with Mildred Dibden at the valedictory service of the BCMS at their headquarters in Westminster.

In October 1931 they sailed out together from London to Hong Kong on the Corfu, on Miss Dibden’s first voyage there.  Miss Baird was 43 and Miss Dibden 26.  Miss Baird was able to share much from her experience of China as well as give Miss Dibden some basic language instruction in Cantonese during the 5 week voyage.

Lucy Baird knew Elizabeth Lucas, who was the experienced missionary superintendent of the BCMS Foundling Home that Mildred was going to serve in.  When they arrived in Hong Kong it seems Lucy went to the home with Mildred but after that must have gone on to Nanning to continue helping in the work there.

From 1932-35 she managed the hospital in Nanning without a doctor in charge.

In 1935 another BCMS mission station at Sheung Sz was opened to the south of Nanning.  This became an important centre for refugee work in 1939 and Miss Baird and some Chinese workers laboured here until the advance of the invading Japanese made further work impossible.

In 1937 a new hospital was completed in Nanning.  Also completed was a larger church.  However the tide of war returned and Nanning fell to the Japanese in 1939, the hospital having sustained ‘severe’ bomb damage.  It seems the missionaries were permitted to stay.

In November 1943 most of the missionaries were flown out of Nanning.  Miss Baird stayed along with Mr Osborne​​​​​ and one other nurse.  In August 1944 they were compelled to leave and they made arrangements for Chinese staff to continue the work.

There was a return of 10 missionaries to the field early in 1947.  Miss Baird reopened Siu Tung in Canton (Guangdong).  

She may well have left in 1949 when the Communists came to power and expelled all foreign missionaries from China, their purpose being to destroy the Chinese church completely.  The church not only survived but continues today despite all attempts by the authorities to suppress it.

Sources:  ‘The First 25 Years of the BCMS’

The Yip Family of Amah Rock by Jill Doggett