NEWTON, Sophie Sackville

Newton, Sophie Sackville (b. Isleham, near Cambridge, England, 11 Sept 1867; d. Chatswood, NSW, 24 July 1958). Missionary in China, Deaconess.

Sophie Newton’s father was a doctor, her paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister, and her mother the daughter of an early NSW Member of Parliament. When the family outgrew its house in Mudgee, Sophie was largely brought up by her relatives in nearby Singleton. At the age of 16, strongly influenced by her family’s Christian faith, she was confirmed in local Church of England.

After two years as a governess on a farm in northern NSW, in 1891 the family moved to Newtown in Sydney. Attending St Barnabas Church, Broadway, Sophie was soon teaching Sunday school and carrying out pastoral visits. Later that year, at a mission conducted by Rev. George Grubb on behalf of the Keswick Movement, she committed herself full-time active service for God. The following year, she began work as an Anglican Deaconess in the inner-city parish of Pyrmont.

In November 1892, Sophie became just the fourth Deaconess ordained in the Diocese of Sydney. Her responsibilities included pastoral visiting, leading a women's prayer group, speaking at weekly open air evangelistic campaigns, and taking part in lunch hour meetings at the nearby Sugar Works and Saw Mill. Two years later she was invited to assist the Rector of St Luke's Concord with Burwood. There she worked in the poorer working class end of this suburban parish, starting a Sunday school and then a branch church.

The visit of missionary Robert Stewart from Fukien Province, China in 1892, Sophie had a growing desire to serve God there. This was strengthened by news of his death, along with that of his wife, two children, and seven other missionaries including three Australians, a few years later. In January 1896, Sophie was accepted by the NSW Church Missionary Association and began training at the new Marsden Training Home in Sydney. The following year she sailed to Foochow, the capital of Fukien Province.

After a year’s language study in the city, she joined fellow Australians Amy Oxley and Minna Searle, at a new mission station in the district of Lieng Kong, north-east of Foochow. Her responsibility was to start a regular three month residential School for biblewomen and the first Girls Boarding School in the district. Along with her colleagues, she helped build a church in their village of Deng-doi. The three Australian women were responsible for work in the whole district, with the nearest male missionary a day’s walk away.

Over the next few years, both Schools grew. Though loving the work, Sophie suffered periodically from migraines which sometimes hospitalised her for weeks at a time. Between terms, she engaged in itinerant evangelism and visitation of Day Schools, both in villages and the district capital of Lieng Kong. In the hot summers she joined other missionaries for six weeks in the mountain retreat of Kuliang above Foochow, enjoying a Keswick-style conference, scenic walks and wider fellowship.

Towards the end of 1899, word came about the rise of the Boxer Movement in northern China, and the subsequent death of some missionaries and many Chinese converts. Though this had less effect in the country’s south, in June 1900 Sophie and other missionaries in the Province were withdrawn from their stations for a time.

During her second term in China, from 1902 to 1908, Sophie was encouraged by growing School enrolments among both women and girls. The curriculum for the Girl’s School included study of Chinese history, geography and literature, romanised Chinese and writing, as well the Bible, Christian beliefs and hymns. Some of the girls undertook further study in Foochow and became the province’s first nurses, teachers and church workers, while others opened up small dispensaries and family businesses in their homes. Womens’ Schools also opened up the possibility of evangelistic and pastoral work for a growing number of single, widowed and older married females.

As now the Senior Missionary in the district, Sophie played a greater role in confronting the restrictions and injustices suffered by Chinese women. She and her colleagues spoke against the widespread practice of infanticide, mostly of girls who were regarded as an economic liability, worked against foot-binding, which caused severe physical distortion of girls’ feet and restricted their freedom of movement, and questioned arranged marriages between older males and young girls for financial gain. She took the remarkable step if adopting two children, a brother and a sister, whose family could no longer care for them, and from then on helped raise them and attended their education. At this time, she was also encouraged by the increasing number of girls and women seeking baptism and by greater openness to the Gospel among upper-class women in the district capital.

Sophie’s third term of service, from late 1910 to early 1914, marked a time of significant social and political change in China. She had already been invited to join local Chinese leaders in publicly opposing the devastating effects of Western supplied opium to China, and assisted a new treatment for opium led by a missionary doctor friend. She also supported the New Nationalist Government’s development of girls’ education after the 1911 Revolution. Around this time, she oversaw the move of the mission base in the district from the village of Deng-doi to a larger complex in Lieng Kong City.

After a brief return to China during WWI from early 1914 to late 1915, in May 1918 Sophie arrived back in Foochow for her fifth term of service. She supported moves by the new Bishop, John Hind, to increasingly hand over Christian work in the province to Chinese themselves. From now on all official meetings were to be in their language, control of schools was to be transferred to Chinese staff, and mission work entrusted to pastors and members of local churches. Learning of her previous experience in Sydney, the Bishop invited her to become the first Deaconess in the Diocese and Anglican Church in Southern China From April 1922 she worked with the Chinese Assistant Bishop in performing baptisms around the Province, preaching at the chapel of the Girls School, and running the CMS home in Foochow for new female missionaries. Her effectiveness led to the appointing of six more missionaries as deaconesses shortly afterwards and, a few years later, to the ordaining of the first Chinese Biblewomen to this position.

During her furlough in Sydney from to 1924 to 1926, Sophie cared for her ailing mother until she died. Shortly afterwards, she began last term of service. Her return to China coincided with the climax of anti-foreign, anti-Christian, sentiment that had been growing among students and others through the 1920’s. There were volatile protests in Foochow and elsewhere, resulting in occasional violence against missionaries and destruction of religious property. While she was able to avoid direct harm, at times hostile threats and even the sounds of gunfire were alarmingly close.

Apart from a year in the city of Fu’an, northern Fukien, helping with a pastoral situation, Sophie spent most of her final years back in Liengkong as Chaplain to her old school. She was deeply gratified by the opening up of work possibilities for women which had significantly raised their status. At her farewell towards the end of 1930, nearly 100 ex-students returned to express their gratitude, the Church Board wrote a lengthy letter to CMS in Australia describing her as their ‘grandmother’ and pleading for someone to replace her.

In January 1931 Sophie left China for the last time. Her remaining 27 years were spent serving as a Deaconess in two parishes in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney, educating local christians about the work and needs in China, providing practical support for her adopted family and christian friends in that country, and occasionally hosting Chinese christian leaders when they visited Australia. When she died, on 24 July 1958, in the ‘Home of Peace’ at Chatswood, her funeral service was taken by her close friend Archbishop Mowll in St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney.

Robert and Linda Banks, View From The Faraway Pagoda: An Pioneer Australian Missionary in China from the Boxer Rebellion to the Communist Insurgency (Melbourne, 2013).

Robert Banks