Eric Liddell Timeline

1902 – China Eric Liddell was born in Tientsin, China to Scottish missionaries.

1907 - Scotland The Liddell family returned to Scotland on Furlough.

1908 - England Eric and his brother were enrolled at a boarding school in South London for the sons of missionaries. Their parents and younger sister returned to China knowing they wouldn’t see their sons for another 4 and a half years.

1918 - England Eric captained the school rugby team.

1919 - England Eric captained the school cricket team.

1920 - Scotland Eric finished school and started a BSc degree in Pure Science at the University of Edinburgh.

1921 - Scotland Eric took part in University Sports. He won the 100 yards and came second in the 220 yards - this was the last time he lost a race in Scotland.

1922-3 - Scotland Eric played rugby for Scotland seven times before retiring to concentrate on athletics.

1923 - England In an athletics meet in Stoke, Eric was knocked off the track by one of his competitors after only a few strides of the race. The leaders progressed 20 yards ahead, a gap that seemed insurmountable, but a determined Eric got up and continued racing towards the finish line. He crossed the line, collapsed unconscious and had to be carried into the changing rooms. Half an hour passed before he regained consciousness.

1923 - England Eric won the AAA Championships over 100 yards and 220 yards. His time of 9.7 seconds for the 100 yards stood as a British record for the next 35 years. His performances over the last year meant he was the favourite to win gold in the 100m at the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris.

1924 - USA The Cambridge University Athletics Club had an invitation from Pennsylvania to take a team to the Pennsylvanian Games in March 1924. Eric, as the 1923 AAA 100 yards Champion, was invited to travel with the team.

1924 - Scotland The schedule for the 1924 Olympic Games was released. It showed that the 100m heats, 4 x 100m final and 4 x 400m final were all being held on Sundays. Eric decided to pull out of all of these events, including the 100m, due to his religious beliefs. Instead, he decided to run the 200m and the 400m events, which he was not expected to do well in. Eric came under immense pressure from not only the British Olympic Association but also the British press, to reconsider his decision and compete.
Eric did not waver in his decision and spent the next few months in the lead up to the Olympic Games retraining for and focusing his energy on the 200m and 400m.

1924 - France On Sunday 6th July when the heats for the 100m were being held, Eric preached in the Scots Kirk in another part of the city.

3 days later Eric won a bronze medal in the 200m.

2 days later, on the 11th July Eric Liddell became Olympic Champion by winning the 400m, and setting a new world record time of 47.6 seconds.

1924 - Scotland Eric graduated with a BSc in Pure Science. He enrolled on a Divinity course at the Scottish Congregational College in Edinburgh where he began training to become a Church minister.

1925 - China Aged 22 Eric chose to leave his fame and athletics career behind him when he moved to China to work as a Science teacher and Sports Coach at the Mission School in Tientsin.
China was now a place of danger for those living there as the government had broken down. Generals had seized different parts of the country and two new political parties worked together to try and fight back against the warlords.

1934 - China Eric married Florence Mackenzie, a nurse whose Canadian parents were also missionaries.

1935 - China Eric and Florence’s first daughter Patricia was born.

1937 - China Eric and Florence’s second daughter Heather was born.

1937 - China After working together to put down the warlords, the two political parties in China had fallen out and were now fighting each other. At the same time the Japanese invasion of China had progressed; they had taken over the north of China and had begun their invasion on the rest of the country. The fighting was bitter and bloody. The people living in the village of Xiaochang, which was surrounded by fields ruined by drought, locusts and war, found themselves in the middle of the fighting.

1937 - China There was a shortage of missionary staff to help in this dangerous part of the country, but Eric decided to leave his relatively comfortable life in Tientsin to go and work at the mission in Xiaochang. Eric’s wife and their daughters were stopped from going by the Missionary Society as it was considered too dangerous, so they stayed in Tientsin, nearly 200 miles away from Eric.

1937-1940 – China Eric faced risks daily including being interrogated at gunpoint by the Japanese and being shot at by Chinese nationalists due to mistaken identity.

Throughout the war there were many times that Japanese soldiers arrived at the hospital at the mission station in need of care. Eric taught the hospital staff to treat all soldiers as children of God. To Eric, there was neither Japanese nor Chinese, soldier nor civilian; they were all men Christ died for.

1939 - Canada and the UK In 1939 the Liddell family had a year long furlough which they spent in Canada and the UK.

With World War 2 well under way travelling by ship was seen as risky due to German submarines firing torpedoes at British vessels. In 1940, whilst travelling from Scotland to Canada towards the end of his furlough the ship Eric and his family were travelling on was struck by a torpedo as they crossed the Atlantic.

No less than three ships in their convoy were sunk by submarines. Miraculously, the torpedo which hit the boat that Eric, his wife and children were travelling on, failed to explode.

1941 - China Eric and the other missionaries were forced to leave Xiaochang Mission as the ever progressing war with the Japanese made it far too dangerous to stay.

Eric and Florence decided that it would be safer for her and the children to go to Canada. Eric decided to stay in China and continue with his missionary work. This was the last time Eric saw his family. A few months later Eric’s third daughter was born in Canada, she never got to meet her father.

1941 - China On the 7th December 1941, Japanese planes attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour. They also invaded Burma and Malaya and attacked Hong Kong which were all parts of the British Empire at the time. Japan was at war with the USA and Britain and the fighting in China became part of the Second World War. As far as the Japanese were concerned foreign missionaries like Eric were the enemy.

1943 - China Eric, along with hundreds of other British, American and assorted ‘enemy nationals’ were interned in a prison camp at Weihsien.

1943-1945 - China Within the camp Eric had many roles. He scrambled for coal, chopped wood, cooked in the kitchen, cleaned, repaired whatever needed fixing, taught science to the youngsters of the camp, counselled and consoled anyone who had worries, preached in the church and organised sports for the many bored teenagers in the camp.

1943-1945 - China Eric was happy to organise the sports within the camp, but in keeping with his principles, he said firmly that there would be no games on Sundays.

Many of the young people protested against the ban and decided to organise a hockey game by themselves - girls versus boys. Without a referee it ended in a fight. On the following Sunday, Eric quietly turned up to be the referee.

When it came to his own glory, Eric would surrender it all rather than run on a Sunday. But when it came to the good of children in a prison camp, he put his principles to one side.

1945 - China On the 21st February 1945, aged 43, and just five months before the camp was liberated by the Americans at the end of the war, Eric Liddell died in the camp hospital from a brain tumour.