Chapter 21
OTHER LABORS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THIS FIELD.
The following statements have been chiefly made out from documents furnished to me by those in charge of the various Institutions. I give them in order according to the date of their establishment.
THE IRISH AND AMERICAN UNITED PRESBYTERIAN MISSION IN DAMASCUS.
I have not received official statistics with regard to the work of this Mission in behalf of women, but they have maintained schools for girls and personal labors for the women through a long series of years. Mrs. Crawford, who is thoroughly familiar with the Arabic language, has labored in a quiet and persevering manner among the women of Damascus and Tebrûd, and the fruits of these labors will be seen in years to come. Miss Dales, now Mrs. Dr. Lansing, of Cairo, conducted a school for Jewish girls in Damascus some fifteen years ago, which was well attended.
Mrs. E. Watson, an English lady of great energy and zeal in the cause of female education, after years of labor in North and South America, Greece and Asia Minor, came to Syria in 1858, and commenced a girls' school in her own hired house. She afterwards removed to Shemlan, in Mount Lebanon, where she erected a building at her own expense for a girls' boarding school, and afterwards gave it to the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. She has since, with untiring energy, erected another building for a Seminary for Druze and Christian girls, the former Institution continuing as it has been for many years under the efficient management of Miss Hicks, assisted by Miss Dobbie. She has also recently erected a neat and substantial church edifice in Shemlan.
In Miss Hicks' absence, Mrs. Watson has addressed me the following letter:
Shemlan, August 28, 1872.
"Our first school for native girls was commenced in Beirût in 1858. The teachers have been Miss Hicks, Miss Hiscock, Mrs. Walker, Miss Dillon, Miss Jacombs, (now in Sidon,) Miss Stainton, (now in Sidon,) and Miss Dobbie. No native female teachers have been employed except pupils of the school under Miss Hicks' care. Masters Riskullah in Beirût, and Murad, Reshîd and Daûd, in Shemlan, have been connected with the school as teachers of the higher Arabic branches.
"The whole number of boarders under our care up to the present time, is above one hundred. The only teachers in my second boarding school are, my adopted daughter Handûmeh, and Zarifeh Twiney, a pupil of the Prussian Deaconesses. Seventeen or eighteen of our pupils have been, or are now teachers, and ten are married.
"The school directed by Miss Hicks was given over to the Ladies' Society in England, some six or seven years ago, and has been supported by them since. The new school in the upper house is under no society and is not regularly aided by any. There are from twenty-six to twenty-eight boarders under the care of my daughter, Miss Watson, I aiding as I can. Several girls have been supported for the last two years by friends in America and England. We have had ten Druze girls in our school in the upper house. Miss Hicks has had three or four, and a number in her day school. We had also a number in our day school at Aitath, four of whom are married to Druze Sheikhs."
Mr. Elias Suleeby, aided by friends in Scotland, has for a considerable period conducted common schools in a part of Mount Lebanon and the Bukaa, and now the enterprise has been adopted by the Free Church of Scotland, who have sent the Rev. Mr. Rae to be their Superintendent.
Their schools are chiefly for boys, though in all the village schools it is usual for a few of the smaller girls to attend the boys' school. In Suk el Ghurb, however, they have a boarding school containing some twenty-five girls.
THE PRUSSIAN DEACONESSES INSTITUTE IN BEIRUT
The Orphan House, Boarding School and Hospital with which the Prussian Deaconesses are connected, were established in 1860. The two former are supported by the Kaiserswerth Institution in Germany, and the latter by the Knights of St. John.
In the Orphan House are one hundred and thirty orphan girls, all native Syrians, who are clothed, fed and instructed for four or five years, and often transformed from wild, untutored semi-barbarians to tidy, well behaved and useful young women. They have ordinarily about fifty applicants waiting for a vacancy in order to enter.
The Boarding School is for the education of the children of European residents, Germans, French, Italians, Greeks, Maltese, English, Scotch, Irish, Hungarians, Dutch, Swiss, Danish, Americans and others. The medium of instruction is the French language.
Since the Orphan School began, many of the girls have married, thirty have become teachers, and about twenty of them are living as servants in families.
In August of the year 1861, the Deaconesses had received about 110 orphans. The children entering are received for three years, and the surviving parent or guardian is required to sign a bond, agreeing to leave the child for that period, or if the child is withdrawn before that time, to pay to the Deaconesses all that has been expended upon her.
In the summer of 1861, several of the parents came and tried to remove their children, though they had no means of supporting them, but the contract stood in the way, and they had no money to pay. The Jesuits then came forward and furnished the parents with French gold in Napoleons, and withdrew in one day fifty orphan girls from the institution, sending them, not to an institution of their own, but turning them back upon their wretched parents and friends to be trained in poverty and ignorance. A few days later, thirty more of the girls were removed in the same way, leaving only thirty. The parents had a legal right to remove the children on the payment of the money, but what shall be said of the cruelty of the Jesuits who turned back these wretched children to the destitution and misery of a Syrian orphan? The Jesuits are the same everywhere, unscrupulous and intriguing, counting all means as right, which promote their own end.
THE BRITISH SYRIAN SCHOOLS.
These Schools, so numerous and widely extended, have grown up since the massacre year 1860. I remember well the first arrival of Mrs. Bowen Thompson in Beirût, and her persevering energy in forming her little school for the widows and orphans of Hasbeiya, Deir el Komr and Damascus.
From that little beginning in 1860, the school increased the following year, until finally other branch schools were organized in Beirût and Lebanon, and then in Damascus and Tyre, until now, the following schedule, furnished to me by the officers of the Institution, will show to what proportions the enterprise has grown. The Memoir of Mrs. Thompson, entitled "The Daughters of Syria," gives so full a history of these schools, that I need only refer the reader to that volume for all the information desired. Since the lamented death of Mrs. Thompson, the direction of the schools has been entrusted to her sister, Mrs. Mentor Mott. The Central Training School in Beirût was under the care of Mrs. Shrimpton, who labored with great earnestness and wisdom in that important institution until the spring of 1873, when she resigned her position and became connected with the work of Female education under the American mission in Syria. She was aided by English and native teachers. The schools in Zahleh, Damascus, Hasbeiya and Tyre are under the care of English and Scotch ladies, who have certainly evinced the most admirable courage and resolution in entering, in several of these places, upon outpost duty, without European society, and isolated for months together from persons speaking their own language. I believe that such instances as these have demonstrated anew the fact that where woman is to be reached, woman can go, and Christian women from Christian lands, even if beyond the age generally fixed as the best adapted to the easy acquisition of a foreign language, may yet do a great work in maintaining centres of influence at the outposts, and superintending the labors of native teachers. These young native teachers trained in Shemlan, Sidon, Suk el Ghurb and Beirût, cannot go to distant places as teachers, and _ought not to go_, without a home and proper protection provided for them. Such protection _is given_ by a European or American woman, who has the independence and the resolution to go where no missionary family resides, and carry on the work of female education. Even at the risk of offending the modesty of the persons concerned, I cannot refrain from putting on record my admiration of the course of Miss Wilson in Zahleh, Miss Gibbon in Hasbeiya, and Miss Williams in Tyre, in making homes for themselves, and carrying on their work far from European society and intercourse.
The British Syrian Schools are doing a good work in promoting Bible education. Many of the native teachers, male and female, have been trained in our Mission Seminaries, and not a few of them are members of our evangelical churches. It has always been my aim, from the time when Mrs. Bowen Thompson first landed in Syria to the present time, to do all in my power to "help those women which labored with me in the gospel."
We are engaged in a common work, surrounded by thousands of needy perishing souls, Mohammedan, Pagan and Nominal Christian. The work is pressing, and the Lord's husbandmen ought to work together, forgetting and ignoring all diversities of nationality, denomination and social customs. There should be no such word as American, English, Scotch or German, attached to any enterprise that belongs to the common Master. The common foe is united in opposition. Let us be united in every practicable way. Let our name be _Christian_, our work one of united sympathy, prayer and coöperation, and let not Christ be divided in His members. I write these words in connection with the subject of the British Syrian Schools, because I can speak from experience of the value of such coöperation in the past. As Acting Pastor of the Native Evangelical Church in Beirût, to the communion of which I have received so many young teachers and pupils from the various Seminaries and schools, I feel the great importance of this hearty coöperation and unity of action among those who are at the head of the various Protestant Educational Institutions in Syria.
The Emissaries of Rome are laboring with sleepless vigilance to win Syria to the Papacy. Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Nazareth, Jesuits, Lazarists, Capuchins, Dominicans, and Franciscans, monks, nuns and papal legates, are swarming throughout the land. Though notoriously jealous of each other's progress, they are always united in their common opposition to the Evangelical faith, and an open Bible. We have thus not only the old colossal fortresses of Syrian error to demolish, but the new structures of Jesuitical craft to overturn, before Syria comes to Christ.
It has been stated on a preceding page that in 1835, the American wife of an English merchant, Mrs. Alexander Tod, gave a large part of the funds to build the first school-house for girls ever built in Syria. That substantial union has been happily reproduced in the cordial coöperation of the Anglo-American and German communities in Beirût, both in the Church, public charities and educational institutions, up to the present time.
Let us all live in Christ, work for Christ, keep our eye fixed on Christ, and we shall be with Christ, and Christ with us!
_BRITISH SYRIAN SCHOOLS_, 1872.
BEIRUT.
No. Established. Name. Scholars. Teachers.
1 1860 Training Institution, 92 16 2 1863 Musaitebeh, 85 3 3 1868 Blind School, men & boys, 16 2 4 1868 Blind girls' School, 11 1 5 1860 Boys' School, 85 5 6 1861 East Coombe, 120 4 7 1860 Elementary, 30 2 8 1872 Es-Saifeh, 100 4 9 1860 Infant School, 125 3 10 1860 Moslem, 50 4 11 1860 Night School, ---- 5 12 1863 Olive Branch, 85 4
DAMASCUS.
13 1867 St. Paul's, 170 6 14 1869 Blind School, 15 1 15 1870 Medan, 80 2 16 1867 Night School, 30 1
LEBANON.
17 1863 _Ashrafiyeh_, 53 3 18 1868 _Ain Zehalteh_, 50 2 19 1869 _Aramoon_, 40 2 20 1863 _Hasbeiya_, 160 3 21 1867 _Mokhtara_, ---- ---- 22 1868 _Zahleh_, 75 4
TYRE.
23 1869 Girls' School, 50 2 ---- ---- Totals, 1522 79 Bible Women, 7
MISS TAYLOR'S SCHOOL FOR MOSLEM GIRLS.
This worthy Christian lady from Scotland is doing a quiet yet most effective work in Beirût, with which few are acquainted, yet it is carried on in faith from year to year, and the fruits will no doubt appear one day, in a vast reformation in the order, morality and general improvement of the Moslem families of Beirût.
Ever since the days of Mrs. Sarah L. Smith, and Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Moslem girls have been more or less in attendance upon the schools of the Syria Mission, but the purely Moslem schools of Miss Taylor and of the British Syrian Schools are making a special effort to extend education into every Moslem household.
This school was opened in February, 1868, for the poorest of the poor. It received the name of "The Original Ragged school for Moslem Girls." No one is considered as enrolled, who has not been at least three weeks in regular attendance. The number already received has reached very near five hundred, all Mohammedans, except five Jewish and fifteen Druze girls. Native teachers are also employed, and the pupils are taught reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic. The principal lesson-book is the Bible. The early history of this institution is replete with interest; but it has attracted little public notice hitherto. It has always been a prudential question whether it would not be wiser to proceed with its work in a quiet unobtrusive way, so as not to awake fanatical opposition. But steady and appreciative friends have stood by it from the beginning, and those who know the school best have commended it most earnestly.
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND SCHOOL FOR JEWISH GIRLS IN BEIRUT.
This school has been in operation since 1865. Although established originally for Jewish girls alone, of whom it frequently had fifty in regular attendance, it has also had under instruction, Greek and Moslem girls.
Three European teachers and two native teachers have been connected with it, under the supervision of the Rev. James Robertson, Pastor of the Anglo-American congregation in Beirût.