Kate Marsden

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Kate Marsden, 1892

Kate Marsden (born May 13, 1859 in Tottenham , Middlesex , † May 26, 1931 in London ) was a British nurse who campaigned for leprosy research and for lepers in Yakutia at the end of the 19th century .

Life

Kate Marsden spent her childhood in Edmonton and Margate following the untimely death of her parents, Sophia Willsted and Joseph Daniel Marsden, and was trained as a nurse at Tottenham Hospital in London. Immediately after graduating in 1877, she helped wounded in the Russo-Turkish War in Bulgaria, where she first came into contact with people infected with leprosy. After several years in London and Liverpool, Marsden went to New Zealand in 1884 .

After the death of Father Damian in 1889, a well-known fighter against leprosy at the time, Marsden decided to do more research and treatment for leprosy. The pathogen was only discovered in 1873. Even at the end of the 19th century, leprosy was still considered incurable and highly contagious, which is why infected people mostly had to live under very severe conditions and often without treatment, excluded from society.

In 1890 Marsden received an invitation from the Red Cross to Saint Petersburg to receive an award for her performance in the Russo-Turkish War. There she explained her research project in several personal conversations with Tsarina Marija Fjodorovna . Shortly before, she had visited Paris and the Pasteur Institute to find out about treatment methods there and the current state of research.

Trip to Yakutia

Marsden in front of a map with the itinerary, photograph, published 1892

Upon her return to Marsden sailed from England and came over Alexandria , Jaffa , Jerusalem and Cyprus by Konstantin Opel , where more of them to Moscow traveled. On these wards she studied the respective treatment methods for leprosy. Equipped with a personal letter from Queen Victoria and Tsarina Marija Fyodorovna, Marsden and Ada Field set out on a journey through Russia and Siberia from Moscow in 1891 . Field broke off the two-month trip in Omsk because of the hardships, Marsden traveled on to Yakutia alone.

Rumors about the medicinal properties of an herb that Marsden hoped to find in Siberia spurred them on to travel on. In the end, however, the medicinal herb was only able to alleviate the symptoms of the disease. On the return trip to Moscow, Marsden met with politicians, local authorities and church officials to demonstrate the need for financial and medical support for lepers who, as outcasts, often lived in forests or mountains. Eleven months later, Kate Marsden arrived in Moscow and began fundraising and developing a plan for a leprosy ward.

Return to England

Upon her return to England, Kate Marsden was accepted into the Royal Geographical Society as one of the first female fellows . In 1893 she published her travelogue On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Sibirian Lepers , which was translated into German a year later by Marie Countess zu Erbach-Schönberg (1852-1923) under the title Journey to the Lepers in Siberia (Leipzig 1894). Kate Marsden gave lectures on the living conditions of people infected with leprosy and the course of the disease and continued to raise funds. In 1897, a modern leprosy station in Wiljuisk was opened according to plans by Kate Marsden.

In addition to many admirers and supporters, Kate Marsden also had to deal with skeptics who accused her of lying and fraud. The accusation was that a woman could not cope with such a grueling journey, the travel experiences were made up. In 1921 she published My Mission in Siberia in response to these allegations . A Vindication.

Kate Marsden died in London in May 1931.

plant

  • Kate Marsden: On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Sibirian Lepers. London 1893 (German edition: Journey to the lepers in Siberia. Leipzig 1894)
  • Kate Marsden: The Leper. In: The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA, 1893 (Ed. Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle). Monarch Book Company, Chicago 1894, pp. 213-216
  • Kate Marsden: My Mission in Siberia. A Vindication. London 1921

literature

  • Monica Anderson: Women and the politics of travel, 1870-1914. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006
  • Barbara Hodgson: The crinoline stays in Cairo. Traveling women 1650–1900. Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 2007
  • Henry Johnson: The Life of Kate Marsden. Simpkin, London 1895
  • Jennifer Speake (Ed.): Literature of travel and exploration. To Encyclopedia, Volume 3. Fitzroy Dearborn, New York 2003

Web links

Commons : Kate Marsden  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Speake, p. 772
  2. ↑ Anderson, p. 160
  3. ↑ Hodgson, p. 47
  4. ↑ Speake, p. 773
  5. ↑ Hubert Kolling: Kate Marsden . In: Hubert Kolling (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Nursing History - Who was Who in Nursing History , Volume eight, Hpsmedia GmbH Nidda, 2018, p. 178 f.
  6. ↑ Anderson, p. 156
  7. ↑ Copy of The Leper (1894)
personal data
SURNAME Marsden, Kate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nurse and leprosy researcher
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Tottenham , Middlesex
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1931
PLACE OF DEATH London