KATE MARSDEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1941, Page 6

KATE MARSDEN

GOOD SAMARITAN OF CENTURY. She died in 1931. Russia honours her name, and the world should know it, for she was a rare soul, a gallant woman, and one of the greatest Good S?m;irit;m's of the century, Kate Marsden was Iter name, and she was sorry for tiie leper:: oi: Siberia. To Siberia she went--that vast i.wnt of cold unlovely, rough and cruel rand which stretches for 2 0(10 miles along the north of Europe, and there she found lepers who were driven from tiie villages and towns and exiled in the woods, poor, unloved, miserable creatures wailing for death, a dog perhaps their only companion. She set out on her perilous journey in 1891. Through marshes, over mountains. across bitterly cold plains she went. She sought out the mon and women who were most horribly diseased for she was determined io lind conditions at their worst. When she returned to Moscow she stirred up public feeling. and her dream of a leper settlement for the far north came into living'. What Failier Damien iiad done under the sun she did unde)' grey skies.