Lawrence of China – T.E.’s Missionary Brother

Anthony Sattin’s The Young T.E. Lawrence has just been published reminding me that Lawrence of Arabia’s older brother was a missionary in China. Montagu Robert Lawrence (1885-1971) was a Medical Missionary in China, first with the China Inland Mission and later with the Church Missionary Society. Robert was definitely more influenced by their mother’s evangelical Christian beliefs that his brothers. Robert had served durin the First World War and then embarked on the missionary route. He was accepted into the CIM in 1921 and on arrival in China trained during 1922 in language studies in Chinkiang (Zhenjiang), Kiangsu (Jiangsu) before being stationed at the Paoning Memorial Hospital in Szechuan. His mother, Sarah, joined him there in 1923. In 1927, due to the dangers associated with increasing attacks on missionaries and other westerners in western China, Robert and his mother returned to England, part of the evacuation of more than half of the CIM staff in China at the time.

However, Robert returned to China in 1932 working as a locum for Dr J. H. Lechler at the Church Missionary Society hospital in Mienchu (a small missionary post in Szechuan), accompanied again by his mother (who was then 70 years old). In 1935, as the Lawrence’s were leaving China via a voyage down the Yangtze, they received news of the death of T. E. Lawrence in a motorcycle accident in England.