The Lee Memorial Mission in Calcutta

This must not be something new for those who have grown up in and around the Subodh Mullick Square area (or Wellington Square if you will). I am often amazed at how spaces open up in cities. You know what I mean? You see them from the roads as you pass them by, but when you enter them there's this entire world that unfolds. You feel stupid to have reduced this to a part of the map all this while. Anushka and I got involved recently with some work that took us to the Lee Memorial.

The old yellow building, just across the road from Subodh Mullick's palace, is fairly well maintained. I find it quite impressive. Upon entering the building, one sees a plaque describing in brief the lives of the founders of the Lee Mission, earlier known as the Bengal Mission. It was a great tragedy that led to the founding of the Mission, but first let's go back a bit.

David Hiram Lee spent his student days in Ohio and came to India in 1875, working alongside William Taylor. Ada Hildegarde Jones was born in West Virginia. At the age of fourteen an aunt took her to Ohio, where she went to Scio college. After a bout of typhoid fever she is said to have had a vision where God asked her to "live for India". A few weeks later a letter arrived from a certain Mrs. Doremous of the Union Missionary Society, "stating that Dr. Thoburn, in passing through on his return to India, had handed to her Miss Jones's name as a candidate for missionary work in India." (All photographs are from Ada Lee, Seven Heroic Children, London: Morgan and Scott, 1906, available at archive.org.)

 

She arrived a year later as part of the Woman's Union Mission. A fairly sensationalist article in The Milwaukee Journal says, "[s]he was the first woman sent by other women to save women." The same article describes her as "a spunky type" and suggests that she was following "the man of her choice half-way round the world to marry him." The details are up for verification, but the two got married in Madras in 1881, after Ada apparently was rejected in Calcutta by "neglected sufferers" and inhabitants of harems, whose souls she was trying to save. When Hiram's health started to decline, they went back to Ohio, returning to India a few years later. It was during this phase that the tragic incident took place. On 24 September 1899, six of their children, Vida, Wilbur David, Ada Eunice, Esther Dennett, Lois Gertrude, and Herbert Wilson, who were studying at Queen's Hill School in Darjeeling, were swept away to death in one single landslide. The school had its premises in a building known as Arcadia where one Miss Emma Knowles served as the first principal. It was then supposedly regarded as a branch of the Calcutta Girls' High School (this is not surprising considering the American missionary connections). The school is known today as Mount Hermon School.

Wilbur was the only one who lived to tell his parents of their last moments, but he too died within a few days of the disaster. Along with the six, claimed by the landslide was also Jessudar, a Bengali girl who had become part of the family.

Jessudar, Ada Lee tells us, was born of Hindu parents.
She lost her father early in life after which the family lived in great poverty. Through out the narrative, the missionary tone strikes one as deeply problematic, but this is only to be expected I suppose. "A wicked man" tried to buy the little girl from her mother for eight rupees (translated in the account to 2 dollars 25 cents), but her mother resisted. Soon after the family converted to Christianity through some "native Christians of the village". One day Jessudar was carried away by the wicked man, but she was rescued and deposited with the Lee family for safety. There is a highly dramatic story of how she decided once and for all to turn to God's service, discarding symbolically the Hindu bangle that she wore. The Lee family also used run a Sunday school, where Vida taught. A couple of photographs fascinated me from Ada Lee's book. (See below.) The book by Ada Lee is a disturbing read, as it contains many of the letters exchanged with the children and an account by Wilbur of the fateful event.

Following the disaster, money flowed in and enabled the founding of the Lee Mission. Dr. and Mrs. Walter Griffiths took charge of the school from the late 1930s. (The rhetoric as reported by The Milwaukee Journal seems to have remained as problematic as ever even post-independence.) The Lee school in Darjeeling was reported by Gordon Sinclair (special correspondent for The Milwaukee Journal) as one of the best in the Himalayas. At the same time, around 1949, there were 400 students and a teacher's training programme for 30 and an orphan home in the Mission in Calcutta. It is also supposed to have provided accommodation for missionaries travelling in India.

Ada survived David Hiram and died in India in 1948. She is buried at the Lower Circular Road Cemetery. For now, I am quite grateful that they allow their premises to be used for diverse activities without interference.