1869 - James Williamson

August 25, 1869

Chenguantun, Tianjin

The Protestant missionary enterprise in China had taken root without too many violent persecutions until the late 1860s. A riot took place at Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province in 1868, in which Hudson Taylor and a number of his co-workers barely escaped with their lives.

James Williamson was serving in the large coastal city of Tianjin in northeast China. Associated with the London Missionary Society, Williamson and a colleague W. B. Hodge left Tianjin by boat on the morning of August 24, 1869. Travelling south along the Grand Canal, their plan was to visit the mission outstations in Shandong Province before returning to Tianjin. By the following night the missionary duo had made it as far as the village of Chenguantun, situated approximately 30 miles (49 km) south of Tianjin City. At around midnight their boat was attacked by a band of robbers who plundered everything of value they could get their hands on. Hodge was awakened by the noise. The first thing he noticed was that Williamson was missing from the room where they had both been sleeping. Hodge attempted to escape to the shore, but the robbers beat him with the blunt edges of their swords. Hodge “was severely bruised from head to foot, and his escape alive was almost a miracle.”[1]

Staggering into the village, Hodge roused the local magistrate from his sleep. A few soldiers were sent to the boat, but the thieves had left with their booty. A party of soldiers was dispatched to follow them, while another group was given the task of finding out what had happened to James Williamson. For three days no trace of him was found, until around noon on August 28th, when his body was found floating in the canal about 12 miles (19 km) downstream from where the attack had taken place. A report in the Chinese Recorder magazine noted that there were no marks of violence found on the body, and

“the most probable supposition seems to be that Mr. Williamson had heard some little disturbance, but did not think it of sufficient moment to arouse his companion, that he arose, however, to ascertain its cause, and as he stepped outside the boat received a blow on his head which stunned him, and at the same time knocked him overboard. On any other supposition, he would almost certainly have called Mr. Hodge, and would have saved himself by swimming.”[2]