New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable AwakeningBrown, Arthur Judson
History
New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable Awakening
Brown, Arthur Judson
China -- Commerce; China -- Foreign relations; China -- Politics and government; Missions -- China
The story that little Paul and Francis Simcox, frightened
by the heat and smoke, ran out of the house and were despatched
by the crowd and their bodies thrown into a well
now appears to be unfounded. All died together, Mr. and
Mrs. Simcox and their three children, and Dr. and Mrs.
Hodge; Mr. Simcox being last seen walking up and down
holding the hand of one of his children.
It is at least some comfort that they were spared the outrages
and mutilations inflicted on so many of the martyrs of
that awful summer, for unless some were struck by bullets,
death came by suffocation in burning houses--swiftly and
mercifully. No Boxer hand touched them, living or dead, but
within less than an hour from the beginning of the attack, the
end came, and the flames did their work so completely that,
save in the case of Dr. Taylor, nothing remained upon which
fiendish hate could wreak itself. Husbands and wives died as
they could have wished to die--together, and at the post of
duty.
The next morning the Boxers, jubilant over their success of
the night before, trooped out to the American Board compound
in the south suburb. The two ladies took refuge in the chapel,
while Mr. Pitkin remained outside to do what he could to keep
back the mob. But he was speedily shot and then decapitated.
His body, together with the bodies of several of the members
of the Meng family, was thrown into a hastily-dug pit just outside
the wall of the compound, but his head was borne in
triumph to the Provincial Judge, who was the prime mover in
the outbreak. He caused it to be fixed on the inside of the
city wall, not far from the southeast corner and nearly opposite
the temple in which the remaining missionaries were imprisoned.
There, the Chinese say, it remained for two or
three weeks, a ghastly evidence of the callous cruelty of a
people many of whom must have known Mr. Pitkin and the
good work done at the mission compound not far distant.
When sorrowing friends arrived in October, the head could
not be found, but it has since been recovered and buried with
the bodies of the other martyrs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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