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THE MURDER of MISS MATILDA CREASY Nancy L. Stockdale

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THE MURDER of MISS MATILDA CREASY Nancy L. Stockdale DANGER AND THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE: THE MURDER OF MISS MATILDA CREASY Nancy L. Stockdale I and none of our ladies wish to sneak in Christianity among them—but it is our duty “to do them good” and this we cannot do without mixing with them.— Miss Matilda Creasy, Treasurer of the Sarah Society of Jerusalem, 9 June 185–1 On September 9th, 1858, the body of an English woman was found near the Convent of the Cross west of the City of Jerusalem. It appeared that she had been beaten to death days before, and her body was now in a state “badly mangled by beasts.”2 Immediately the woman was identified as Miss Matilda Creasy, an English mis- sionary who had disappeared on the 3rd of September, and for whom the British Consulate had been actively searching since the 7th.3 Her death sent a shock wave through the small English com- munity in Palestine, and served as a powerful danger narrative regard- ing the risks associated with being an Englishwoman resident in the Holy Land. Matilda Creasy was one of the first female English mis- sionaries to live long-term in Jerusalem, and her independent yet arduous work was a model for many. Her working life in the Holy 1 Letter from Matilda Creasy to Miss Sterry, dated “Jerusalem June 9th [1857?].” Finn Papers, MSS Finn File D, Yad Ben Zvi Library [hereafter Finn D, YBZ], Jerusalem. 2 Canon J. E. Hanauer, Reminiscences of Canon J. E. Hanauer—Jerusalem, 11. Unpublished Manuscript (date unknown), Israel Trust for the Anglican Church Archive, Jerusalem. Hanauer recalls Creasy as an “old lady,” but since he was only eight years old at the time of her death, I question his reliability on her age. In retrospect, too, Hanauer judged Creasy’s actions—that is, setting off alone—as imprudent: “One afternoon she imprudently left the town, as it appears quite alone, in order to go to the camp, which however, she never reached.” Her death acted in later years as a warning for other English women in the Holy City who ven- tured into public alone, as argued below. 3 The consular diary of James Finn is the key source for determining exact accounts regarding the search for Creasy. See Arnold Blumberg, A View from Jerusalem, 1849–1858: The Consular Diary of James and Elizabeth Anne Finn (Cranbury, NJ, 1980), 295–298, 301–304, 309–311. 114 nancy l. stockdale City was not so different from many others, but her death was extra- ordinary, and left an indelible impression for many years to come. In telling her tale, I not only wish to present a case of the ways English women attempted to manipulate Palestinian life, but also to argue that English women in Palestine were perceived to be in need of protection; yet Creasy’s dreadful death was unique. The murder of Matilda Creasy could always be cited as evidence of the inherent danger of the Holy Land, a location increasingly constructed throughout the nineteenth century (and twentieth century) as a place of timeless conflict and chaos, where life could be snatched away at any moment. Matilda Creasy came to Jerusalem sometime in the late 1840s at the urging of her friend, Miss Lucy Harding, a missionary agent of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East and teacher at the Bishop of Jerusalem’s Diocesan School.4 Creasy’s circumstances before this move are unknown,5 but reconstructing her life in Jerusalem has been made easier due to the infamy surrounding her unfortu- nate demise. She worked with Harding at the Diocesan School until they left that establishment in 1851,6 and remained in Jerusalem 4 For more about Lucy Harding and her sponsoring missionary society, the FES, see Chapter Five, “Things Go Wrong: Failure at the Protestant Orphanage at Nazareth,” in Nancy L. Stockdale, Gender and Colonialism in Palestine, 1800–1948: Encounters Among English, Arab, and Jewish Women (Santa Barbara: University of California Ph.D. Dissertation, 2000.) Blumberg states that Creasy came to Jerusalem on 20 November 1850, citing the British Consulate Register of British Subjects, Jerusalem, R. G. N. 123–1, file no. 2, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem, as cited in Blumberg, A View from Jerusalem, 95. However, the minutes of the Jerusalem Literary Society show that Creasy was inducted as a member of that organization by Lucy Harding and James Finn on 7 December 1849, the third meeting of the Society. See Minutes of the Transactions of the Jerusalem Literary Society, Founded November 20, 1849, PEF/JER/5, vol. I, 1, Palestine Exploration Fund Archives, London. I surmise that perhaps she made a trip to England after this, and returned to the Holy City on the date cited by Blumberg. When she arrived for the first time, I do not know, but most likely either with Harding in October 1847 or shortly thereafter. 5 I have been unable to locate any materials about Creasy prior to her move to Jerusalem, but it is clear in extant sources that she was not affiliated with any known missionary organization; instead, she came to Palestine on her own accord and lived from her own funds. Elizabeth Finn wrote of Creasy that she “had come to Jerusalem long before [1857] with a friend who was schoolmistress for the Bishop’s school [i.e. Harding]. When that friend left, she preferred to live independently in Jerusalem.” See Mrs. [Elizabeth Anne] Finn, Reminiscences of Mrs. Finn (London, 1929), 172–173. 6 James Finn’s consular diary for 1851 reads: “January 6—The consul was pre- sent at Miss Harding and Miss Creasy vacating the Diocesan School.” This is a reference to the conflict between Harding and Bishop Samuel Gobat examined in Stockdale, and places Creasy as a worker in the establishment as well. See Blumberg, A View from Jerusalem, 85..
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