George Smith (bishop of Victoria)
[1] He rapidly became involved in the Church Missionary Society and he and fellow priest Thomas McClatchie arrived in Shanghai on 25 September 1844 to establish a mission.[4] With his new wife Lydia, née Brandram, Smith arrived in Hong Kong on 29 March 1850 and threw himself into missionary and educational work.[5] He was still sympathetic as late as 1863, when he protested to the Foreign Secretary (then Earl Russell), without checking his facts, over Hong Kong newspaper reports on the killing of Taiping prisoners in Taintsan by followers of the Ever Victorious Army who were under command of Charles George Gordon (but done without his knowledge).[6] At that stage he considered the Taiping sincere if somewhat heretical Christians, and he was supported by a strong lobby of merchants in Hong Kong who profited from supplying the rebels.[7] He had arrived back in Britain by St Peter's Day (29 June 1864), when he presented Charles Bromby for consecration as a bishop at Canterbury Cathedral.