“In consequence, excitement and terror and hatred to foreigners, and consequently to native Christians, became most intense, and extended from the cities far into the country around.  Wells were fenced in and put under lock and cover.  People were called together by the beating of gongs to draw water.  The buckets were covered in carrying water to guard against the throwing in of poison along the streets.  At the entrances of some villages notices were posted warning strangers not to enter lest they be arrested as poisoners.  In various places men were arrested and severely beaten on suspicion, merely because they were strangers.  The native Christians everywhere were subjected to much obloquy and sometimes to imminent danger, charged with being under the influence of foreigners and employed by them to distribute poison.

“Even at the Amoy hospital, which has been in existence nearly thirty years, the number of patients greatly decreased; some days there were almost none.”

In the large cities of Tong-an and Chinchew placards were posted in great numbers.  They averred that black and red pills were being sold by the agents of foreigners under presence of curing disease and saving the world.

Instead they were causes of terrible diseases which none but the foreign dogs or their agents could cure.  And to get cured, one must join the foreign religion or else give great sums.  It was asserted that all this poison emanated from the foreign chapels, was often thrown into wells, and secretly put into fish or other food in the markets.

A preacher, sixty miles from Foochow, one hundred and fifty miles north of Amoy, barely escaped with his life.  He was pounded with stones while the bystanders called out, “Kill the poisoner, the foreign devils’ poisoner!”

The whole object of this diabolical calumniating was to kindle the people into a frenzy against foreigners, especially missionaries, and to make foreign powers believe that the people are so anti-foreign that the authorities cannot secure a foreigner’s safety outside of the treaty ports.

Even when these reports were traveling like wildfire there were those among the Chinese who knew better, and it was often said, “It cannot be the missionaries and native Christians, for have they not been going in and out among us all these years and they never did us any harm?”

Speaking of the “Political State of the Country,” Dr. Talmage says: 

“With the atrocities committed at Tientsin the world is acquainted, though many seem still to be under the grievous error that these atrocities were designed only against Romanism and the French nation.