The 'Invisible' Women of the Baptist Mission to Jamaica (1800-1860)

Abstract

Women played an integral, but understated and often unrecognised, part in Baptist missions such as Jamaica during the early nineteenth century. Yet they are largely absent from extant correspondence, only sparsely mentioned in mission journals and the writings of male missionaries. This paper, through examination of primary records of the Baptist Missionary Society and published memoirs, explores the extent of female mission activity and the lives of the women who undertook it. It demonstrates that parochial and mission work, although prescribed by defined gender roles prevailing in England at that time, offered women enhanced opportunities outside the domestic sphere. Missionary service, using Jamaica post-slavery as a case study, offered even greater opportunities for spiritual fulfilment by engagement both as teachers in the mission schools and as the wives of serving missionaries.