Nanning
The work started as an offshoot of the Medical Mission that Dr Harry Lechmere Clift and his wife Winifred started in Nanning in 1906. When encountered by the prevalent Chinese practice of abandoning baby girls, the Clifts responded by taking in these abandoned babies and caring for them.
In 1923 Winifred Clift came down with rheumatic fever and had to be hospitalised in Hong Kong. By this time the clinic had become a Hospital with a Foundling/Children’s Home [1] of 26 children attached. The Clifts handed over the whole project to their missionary society, the BCMS, to administer. Dr Kate McBurney took over the hospital and Miss Elizabeth Lucas took over the running of the Children’s Home helped by Miss Edith Loudwell.
Lungchow
In 1925 the Shanghai Massacre caused a resurgence of anti-foreign feeling and the four European staff withdrew from Nanning to Hong Kong. A new house was secured for the Foundling/Children’s Home 180 miles south of Nanning at Lungchow and all the children moved safely over. For greater safety 8 of the older girls were sent on to the BCMS station at Haiphong in French Indo-China, where there was a home and a school. Here Mrs Clift was delighted to see her older girls, she mentioned Sheng Sau and Peace, helping in the Sunday school, each one taking a little class and passing on what they had learned, girls whom she had taken in as foundlings.
However, new perils arose in the form of the Chinese Civil War and in February 1930 the Red Army took Lungchow and a group of 30 soldiers rounded up the four European missionaries including Miss Lucas and Miss Loudwell and took them on an 18-mile march to their headquarters. From there they were taken to the border of French Indo-China where they were released. With the consul’s help they made their way to Haiphong.
Hong Kong – Broadwood Road
The Red Army was quickly driven out of Nanning, and later in 1930, Miss Lucas was able to return with an escort of soldiers and transfer the children firstly to Haiphong, and then to Hong Kong, where the BCMS rented a palatial mansion from a Chinese landlord at 24 Broadwood Road, Happy Valley, to accommodate them.
In 1931 the home had 'about 35 girls' and Miss Lucas was joined by Miss Mildred Dibden, and then by nurse Barbara Lomas, who was there to learn Cantonese before going to serve in Ham Chow in Kwangsi province. As well as being a children's home, the Home was a base for missionaries going up-country.
Some of the older girls were - Ah Lin looked after 8 of the smallest ones. Hei Lok was learning to help in the house and cook. Seng Sau helped with the general housework but she wanted to be a Bible woman* and was destined for a station in Kwangsi. Kei Tak was a younger girl.
In the Home the girls were in two classes for their schooling. The older girls aged 12-14, were set to learning pages of text and books by heart, reading aloud in sing-song voices. Mildred was concerned at this practice, as it was not developing their reasoning skills enough.
In 1933 the rent on the Broadwood Road mansion was put up and a move was made to the White House at Taipo. Newly trained from England, Nora Bromley joined the three others, presumably to learn the language before going to the BCMS Home at Haiphong. Miss Lucas then announced her retirement, which left Mildred Dibden in charge.
In 1934 Miss Dibden and Miss Lomas were joined by Miss Loudwell and Miss Grace James. Some of the older girls could now be sent out as teachers and nurses or Biblewomen* to other stations. One of the places to which a girl from the Taipo Home went was the school and home at Haiphong, under Miss Field and Miss Bromley. Eleven girls in the home came forward for baptism at this time.
In 1935 Miss Dibden was returned to England to recuperate from a serious case of malaria. She was not expected to return.
Kowloon
During 1937 the home was moved to Kowloon, a healthier district of Hong Kong. Miss Iris Critchell went out to work there, and Miss S. Birchall in 1938.
Fanling
Just before the war (1940) the BCMS purchased Mirror Lake Villa on the Sha Tau Kok Road in Fanling and the Home was moved once more, now with Iris Critchell in charge.
Jockey Club Stables, Victoria
When the Japanese invaded in December 1941, Iris Critchell followed a pre-set plan to transfer to the Jockey Club Stables on the island and she managed to get her girls and 34 of the older girls from the Fanling Babies’ Home moved over.
However, as she was the only European there and the Japanese looked likely to take over, she was told by the Chinese officials to leave and she and her maidservant Ah Foon had a hazardous two-day cold and wet journey to get back to Fanling.
Fanling Babies’ Home
The Japanese colonel in Fanling gave permission for Miss Critchell and Ah Foon to return and also to fetch her girls back from the Jockey Club Stables along with Mildred Dibden’s girls. They couldn’t return to the BCMS Home as it had been systematically looted of anything wooden, so they returned to the Babies’ Home. By December 25th the girls were back along with their matron and teacher and they were accommodated in the nurses' quarters (the 2 bungalows in the grounds).
The BCMS girls went through the war years under the care and protection of Miss Dibden, Miss Ruth Little and Miss Critchell. Being older than the Fanling girls, they survived the war better than the little ones.
In April 1943[2] it was decided that the older girls should be sent away on foot to the BCMS Emmanuel Hospital in Nanning in Guangxi province, where they would be safer. They were accompanied by their Chinese BCMS teacher. They took with them a note from Ruth Little which she had written to her mother in Australia, hoping that it would somehow get through. By June they had arrived in Nanning where Rev Osmond Peskett was in charge of the Bible Churchmen’s Training College and the Emmanuel Hospital. He was able to forward Ruth Little’s note.
We know that there were some BCMS girls left at Fanling because three of them fell ill during the cholera outbreak in the summer of 1943.
The last mention we get, an unhappy note, of the girls of the BCMS Home is in February 1944 when it was announced to Mildred Dibden that one of the original girls from Broadwood Road days had been found dead locally, named Ah Lin (see earlier). She had recently been back in touch with the Home, but things had been difficult and she had left again to try her luck in the city. Unsuccessfully alas. She had died of starvation and exposure, trying to get back to Fanling. Mildred grieved for the once happy girl she had known.
Looking at the history of the BCMS girls, the most striking fact is that throughout their growing years they lived with the constant dangers of war, the upheavals of relocation and the loss of successive parental figures. One trusts that the faith and dedication of their guardians, who saw them through these traumas, will have been sufficient to make for happier times in later life.
[1] In its early years it was known as the Foundling Home, then later the Children's/Girls' Home.
[2] The First 25 Years of the BCMS has this version - 'In February 1943 permission was obtained for the five older girls and their Chinese teacher to leave for the Bethel orphanage at Kweichow in Kwangsi.'
*Bible women were Chinese Christian women dedicated to evangelistic work, most often within churches, missions, education, and medicine.
The Yip Family of Amah Rock by Jill Doggett
The First 25 Years of the BCMS
The Newcastle Sun, NSW Aug 1943
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