LEPER LAND i % THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID In Leper-Land N LEPER.LAND BEING A RECORD OF iMY TOUR OF 7,000 MILES AMONG INDIAN LEPERS INCLUDING SOME NOTES ON MISSIONS AND AN ACCOUNT OF ELEVEN DAYS WITH MISS MARY REED AND HER LEPERS BY JOHN JACKSON AUTHOR OF "MARY REED: MISSIONARY TO THE LEPERS," ETC. THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS MOSTLY FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR LONDON: MARSHALL BROTHERS KESWICK HOUSE PATERNOSTER ROW E C AND THE MISSION TO LEPERS EXETBR HALL STRAND WC R. W. Simpson & Co., Ltd., Printers, Richmond, London. J5 CONTENTS Chap. vi CONTENTS PAGE XXII.—Saharanpur and Ludhiana . 176 XXIII.—Ambala ... .187 XXIV.—Amritsar . 196 XXV.—Tarn Taran . .204 XXVI.—Wazirabad and Jalalpur . 217 XXVII.—Lahore to Lucknow . 225 XXVIII.—Ramachandrapuram . 231 XXIX.—Sholapur Poona, and Miraj . 255 INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS OPPOSITE PAGE Atmaran and Two Leper Women . .16 Indian Bullock Cart . .16 Lepers and Temporary Huts, Nasik . .24 Leper Bible Woman and Class, Nasik . 32 A newly-arrived Leper, Chandkuri . .40 Lepers and Teachers, Mungeli . .40 The late Rev. H. Uffmann, Purulia . .48 Lepers and Missonaries, Purulia . ,64 Address from Students of Zilla School, Purulia . 80 Leper Compounder giving Medicine, Bhagalpur . 96 Group of Lepers, Almora . .112 Thibetan Shepherds at Almora . .120 Street Scene in Almora . .120 View from Asylum grounds, Chandag . .128 Panahgah, Men's Quarters, Chandag . 136 Miss Reed's House, Chandag . .144 Miss Reed paying Workmen, Chandag . 144 Group of Leper Men, Chandag . '152 Group of Leper Women, Chandag . .160 Lepers at Dinner ..... 168 Leper Asylum, ISIoradabad .... 168 viii INDEX TO i ILLUSTRATIONS OPPOSITE PAGE The Golden Temple, Amritsar . .192 The Old Moulvie, Amritsar . 200 Rev. E. Guilford and Lepers, Tarn Taran 208 216 Village Preaching Room near Wazirabad 216 A Native Leper Missionary . * 224 A Christian Leper Woman 224 Temporary Huts, Ramachandrapuram 232 A Ward of the new Asylum, Ramachandrapuram 232 Three Singing Lepers, Ramachandrapuram 240 Group of Christian Lepers, Ramachandrapuram 240 Carpenters Working on Asylum, Ramachandrapuram 248 Bricklayers Working on Asylum, Ramachandrapuram 248 PREFACE the reader who is disposed to accompany me TO in a tour through Leper-land I desire to address a few preliminary words. The visit to the lepers of India, of which this volume is one of the results, was the outcome of an ever-deepening sympathy with the needs of these afflicted people. Having for some five years been permitted to plead their cause here in the Home- land, it was hoped that a personal acquaintance with their actual condition would enable that service to be still more effectively rendered. During the twenty weeks spent in India I travelled not less than seven thousand miles, and visited twenty-seven Asylums or settlements for lepers and their children, containing 2,979 inmates. On thirty-seven occasions I was enabled (through interpretation) to speak words that I had reason to believe often brought hope and comfort to these stricken people. I spent many days among the lepers. I entered, so far as a stranger might, into their joys and their sorrows. I joined in their worship and I shared in their festivities. Among the functions in which I was permitted to have a part were several feasts and one funeral. I was present at X PREFACE three baptismal services, at which eighty-five lepers v^^ere welcomed into the membership of the Church on earth. On three occasions also I united with the Christian lepers in the observance of the Holy Communion. I brought back with me some touching tokens of their appreciation of my visit, as well as in- numerable messages of heartfelt thanks to their friends in England. All who have contributed in any degree to aid the work among these suffering people will, I trust, accept my assurance that their gifts have resulted in much real alleviation of their hopeless lot. If the reader's sympathy with the Christlike labours of the Missionaries who are working among the lepers is deepened by the perusal of this book, its main object will have been attained. These pages will show that exceptional opportunities were afforded me for gaining an in- sight into many phases of Missionary effort. But none of these impressed me as being more entirely in accordance with the mind of the Master than this work of ministering to the bodily and spiritual needs of the lepers. The practical kindness that shelters, feeds, and tends him predisposes the leper to a lively faith in Him in whose name these boons are bestowed. Hence no class to which Missions appeal yields so large a proportion of apparently genuine conversions as do these outcasts from their own creed and kindred, upwards of 2,100 of whom may now, it is believed, be regarded as true Christians. A secondary purpose of my visit was to represent PREFACE xi the Missionary Pence Association. In the capacity of Treasurer to that Society, it was my privilege to distribute upwards of £1,000 raised by contributors to the Association. This sum was disbursed in various forms of famine relief, much of it, conferring a double boon, being expended on buildings for lepers and others, the erection of which provided employment for the impoverished workers. The hospitality so freely extended to me by the Missionaries of sixteen different Societies has usually received a passing acknowledgment in its appropriate place. But in addition to this I beg here to tender my most grateful thanks to all the friends who, by their unfailing kindness, contributed so largely to render my tour both enjoyable and instructive. For their courtesy in furnishing me with intro- ductions I have to thank Sir Charles Elliott, K,c.s.i., LL.D. (formerly Lieutenant - Governor of Bengal), Rev. H. E. Fox, m.a. (Hon. Secretary Church Missionary Society), Henry Conder, Esq., and my friend Wellesley C. Bailey, Esq. (Secre- tary and Superintendent of the Mission to Lepers in India and the East). To the last-named I am also indebted for much valuable advice as to my route, &c. My chief object being to visit the lepers, my experience of other forms of Missionary work was derived mainly from that of the Societies with which this object brought me into contact. I was naturally introduced to the general work of those Missionaries who are Superintendents of the Asylums supported by the Mission to Lepers. xii PREFACE Hence the occasional pages which deal with missionary matters in general are to be regarded as merely incidental, and subservient to the main purpose of the book. Pressure of time compelled me to pass by much that would have deeply interested me, and lack of space prevents my doing justice to much that I did see of Missionary effort that well deserved notice. With these limitations in view, the well-informed and Missionary-minded reader will understand the absence from these pages of any reference to much that would be indispensable to an account of the work of Missions as a whole. It is probably an insufficient apology for the blemishes that a critical eye will easily discover in this volume to say that it was prepared under the pressure of limited time and of manifold duties. But it is at least free from exaggeration, and true to fact, and if the susceptibilities of the more sensitive reader are occasionally shocked, I beg her to believe that the realities went far beyond the subdued descriptions I have given. With so much of explanation and excuse, I launch my little volume on its mission with the prayer that it may awaken in many hearts the same pity for the lepers that the facts and scenes described in it created in my own. JOHN JACKSON. London, November 1st, 1901. IN LEPER-LAND CHAPTER I Bombay CHIS volume is the record of a Tour extending to 7,000 miles of Indian travel and occupying a period of twenty weeks, exclusive of the voyages out and home. My primary purpose was to ascertain by personal observation the real condition of the lepers of India, and to obtain a direct insight into the work of ministering to their temporal and spiritual needs. It was fitting, therefore, that my first visit to any place of pubHc interest should be to the " Homeless Leper Asylum," as it is officially termed, at Matunga, Bombay. The drive of five miles through the city presented to my unfamiliar gaze more features of interest than one pair of eyes could apprehend. While trying to seize the points of a group full of life and colour on the right, figures and scenes of beauty or squalor, but picturesque in either case, were escaping me on the left. The variety in type and tint, in caste and feature, in social condition and racial characteristics, was bewildering. And the absolute 1 B 2 IN LEPER-LAND novelty of the whole was almost paralyzing to one enjoying his first sight of the mysterious East, whose myths and fables fall far short of its living facts in real and even romantic interest. ! And the people ! Oh, the people —the multitudes of them, I mean. Gazing on this seething mass of humanity—crowding the doorways, swarming off the side-walk into the road, blocking the carriage way, and hardly heeding the yells of the drivers—one can scarcely wonder that men who see in these subject races bodies rather than souls, should cynically suggest that India can well spare the thousands slain by plague, pestilence, and famine. But in how many of these faces a sympathetic eye can discover the hunger of the spirit within ! Dormant, doubtless, in the majority, but capable of being quickened into life by the touch of Divine love even when transmitted through human lips and human hands.