1899 - Sidney Brooks

December 29, 1899

Tai’an, Shandong

Sidney Brooks.

The English missionary Sidney M. W. Brooks is widely recognized as the first martyr killed by the Boxers. He died in Shandong Province in the last week of 1899, even though the Boxer Rebellion is generally recognized to have commenced in the summer of 1900.

Brooks had entered St. Augustine’s College in Canterbury, England, in 1894 and was accepted to be an Anglican missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Brooks arrived in China in 1897, accompanied by his sister. He travelled to Pingyin in the southwest part of Shandong, while his sister established her home at Tai’an, approximately 150 miles (243 km) away.

Brooks saw little of his sister, as he threw himself into language study and preaching. She married a missionary, H. J. Brown, and the two newlyweds had only just returned from their wedding in England. At Christmas, 1899, , Brooks excitedly made the journey to Tai’an, where he greatly looked forward to sharing a Christmas break with family members. They had a wonderful time, and Brooks longed for the day he would be able to return to England on furlough, to see his many loved ones and enjoy the familiar surroundings of home.

On December 28th, after lovingly saying goodbye to his sister and brother-in-law, Brooks mounted his donkey for the arduous ride home to Pingyin. At ten o’clock the next morning, as he rode through Zhangjiadian, “there was a terrible commotion in the village and about thirty Chinese brandishing big knives and yelling like demons came rushing toward him.”[1]

Brooks was startled. He had no idea what he had done to deserve such a hostile reception. Little did he know, but the men were Boxers, a secret society that were to butcher tens of thousands of Christians across China the coming summer. Brooks had found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and when the anti-foreign Boxers saw a white man calmly riding his donkey through their village it was more than they could take. They decided to make the Englishman the first-fruits of their blood orgy.

Brooks realized his only hope of survival was to flee, so he forced his mount into a faster speed, but the pursuing Boxers soon overcame the donkey. Brooks leaped from the beast and ran into a temple, hoping he would be safe inside a house of religion. This hope proved to be a false one, for the temple headman had seen the chase and wanted nothing to do with protecting the missionary. He grabbed Brooks and tried to push him from the temple property. Brooks put aside his thoughts of the gentle Jesus and dwelt on the image of the same Christ turning over the money changers’ tables in the temple. Brooks struck the man to the ground with his fists. This action had the same effect as striking a beehive with a large stick, for

“Instantly the priests of the temple became howling dervishes. They rushed upon him from all sides, and, with his back to the wall, he used both his right and left arms with telling effect. One priest, rushing in under his guard, was caught up in both his strong arms, whipped off the ground and thrown back among his countrymen, knocking them right and left.”[2]

The bloodthirsty Boxers waited impatiently outside the temple for the condemned man to be brought out. Finally, by sheer weight of numbers, Sidney Brooks was overwhelmed by the monks, who

“pinioned his arms, and dragged and pushed him to the door. Then they hurled him into the arms of the Boxers. The latter set upon him, striking him on the head with their knife handles and pricking him with their blades. They kicked him, punched him, and tore his face with their nails.”[3]

Brooks tried hard to reason with the men, offering them money for his release. They laughed and spat in his face. The only thing they wanted was his blood. Throwing him to the ground and binding his hands behind his back, the Boxers “cut a hole through his nose, ran a rope through and led him along, yelling and dancing about him, the villagers joining in their revels.”[4]

In this horrible fashion Brooks was dragged along the path to another village a short distance away. Caring nothing about the man whose life they had in their grasp, the Boxers stopped for lunch so they could discuss how to kill Brooks in the most gruesome manner. The missionary was stripped to his blood-soaked underwear and made to wait, despite the temperature being below freezing. The poor man “shrieked aloud in his agony, but his sufferings only delighted the yellow fiends. They pricked him with their knives in the face and body, some of them driving their knives with force. The blood freezing on his body increased his agony.”[5]

Somehow, out of utter desperation and terror, Brooks managed to free his hands and raced away. The callous Boxers laughed at this development, focusing their attention on their meal. Three horsemen were sent in pursuit and soon overtook him. Brooks jumped into a deep gully, taking his last stand. When the Boxers came upon him,

“he again offered money and begged piteously for his life. Knives in hand, they stood over him and taunted him. They waved their weapons and laughed at him, and circling about him like vultures, sprung upon him until he fell dead. They then cut off his head and bore it back to their companions in triumph.”[6]

The missionary community throughout China was horrified and angered after receiving news of the martyrdom of 24-year-old Sidney Brooks, although most of the details recorded here were left out of the newspaper reports of the day.[7] In the summer of 1901 the Chinese government erected a monument on the spot where Brooks had been killed, and a memorial church, St. Stephen’s, was constructed at Pingyin.

It later emerged that Brooks had told his sister and brother-in-law of a premonition he had of his own martyrdom. When Brooks visited them for Christmas,

“he seemed greatly depressed. When the cause was asked, Mr. Brooks said that he had just had a disturbing dream. It was that he was back in England and in passing through the college where he received his education he read again the tablet bearing the names of all who had gone out from that school as missionaries together with the name and field and the date of departure; and that while looking through the building he saw another tablet, bearing the inscription: ‘To those who were martyred for the Faith,’ and that on the tablet he saw plainly his own name.”[8]

1. Cleveland, Massacres of Christians by Heathen Chinese, 538.
2. Cleveland, Massacres of Christians by Heathen Chinese, 539.
3. Cleveland, Massacres of Christians by Heathen Chinese, 539.
4. Cleveland, Massacres of Christians by Heathen Chinese, 539.
5. Cleveland, Massacres of Christians by Heathen Chinese, 539.
6. Cleveland, Massacres of Christians by Heathen Chinese, 539.
7. Various reports say Brooks was killed on December 30th or 31st, but the most reliable accounts say he left his sister’s house on the December 28th and was killed on the following day.
8. Isaac C. Ketler, The Tragedy of Paotingfu: An Authentic Story of the Lives, Services, and Sacrifices of the Presbyterian, Congregational and China Inland Missionaries who Suffered Martyrdom at Paotingfu, China, June 30th and July 1, 1900 (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1902), 325.