1900 - Mildred Clarke

July 9, 1900

Taiyuan, Shanxi

Mildred Clarke.

Mildred Clarke was the daughter of a British army Colonel, A. R. Clarke. In the summer of 1890, the Lord Jesus laid his hand on young Mildred and asked her to follow him. Her father later recalled, “My beloved daughter came one evening and told me she had given herself in entire consecration to the Lord. I have a specially vivid recollection of her words, and I felt convinced of the reality of what she said.”[1] The following year Mildred received a call for foreign missionary service while she was living in London. Over time it became clear that she was to go to China. The Redhill YWCA, of which Mildred Clarke was a member, promised to provide her financial support, and on October 7, 1893, she sailed for China as a member of the China Inland Mission. She was never to see her homeland again.

Clarke arrived at Taiyuan in April the following year, after six months of arduous travel on ocean and across China. On April 24, 1894, Mildred she to her family,

“At last we have reached our destination….. Pray that God would be sanctified in my life, and in the lives of all His children here: then the heathen shall know that He is God. I long to live a poured-out life unto Him among these Chinese, and to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings for souls, who poured out His life unto death for us.”[2]

For the first few years Clarke was stationed at Taiyuan, before the mission transferred her to Huo Xian in south-central Shanxi. There she and Jane Stevens became the best of friends. In the summer of 1900, the two ladies made the five-day journey north to Taiyuan, where on July 9th they were savagely and callously hacked to pieces at the order of the wicked governor, Yu Xian.