1895 - Robert & Louisa Stewart and Children

August 1, 1895

Gutian, Fujian

Robert Stewart.

Robert and Louisa Stewart were Irish missionaries with the Church Missionary Society. They were stationed in Gutian where they headed up the C.M.S. work, but they had also been asked by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society to watch over the dozen single ladies serving in Gutian with that particular mission.

Louisa Stewart had been instrumental in women’s work in Fujian Province, establishing a boarding school for girls in Fuzhou that resulted in numerous conversions to Christ. She also helped to establish a Christian hospital in the provincial capital. At the time of the massacre the Stewarts were taking a spiritual and physical break from their labours, and had organized a mission retreat in Huasang, a village of approximately 500 people, located ten miles (16 km) from the town.

The Stewarts had four children with them at the retreat, two daughters Kathleen and Mildred, and two sons—one-year-old Herbert, who was to die on his birthday—and a newborn baby named Evan. Early in the morning of August 1, 1895, 11-year-old Kathleen Stewart and the other children were excitedly picking flowers for little Herbert’s birthday picnic later that day. At a quarter to seven a mob suddenly descended from the woods. The children excitedly rushed towards the trail to see what they thought was a procession, but Annie Gordon, who had been reading the Bible under a tree, saw their spears and knew immediately of the danger. She shouted for the children to run. Kathleen somehow managed to escape the murderer’s grasp, and rushed into the bungalow to her parents. Her assailants followed immediately….

“Some entered the bedroom occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, and striking down Mrs. Stewart, who was at the door, next killed her husband, first telling him that their object was not to obtain money, but to take his life. Poor little Herbert they wounded terribly, attacked and killed the nurse, Helen Yallop, who was bravely trying to hide the baby under her clothes.”[1]

Both Robert and Louisa Stewart were dead, while three of the Stewart children were severely wounded. Herbert and the baby later died, while Mildred survived after spending a long time in a critical state. Just how she survived is a matter of wonder, when the following eyewitness account is considered:

“Mildred and little Kathleen were in the same room, the door of which was bolted. Kathleen at once got under the bed. Milly was about to follow, when she thought, ‘If I do that, the men will know there is somebody here, because the door is locked; I will unlock the door and lie on the bed, perhaps they will only see me, and not look under the bed for any others.’ This she did. ‘Soon,’ says little Kathleen, ‘the men broke open the door, opened the drawers, smashed windows and things, pulled off all the bed-clothes, then began beating Mildred, and cut her with their swords; afterwards they left the room.’ In spite of the terrible gash on her knee, dividing the joint, and which long afterwards endangered her life, Mildred got up, and went to the nursery with Kathleen, and together the brave little girls succeeded in pulling the wounded year-old baby from under the dead nurse’s body, and rescuing also their baby brother Evan, who was only slightly hurt, from the burning house.”[2]

The Vegetarians set the mission houses alight with kerosene, believing they had killed all the foreigners, but the few they had missed fled into the woods until the murderers had gone. The shocked survivors didn’t know what to do. The next day it was decided they should leave immediately for the safety of Fuzhou, 80 miles (130 km) away. Leaving Huasang at three o’clock in the afternoon, the group undertook a “terrible and difficult march all through the night of the 2nd of August, during which the little birthday boy, Herbert, so terribly wounded, ‘fell asleep’ and joined his parents. ‘How glad father and mother will be to see him!’ said brave, suffering Millie, when told of his death.”[3]

Finally the survivors arrived at the hospital in Fuzhou, where doctors attended to their wounds. Irene Barnes expressed, “Remarkable it was that this hospital, built through dear Mrs. Stewart’s exertions, should have opened its doors to receive her children!”[4] Looking back, Mildred Stewart was aware of the miraculous grace of God during the long journey to Fuzhou. She remembered how none of the survivors, despite carrying life-threatening wounds, felt any great pain until they reached the hospital. Without the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit, nobody involved with the Gutian massacre would have been able to survive the ordeal. One writer remarked,

“The heroism of these children at such an awful moment was undoubtedly inspired. Consecrated to God for China from their birth, and trained in the atmosphere of self-sacrifice and holy courage, they followed in their now sainted parents’ footsteps…. Not one word of reproach or resentment did they utter. On that very evening of the first of August, little Mildred, sorely wounded, her parents and friends cruelly murdered, could not settle to rest, for she wanted to pray and to plan that those gaps in the ranks might be filled up. When someone said that one of the ladies would bring the children home to Ireland, ‘No one can be spared from the work now,’ she said; ‘the stewardess will help us to take care of the little ones.’ So earnestly did she long that the people who had dealt so cruelly with her and hers should be led to the Saviour!”[5]

A day or two after arriving in Fuzhou, the little baby Evan died. Even though his physical wounds had not been so great, it was as if his little spirit could sense the trauma of the situation.

On August 6th the entire foreign community in Fuzhou turned out for the funeral service of the Gutian victims. In the middle “was a black draped box, smaller than a coffin, and on it the names of Robert and Louisa Stewart, and the words, ‘Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their deaths they were not divided.’”[6]

1. Barnes, Behind the Great Wall, 139-140.
2. Barnes, Behind the Great Wall, 140.
3. Barnes, Behind the Great Wall, 146.
4. Barnes, Behind the Great Wall, 148.
5. Barnes, Behind the Great Wall, 141.
6. Barnes, Behind the Great Wall, 149.