Ellen ARNOLD

ARNOLD, ELLEN (b. Aston, Warwickshire, England, 5 July 1858; d. Ataikola, East Bengal, India, 9 July 1931). First missionary to serve with an Australian Baptist missionary society.

A daughter of Alfred Arnold, a jeweller, commercial traveller and enthusiastic Congregational lay-preacher, she migrated with her family to Adelaide in 1879 and joined the Flinders Street Baptist Church, where she was greatly influenced by Silas Mead (q.v.). She entered Adelaide Teachers' College in 1880, and later taught, briefly, in city and country schools.

Arnold, with her teacher friend Marie Gilbert, offered as a missionary to the South Australian Baptist Missionary Society (formed 1864, later called Furreedpore Mission). They were accepted, and, after brief medical training, left in October 1882 for Faridpur, India, as the society's first Australian workers. Practical and ascetic, Arnold expected 'hard work discouragements, fever, ague, cholera disagreeableness, privations'.

She was invalided back to Australia to convalesce in 1884, and on recovering her health toured most of the colonies and New Zealand. This 'crusade of Ellen Arnold' fixed East Bengal (now mostly Bangladesh) as the mission field for Australian Baptists. She enlisted four women, who returned with her to Bengal in 1885; the group was known as 'the five barley loaves'.

A 'fine, impulsive, carry-all-before-you sort of woman', Arnold helped initiate educational and medical work at Faridpur. A building project she supervised there ran the mission into debt, so, to save the expense of her support, she transferred in 1886 to the NSW Baptist Missionary Society and pioneered its work in Comilla. With some difficulty she secured land and began building a mission house in 1889.

In 1892 she went to Pahna, where most of the rest of her life was spent preaching, establishing schools and dispensaries, and supervising occasional relief programs, centred on the villages of Ataikola and Bera. She travelled widely, mainly by boat and bullock-cart. In 1905 she reminisced: 'At one time they hooted me out of the village [Ataikola]; now they growl when I go away, and rush for me when I come! What has done it? My poor blundering attempts at medical work ...'

Ellen Arnold's strong will sometimes made cooperation with her Australian colleagues difficult, especially in 19l3 when she was almost forced to retire. The Bengalis, in whose language she was fluent, loved her, and she was a driving force in forming the East Bengal Baptist Union. She urged intercolonial cooperation long before the federation of Australian Baptist mission work occurred in 1913. In 1919 she was awarded, but declined to accept the Kaiser-I-Hind medal for public service in India. She served seven terms in Bengal, spending all but one of her furloughs in Australia rallying support for missionary work.

In March 1930, on the eve of her expected retirement, the East Bengal Baptist Union took over her work, but after a few months in Australia Arnold returned to India, against the wishes of the home hoard and her colleagues. Settling at Ataikola, she became a voluntary worker until she died there. Donations financed the building of the Ellen Arnold Memorial Dispensary at Ataikola. The Bangladesh Baptist Union observes 'Ellen Arnold Day' annually in her memory.

Ellen Arnold, the best remembered of all Australian Baptist missionaries, had a profound influence in encouraging missionary interest among Australasian Baptists.

D F Mitchell, Ellen Arnold (Adelaide,1932); Truth and Progress, Nov. —Dec 1982; Our Indian Field, Aug 1931; Furreedpore Mission committee, Minute books (Burleigh College, Adelaide); Log books of Comilla and of Pabna zenana work (Australian Baptist Missionary Society Archives, Melbourne); ADB 7

GERARD B. BALL