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Shigeru Nakamura
Director of the Society of Historical Studies of Christianity, Japan
Mary Helena Cornwall Legh was born in Canterbury on May 20, 1857. Her father Edmund Cornwall Legh (1821-1859) was the sixth son of George John Legh of a distinguished family in Cheshire. Her mother Julia was a daughter of Neville Parker, Master of the Rolls of New Brunswick. Mary had a brother Neville (1854-1902). Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Cornwall Legh commanded the 97th Regiment in India during the Mutiny and died at Banda in central India on June 3, 1859. Julia took her children to live on her brother-in-lawfs estate at High Legh, Cheshire, and there Mary spent her childhood.
The head of the family in those days was George Cornwall Legh, who was M.P. for Northern Cheshire in 1841-1868 and for Mid-Cheshire in 1868-1873. Henry Martin Cornwall Legh, the next head of the family, was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. They are each known to have rented a flat in London to perform their official duties. Their connection with London enabled Mary to visit and stay there during her girlhood.
In London she went to St.Peterfs, Eaton Square, where, she met a person who was to have a decisive influence on her life: the Rev. George Howard Wilkinson. Taking on the vicarage in 1870, he immediately won the heart of the respectable congregation with his gospel of conversion. He was one of the most inspiring figures of the Victorian church. It was following his proposal as a member of the SPG Standing Committee that special services were held across the country on December 20, 1872, for united intercession for more missionaries. More than half a century later, in a speech made at the 50th anniversary of the Society of Watchers and Workers in 1929, Mary stated that her interest in foreign missions had been awakened by Wilkinson, to whose church she gused to go as a young girl.h
At the time when most universities were closed to women, Mary studied hard and received an LLA (Lady Literate in Arts) certificate from St.Andrews University, Scotland, in 1886. Travelling abroad with Julia and returning to England for a few years at a time, she started to write stories for children and young adults. The earliest known book by her was published in 1894. Before leaving England for Japan in late 1907, she had written at least thirteen books, all of which have been preserved in British Library.
When her mother died in early 1907, she inherited a considerable amount of independent means. It was then that she volunteered to come to Japan as a self-paid SPG missionary.
Arriving in Japan toward the end of 1907, she worked in Tokyo and its vicinities for several years. Then in 1915 she had a visit from a Christian suffering from leprosy, who asked her to work for his fellow sufferers living in a colony at Kusatsu. Kusatsu is in the mountains north of Tokyo and well-known for its efficacious hot spring. In those days, when no effective way of radical treatment of leprosy had been discovered, leprosy sufferers were only abhorred and excluded from their own communities. Many of them would come and stay at Kusatsu, hoping in vain that the hot sulphur spring would do them good. Because of the hopeless reality, however, they were leading a dissipated life. The dead were even thrown into the valley and left to decay.
Mary bought a piece of land at Kusatsu and founded St.Barnabasf Mission to Lepers in the summer of 1916. Beginning with St.Barnabasf Church, she set up several homes, a primary school, a kindergarten and a hospital for the sufferers and their families. She not only provided these facilities but also supported their management and the peoplefs day-to-day life. Thanks to the medical and spiritual work, the place which had once been called the gValley of Gehenah was turned into a Christian home. The church came to have the largest congregation in the diocese. Living a very simple life among the sufferers, Mary was loved as their gMother.h
Taking care of all these sufferers required a lot of resources. Since her private income was far from limitless, she wrote to her friends mostly in England, America and Canada for support. They responded by sending her many gifts of money and supplies. At the end of each year she made up whatever deficit there was from her own resources. However, the time came when her failing health and old age no longer allowed her to write, and the gifts from abroad ceased to come.
In 1936 she was finally obliged to leave Kusatsu for a warmer place, Akashi. In 1939 she was awarded the 6th Order of the Sacred Treasure, an honour rarely given to a woman, still less a foreigner. She died at Akashi on December 18, 1941, at the age of eighty-four. The fact that Japan had entered the war against her mother country had been carefully kept from her. Although having broken diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, the Japanese government arranged special funeral honours for her.
(To be continued)