When I arrived home from the asylum, I went at once to find my husband, to tell him all that I had seen, and ask him to help me in doing something for the lepers. He was out, unfortunately, and, no one else being in the house, I tried to interest my little boy in the fate of the poor leper child whom I had just seen. His baby brain could not grasp the full extent of my meaning; but he understood enough to offer his scrap-book and promise me his musical-box and other things, all of which were duly handed over to the poor little leper next day.

I could do nothing all day but brood over what I had seen. In the evening, with the incidents fresh on my mind, I sat down and wrote an account of them for our paper. This raised for me the anger of the officials in charge of the place, who had accepted the responsibility of caring for the lepers. I described exactly what I saw and smelt. If I had not written the truth, Brother John, who was with me, would have corrected my statements when appealed to in the matter, instead of publicly corroborating them, as he afterwards did. My husband thoroughly entered into, and appreciated, my wish to relieve the sufferers, and we presented ourselves next day at the asylum with offerings of fruit, flowers, fans, scent, biscuits, jam, clean linen for bandages, sheets, underclothing, and as many other things as I could think of. These things were tearfully received by the poor women, including Bridget, whom I now had an opportunity of seeing for the first time. Mr. McGuire was not pleased with me. He said they had all they required, and informed me, when I told the women I should try and get sufficient money to allow them a rupee a week each for extra washing, etc., that the Jewess had money in the bank, and that my money was not required. I happened to know about this money, and the use for what it was being kept, so allowed his remarks to pass in silence. Bridget was a strange and weird sight when I first saw her. She wore a short black petticoat, reaching a little below her knees, and a soiled cotton jacket that had once been white. She had evidently gone without a bath for a long time, for her face and neck were dirty. Her bare feet were swollen, but there were no leprous sores on her, nor any distortion of her fingers or toes. As she stood towering above me, a tall, gaunt, starved-looking woman, I noticed a wild, restless look in her eyes which appeared to me to be a sort of challenge. On a table near her were some old loaves of bread from which all the crumb had been eaten, leaving nothing but the outside crust, that, from want of teeth, she had been unable to eat. There was also a little sour milk in a bowl. I inquired and found that her diet was bread, milk and a little coarse sugar, and that she begged scraps of curry, or dall (lentil) and rice from the inmates. It appears that at the Calcutta Leper Asylum there is a milk diet, on which Bridget was placed, and which consisted of twenty-two ounces of bread and a quart of milk daily, and a little sugar, and a meat diet; the latter being sufficient for an adult, but the former was not. Bridget had her choice of the two diets, and, as she was loth to sacrifice her milk, which she would have to do if she chose the meat diet, elected to take the milk diet. The rules of the place were not sufficiently elastic to admit of a milk diet varied with meat. Bridget, therefore, in order to keep body and soul together, was obliged to beg food from the other inmates. She replied, when I asked her why she had not taken a bath, that there was no place in which she could bathe. Outside, there was a brick building that had evidently been constructed for the use of native women, and without reference to the requirements of Europeans. This building was divided into three small compartments, in each of which there was a tap for water and a drain for its outlet. There were no doors of any kind. I must here explain that the tap, rather than the more convenient bathing-tub, was selected in the interests of sanitation. The floor was of stone or concrete, and the wall in front, which shut off the bathing compartments from view, was open at both ends. My lady readers will understand how repugnant it is to the feelings of white women to bathe in a place in which they are not entirely secure from observation, even from that of their own sex; a condition which is not obtainable at the Calcutta Leper Asylum. Bridget, having been brought up in Ireland with some ideas of decency, would not take a bath under these conditions; so went without.

After making this discovery, I could not rest until I had written a letter to Mr. Lambert, the Commissioner of Police, asking for an interview. He granted my request, and appointed a time for me to call at his office. I found him a typical official, the performance of whose routine duties allowed him but little scope for the exercise of personal sympathy. I told him of the state of the Leper Asylum exactly as I had found it. He gave me little satisfaction, but ended by remarking that he and Mr. Justice Prinsep, who was President of the District Charitable Society, were going down to the Leper Asylum on the following morning, and that he would be glad if I would then shew them the dirty sheets described in my article which had appeared in our paper. I was too much awed by Mr. Lambert’s official manner to point out to him the futility of such a quest; for the most rigid believer in the artlessness of human nature would have known that the sheets destined to meet the forthcoming scrutiny, after all that had been written and read about their previous state, would be characterised, as far as possible, by scrupulous purity. However, being in a position to be thankful for the smallest mercy, I accepted Mr. Lambert’s offer, and drove down to the asylum, with my husband, on the following morning. Mr. Prinsep, who, I believe, had never been to the place before, appeared to be amused on seeing me, and was little inclined to treat the inquiry seriously. Owing to my article, no doubt, the asylum had undergone a thorough cleaning; the sheets were clean, and the place tidied up. Mr. Lambert, without a smile on his face, turned to us and said that he failed to see any cause for complaint, and that the place was clean. At that moment I saw a dying leper lying on a filthy bed, the sheets of which were covered with spots of blood and matter. I pointed this out to Mr. Lambert, who asked the man how often his sheets were changed. “We have a clean sheet every eight or nine days,” replied the man in English. I had given the time as once a week in our paper, so it was even longer than I had stated. When we got outside, Mr. Prinsep joined us, and we went to Bridget’s room. I asked Mr. Prinsep if he considered 22 ounces of bread, a quart of thin milk, and 4 ounces of coarse sugar a day sufficient for her? He turned to me and said he certainly thought it plenty. I could not help looking at his portly and well-nourished form, and comparing it with that of the thin, starved-looking old Irishwoman, standing at the door and offering a bowl of well-watered milk for his inspection.

My readers may imagine that in the face of so much opposition, I was beginning to lose heart. While these persons were inspecting the tank in which the lepers’ clothes were washed, I went into Daisy’s room, and gathering the three English-speaking lepers—Bella, Daisy, and the Jewess—around me, I begged of them to speak out and tell these gentlemen of their need of a female attendant, of washstands, and a place in which they could bathe in private, as well as of the bad food of which they had complained to me. The poor things said they would, but when the three stern men stood before them, and Mr. Lambert asked, in his severest police tones, what complaints they had to make, the miserable leper women crouched down on the floor and were silent! What “complaints” dared they make? Did they not know that such men possessed the power of turning them, diseased and penniless as they were, into the streets at any moment? The horror and disgrace of a European leper woman begging in the streets was an idea that they could never have tolerated—anything rather than that. There is a certain amount of sympathy accorded to native lepers, but Europeans afflicted in like manner are regarded more as wild beasts than as human beings. Could they have uttered a word of complaint under the circumstances? Of course not. To me, as an Englishwoman, the sight of these three leper women, cowering before the very men who posed before the world as their friends and benefactors, was one that roused every feeling within me to rebellion! However, after all, I was only regarded as a meddlesome unit, whose blame or praise was a matter of utter indifference to persons of position and standing; though who knows but that a merciful God in Heaven, the Father of the fatherless and afflicted, to whom all hearts are opened, did not see and pass judgment on one and all of us who stood before Him that day? It may have been this thought which caused me to bridle my tongue and refrain from giving utterance to strong words. Anyhow, I did manage to control my feelings sufficiently to enable me to speak calmly to Mr. Lambert, to point out to him the bathing-place, and to ask him, as a man who had daughters of his own, if he considered it a fitting bath-room for European women. Mr. Lambert, looking into the bathing-place, saw a native woman taking her bath, and retired in confusion. I commented on the unprotected state of the European women, who were obliged to bathe in this place, which was exposed in an enclosure where native male dressers, washermen, cooks and others were in the habit of walking, and suggested the desirability of having a door placed in one of the bathing partitions, which should be supplied with a bathing-tub, and reserved for the use of European women, who are unaccustomed to bathing like natives. I was informed that such additions were altogether superfluous, and that if the ends of the outer wall were rounded or curved in, instead of being straight as they then were, all requirements as to the privacy and comfort of the bathing arrangements would then be met. This was done, but up to the time of writing, no door or bath-tub has been provided for the use of Daisy, Bella, or the Jewess, who have to make their daily ablutions under the tap as best they can. I may mention that there were no arrangements at all in this asylum for giving the patients a warm bath.