she rather disliked them. She thought it a mistake to interfere with the
ways and beliefs of other people, and on her travels used to try to
avoid mission houses. Dr. Bishop’s influence had changed her opinion by
first giving her an interest in medical missions; what she saw
afterwards in Eastern countries turned her into a warm friend of all
Christian missions. She made great friends with Dr. Neve, the medical
missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Kashmere, and with him
arranged for the building of the John Bishop Memorial Hospital at
Islamabad. It was a great pleasure to her that Dr. Neve had been a
student under her husband. When this was settled, she was glad to escape
from the crowds of Anglo-Indians who haunted Kashmere, and whose hubbub
she found intolerable, for a ride of twenty-eight days through the
Himalayas to Lesser Thibet as far as Leh, travelling alone with native
servants and camping out at night. When she got back to India, she found
it possible to carry out a long cherished plan and make a journey into
Persia. Before she started, she visited several mission stations, and
founded another hospital in memory of her sister, called the Henrietta
Bird Hospital, which also was under the care of an old pupil of her
husband’s.
The journey through Persia began at Bagdad and lasted nearly a year. The
first part lay through wild lonely mountains, where no English lady had
ever been; here she had the companionship of an English officer, who was
travelling for scientific purposes. It was an awful journey, and she
would never have undertaken it had she known the hardships she would
have to face—the long marches, the wretched food, the abominable
accommodation, the brutal barbarism of the people. The weather was
terrible: ceaseless rain, or deep snow in the high mountains. The nights
had to be spent in cold, filthy caravanserais, as the rough inns of the
East are called, mere shelters, which three or four hundred mules and
their drivers often shared with Mrs. Bishop’s party. There was constant
danger from robbers, and everywhere curious crowds surrounded her,
allowing her no rest or peace; they used to feel and pull her hair, to
finger all her things, and examine her clothes when she hung them up at
night. They brought their sick in crowds to her to be healed. One
evening, when she had got a mud hovel to herself and was suffering from
a severe chill, lying down covered with blankets, she heard a noise, and
looking up saw the room thronged with men, women, and children, covered
with sores, and suffering from all kinds of diseases. She had to get up
and listen for two hours to their tales of suffering, interpreted to her
by her servant. It was painful indeed to be able to do but little for
them. The next morning they were all there again. She could only give
them ointments for their sores, lotions for their eyes, or some few
simple medicines, and had to send most of them sadly away. The cold was
so bitter and the storms so terrible in crossing the mountains that it
was a wonder that Mrs. Bishop and her whole party did not perish. She
felt that they would never have got through had it not been for the
splendid Arab horses which carried them with unfailing spirit through
all the difficult places.
Forty-six days brought them to Teheran, one of the chief cities of
Persia, and here she rested in comfort for three weeks in the house of
the English minister, and then they started for another and longer
journey of exploration among the mountains. Again terrible hardships and
dangers were endured. Every day after the fatigues of the journey,
diseased and infirm people crowded her camp, and she did all she could
to help them. One of the chiefs came to her one day for medicine, and as
he lingered, watching her care for the people, he asked her why she took
so much trouble for people unknown to her. She answered by telling him,
through her interpreter, the story of Jesus Christ. When he had heard
what she had to say, he said sadly, “He is the Hakim (doctor) for us,
send us such a one as He was.”
These people are Mahometans, and seeing the little help and comfort
their religion gave to them, and the miserable lives to which it
condemned their women, made Mrs. Bishop still more keen about Christian
missions. In the larger towns she often visited the houses of the
chiefs, and went into the women’s quarters, where the many wives of the
chief and his children lived shut up together. They were never allowed
to go out, and spent their days in quarrelling, eating sweetmeats, and
dressing and dyeing their hair. They asked her for love potions and
charms, and wondered why she did not dye her hair, and for what purpose
she could be travelling.
For the last part of her journey, Mrs. Bishop was quite alone with her
servants, as the English officer had to go elsewhere. Her chief
companion was the Arab horse on which she rode, which she called “Boy,”
and which was as gentle and affectionate as a child. He often slept in
her tent, and would come and rub his nose against her face to attract
her attention. He carried her safely from Burjurid, in the centre of
Persia, to Trebizond, on the shores of the Black Sea, a journey of four
months. In dangers and hardships her courage never failed. She was
robbed of most of her travelling necessaries, and had to do without them
as she could not replace them; she had strange food, and often had to do
without food at all; and yet she got safely through though she was a
small, delicate woman, fifty-nine years of age. In all she had travelled
2500 miles since she started on her journey through Persia. Wherever
there were mission stations, she enjoyed the hospitality of the
missionaries, and she was much impressed by their self-denying work. The
last part of her journey was through Armenia where she saw with much
sympathy the courage and endurance of the Christian Armenians, poor,
ignorant people, who clung to their ancient faith in spite of cruel
persecution. They begged her to send them teachers, for their own
priests were poor and ignorant because they could not afford to go away
to study. One of the priests said to her, “Beseech for a teacher to come
and sit among us and lighten our darkness.” England he thought could
send teachers, for he said, “England is very rich.”
From Trebizond Mrs. Bishop travelled quickly back to England, and was
soon very busy preparing a book with an account of her travels. But she
found time to speak at many missionary meetings, so anxious was she to
plead the cause of the poor people whom she had seen. Her pleasant voice
and way of speaking and all the interesting things she had to tell made
people eager to hear her, and she spoke also to gatherings of learned
men. She was considered one of the greatest of missionary advocates, and
an address, in which she pleaded for the poor secluded women in Eastern
lands, was printed and sent all over the world. She spoke of the
terrible sins of the non-Christian lands in the East and of the
degradation of the women, and said she would give all she had to help
them.
As usual when at home Mrs. Bishop was constantly ill, and only three
years passed before she started on another journey. She longed for the
East and wished to visit China and Japan. Whilst she was at home, she
had taken lessons in photographing, that she might be able to take
better photographs on her travels. She improved immensely, and after
this her books were always illustrated by her own beautiful photographs.
She first went to Korea, the strange country which lies between China
and Japan, and which both those countries desired to possess. At first
she did not like Korea nor its people, but she soon grew to love them,
and especially enjoyed the beautiful, sunny climate. She wrote that she
felt this journey to be more absorbing in its interest than any she had
yet had. During the three years that she now spent in the East, she paid
three visits to Korea, in order that she might thoroughly study the land
and its people. She had a great many hardships to go through in some
parts of her journey. Once after riding for eleven hours under a hot
sun, she found the only night’s lodging she could get was in a filthy
fishing village full of the vilest smells. Her room in the inn was such
an awful black hole, full of vermin and rats, that when her Chinese
servant left her for the night he said, “I hope you won’t die.” In other
places she was annoyed by the crowds who came to stare at her, never
having seen an Englishwoman before. Once her servant had his arm broken
by a fall from his horse, and she was obliged to set it herself. He was
so touched with her care of him that, in spite of his pain, he somehow
managed to do his work just as usual, and said, “The foreign woman
looked so sorry, and touched my arm as if I had been one of her own
people. I shall do my best.”
Between her visits to Korea, Mrs. Bishop went back to Japan, and also
travelled in China. Her first object was to visit the mission stations
in China, and she was much interested in all she saw, especially in the
medical missions, and was full of admiration for the missionaries. On a
second visit to China she made a long journey into the interior, going
up first by boat on the river Yangtze for 300 miles, and then alone 300
more miles into the country in a carrying chair borne by Chinese, the
only way of travelling. Far in the interior, she visited the
missionaries of the China Inland Mission, and there she gave money to
found a hospital to be called the Henrietta Bird Hospital after her
sister. Wherever she went she photographed, undisturbed by the curious
crowds who gathered round her. Once as she was being carried along, the
people got so angry because she would not stop her chair to let them
have a good look at her, that they threw stones at her, and one hit her
a sharp blow on the head from which she suffered for a long time.
In 1897, after an absence of over three years, Mrs. Bishop came back to
London. She had accomplished these long and tiring journeys at the age
of sixty-six. She brought back with her a beautiful collection of
photographs which she had taken, and materials for writing two books,
one on Korea and one on her travels in China. She busied herself with
writing her books, lecturing about her travels, and speaking at
missionary meetings and doing all she could for the cause of missions.
She tried to settle down in a house, and took first one in London and
then one in the country, but never stayed anywhere long, and was as
usual always ill as soon as she tried to live in a civilised country. So
after a while she went off to Morocco, and there at the age of seventy
she travelled through the wild parts of the country, riding astride on a
superb horse and camping out at night. This was her last journey. After
she got back to England she still lectured and spoke for missions, and
studied photography. She began to plan another journey to China, but she
fell ill in Edinburgh. For some months she was confined to bed, but
still saw her friends, and was full of eager interest in everything that
happened. She was not afraid to die, and waited peacefully for the end,
saying that she was going home. She died in March 1904, at the age of
seventy-one. Those who wish to know about her travels and the wonderful
things she saw must read her many books, which are full of life and
adventure and enable us to share her experiences and admire her pluck
and energy.
XI
SISTER DORA
DOROTHY PATTISON, who was afterwards known as Sister Dora, was born in
1832 in a little village called Hauxwell, near Richmond, in Yorkshire,
of which her father was the rector. She was the youngest but one of a
family of twelve children, of whom ten were daughters. They grew up in
all the enjoyment of country life. Dorothy was delicate as a child and
not allowed to do regular lessons, but she describes herself as having
all the same been a great romp, as wild and merry as a boy, and good at
all outdoor sports—riding, rowing, shooting, swimming, and skating. But
even as a tiny child she loved to wash and nurse her dolls, and longed
to be able to do the same for real people. When she talked over the
future with her nearest sister she used to say, “I’ll be a nurse or a
lady doctor and do everything for my patients.” When she was twelve, one
of her sisters fell ill, and Dorothy begged, at first in vain, to be
allowed to sit up with her and nurse her, but at last she managed to
slip into the room unnoticed, and once she was there, she was allowed to
stay and helped to nurse her sister till she was well. A couple of years
afterwards a fever broke out in the village, and an old woman whom
Dorothy knew very well took it. She called at the house to ask how she
was and found the old woman left quite alone. In a moment, she made up
her mind, and without thinking of what her parents might say, she hung
up her coat and jacket behind the door and told the old woman she had
come to stay with her. In the evening she sent a message home to say
that she was going to stay all night, and word came back that, as she
had chosen to stay without permission, she must now remain with the old
woman. She washed her and nursed her and read the Bible to her, but she
grew worse and worse, and the next night she died. A kind neighbour came
in and helped to lay her out, but Dorothy, tired out and frightened, was
left to spend the night alone in the cottage. Next morning she sent a
message to the Rectory to say that the poor woman had died, might she
come home. But the answer came back, “Stay where you are till you are
sent for.” She was terrified lest her parents had cast her off and she
should never be allowed to go home. But soon a carriage arrived with her
old nurse to carry her off to spend a month at the seaside, so that she
might be free from all infection before going home. When at last she
returned home she was welcomed as a little heroine, and got rather
puffed up by the praise she received.
[Illustration:
_Photo: Mrs. Williams, Wolverhampton._
SISTER DORA.
]
As she got stronger and able to study more, she was inclined to rebel at
the time spent over lessons, and said she did not see why, as she was
going to be a nurse, she should learn languages and music. But she was
told that a nice Christian nurse should learn everything she had time
for; she might some day have French or German patients, and music would
be a pleasure to everybody; it would not do to be one-sided, for she
ought to be able to care for the minds and souls of her patients as well
as for their bodies. So she was persuaded to study gladly, and would
often wonder how the thing she was learning would come in afterwards.
Later she found that there was not a single thing she had learnt which
had not in some way been hallowed in the service of God. She used to say
to others, “Never feel that it is waste of time to get knowledge of any
kind; you can never tell how handy it may come in.”
Dora grew up to be a very handsome woman. By the time she was twenty,
all her delicacy had disappeared and she was tall and strong. She had
very high spirits and was always full of fun and ready to see the funny
side of people and things. Her laughter and her happy voice, singing as
she went about the house, were the delight of her father, who called her
his sunshine. But though she loved her home and her rides and walks on
the moors, she did not find there enough occupation for her active
nature. Her mother died after a long time of ill-health, during which
Dora had been one of her devoted nurses, and now Dora longed for some
real work. Her father did not wish her to leave home, but he did not
forbid it, and at last when she was twenty-nine, Dora went to be
schoolmistress at Woolston, a little village in Buckinghamshire. She
lived there alone in a tiny cottage, loving the children who came to her
school, and making herself the friend of all the poor and sick in the
village. She did not feel, however, that this was her real work; and
after three years she decided to join the Sisterhood of the Good
Samaritans. She had learnt to know these Sisters in Yorkshire, as they
had their chief home at Coatham, which was not very far from her old
home. The Sisters had a Convalescent Home under their care, and many of
them went out from Coatham to work in other towns.
After she joined the Sisterhood, Sister Dora, as she was now called, had
to work very hard. The Sisters did all the work of the house, and Sister
Dora cleaned floors and grates, swept and dusted, and for a time acted
as cook. She sometimes felt it very hard to have to do all this work.
Once when a gentleman whom she knew came into the kitchen where she was
peeling potatoes, she pulled her hood over her face so that he might not
see her. In after life she found the great advantage of having learnt
how to do all the work of a house herself. She thought some of the rules
very strict; but still she was very happy there, and the Sisters loved
her. She was able also to learn more about nursing, as the Sisters had a
Cottage Hospital near Middlesborough, to which she was sent. Sometimes,
too, she was sent to nurse private patients, and sometimes to nurse in
another Cottage Hospital for accidents at Walsall, which was managed by
the Coatham Sisters.
At last Sister Dora settled altogether at Walsall, in charge of the
little hospital there. Walsall is a great manufacturing centre, with
coal pits, blast furnaces, and many kinds of factories. It had then no
large hospital; the little Cottage Hospital was chiefly intended for
accidents, and the patients were for the most part men and boys from the
pits and workshops. There were also a large number of out-patients, men,
women, and children. As most of the cases were accidents, Sister Dora
was particularly anxious to become a good surgical nurse, and the chief
surgeon at the hospital, when he saw how quick and clever she was,
taught her all that he could, so that she could attend to many cases
herself without the help of the doctor. The hospital in which she at
first nursed was very small and inconvenient, with only fourteen beds,
but a few years after Sister Dora settled in Walsall a new hospital was
built on the top of the hill on which the town lies. It had twenty-eight
beds, conveniently arranged in three wards, so that it was just possible
for an active woman like Sister Dora to do all the nursing herself. She
had the help of an old servant of her family, who came to live with her
and who soon learnt to be a very capable nurse herself. Other women were
engaged to sit up at night with the patients, and, later, Sister Dora
used to have lady pupils who learnt nursing under her.
It was a very hard life, full of ceaseless work and responsibility, but
Sister Dora threw her whole heart into it, and loved her work and the
people for whom she worked. Once settled at Walsall, she never wished to
leave it. Speaking to a friend about her work, she said, “I generally
find that the more I have to do the stronger and happier I feel. It is
hard enough sometimes at night, when I have been round to all the
patients and left them comfortable and asleep, and am just going to bed
myself, to be called down by the bell, or perhaps roused by it just as I
am falling asleep. But then I think ‘the Master calleth thee,’ and jump
up and go down, to find perhaps some poor drunken man or woman, and it
is difficult to recognise the Master in such poor degraded creatures as
come to be doctored up.” She had a wonderful power over the men and boys
amongst whom she worked. She sympathised deeply with all their pain and
trouble, and made them feel as if their troubles were her own, but she
tried to make them forget their pain by her bright talk and her laughter
and jokes. She would raise their spirits by her delightful fun, till an
Irishman said once, “Make you laugh! she’d make you laugh when you were
dying.” Whenever she had a spare minute, she would read to them or talk
to them or play games with them. She allowed no bad talk or quarrelling
in the wards, and tried to mend her patients’ morals as well as their
limbs. They each of them knew that they had a real friend in her, and
that she prayed for each and cared deeply what became of them. They
loved to come and see her after they had left the hospital, and were
always sure of a welcome. She tried hard to cure them from their
drinking ways, showing them again and again how hard it was to heal the
wounds of those who drank; and when they were brought in at night
wounded after a drunken brawl, after dressing their wounds with all her
usual gentleness, she would ask them why they did not behave like
respectable members of society, instead of fighting in the streets and
getting her up at unearthly hours of the night to mend their broken
heads.
Sister Dora was devoted to children and they loved her, and she knew how
to get them to bear patiently the dressing of their wounds. Often when a
child was miserable and in pain, she would carry it about with her on
one arm as she went through the wards, saying, “Don’t you cry, Sister’s
got you,” whilst with her other hand she attended to the patients. Many
children suffering from terrible burns used to be brought to the
hospital, and she grew so clever in treating them that the surgeons
trusted them entirely to her care. Once a child was brought in so badly
burnt that it was plain it had only a few hours to live. All pain had
ceased, but the child was terrified. Sister Dora gave up all other work
in order to comfort her. She sat by the bed for some hours talking to
her about Jesus Christ and His love for little children, and about
heaven where she would never feel hunger and pain again. The child grew
peaceful and happy, and her last words were, “When you come to heaven,
Sister, I’ll meet you at the gates with a bunch of flowers.”
Sister Dora felt special sympathy for the men who had been so hurt that
it seemed necessary for them to have an arm or leg cut off. She knew
well how difficult this made it for them to earn a livelihood, and she
devoted all her skill to saving the wounded limb if possible. One night
a fine healthy young man was brought in with his arm torn and twisted by
a machine. The doctor said that nothing could save it, and that he must
cut it off at once. Sister Dora was moved by the despair of the poor
man; she looked long at his arm and at himself, and the man cried out,
“O Sister! save my arm for me; it’s my right arm.” When she turned to
the doctor and asked if she might try to save the arm, he only asked her
if she was mad, and said that the man’s life could not be saved unless
his arm were taken off at once. But she turned to the patient and said,
“Are you willing for me to try to save your arm, my man?” He was
willing, but the surgeon was very angry, and refused to help her,
saying, “Remember, it’s your arm,” and telling her she must take all the
responsibility. Night and day for three weeks she tended him, naturally
feeling terribly anxious as to what would happen. She often said
afterwards, “How I prayed over that arm.” At the end of that time she
asked the surgeon to come and look at her work, and when she unbandaged
the arm and showed it to him, straightened and in a healthy, promising
condition, he exclaimed, “Why you have saved it, and it will be a useful
arm to him for many a long year.” It is not surprising that Sister Dora
wept with joy at her success, nor that the man became one of her most
devoted admirers. He was nicknamed “Sister’s Arm” in the hospital, and
used to come back often to see her after he had left.