Dorothea Beale was not directly interested in missionary work until the year 1883, when Pundita Ramabai was sent by the Wantage Sisters to study at Cheltenham College. Under her influence she studied Hindu religion and philosophy, and became greatly concerned about the condition of widows in India. When Ramabai established her Home for Widows at Mukti, Dorothea Beale became a regular and large subscriber. Among her papers was found an appeal evidently intended to reach the minds of educated Hindus.
“My heart,” she wrote, “is stirred by sorrow and pity for those suffering widows of India; but there are some whom I pity more—those who inflict the sorrow on them, since it is far better to suffer than to do wrong.... But what grieves me, too, is the thought of the waste of all that wonderful amount of energy and life that God has given your country-women in order to bless others.
“If the men of India believe in God’s goodness and wisdom, as I think they must, even though they may not trust Him, they must think He has not made all those widows to be a burden and a misery to themselves and others, but to do good work. What mistakes people make when they think they are wiser than God.
“I can remember when ‘Old Maid’ was a term of contempt in England, but it is not so now; you have seen me and sixty old maids working together happy and content, and if I could send out a hundred women where I can now send one, I should not have too many, so constant are the demands for ‘old maids,’ as you would call them—for teachers, nurses, missionaries, and all sorts of good work.... India will some time feel all that her wasted women’s life can do.”
With regard to missionary work for girls, she was always afraid lest the glamour and romance of it should tempt them away from obvious duties at home.
Dorothea Beale, perhaps because of her early acquaintance with Mrs. Lancaster’s work, was always ready to support any agencies for the protection of girls and women. As far back as ’86 she wrote:—
“I would ... urge the formation of a body of women-policemen who could safely do work which could not be undertaken by men-policemen or clergymen. These should undertake to watch over registries for women, shops where women work, to establish labour registers themselves and take care that women were not paid starvation wages; to enter (under protection) suspected houses; to watch railway stations, shops,” etc.
She was always anxious for the vote to be granted to women, knowing that many reforms were impossible without it. She was saddened by Mr. Balfour’s Education Bill of 1902, feeling that by the abolition of School Boards on which women had been well represented, the cause of the vote had received a serious “set-back”.
Many other causes received her sympathy and financial help. Agnes Weston’s work among sailors always appealed to her, as did also all efforts to set discharged prisoners on their feet again. She had, too, a warm spot in her heart for sufferers of her own class, impoverished women teachers and other workers.