The policy of employing Egyptians or Syrians as teachers was frequently
challenged by people in England, and vigorously defended by Miss
Whately. "The schools are under my personal superintendence," she wrote
in 1885, "receiving not only daily supervision, but examination from me,
and I never gave up the teaching of any part of Scripture into other
hands, until I had truly converted as well as educated teachers as
assistants." [1]
[Footnote 1:_The Times_, Aug. 15, 1885.]
In 1879 pupils had to be refused for want of room, and from that time
till her death the scholars numbered nearly seven hundred.
The period of the Arabi rebellion in 1882 was a severe testing time.
Though deliverance came at the eleventh hour, and Cairo was spared, "the
inhabitants," writes Miss Whately in her report for that year, "lived
for months in a sickening anxiety which can hardly be realized by those
who only know the general facts from the papers." Not only Jews and
Christians, but Moslems who remained faithful to the Khedive were
threatened with torture and death. Miss Whately stayed at her post long
after nearly all the Europeans had fled, and only left when the English
Consul informed her that he would be no longer responsible for her
safety. "The superintendent of the Mission Boys' School remained in
Cairo at great personal risk, to keep things together as much as
possible. The schools were not closed till the bombardment of
Alexandria, when the excited mobs in the streets made it unfit for
children to be abroad, and it soon afterwards was necessary to take away
the board with the notice of the 'British Schools,' &c." The school
buildings were used as a refuge for the homeless and persecuted, both
foreigners and Egyptians. A list of buildings doomed to pillage included
the Mission House. "The second day after the entrance of the victorious
army, the superintendent opened the school. The pupils flocked back by
degrees. At first some of the children of _Arabists_ hung back, but
began to follow the rest after a time." Miss Whately had the joy of
knowing that in the time of extremest danger many young Coptic girls,
formerly her pupils, when urged to pretend to turn Moslems to save their
lives, had replied, "No! if we die, we die in the faith of the
Messiah." [1]
[Footnote 1:_Report of English Egyptian Mission for_ 1882.]
Yet the same year a night school for youths of the better classes was
established. Several years previously Miss E.J. Whately had founded in
connection with the school a branch for the education of the children of
European parents in Cairo. After the rebellion these were much less
numerous, and the branch, henceforth known as the Levantine School, was
chiefly attended by Jewesses, Armenians, Syrians, and others of Eastern
race, who paid for the education they received. Among them it did good
service. Subsequently small branch mission schools were established in
Gizeh and other places.
VI.
THE MEDICAL MISSION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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