CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY ARCHIVE

Section IV: Africa Missions

Part 20: Uganda Mission, 1898-1934

Part 21: Kenya Mission, 1935-1949

Part 22: Uganda Mission, 1898-1934

Part 23: Uganda, Tanganyika and Rwanda Missions, 1935-1949

Part 24: Mauritius, Madagascar and the Seychelles Missions, 1856-1929

Introduction to Part 22

Part 22 concludes the publication of the Uganda Mission papers up to 1934. It concludes the Original Papers from 1910-1934, the earlier years having been published in Part 20 and it also includes the Précis Books, 1898-1935.

The Original Papers, 1910-1934 consist of incoming papers sent by the missionaries and mission secretary to headquarters in London. They include letters, some Annual Letters, reports and minutes and give a good overview of the work in the mission, the experiences of the missionaries and the local customs.

Letters: These cover all manner of topics and were sent by the mission secretaries - R H Walker, E Millar, F Rowling and H Boulton Ladbury (who was also Secretary of the Native Anglican Church of Uganda) and the Bishops of Uganda –A R Tucker and later J J Willis. Letters were also received from missionaries, doctors, nurses and native evangelists. Included are letters from Dr A R Cook of the Toro Medical Hospital, A B Lloyd, Rev H W Weatherhead, C Hattersley, G W Baskerville (the Archdeacon of Uganda), A B Fisher, H Bowers, W E Owen, J Britton, G H Casson, J Owrid, A L Kitching, S R Skeens, E N Cook and from Miss Annie M Matthew at the Indian hospital describing operations on the King and Queen of Ankole. Letters from other missionaries include those from Miss E M Furley describing women’s work, J A Burden, L Sharp, A C Stanley Smith re work in Rwanda, Miss Alfreda L Allen, Miss Gertrude E Bird, Mrs Beatrice E Dillistone, L E Sharp, W B Gill, Rev H E Guillebaud, W Holden, E S Daniell, E L Langston, W Holden, H F Wright, Miss Edith M E Baring Gould, Rev H B Ladbury re shortage of staff, Rev E A Bawtree, A Williams (acting General Secretary), Stephen H W Wright and E L Pilgrim. Letters from African Christians complain about the setting up of a cross in the church at Namirembe.

Reports: The reports are extremely varied, ranging from reports on schools and hospitals and annual reports on the mission to a report on the investiture of King D D Daudi Chwa II. Included are reports on: King’s School at Budo, forced labour, the Uganda Bible Committee and the Uganda Bible Conference, the CMS Mengo Hospital, the CMS Hospital at Toro including the 10th Annual Report of the Hospital by Dr Ashton Bond and other doctors with photographs of the patients, the Normal School at Namirembe, work in the Hoima and Bugoma districts by Rev A B Fisher, the examiners of the Uganda Language Exam, the Toro Medical Hospital with photographs of Dr Cook and the nurses, the first report of the Busoga Balangira School, the investiture of King D D Daudi Chwa II on 7 November 1914, the Toro Medical Mission, the work in the mission for 1916 by Archdeacon G K Baskerville and Dr A R Cook, Industrial Training and Land Development, the Educational Sub-Committee, the Lady Coryndin Maternity Training School, the Bishop Tucker Memorial College, a special meeting to discuss opening up work in Rwanda, on education in Uganda by Rev Garfield H Williams, report on the mission at Mboga, on the death of Sir Apolo Kagwa, the Katikoro of Uganda by H Boulton Ladbury, on the future of the Maternity Training School by Dr A R Cook, on the plans for the future of the Bishop Tucker Memorial College at Mukono, on educational work in the African missions and on the Uganda Industrial Mission.

Annual Letters: Annual Letters for the period, 1910-1913 describe the work and experiences of missionaries, nurses, doctors and teachers such as Dr J H Cook, Rev H T Wright, Miss J McNamara, Rev E Millar, Miss A K Attlee, Miss M S Thomsett, Miss L M Bingham, Rev W E Owen, Rev G K Baskerville, Miss
J M Flint, Miss E C Pike, Rev R H Leakey, Rev E S Daniell, Miss E M Piffin, Rev H W Tegart, Miss E L Pilgrim, Rev J E Hannington, Dr A R Cook, Dr D Ashton Bond, Miss I Ferguson, Miss A M Morris, Rev W Bowen, Rev J Britton, Miss L O Walton, Rev J S Herbert, Miss J E Chadwick, Rev A L Kitching, Archdeacon T R Buckley, Rev A B Fisher, Miss A M Matthew, H G Dillistone, Mr C W Hattersley, Rev H W Weatherhead, Miss M A Taylor, Rev S R Skeens, J B Fletcher, F H White, Rev H B Lewin, Miss M J Baker, Mr W S Syson, Miss J Ferguson, Miss M Brown, Miss H L Wright, Rev H B Ladbury, Mrs A B Fisher, Rev A E Playdell, Miss L M Bingham and Rev G Casson.

Minutes: Included are minutes of: the Probation Committee, the Missionary Committee, the Women’s Conference, the Ladies Missionary Committee, the Luganda Translation Committee, the Board of Education, the Native Womens’ Central Conference, the Medical Sub-Committee, the Kavirondo Local Missionary Committee, the first meeting of the Eastern Province Local Missionary Committee, the Probation Board, the Synod of the Diocese of Uganda, the Medical Sub-Conference, the proceedings of Medical Boards, the Retirement Committee, the Standing Committee, the Rwanda Medical Mission Auxillary, the Rwanda Sub-Conference, the Literature Committee and the Medical Mission.

Miscellaneous: Included are issues of “Uganda Notes”, a regular mission newsletter with up to date information on all the developments in the mission. Pamphlets include those on the training of teachers, on “The Policy of the Uganda Mission” and on the Jubilee of the CMS in Uganda.

Other papers included are: a proposal of the Africa Inland Mission to commence work among the Azandi Tribes, a memo concerning the locations and duties of the missionaries in Uganda, notes on the Land Development Scheme for the Uganda Church, details of a scheme for an East Central African Province, thoughts of Rev G T Manley on Industrial Training, a memo on the increase in drunkenness in the local people, a list of new personnel urgently needed for the mission, memo on the proposed Federation of the British East African Dependencies by his Highness the Kabaka of Buganda, memos re the training of elementary vernacular schoolmasters and government grants, a printed newsletter of the Native Anglican Church of Uganda, memos on the need for evangelical work among the Indians in Nepal by Dr Alma Downes-Shaw, the teaching of Swahili in elementary schools by Henry Streicher, a memo on a scheme for Girls’ Education, on the Mboga Mission and the Mengo Hospital, discussions on the retention of Mboga and suggestions for Agricultural Instruction in Busoga.

News paper cuttings are also to be found describing the visit of the Prince of Wales and the funeral of Sir Apolo Kagwa, Katikiro of Uganda. Photographs of the Bishop Tucker Memorial College and the staff of the Toro Medical College are also included.

Financial papers include: estimates for the Uganda Mission for 1926, missionary statistics re workers and congregations, expenses of the missionary schools and details on the financial state of the Native Anglican Church.

Précis Books, 1898-1935

The Précis Books contain a printed précis of all papers received at headquarters from the mission. Each précis gives the date, writer, date received, summary of contents, proposals for committee action to be taken and/or the secretary’s remarks. There are sometimes also additional printed papers inserted within the volumes including: a memo from the Secretaries on the proposed constitution of the Church of Buganda, a report of a conference of CMS European missionaries on the subject of Church Organisation in Uganda, a memo on the proposed Uganda Development Company, a report on the Uganda Industrial Mission and on the maternity training school, a summary of a committee discussion, a memo on administrative development in the Rwanda Mission, the constitution of the Rwanda Mission and a memo on government grants.

EXTRACTS

Reel 439 Original Papers 1910 Annual Letter from Dr J H Cook, Mengo November 30th 1909

“In reviewing the work carried on by the medical mission during the past year, there are many features which call for humble thankfulness to God. The first that I would mention, as we all feel it to be the most important, is the more effectual organisation of the spiritual work among the patients. This has been rendered possible by the appointment of two valuable native teachers to work amongst the men & the women respectively. After one or two unsuccessful attempts we have at length secured an earnest and diligent young teacher who lives in the hospital with the hospital boys, supervises them & is generally responsible for them in off-duty hours, takes a class of convalescent patients in the afternoons, conducts the Dispensary out-patient service in the mornings, and takes evening prayers in the men’s ward, & helps in Sunday services. I have also seen him speaking individually to the patients. His heart is thoroughly in the work, and he has voluntarily offered to help in the Dispensary by doing the work of a hospital boy in showing the patients in to the consulting-room in their turns. The woman teacher is just as satisfactory in the women’s ward. Undoubtedly between them they are doing a great work in supplementing the efforts of Doctors and nurses to evangelise the patients.”

Reel 439 Original Papers 1910 Annual Letter from Miss A K Atlee, Hoima, November 26th 1909

“…. My work here is chiefly among the women & I also have the Dispensary.

Work among Women:
This divides itself into two heads:work among non-baptised women, & the further teaching of those who have been baptised. As regards the former, we have classes each morning for teaching those who want to come forward in Baptism, & I take a class for those who have been some time under a native’s instruction, & who hope to be baptized soon…. We have one class for those who are too old to see to read, & who are taught orally. For the Baptised women, the classes are held chiefly in the afternoon, when we have sewing and writing alternately, followed by a short Bible Class. On Tuesday we have a Prayer meeting, & every other week I try & tell them something of the women of other countries, and of the missionary work done there. They have been most interested in India and China the two countries we have taken so far. We do not get nearly as many women as we ought to, to these classes, considering the number of baptised women in & round this place, but I hope we shall get more by constant visiting & looking up the slack ones….

I feel very much how we need more women teachers out in the gardens – the Banyoro women are specially shy & timid, & need a woman’ s teaching – I am hoping we may be able to send out a few more Banyoro women later on, & so I am having a training-class for them, but they are very slow; some in the class are wives of teachers, so we hope they may be a help to their husbands & when they go back to their villages….”

Reel 440 Extract from an Issue of “Uganda Notes”, September 1910

“Coronation of King Daudi

The following is a translation of an account of the ceremony written by the Rev Henry Wright Duta, and part of it refers to what took place at Kasubi before the internment of Mwanga’s corpse:

I tell you here what was done when the king came to his inheritance. Only certain things were done and not all that was formerly done.

First the princes were all made to stand in a line. Kasuju, the keeper of the princes, then came and took Daudi Chwa by the hand and took him to the Katikiro saying “Here is your King, the other princes who remain are but peasants.” The Katikiro then took him by the hand and caused him to approach the corpse and Daudi Chwa took hold a bark cloth together with Mugema and Kago and covered up the corpse, this being the custom of a son whose father is dead when he says good-bye to him, and then the body was buried.

When he had done this the Katikiro took him away and he returned to his own house, that is to say, the house which he was occupying for the moment whilst they were burying the corpse. During the evening and the night many chiefs came and slept at the king’s Court to sorrow with him and they beat the drum which is called “Majaguzo” which was beaten all night.

At 9 o’clock in the evening the Rev Henry Wright Duta took the king into the Royal Chapel and hymns were sung and Evening Prayer read and a sermon preached on the Resurrection from 1st Thess 4.13 and the chief Tefaro Musalosalo preached after which the Court retired to rest.

Now follows the account of what took place next morning at the Coronation.

In the morning the king came and stood outside his court and he stood on the chair which is of great historical notoriety and which has been the coronation chair for many generations from Namalondo, the meaning of which is that Mulondo was the king who inherited when he was a small boy, and they made the chair for him so that they might stand him on it in the council, and people seeing him so tall might say that he was a tall man and grown up….

The custom of the King who is about to inherit has always been to come outside the fence practically into the road and to mount on to this chair and Mugema opened proceedings by bringing a bark cloth and hanging it about the king from his shoulders….

Then came Kasuju who is also called Walugave, who brought a second bark cloth and also a leopard skin with which he also proceeded to dress the king. His office is to take charge of all the Princes, which he does with great loyalty, and the meaning of the leopard skin with which he dressed the King is that he separates him from all other princes and makes him into the king, and he is supposed to wear the bark cloth with the leopard skin in order to remind him of the dress of the Baganda who first came into this country, and when the first king came and found the people wearing bark cloth he threw off his calf skin and dressed in a bark cloth. The reason why he is dressed in two bark cloths is because he is called the “father of twins”, that is to say, he gives birth to many people and he rules over many people….”

Reel 445 Original papers 1916 Miss Annie M Mathew, Indian Hospital at Kampala, March 19th 1916

“…. As I have been having some people of note in as patients in the Indian hospital I thought perhaps you would like to know about them. Last January the King and Queen of Ankole & their daughter Princess Christina came in and an attending suite, amongst them a private secretary & private Chaplain. They were in the hospital about 5 weeks. The King had an operation on his nose, & Princess Christina had an operation on her ear. The King is a huge man, height 6ft 6ins & weight 24 and a half stone, we could hardly get him on to the operating table, & we had some of his attendants to stand on either side to prevent him slipping off. We had to leave him on the table after the operation to come round from the chloroform as we had no stretcher big enough & strong enough to bear him.

The Queen too is very large, as indeed are all the Ankole women. They drink large quantities of milk, and are not allowed to get about, in fact they are so fat they cannot walk, only waddle along.

They are carried about in huge baskets with a hood to them. The Queen on going out wraps a very large barkcloth round her, over her head as well, & only just leaves room enough to peep out, and always puts up an umbrella if it is only to walk a few steps. The King’s name is Edwadi, (Edward) & the Queen’s Esita, (Esther).

One evening in walking along the verandah, I heard a murmuring of voices coming from the King’s room, & on looking in saw they were having Family Prayers, the Chaplain taking the lead…. The Chaplain preached one Sunday afternoon here at the native service. The Queen went to the Service & caused a great deal of interest, such a huge person waddling into church enveloped in a large barkcloth was bound to attract the attention of everybody….”

Reel 448 Original papers 1921 Letter from A C Stanley Smith, Kabale, Kigezi, May 7th 1921

“…. Since the beginning of Feb Dr and Mrs Sharp have been here at work in Kigezi. We are set on the very summit of Africa. The 200,000 inhabitants of Kigezi are heathen almost to a man. There are however scattered points of light in the surrounding darkness, for some 20 teachers are distributed throughout the land, consisting largely of the first converts of the Bachiga themselves, and they greatly need your prayers. But otherwise drunkenness, witchcraft and the grossest heathenism are the chains that bind these people in Satan’s thraldom. Our first aspiration is thus fulfilled – we are in a pioneer district: for except at the centre here at Kabale the converts are almost non-existent.

Then again 2 hours walk takes us into Ruanda, and away at the southern end of the great valley in which we live we can see the boundary tree which marks the border of Belgian Ruanda. Our district is divided into 4 main sections. Ruchiga and Ruanda lie side by side to the south, and Ruzumbura and Kinkezi cap them to the north. The former are the most thickly populated and the most important. I wish I could draw you an adequate pen picture of the beauty of this place. In coming here one toils up a great hill 1000 ft or more and finds oneself transported away from the hot steamy plains of Ankole up into a spacious upland country of piled-up hills and deep-cut valleys, and everywhere the signs of cultivation. These industrious people, who live mostly down in the depths of the valleys, carry their cultivation away up to the mountain tops, sometimes 1500 ft above. Our station stands on a fine bluff of a hill, which juts out like a buttress into a wide valley some 20 miles long running almost N & S; and through a gap in the hills in front of us we can see the great extinct volcano, Muhavura, one of the finest peaks of the Mufumbiro range. So our 2nd ambition is fulfilled and we are working in Ruanda.

Since we arrived here we have been urgently occupied in building – and our houses are nearing completion. The new work means a new language, and it is hard to find time for it. The opportunities for missionary work even now are wonderful. We have some 200 men working for us, almost all raw heathen, and drawn from every part of Kigezi: and day by day, morning and night, they hear something of Jesus and His love. We feel confident that God is working in the hearts of many of them. They are a wild lawless tribe, of magnificent physique – though as a race not strikingly intelligent. One of the best of their Christians said that there was no love among the Bachiga. Especially in the drinking season, they give way to an orgy of tribal feuds, and murder is rife. One of their great chiefs has been attending Dr Sharp for treatment. He is rather a grand and pathetic figure, is old Mutambuka. For by his outstanding personality, his skill as a medicine man and by his many acts of kindness rarely found in a heathen, he had raised himself to a position of great influence in the country. But corneal ulceration destroyed his sight. In spite however of his blindness, he is still the most popular judge and the cleverest too amongst the Bachiga”.

Reel 452 Original Papers 1927 Report on Girl’s Education by Miss I C Warburton

“The situation as regards girls’ education in Uganda is a very hopeful one. Central High schools for girls are developing in all the different districts of the Uganda Protectorate, very often side by side with the boys’ school of similar grade. The progress of these schools is largely due to the fact that in many cases the heads are trained teachers who have worked on sound educational principles and that there has been far more continuity of teaching than has been possible at the boys’ schools, where the Head of the High school was frequently also Head of the District. With adequate addition of qualified staff these High Schools and Central Schools should become strong centres of Christian influence in the Protectorate and play a great part in the forming of the ideas of the present and future generations at a critical time in the development of the country….

There is a growing feeling towards experiment in co-education, not on the lines of combining boys and girls in the same classes for instruction which has not been found generally helpful for their development, at all events at the adolescent age – but rather with the idea of bringing them together naturally in many ways such as a common school service, social evenings, visiting days, games etc. In Toro this has been tried with good results….”

<back