'Four Women, Four Wars'

Typescript entitled 'Four Women, Four Wars', which is the story of Samuel Lavington Hart and four female members of the author's family; his mother Fanny, his sister in law Mary Hart nee Harris, his first wife Elsie Peake and his second wife Edith Kendwrick. The material is gathered from original letters and diaries, from the book Mary Hart, from the book Lavington Hart of Tientsin by A.P. Cullen, from newspaper reports and cuttings, and from memory. It is told as a narrative, and is arranged into chapters: 1. Fanny and the Franco Prussian War, 1870, covering the years 1858 to 1891. 2. Mary and the Sino Japanese War, 1894, covering the years 1892 to 1895. 3. Elsie and the Boxer Rebellion, 1900, covering the years 1895 to 1913. 4. Edith and the Russian Revolution, 1917, covering the years 1913 to 1929.

Philippa Frances Clark was born on 14th January 1922 and is the daughter of the London Missionary Society missionary to China Samuel Lavington Hart, who was Principal of the Anglo-Chinese College in Tianjin [Tientsin]. Samuel Lavington Hart was born in 1858 to Fanny and Thomas Baron Hart. The family moved to Paris in 1864 as Thomas Baron took up the pastorate of the Congregational Church in Rue Royale and Thomas Baron Hart remained in Paris during the Franco Prussian War. In 1889 Samuel Lavington Hart married Elsie Peake. He was appointed, together with his brother Walford Hart as lay missionaries to China in 1892. Samuel was appointed to Hankow and then Wuchang. In 1895 he transferred to the mission at Tientsin, where he established the Anglo-Chinese College in 1902. Mrs Hart died in 1913, and he married Edith Kendwrick of the Union Medical College, Peking, in 1916. James Walford Hart was born in 1860 and was appointed to Chung King mission, West China, in 1892. He married Mary Harris of the Hankow mission in March 1894, and died at Wuchang on 15 April 1894. Mary Hart resumed work at Hankow and died there in July 1895. Samuel Lavington Hart retired in 1930, and died on 7 March 1951.

Open

Presented to SOAS Library by Mrs Philippa Clark, via Dr Norman Cliff, on 1 July 1999.

CWM