Osmond Fletcher PESKETT [1912-2004]

The Reverend Osmond Peskett served as a missionary with the BCMS in China from 1934-51, and later in Tanzania (1965-67), interspersed with times leading churches in England in Tonbridge in Kent and Chadderton in Lancashire.

Osmond Peskett was born in 1912 to Thomas and Edith Peskett. His father was a grocer in Hurstpierpoint.

The 1921 Census finds him as a boarder, aged 9, at Grammar School House, Dyke Road.  (This was the Brighton, Hove & Sussex Grammar School).

He felt a call to the mission field and in October 1934 he boarded the Trier in Dover, heading for Hong Kong and China. He started with the BCMS in Nanning, Kwangsi (Guangxi) Province in 1934, which had become an important BCMS station.   Aspiring ordinands could come for training before going out as evangelists and preachers.  It is possible that he did his missionary training at the BCMS Bible School there. He was ordained deacon in the church in Nanning in December 1937.

At that time the Rev Wilfrid Stott oversaw the work in Nanning.  He ran the Bible School there.  In addition, the Emmanuel Hospital at Nanning played an important part in winning the confidence of the people.  The hospital was founded by Dr Harry Lechmere Clift and his wife Winifred in 1906.  For a while it had been managed very capably by nurse Lucy Baird. Then in 1935 Dr Freda Harmer had been posted there to help.  Freda Harmer and Osmond Peskett met through the church and later married.  They had three children.

In 1939 the Japanese army in its incursions into China took Nanning and their bombing destroyed much of the town. Fortunately the hospital and church were not badly damaged and were able to continue their good work.

In the autumn of 1940, the Rev and Dr Peskett were in Hong Kong, temporarily in charge of the BCMS Children’s Home which had recently moved to Fanling.  While they were there, Dr Peskett treated Mildred Dibden at the newly opened Fanling Babies’ Home; she was having a stubborn relapse of malaria in November/December.  Dr. Peskett decided that hospital treatment was called for, and once the Christmas festivities were over, Miss Dibden was admitted to the recently built Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam where some drastic treatment restored her to health.  She returned to her Fanling Home in March 1941.

The Pesketts must have left Hong Kong before hostilities with Japan started, as in 1943 we find them back in Nanning, where Rev Peskett was in charge of the Bible Churchmen’s Training College and the Emmanuel Hospital.  He had to close the college until the end of the war.

In June of this year Rev Peskett wrote a letter to the mother of missionary nurse Ruth Little in Australia giving news of Miss Little which had been brought from war-torn Hong Kong by a Chinese school teacher; she had arrived at Nanning with a party of orphan girls from the Fanling Babies’ Home.  These were the older BCMS girls who were thought to be at risk in Hong Kong and so sent to Nanning, a journey of 350 miles. 

In his letter Rev Peskett gave assurances that colleagues Ruth Little, Mildred Dibden and Iris Critchell were as well as could be expected under Japanese occupation and there was no need to feel anxious for their welfare.  The Japanese were supplying them with rice, flour and sugar, amongst other things, and they were enjoying liberty to visit Hong Kong to get supplies and visit friends.  This was before things got a lot worse towards the end of the war when the Japanese were losing. 

In 1945 Rev Peskett spoke at the BCMS autumn meeting in London about conditions in South China and how much the work had been hindered by the Sino-Japanese troubles.  He was one of four secretaries representing the four main fields of BCMS work round the world, he in South China, the other 3 fields being India, Burma and Africa.

In 1946 Rev Peskett was sent back to Nanning to assess the war damage and see to repairs.  St Peter’s Church was still standing, but the missionaries’ house was gone and of the hospital only some walls survived.  These were pulled down and the hospital rebuilt, together with the missionary house.

In 1949 the success of the Communist forces in China was complete and there followed a mass exodus of missionaries from the country.

The Pesketts returned to England in August 1950 on the Carthage; Osmond Peskett, 38, clerk, Freda Peskett, 42, surgeon, daughter Judith Peskett 2½, intended future residence England.  

The Electoral Register of 1951 puts them at 26 The Crescent, Windsor, Berks. 

Very unexpectedly Freda Peskett died in March 1952.  

In July of 1953 Rev Osmond remarried (Edith) Ruth Earle, in Birmingham.

He went on to serve as vicar of St Stephen’s, Tonbridge. 

He then served as a missionary again in Tanzania from 1965-67 before finally returning to England to serve as vicar of Christ Church, Chadderton, Lancs.

In 1971 he had become a Canon and was serving as vicar of St Keverne, living in Vicarage Street, Keverne, Devon.  Here he was 'much respected'.

He died in March 2004 in Exeter, Devon, aged 92.

Sources:

Papers of the BCMS

The Newcastle Sun 31^st August 1943

The First 25 Years of the BCMS

The Yip Family of Amah Rock – Jill Doggett

Ancestry