Late in the nineteenth century, Vegetarians rose-up and butchered Christian missionaries. Among the martyrs was a normal girl from a Queensland town. I told a version of this story live on West Bremer Radio.

It begins with Mr Charles Gordon. He was a well-known veterinary surgeon in the very early days of Ipswich, Queensland, in fact he was possibly the first.  He born in South Africa and went to Port Jackson from Capetown with a mob of horses.

He was attracted north to the Moreton Bay district by glowing reports of the beautiful country on the Darling Downs. He travelled overland from Sydney to Limestone as Ipswich was known then, pitched his tent and started his business as a vet.

In those days, Ipswich was the effective capital city for squatters from the Condamine, and they always had the best horseflesh. Mr Gordon became the preferred vet for those leading citizens and his business thrived. His first stables were on the corner of Brisbane and East streets in the centre of Ipswich. Nearby Gordon Street is named after him.

However, the good times didn’t last. The railway opened from Ipswich to Grandchester in 1865, extended west to Toowoomba and Dalby in 1868, and east to Brisbane in 1875. With that, Mr Gordon’s business fell away.

But before all that, in 1855 he married Miss Mary Ann Devine. Over the next fourteen years, they had nine children together. Mary was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1840. As a two-year-old with her parents, she emigrated to Sydney then Port Macquarie in New South Wales. When her father got a job with Queensland’s Bigge Brothers, she came to the Ipswich district to Bigge’s Camp or Grandchester as it’s known today. She remained in the district for the next eighty-one years, the rest of her life.

Mary married for a second time, her new husband was Mr John Murphy. Co-coincidentally her sister married an unrelated John Murphy. This was at a time when a third John Murphy was five-times mayor of Ipswich.

In any case, her oldest daughter was Mary Anne Christina “Annie” Gordon. Annie was born in Ipswich one hundred and sixty years ago this year, on the 13th September 1864, and was baptised at Ipswich’s St Paul’s Anglican Church.

Annie became a member of St Paul’s, she was a Sunday School teacher there, worked at the Ipswich Woollen Company, but decided to devote her life to work as a missionary

At first she wanted to go to India but decided that was too much of a risk to her health, so she chose China instead.

Annie left Ipswich and linked up with Melbourne sisters Topsy and Nellie Saunders. The three young ladies went as missionaries to China.

After four years of Christian work, in 1895, Annie, Topsy and Nellie were among a group of British missionaries who took a holiday to Gutian Huashan in China.

In the district was a religious sect called the Vegetarians. It was a dawn on the 1st of August 1895 that the Vegetarians rose-up and attacked the missionaries. Eleven people, including a five-year-old child and a baby, were butchered. Among the dead were Topsy, Nellie, and Ipswich’s Annie Gordon.

This became known as the Kucheng Massacre. It was the worst attack against foreigners in China leading up to the Boxer Rebellion.

The Qing government suppressed the news for three days before releasing word through Shanghai.  Western countries were appalled and condemned the government for its involvement in the brutality. A commission of enquiry was set up and all the leaders of the attack were executed. The martyrs of Kucheng Massacre, including Annie, were buried in an English cemetery at Foochow.

Twenty-nine years ago on the 6th of August 1995, a special remembrance service was held in Ipswich at Annie’s St Paul’s Anglican Church. It was to commemorate the centenary of the massacre.

In the ceremony, the Anglican Church officially bestowed martyrdom on Ipswich’s own Annie Gordon.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO.

Photo credits:
A Chinese official and his family – Weekly Times, Melbourne, 17th August 1895, page 17, colorised.
Gordon Street streetscape, Ipswich, 1991 – Picture Ipswich.
Miss Mary Gordon – Weekly Times, Melbourne, 17th August 1895, page 17.
Miss Topsy Saunders, 22, Miss Nellie Saunders, 24 – Herald, Melbourne, 6th August 1895, page 1.
Commission of Enquiry in session following Kucheng Massacre – Wikipedia Commons, colorised.
The massacre of missionaries at Ku Cheng open graves – Australasian, Melbourne, 5th October 1895, page 21, colorised.