Isabella PRICE

Price, Isabella (8 March 1830 - 26 July 1920), Zenana missionary teacher, Consumptive Hospital Matron.

In 1877 a private charitable ‘consumptives’ Home was set up, funded and run by the Scottish born Sydney merchant, manufacturer, philanthropist and churchman John Hay Goodlet and his wife Ann. It was a unique facility in NSW as it was the first, and for a significant period of time the only, hospital dedicated to the care of those suffering with tuberculosis or as it was then known ‘Consumption’. In the nineteenth century, consumption was a major health problem. Many arrived in the colony of NSW on the advice of their doctors hoping that the climate would benefit them. Unfortunately many of these immigrants found themselves in Sydney ill, jobless and without friends. The Goodlet Home took them in and at no cost to the patients provided a home from which they left either with a substantial improvement in their health or they died.

John and Ann Goodlet began the 18-bed Home in a leased former hotel at Picton in September of 1877. Both males and females were admitted and the only requirement for admission was that the persons were poor and consumptive. Such was the demand for places in the Goodlet Home that in 1884 the Goodlets began to plan a purpose built facility at Thirlmere which could cater for 40 patients, again at no cost to those admitted. This was opened in September 1886. The construction cost of the home was fully met by the generosity of the Goodlets. They did not spare any expenditure on either the construction of the Home or in its recurrent costs and they even paid for the burials of the many who died there. In the period 1877 to 1893 when the Goodlets ran the hospital some 940 patients were admitted, with 233 patients dying within the facility.

While the Goodlets planned the framework, the person actually running the institution was Isabella Price. Price was matron of the Goodlet Consumptive Home from its opening in September 1877 until July 1894. Little is known about her other than that her work was highly esteemed by the Goodlets and the patients. Isabella was born in 1830 in Barrackpore, Calcutta India to Andrew and Elizabeth Marr (née Peters). Her father was the Park Superintendent at Barrackpore and died before she was one, while her mother died when she was seven. Her mother must have had a difficult life, being first married in 1821 (to Daniel Desmond) and again in 1824 (to George Dougherty) and then to Isabella’s father in 1825. On the death of Andrew Marr in 1831 she again remarried in 1832 (to John Gash) before own death in 1838. When their step father died in 1844, the 14-year old Isabella and her step sister found themselves orphaned.^[1] It is unknown what happened to Isabella but her step sister was consigned to the European Female Orphans Asylum where she died two years later. Thus at the age of 16, Isabella was left with no family.

Isabella was trained at the Calcutta Normal School (CNS) and was its first graduate. The CNS was an institution set up in 1852 ^[2] largely for the purposes of training Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) women as teachers but it also trained Europeans for work in the Zenanas. The Eurasian women were discriminated against but they had some special qualifications which the CNS sought to enlist. Henry Lloyd described these as follows:

Country born, the climate was natural to them; they could stand its heat as English immigrants were not likely to do. Surrounded by Hindus – although alas! despising them very much, and being alike despised – they were, however, at least familiar with the sound of the vernaculars, and it was thought that they would soon become masters of it.^[3]

As the enrolments of CNS were mostly Eurasian women and as Isabella was its first graduate, it is possible that she was Eurasian. This, however, is far from certain: a contemporary account notes that ‘devoted to native female education, though the pupils be Europeans and East Indians’.^[4] and while ‘Peters’ is not an unusual Anglo-Indian name, other evidence points to her being European.^[5] The course enrolled about ten students per year and was three years in duration which would mean that, probably around 1855, at the age of 25 this ‘admirable... pupil’,^[6] Isabella, began to work for the Free Church Zenana Mission in Calcutta. The life of a nineteenth century Indian woman, especially if they were from a high-caste Hindu or Muslim family, was hard. Young girls were often married off in childhood and then became the property of their husbands. They were confined to the women’s quarters of their husband’s family, called ‘zenanas’. They received neither education nor adequate medical care, since all physicians were men and thus unable to enter the zenanas. The work of the Free Church Zenana Mission was to send missionary teachers, such as Isabella, into these closed enclaves and to give to the Indian women vernacular and English education, strengthening their ability to critique traditional belief and social practices. Where possible the teachers also shared the teachings of the Bible. When she began this work Isabella had replaced a Miss Toogood, a teacher from the Calcutta Normal School,^[7] as assistant to Mrs John Fordyce the wife of the founder of the Mission. Isabella’s work in the zenanas was highly esteemed as

Misses Toogood and Marr are held in loving remembrance by those who knew them, and their names should have a place in any history of the Zanana Mission. ….. Miss Marr, like Miss Toogood, was remarkably well qualified for such a service, pious, prudent, courteous, loving. Their enthusiasm about their zananas [sic] was beautiful.^[8]

During the Indian Rebellion of 1857-1858 Isabella was shut up in the Agra fort with many Europeans. It was during this time that she probably met and then later married John Christopher Price.^[9] It would appear that she, after her husband’s death in Calcutta, travelled to Queensland in the early 1870’s and, came to NSW around 1877.^[10] It is at this time that she was employed by the Goodlets^[11] to look after the residents of their home. She served in the home as Matron from 1877 until 1894 and was dedicated to looking after the residents. Her task was not merely that of management and nursing: the Goodlet’s intended her to have a spiritual ministry. The advertisement placed by the Goodlets, unlike other advertisements for positions at the Hospital, required her to be a member of an ‘evangelical church’.^[12]

Nursing those with consumption was not a task which would have commended itself to many, given the stigma and fear attached to the disease. Perhaps Isabella as an Anglo-Indian widow had little other opportunity to support herself, but given her background and previous Christian dedication to the work of the Zenana Mission it would seem that her work was also a labour of love. It was a task that she undertook at what her contemporaries would have regarded as considerable risk to her own health. Not only did she spend long hours devoted to the patients care but the Consumptive Home was also her residence. The Goodlets themselves had built their country residence (‘Harmony‘)near the Home, and would have expected no less from their staff. She was constantly surrounded by sickness, in her time dealing with over 230 deaths. She was, however, highly regarded as she

seems to be regarded as one of those ministering angels whose function is to relieve by their presence, and their goodness of heart, the pain and anguish which wring the brow of the sick and the unfortunate. She is up at all hours of the night, and sometimes all night, watching beside the beside of a man or woman over whom death is fast obtaining its inexorable mastery.^[13]

In 1893 the Goodlets, due to the economic depression of the 1890’s were no longer able to maintain the Home and it became a public charity. Isabella remained at the Home for one year after the Goodlets relinquished control. She then went and lived with them at Canterbury House in 1894, where she most probably nursed Mrs Goodlet whose health had begun the decline which led to her death in 1903. Such was Goodlet’s regard for Isabella that she remained at Canterbury House even after Goodlet remarried in 1904, even after other long time co-residents (such as the Rev Joseph Copeland and family) left. Isabella remained at Canterbury House until John Goodlet’s death in 1914. That she went to live with the Goodlets, and did so for so long, tells us how much her service was valued, and the responsibility they felt towards this widow who had served their charity so well. After John died Isabella took up residence in Ashfield, until she herself died in 1920 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Rookwood cemetery.^[14]

At the death of both Ann and John Goodlet rightly much was made of their dedication to the cause of the poor consumptive. At Isabella’s death there appears to have been no public recognition of her contribution to the welfare of the poor consumptives of the colony. Like many Christian women whose contribution to NSW society and to the ministry of the Christian Church has gone unrecorded and unacknowledged, her work was largely unrecognised or overshadowed by others. Her contribution, though unnoted and subsequently forgotten, was considerable.

Paul F Cooper

Notes:

1. It is likely that her step father died in Minapore on 9 May 1844.

2. The CNS opened on 23 February 1852 (sometimes recorded as 1 March 1852) under the supervision of the Suter sisters. Missionary Register, vol 41 ,127.

3. Henry Lloyd, Hindu Women, London: Nisbet, 1882, p. 55.

4. Proceedings of a Conference Held at Calcutta, Sept. 4-7, 1855, Bengal (India), Bengal (India). General Conference of Protestant Missionaries, Calcutta: Baptist Missionary Press, 1855, p. 151.

5. Isabella Marr was a graduate of the CNS and not a teacher: this is consistent with her perhaps being Eurasian, however her step sister clearly was not as she died in the European Female Orphanage which required both parents of orphans to be European “Rules of the European Orphan Asylum” 1.2 in C. Lushington, The History Design and Present State of the Religious, Benevolent and Charitable Institutions bound by the British in Calcutta, Calcutta, Hidostanee Press, 1824, p. lxxvii . While it is possible Isabella was Eurasian it is on balance more likely she was European.

6. Report of the second decennial missionary conference held at Calcutta, 1882 , p. 318

7. Henry Verner Hampton, Biographic Studies in Modern Indian Education, Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, NY 1970, p. 117; Geoffrey A. Oddie, Imagined Hinduism: British Protestant missionary constructions of Hinduism 1793-1900, Sage, New Delhi, 2006, p. 293. These works designate Miss Toogood as a Eurasian, but when Dr Duff reported on her employment to teach in a high caste girls school (in order to counter native prejudice against a native teacher) she is designated a European. Proceedings and Debates in General Assembly Free Church of Scotland, 1860, Edinburgh: Nicol, 1860, p. 18. G. Smith, The Life of Dr Alexander Duff, p. 361 describes her as ‘a European governess who knew Bengalee perfectly’. As Miss Toogood was a teacher at the CNS it is more likely she was European. These accounts being closer to the event and the circumstances surrounding Miss Toogood’s appointment to the Duff School favour his designation of her ethnicity.

8. George Smith, Twelve Pioneer Missionaries, Thomas Nelson, 1900, p. 83.

9. 13 February 1858.

10. It is unknown when Isabella’s husband died. I would appear from her death notice that he died in Calcutta. SMH, July 27,1920.

11. SMH, September 8, 1877.

12. See SMH, June 13, 1878 for a comparison.

13. Telegraph, August 26, 1893.

14. Isabella Price, of 3 Central Road, died in Ashfield in 26 July 1920. Her death was reported by a non relative ‘A. E. Seward’, probably Annie Eliza Seward, daughter of William and Ann Seward, friends of the Goodlets. SMH, 27 July 1920.