Days of Sorrow, Times of Joy

Days of Sorrow, Times of Joy is the story of the battle against seemingly insurmountable obstacles of death, disease, deprivation, riots and rebellion as told through the letters of the Gillison family. The discovery of a cache of family letters, written between 1859 and 1937, has made it possible to compile this remarkable, evocative and affecting story.Frances Clemmow tells the story of her Scottish grandfather, Dr Thomas Gillison, who went out to China in 1882 as a medical missionary, and of his sister Jane whose life as the wife of a South African doctor was to end in unimaginable tragedy. In some instances there are letters which give first hand accounts of key historical events such as the Boxer and Nationalist revolutions and the 1911 overthrow of the last Emperor in China; and in South Africa, there are first hand accounts of the ill-fated Jameson’s Raid and one of the first battles in the Boer war. At the same time the letters written by the family at home in Edinburgh give a fascinating insight into the social history of the time. Dr Thomas Gillison married Dr Bessie Harris, one of the first generation of female doctors, and during their tireless work at the Union Hospital in Wuhan they faced the ever present threat of disease and the real danger of China’s political instability – such was their commitment to China that, between them, they dedicated over ninety eight years to the Chinese people they loved. Days of Sorrow, Times of Joy tells a fascinating and moving turn-of-the-century tale of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming odds.