of Cape Town women is through the extensive literature on nineteenth-century philanthropy. As this scholarship has demonstrated, nineteenth-century Britain was replete with instances of women who grouped together in philanthropic committees and used the opportunities presented by such public work to further their interests. These committees took women outside the household and shifted key assumptions about the correct distribution of power between men and women. In some cases, women were paid for committee-related work. Such employment for women threw the Victorian idea of separate spheres for men and women into some doubt, as male and female now operated in a shared and salaried professional realm (Thorne 1999, 92–104).
At some levels, the Cape Town committee reflects similar trends. The CTLBA, for example, used the opportunity of philanthropic work (in this committee and others like the Cape Town Ladies’ Benevolent Society) to develop public positions for themselves. Women assumed positions of public authority, they handled money, they hired and fired people, they ran meetings, and kept minutes and accounts. Indeed, the president, Mrs Wilmot, gained public recognition for her labours by being made an honorary life governor of the BFBS “in recognition of the work done by the Ladies of our Committee for the B.F.B.S.” (CTLBA 24 Feb. 1915).
As Susan Thorne (1999) has pointed out in her analysis of Christian mission-related women’s committees in nineteenth-century England, women’s philanthropic endeavours often assumed a transnational character. Like their counterparts in London, the women of the CTLBA were not only involved in “uplifting” the poor in their immediate vicinity; rather, they saw their brief as the whole world, or in the phraseology of the BFBS, “spread far and wide over the surface of the earth” (SAABFBS 1859, 13). Much of the activity of the committee was consequently aimed at developing forms of reading and communication to position themselves as transnational religious subjects and actors.
As the minutes of the November meeting of 1912 make clear, the women of the CTLBA used this forum to place themselves at the centre of a set of local, national and transnational textual relations, and at every monthly meeting, these relationships of distribution and circulation were dramatised. Locally, they could use the committee meeting as a way of imaginatively entering the poorer areas of Cape Town; the Bible woman provided reports of her work, and through these narratives, the committee members could construct themselves as the benefactors of the poor and could feel themselves connected to these areas. Nationally (or regionally), the members of the CTLBA could think of themselves as linked to the recipients of Bibles in much of the subcontinent, be these “natives” in Johannesburg, colportage in Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo (CTLBA 9 Sept. 1926), Hereros in South West Africa (CTLBA 8 Sept. 1925) or Sotho cattle herders in Lesotho (SAABFBS 1861, 8–9). As the oldest women’s Bible Auxiliary in Southern Africa, the CTLBA maintained correspondence with and gave advice to equivalent organisations in places as far afield as Durban and Bulawayo.
Transnationally, the CTLBA used its committee status to forge links with numerous different groups, including, as we saw in the case of the November 1912 meeting, Buddhists in Ceylon and Afghans on the North-west Frontier. Indeed, one of the committee members, Mrs Fagg, had actively been pursuing the question of Buddhists in Ceylon for some time and had written to the BFBS head office in London with a donation of £1 6s 6d to purchase Sinhalese testaments for the Buddhists in Kandy (CTLBA, 28 Nov. 1912). The BFBS had passed on her donations and instructions to the Ceylon Auxiliary of the BFBS, and its secretary, Mr T. Gracie, had in turn reported to Rev. Van der Merwe, his counterpart in the SAABFBS. It was this letter that was in turn read out to the CTLBA at the November meeting:
I would have written to you before this regarding the contribution of £1.6.6 which you so very kindly forwarded to the London Bible House from Mrs Fagg, for the distribution of Testaments in the Buddhist monastery in Kandy; but it had taken time to effect the distribution. I thought it would be much better to get at the Buddhist priests in a personal way, rather than to visit the temple and distribute the books more or less publicly. So I arranged with two of my missionary friends to get into personal touch with the priests. Their efforts have met with much success and already most of the 27 Sinhalese Testaments which I sent have been handed to them. A few copies remain to be given out as opportunity occurs. The books so far have been gratefully received and the recipients have all promised to read them as opportunity occurs in their quiet seclusion. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will use His Holy Word to lead them out of the darkness into light (31 August 1912, T. Gracie to G. P. van der Merwe, attached to CTLBA 28 Nov. 1912).
The letter demonstrates how one woman utilised the CTLBA to make her presence felt in London and Ceylon. Through the South African BFBS she could cause books to be moved through time and space and, on her behalf, have them delivered thousands of miles away. Mrs Fagg appears to have developed a life-long interest in Buddhists and continued to try to have testaments thrust upon them.
Part of the authority and energy of the committee derived from this knowledge that it could cause texts to circulate through time and space. This sense arose in part out of their direct control over the Bible women they employed. In hiring these intermediaries, the committee was following metropolitan fashions where, through the energy and organisational ability of Ellen Ranyard (Howsam 1991), the idea of using Bible women as intermediaries between middle-class committees and poor communities was formulated. Known as the “missing link”, such Bible women were widely used across the British empire as a way of reaching into the “dens and rookeries” of the poor (Anon. 1957, 240). Bible women would be supplied with Bibles and testaments and would then sell these in poor communities on a lay-by system in which a small amount of money would be given each week until the full price of the Bible had been paid off. These women consequently established ongoing relationships with their customers and in some cases also gave other forms of assistance like health care for the sick and clothes for the needy. In Howsam’s words (1991, 2), these relationships formed a complex “bible transaction”, part “commercial, personal, philanthropic and cultural”.
In their dealings with these Bible women, the CTLBA assumed a position of paternalism. At times they would withhold a portion of someone’s salary if they were ill (CTLBA 25 Jan. 1898). In other instances they fired women for what they considered inappropriate behaviour (“rudeness and unladylike behaviour”) (CTLBA 29 June 1909). With regard to Bible women themselves, we have little evidence of their biographies and opinions outside those left in the official records of organisations like the CTLBA. However, in at least some cases, it is clear that these women saw the job as an opportunity to buy respectability. Take, for example, the case of Rachel Williams, an ex-slave:
Rachel Williams was one of the emancipated slaves of 1838, and well knew how to sympathize with the poor coloured population; she was a refined woman for her class; and being an intelligent Christian and very happy and consistent in her daily walk, her visits were much valued and blessed. She was cut off in the midst of abundant labours, during the fever epidemic of 1867 (SAABFBS 1873, 2).
Another Bible woman, Mrs Miller, was described as follows:
As a Christian visitor to the poor, a vendor of Bibles from house to house, a collector of Free Contributions to the Bible Society, and the manager of a Clothing Club for the benefit of the families which have been brought to her notice during her eight years of service, she has proved a persevering and devoted friend of the poor, and a consistent agent of the Bible Society. The proof of her work, as far as figures can show it, appears in our Balance Sheet; but we believe a more important record is on High, and will be her rejoicing on the great Day of Account (CTLBA 1870, 2).
It is clear as well that the women learned from the Bible women and vice versa. One of the first women hired by the CTLBA in the 1840s was a woman from England. However, she could not speak Dutch and tended to mimic the forms of evangelisation used in England, like “cottage meetings” (sermons in the houses of the poor). She proved to be less than effective and so the next appointment was a “colonial” woman who spoke Dutch and English; she soon discontinued the cottage meetings. With increasing frequency, the committee appointed Bible women who had some nursing background and who could offer a combination of print and medicine that had proved so effective in other mission settings (A. M. Piers to Mrs March, letter dated 27 Nov. 1894 attached to CTLBA 13 Oct. 1894).
Another way to understand how members of the CTLBA viewed themselves and their work is through