From the foregoing information it is abundantly evident that there is great need for the establishment of Homes for Lepers. Mr. Bailey, in his recent tour through India, visited twenty-six homes, where he saw in all 1,425 lepers, and he thinks that not more than 5,000 poor sufferers are being provided for throughout the whole of the empire, out of several hundreds of thousands who need such provision.
It was about the beginning of 1890, when our general mission work was getting upon its feet, and the pressure of the early difficulties was relieved a little, that I became concerned to do something for the lepers in Upper Burma, for whom nothing was being done. I waited upon Sir Charles Crosthwaite, then Chief Commissioner, to broach the subject to him, and was very cordially received. Sir Charles welcomed the idea. There was nothing of the kind, he said, in all Burma. Government could not well do anything directly in the matter, and even if they could, he remarked that we, the missionaries, could do it much better, that is, more kindly and mercifully than they could. He would gladly do all he could to help the scheme. Government would give the land, and he himself started the subscription list with one hundred rupees.
Encouraged by this, I issued a printed circular, setting forth the object of the undertaking, and appealing to all classes for subscriptions. There was a very liberal response to this appeal from all classes and sections of the population. I wrote to the Prince of Wales, as President of the National Leprosy Fund. My application was handed to the Secretary of the Fund, and in due time there came, in response to this application, through the Viceroy of India, a draft in rupees which was the equivalent of £80. I also put myself in communication with the Mission to Lepers, and received from that Society immediate help in the form of a contribution, and eventually we placed ourselves amongst the number of Homes for Lepers supported by the Society.
In all 6,500 rupees were collected for a commencement. The land assigned to us by Government was fenced in, and the first ward of the Home was erected in January 1891, in the usual Burmese style—teak posts, board floor raised a few feet from the ground, bamboo matting for the walls, and thatched roof, with accommodation for fifteen inmates. The time had then arrived for us to go home to England on furlough, and it fell to the lot of my colleague, Mr. Bestall, to gather in the sufferers, if he could induce them to trust themselves to our care.
THE HOME FOR LEPERS, MANDALAY.
Many had been the predictions that the whole thing would prove a failure. The lepers would never be induced to come; if they came they would never stay. But these fears have not been realised. As regards the first experiences in the Home for Lepers I could not do better than let Mr. Bestall tell the story for himself. Towards the end of 1891 he writes:—