Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Peking Siege Commemoration Medal 1900, obverse: the Ch’ien Men engulfed in flames, in the exergue a cannon, ‘junii xx - augusti xiv’, reverse: Britannia and Germania standing facing, clasping hands, a Chinese female standing behind; below a dragon, ‘mene. mene. tekel. upharsin. ichabod!’ (Grace Newton) 57mm., bronze, in J. Tayler Foot, London case of issue, the lid inscribed, ‘Peking Siege 1900. G. Newton’, ref. B.H.M. 3672, E.1842, extremely fine and rare £1500-2000

Grace Newton was born in 1860. In 1887 she went to China as a Missionary Teacher with the North China Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A. - she directed a girl’s boarding school in Pang Chuang, Shantung. In the ‘Wikipedia’ entry for the ‘Boxer Rebellion’, she is credited, in a letter of 1899, as being the first to use the term ‘Boxer’ for members of the Righteous Harmony Society. She was part of the Pekin Mission of the Presbyterian Church at the time of the siege of the legations (ref. New York Times, 28 June 1900 in which her name is listed) and in this she was fortunate, as Christian missionaries elsewhere in the country were often the target of militant Boxer atrocities. Having survived the siege, she remained in China at the school at Pang Chuang, until her death, following a short illness at Paotingfu on 12 October 1915. She was buried in the British Cemetery in Pekin.

Her personal papers, including letters and four diaies on the Boxer Rebellion are in the possession of the Princeton University Library.

With a photocopied photograph of Grace Newton and copied New York Times extracts.