John and Betty were newlywed missionaries in China, having been married on 25th October 1933. A little under a year later on 11 September 1934 they had a baby girl, Helen. Three months later they were captured by communists.
The night before their execution they hid their daughter in a blanket along with ten dollars.
Hudson Taylor's daughter-in-law Geraldine relates some of it:
Never was that little one more precious than when they looked their last on her baby sweetness, as they were roughly summoned the next morning and led out to die. . . . Painfully bound with ropes, their hands behind them, stripped of their outer garments, and John barefooted (he had given Betty his socks to wear), they passed down the street where he was known to many, while the Reds shouted their ridicule and called the people to come and see the execution.Wikipedia has more information and also tells of Helen's rescue.
Like their Master, they were led up a little hill outside the town. There, in a clump of pine trees, the Communists harangued the unwilling onlookers, too terror-stricken to utter protest—But no, one broke the ranks! The doctor of the place and a Christian, he expressed the feelings of many when he fell on his knees and pleaded for the life of his friends. Angrily repulsed by the Reds, he still persisted, until he was dragged away as a prisoner, to suffer death when it appeared that he too was a follower of Christ.
John had turned to the leader of the band, asking mercy for this man. When he was sharply ordered to kneel—and the look of joy on his face, afterwards, told of the unseen Presence with them as his spirit was released—Betty was seen to quiver, but only for a moment. Bound as she was, she fell on her knees beside him. A quick command, the flash of a sword which mercifully she did not see—and they were reunited.*
*Mrs Howard Taylor, The Triumph of John and Betty Stam (Philadelphia:China Inland Mission, 1936), 107-108. Quoted by John Piper, This Momentary Marriage, 14 (Inter-Versity Press, 2009)
