1900 - Bessie Renaut

August 9, 1900

Xinzhou, Shanxi

Bessie Renaut.

Bessie Campbell Renaut was born in the English town of Leytonstone in 1871. After completing high school, Bessie taught Sunday school at her local Baptist church, and travelled to Glasgow, Scotland, for missionary training. She impressed all who knew her, with one friend describing her as “a lady with considerable force and ability.”[1] She was accepted by the Baptist Zenana Mission, a mission exclusively for female workers. The mission suffered a shocking setback when a number of their members were slaughtered at Gutian in Fujian Province in 1895. Despite this knowledge being fresh in her mind, Bessie unhesitatingly volunteered to serve in China. She knew the risks, but was willing to take them in order for the Name of Jesus Christ to be exalted among those who had never heard it.

Bessie arrived at her appointed station of Xinzhou in Shanxi Province just nine months before her death. During that time, which was mostly occupied with language study, Bessie wrote many letters home, telling of “her interest in the work of the station, of the visits to the homes of the people in company with Mrs. Dixon, and her intense earnestness of desire to be able to speak to the people the words of eternal life committed to her.”[2]

Bessie Renaut’s last letter to her family.

After weeks of intense hardship in the rugged mountains surrounding Xinzhou, Bessie Renaut and seven other missionaries and were thrown into prison for two weeks. On August 9th, the incarcerated missionaries were told an armed guard had been prepared which would escort them to the coast. The missionaries joyfully accepted the news, not realizing it was a ruse. They only got as far as the city gates when a gang of Boxers slaughtered them.

The remains of the eight missionaries were thrown on a garbage dump outside the city, but a resident of Xinzhou, a non-Christian, “paid some beggars to wrap the bodies in mats and bury them close to the city wall, he himself conducting a short memorial service in his own way.”[3]