| Administrative History | William W. Colborne qualified as a surgeon and worked in Cape Town, South Africa as Assistant Resident Surgeon at New Somerset Hospital before undertaking missionary training in England. He was sent to the South China mission as a medical missionary with the Kuang Tung Itinerant Mission in 1890. In 1894 he married Sophia Ellen Field, who was in the service of the London Missionary Society in Hong Kong. In 1897 he transferred on health grounds to work in the Japan mission in Hokkaido. He retired in 1909 but returned to Japan where he continued his medical work until his death in 1915.
References: Register of missionaries (clerical, lay & female) and native clergy from 1804 to 1904 (Church Missionary Society, 1905) and Register of missionaries additional List I 1804-1892 |
| Custodial History | Deposited with the CMS in December 1980 and transferred to the Special Collections Department in July 2003 |