Catherine Maria Ricketts (20 April 1841 – 28 December 1907) was an English missionary. Born in

Westbury-on-Trym Westbury-on-Trym (sometimes written without hyphenation) is a suburb in the north of the City of Bristol, near the suburbs of Stoke Bishop, Westbury Park, Henleaze, Southmead and Henbury, in the southwest of England. The place is partly na ...

, Ricketts moved with her family to

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

in the 1850s. One day, she sheltered from the rain in the Queens Road Presbyterian Church, and this led her to join the congregation there. She soon became the superintendent of the Presbyterian Girls'

Sunday School ] A Sunday school, sometimes known as a Sabbath school, is an educational institution, usually Christianity, Christian in character and intended for children or neophytes. Sunday school classes usually precede a Sunday church service and are u ...

, and in 1863 she founded the Brighton

Young Women's Christian Association The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swit ...

. In 1870,

school board A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional area, ...

s were established across England and Wales. Ricketts was elected to the Brighton School Board, one of only nine women elected across the country.Patricia Hollis, ''Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865-1914'', p.132 She was re-elected in 1873 and 1876, but in 1877 she heard a sermon from William Duffus, a missionary recently returned from China. Inspired, she travelled to

Shantou Shantou, Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 20 ...

around the turn of 1878 and 1879, where she began missionary work. The Women's Missionary Association of the

Presbyterian Church of England The Presbyterian Church of England was a late-19th-century and 20th-century Presbyterianism, Presbyterian denomination in England. The church's origins lay in the 1876 merger of the English congregations of the chiefly Scottish United Presbyterian ...

was founded in 1879; it promoted her work, and raised money to construct a Bible House in Shantou, where six local students could study. In 1897, Ricketts moved to

Chaozhou Chaozhou ( zh, t=潮州), alternatively Chiuchow, Chaochow or Teochew, is a city in the eastern Guangdong province of China. It borders Shantou to the south, Jieyang to the southwest, Meizhou to the northwest, the province of Fujian to the east, ...

, where she worked with Philip Cousland, and ministered to patients in a local Presbyterian hospital. She returned to England on a couple of occasions for medical attention, but in failing health in 1907, she decided to remain in China. She died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

in 1907.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ricketts, Catherine 1841 births 1907 deaths English Presbyterian missionaries People from Bristol