Letters of John M. Leggate

The collection is made up of transcriptions of letters written by Leggate from Manchuria between 1946 and 1949. Leggate describes re-establishing missionary work in Manchuria following the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the impact of the political situation in China on church and mission.

John M. Leggate, MB ChB, FRCS, was a Church of Scotland medical missionary in Manchuria and the nephew of another medical missionary in Manchuria, Dr Archibald Leggate. He was appointed by the mission in 1933 and retired in 1950. In 1935 he married Grace Cumming Small Clark who had been a Church of Scotland missionary to Manchuria since 1930. With the Japanese occupation of Manchuria the Leggates left China and spent some time in Scotland. Leggate was invited to return in 1946 with an advance party to re-establish medical work at Moukden. His intention had been that his wife and two children, Grace and John, should join him later but the continuing fighting between Chinese Communist and Nationalist forces meant that the situation was never stable enough for this to happen. After his return to the United Kingdom, Leggate was appointed dean of medicine at Liverpool University.

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Description originally written and researched by Caroline Brown in June 2001. This had been added to Archives Hub in August 2012 by Louise Williams.

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