NOBLE WORK BY WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 45, 22 February 1930, Page 20

NOBLE WORK BY WOMAN

A. Florence' Nightingale of Central Africa has passed away. Sho was a. Scottish nurse, Mrs. Draper, who, with her husband, started a leper colony at Kawimbe, in Northern Rhodesia, about 12 years ago, says the"Cape Twines.'? For years they ran the settlement without outside medical aid, while they paid the cost out of "their own pookets. Happily, a few years ago, the Governments of Northern Rhodesia and of Tanganyika, realising what a wonderful work was being carried on in an out-of-the-way part of. Central Africa, tcgan to maket a grant of money and medicines. ' .Mrs. Draper's apprenticeship to what proved to be her great life work was first 10 years as a nurse at Edinburgh Eoyal Infirmary. Then for 15 years sho . carried on village nursing work in Livingstonia, in.. connection with the .Scottish -Mission-there.,' She was then Miss May Ballantyne, and she married Mr. Walter Draper, of the Kawimbe station of the London Missionary Society. Her nursing knowledge supplied just what was lacking for the relief of -lepers: :,, ;. ; : ' . ; ;:= "My first;patient," Mrs. Draper once said, ''was- a;.poor woman, who had 'long lived in caves and on roots. Like the other lepers, she was utterly neglected, and like a frightened animal, and even when I had persuaded her to come to -me for treatment,, she- would Tetire every night to sleep under an old 'ant hill. But I had the joy of seeing ■Jier gradually recover, and now a littlo Village has grown up of lepers who have been'•'.cured, and do not want to Return-to their old homes." ... j

A 'FRIEND./OF THE LEPERS

At first the lepers were housed iii grass huts, which' wcro buried at intervals, as they could not bo properly cleansed. Later, however, proper dwclJings were erected for them, and Mrs. Draper was able to work a little sisroomed hospital1 rfor the: worst cases. She was utterly'fearless, and would often travel, without any white companion, for hundreds of miles through the bush. News of her coming would rapidly spixad, and she would have to get out of the' "mdchila" in which faithful Africans ;were carrying her, to give injections tb: sufferers"^ kneeling by the:roadside,, praying for her help. Poor creatures came from . far and near to the kind Englishwoman, .Who gave them' medicine and gentle words. In many cases she was able to effect a cure, 'and presently the rulers as vfell; as.the ruled were talking of her work.1 It was-as if one of the prophets, of; old was passing ';,.through; therland,i- so' eagerly did the sick and maimed drag themselves to Mrs. Draper's feet, :'so thankfully did they bless her .name.. And now it is done. Tanganyika will; see the angel of Kawimbe station'/ no; more. After her husband's '•■ death : >iw, 1927, 'Mrs. Draper; struggled on, doingl double duty for a while, „ and now,' worn out by the strain of her African' years, she has died quite suddenly. She was on leave in England, but was still working for her poor, Africans. She was going to.make two speeches for them in the. week that proved-to/be her last. So this noble woman died as sho lived,; working for others. Sho was of tlio line of Florence Nightingale and Father Damieu. ■■■'•