1952 - Gertrude Cone

February 20, 1952

Jiangxi

The much-beloved American Catholic missionary Gertrude Cone was a happy-go-lucky lady based at Nanchang in Jiangxi Province. She often travelled between her home base and the coastal city of Shanghai, and was much loved and respected by all who knew her. The government had already started to clamp down on religious activities in Nanchang, and many of the foreign missionaries had left China as a result. Cone decided to remain, even though her activities were severely curtailed, and she was being watched.

Throughout 1951 and early 1952 Cone couldn’t understand why she was finding it increasingly difficult to contact her Chinese Catholic friends in different locations. She couldn’t bring herself to realize that many of them had been arrested and were being tortured to bring false testimony against the missionary. One day, quite unexpectedly, the police arrived at Gertrude Cone’s door and took her to the hall of Baldwin School, where she had taught for many years. She was forced to stand on the platform for five hours while the school’s staff, students, and church workers

“howled accusations against her. They accused her of ‘cultural aggression,’ espionage, embezzlement, and a host of other crimes. She was utterly baffled that these Chinese friends and acquaintances had turned against her. She could not understand how this ‘people’s trial’ could proceed so smoothly, though at a wild pitch of excitement.”[1]

After the trial Cone was returned to the mission home but was placed under house arrest. Nobody was allowed to visit her, and she was given just one bowl of rice gruel to eat each day. She was inwardly and outwardly devastated by the events of the trial. Something died inside her heart, and she was never the same again. Like Jesus, her friends had turned their backs on her in her time of need. Cone’s broken heart soon made her body ill. She was not allowed to go to the bank to withdraw her money, so she sold all her possessions in order to buy medicine. Cone wished she would have left Nanchang with the many other missionaries who were now living in the safety of their home countries, but it was too late for her. She requested a permit to leave China, but the answer was a firm denial.

As the months rolled by Cone became as thin as a scarecrow, but received no sympathy from the Communists, who jeered at her and called her a ‘symbol of American impotence.’ Only after she collapsed in the local police station did the authorities call in a doctor to examine her. The doctor warned the Communists that she was gravely ill and could die at any time. This sent alarm bells ringing for the heartless officials, for they had not been permitted to kill the missionary and would be held to account if she died. They immediately sent her to the hospital, where she remained for one week but showed few signs of improvement. In a bid to wash their hands of responsibility, arrangements were made to send Gertrude Cone out of China as quickly as possible. She was rushed southward towards the Chinese border with Hong Kong, supported by a team of physicians and nurses. When

“her stretcher was passed over the frontier and she was lifted into the waiting ambulance, she was hardly recognisable to those who had known her. But though her body was emaciated and her voice so weak it could scarcely be heard, the tears which came into her still smiling eyes were tears of happiness. Her spirit had not been broken. She died 36 hours later in Hong Kong hospital, on February 20, 1952. Her last words, barely audible, were words of forgiveness for the Chinese people, ‘who know not what they do.’”[2]

1. Edward Hunter, The Story of Mary Liu (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), 246.
2. Hunter, The Story of Mary Liu, 247-248.