Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Moule, George Evans
MOULE, GEORGE EVANS (1828–1912), missionary bishop in mid-China, was born 28 January 1828 at Gillingham, Dorset, the second of the eight sons of the Rev. Henry Moule [q.v.], then curate-in-charge of Gillingham, and from 1829 to 1880 vicar of Fordington, Dorchester, by his wife, Mary Mullett Evans. He was educated at home till 1846, the year of his sudden conversion, the result of a sermon on Acts xxviii, 24, by Augustus Handley, his father's curate. The effect never passed away; it changed his whole subsequent life. In 1846 he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and in 1850 graduated with mathematical and classical honours. James Scholefield, the regius professor of Greek, and Frederick Foster Gough helped to turn his thoughts to work abroad. He was ordained deacon at Salisbury in 1851 as curate to his father, and priest in 1852, and acted as tutor to his father's pupils. From 1855 to 1857 he was also chaplain of the Dorset county hospital.
In 1857 Moule offered his services to the Church Missionary Society, and in the December of that year sailed for Shanghai. On the way, at Hong Kong, he married Adelaide Sarah (died 1909), daughter of Frederick Moule, of Melksham, Wiltshire, and widow of Captain Griffiths, the wife who was his devoted companion for fifty-one years, and the mother of his seven children. He was stationed first at Ningpo; in 1864 he was led in a remarkable way to open up work in the capital of Chekiang, Hangchow, then practically destroyed by the Taiping rebels. From 1865 to the end of his life the house in Hangchow was his only home. In 1864 he became a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, China branch, and most of his writings were papers in its Journal. On the death of Bishop William Armstrong Russell [q.v.], of North China, he was consecrated (October 1880) first bishop in the new diocese of mid-China, a post which he held till his resignation in 1906. In 1905 he was elected an honorary fellow by his college. He continued to work under the Church Missionary Society till his death, which took place on 3 March 1912 while he was on a visit to England. He was buried in Bow cemetery at Durham.
George Moule was a man of wide interests: music, drawing, turning, medicine, swimming, botany (he introduced some hitherto unknown plants to science), and especially literature, all attracted him, and he attained extraordinary skill in the Chinese language, literary and colloquial. All this, however, was secondary to his missionary work, at which he laboured incessantly by prayer, preaching, teaching, translating, and church administration. During his time in China he saw the church members in Chekiang increase from less than a hundred to more than four thousand. It was a son of one of his early pupils who became the first Chinese bishop—Tsaeseng Sing, assistant bishop in Chekiang. Gentleness, reverence, humour, courage, and diligence were conspicuous in Moule, and endeared him to a wide and varied circle of friends.
[G. E. Moule, A Retrospect of Sixty Years, 1907; Bishop Handley Moule, A Short Memoir of George Evans Moule, 1912, and George Evans Moule. A Sketch, 1920; Journal of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (containing bibliography), 1912.]