On 7 September, our planned talk was going to be by Sheron Boyle
but unfortunately, she had to cancel due to a family bereavement.
Consequently, Paul Gaywood stepped in with his interesting talk on “The
Footsteps of Hu Jin Yen.”
Paul structured his talk around a 30 page autobiography of the above
woman who was connected with his family and this closely detailed
account was of her early life in her own words and also what she had
been told. The autobiography started on 5 May 1917 and tells us how Hu
Jin’s mother arrived at a Mission Hospital in China, run by the London
Missionary Society, very agitated and accompanied by a maid. She gave
birth during that night and left with her maid the next morning.
Subsequently, the baby came under the guardianship of the Reverend
Wasson who oversaw the Mission and his wife Mildred Nurse. The
detailed account goes on to describe her life as a baby, her childhood
and schooldays.
We learn that she was often sick as a child and in 1920 at three years
old she travelled back to England with the Reverend and his wife, whose
life with the London Missionary Society Paul informed us could be traced
through the records of the School of Oriental and African Studies. The
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journey home on the ship is described and how she was absorbed into
the Reverend’s family.
Hu Jin, now known as Jean, was sent to Slepe Hall, a boarding school
for girls in St Ives, where the children of missionaries were often placed
and we learn about her life there. In her teenage years she worked
looking after the three children of a significant mill owning family in Belfast
but at some point decided that she wanted to become a midwife. Jean
went to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin to train.
We were shown photographs of her graduation and an image of her
future husband, a medical practitioner who became a gynaecologist.
Various newspaper articles followed their marriage in 1942 and their
journey to Thailand which was facilitated through an Anglo-Japanese
civilian exchange.
Paul also told us a little about what he found out about her interesting
husband – he worked on a translation the Bible into Thai, experimented
with hydroponics and even turned up in a couple of Kung Fu films!
Paul said how he tried to make Yorkshire connections in his research
and following a perusal of documents surrounding the 50th anniversary
of the Outwood Memorial Hall discovered that the then Mayor of
Wakefield was born in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Ending the talk
Paul gave us some details of Jean and her family in later years.
