Sheila McClure has worked in libraries, museums and the charity sector, and is now retired and lives in Essex.

Constance
She remembers her grandmother telling her how her great grandmother, Constance Groves, came to China as a young woman in 1887, to serve as a missionary in Chefoo, Shandong Province, eventually marrying Arthur Douthwaite, a medical missionary, and about their eventful life together over ten years.
When Sheila became the guardian of the letters which Constance had written home each week to her family in Bristol, along with the family photographs of the same time, she realised what a remarkable story they told.

Constance’s family in Bristol
Further research revealed a network of connections between the China Inland Mission and Constance Douthwaite’s Brethren community in Bristol.
Sheila developed a profound respect for Constance, who was a wryly perceptive observer of people and events, perhaps shaped by her experience of her father’s mental illness and of society’s attitude to him.

The Douthwaite’s with Cousin Norris, 1895