Pip’s Patch

By the time that Jemima reached Ningbo Mary Ann Aldersey was a very influential member of the missionary community. Even the Chinese were awed by her. Dr W A P Martin, and American Presbyterian who was in Ningbo from 1850 to 1860, wrote: “The most remarkable figure in the foreign community was Miss Aldersey, an English missionary. Born with beauty and fortune, she never married, not for want of opportunity, for she was known to refuse at least one offer.  The (Chinese) firmly believed that as England was ruled by a woman, so Miss Aldersey had been delegated to be the ruler of our foreign community! The British consul, they said, always obeyed her commands.” Below: Mary Ann Aldersey as a young woman.

She had reached that position through patience, prayer and dogged persistence.  Like Florence Nightingale she could not respond to her call from God  until she gained her father’s permission. She waited 11 years and during that time she was involved in evangelistic work in one of the poorest areas of East London and, after her brother’s first wife died, cared for her nieces. She used money she had inherited  to support Maria Newell, the first single woman to be sent overseas by the London Mission Society. Miss Aldersey also recruited and supported another single woman to teach in Melaka. As pioneers for single women working overseas these two women had some very difficult experiences and it would seem that Miss Aldersey decided it was better to be as independent as possible of male missionaries.

She was 40-years-old and a committee member of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (SPFEE) when she was finally free to go overseas. Not that the other members of the SPFEE supported her then – they felt that to consider going overseas at such an age just proved she was  suffering from  an affliction. Miss Aldersey noted: “It was manifestly of great importance that nothing should be entered on by me with precipitation especially as the subject of single ladies engaging in foreign missions either with or without the control of a committee was not generally approved.” As she was determined to go alone she even submitted to a medical examination to prove she was not mentally unstable.

On August 10 1837 (a few months after Miss Nightingale received her call*) Miss Aldersey  joined some  SPFEE’s young ‘agents’ on the brig Hashemy at Gravesend. They were chaperoned on the journey by Walter and Eliza Medhurst. It was Medhurst who encouraged her to go to Surabaya in Java. There she lodged with a Dutch Christian clockmaker for six months and then moved out of the European quarter so that she could organise a school for Malay Chinese girls. Very few families were willing to allow their girls to attend her school and only on the condition that they remained secluded and well protected. Among her first pupils were Ati and Kit (see below). Ati wrote later of how anxious she was to learn to read. Both she and Kit were obviously greatly inspired by Miss Aldersey – much to the concern of their parents. With relationships becoming very strained Miss Aldersey decided to leave Surabaya and headed for Singapore with her ward, Mary Leisk, who was the daughter of a Scots merchant.

Ati and Kit were determined to join them,  and with a few instructions from Miss Aldersey on how to reach the home of a Christian, they managed to run away – a remarkable feat given that they had never before walked anywhere outside of their homes. They were hidden in various Christian homes whilst their parents organised a big search for them throughout Java. They reached Singapore after Miss Aldersey and Mary had left for China. Miss Aldersey was overjoyed when they were reunited in Hong Kong.

That independent streak probably led to her being described as “quixotic” by male missionaries, especially when she “waited for no protection but went straight to Ningbo and there established her school.”  It is possible that hers was the first school for girls ever set up in China. She soon became notorious in Ningbo. The people whispered: “All English children have blue eyes, with which it is, of course, impossible to see, and the strange lady wants to receive our children, only that she may pick out their eyes, and send them as a valuable present to her friends at home.” Rumours were spread that she had massacred children and their parents. She was even accused of eating children. When, as part of her exercise programme, she walked the city walls during the dark winter mornings led by a servant carrying a lantern, it was believed she was conversing with the spirits of the night. Not surprisingly those who visited her were too scared to eat the food and drink she offered them, especially as it was said she had a special drug which could turn them into Christians.

With so much opposition and mistrust and that she never became fluent in Chinese her school would not have survived without those three teenage girls, Ati, Kit and Mary. She wrote: “The two dear young converts who have followed me to this country have proved most valuable assistants, not only, or perhaps principally, in the amount of work done for me with reference to the school, but also in gaining for me the confidence of the people, who are still greatly prejudiced against foreigners, having formed for me a sort of link between the people and myself, they being Indo-Chinese, and adopting the costume of this province.” Of Mary  it was later said: “She not only spoke like the natives, and understood every shade of their vernacular idiom, she felt with them and thought with them.”

Miss Aldersey rented half of a wooden house on the river bank outside the city for her first school. Then she moved to a large house in the city and set up a boarding school for about 50 girls. All of the parents had to sign contracts binding them to keeping the girls at the school for set periods of time. Miss Aldersey explained to the SPFEE in 1848, when she applied for a grant,  that she had started with so many  because she realised that as soon as one  was converted to Christianity some parents would take their girls away. This did happen but she was still left with a large number of pupils especially as many parents were happy to leave their dull or diseased daughters with her. Above: The Ancestors’ Hall in the house leased by Miss Aldersey was fitted out as a schoolroom. Seated at the front are the Chinese teacher with Ati and Kit. Both pictures have been reproduced from E Aldersey White’s book about Miss Aldersey.

She also taught a Bible class and two of the men she employed had been converted. These two had then gone on evangelistic trips into the surrounding countryside where the foreigners were not allowed to go at that time. (The foreigners, under the treaty of 1842 were confined to five ports.)

Miss Aldersey soon began another career – as a matchmaker. She may have been determined to stay single herself so that she could be a missionary – but she seemed equally determined to organise the lives of the girls who worked with her. By 1852 Kit, Ati and Mary were married. Mary’s husband, the Rev William Russell of the Church Missionary Society became the first Bishop of North China. For the next few years Miss Aldersey was assisted by two Chinese graduates of her school: Asan (who was abandoned as a baby and been given to Miss Aldersey by a missionary) and San Avong. The story of San Avong illustrates very well how Miss Aldersey could inspire Chinese girls to break free of the strong cultural restraints on girls and women in China at that time.

*Miss Nightingale was not able to begin work as a nurse until 1853.

Miss Aldersey referred to the girls as Ati and Kit in all her letters. Carl T Smith in Chinese Christians (Oxford University Press 1985) refers to them as Ruth A-Tik, who married Tsang Lai-sun,  and Christiana A-Kit, who became the wife of Kew Teen-shang.

Sources:

E Aldersey White A Woman Pioneer in China, The Livingstone Press London 1932; A.F.S (author), E J Whately (ed) Missions to the Women of China, James Nisbet London, 1866; Records of the Society for Promoting Female Education of the East and of the Church Missionary Society held in the Special Collection at Birmingham University; and The Chinese Missionary Gleaner June 1857.