Willie Fleming was a sailor visiting Adelaide in the 1890s from Scotland, when he attended one of JJ Virgo's Sunday mission services in the Theatre Royal. Fleming became a Christian as a result, and joined classes at the Adelaide YMCA to learn more about his new faith. He helped organise open air mission services for the construction workers at the Happy Valley Reservoir, and joined in the work of the City Mission amongst the Chinese population of Adelaide. He also studied at Hope Lodge under W. Lockhart Morton, and in 1894 was accepted by the China Inland Mission as a candidate for missionary work in China. He sailed for China in January 1895. A few months later British missionaries were murdered in China, and in a second attack in November 1898, Fleming and a Chinese fellow missionary were stabbed to death.