Wellesley C. Bailey

By Patrick F. Meehan
Extracted from: Laois Yearbook 1983

Wellesley Cosby Bailey was born at Thornbury House, Abbeyleix on 28th April, 1846, the son of Thomas Francis Bailey, gentleman farmer. Educated in Preston School, Ballyroan and Dublin. As a young man he emigrated to Australia to seek his fortune as a gold digger. When his venture failed, he went to New Zealand, where he got a farm but failed to make a fortune there also. His father soon let him know in letters that he was not pleased with his misfortune and advised him to join one of the Irish regiments. But Wellesley was deeply religious and he started praying a lot and wrote home to his father telling him not to worry that God would advise him what to do.

At the time his brother Christopher was in India with the army and invited Wellesley over for a holiday hoping that he would get him to join the Indian police and learn Hindi, but this was not to be. Wellesley went to the Indian Holy City of Faisbad. There he joined a German missionary, the Rev. Reuther. The needs of the poor touched his heart and he decided to become a missionary.

In 1869 he joined the American Presbyterian Mission at Ambala in the punjab under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. J. M. Morrison. Wellesley took on the running of the missionary school. One day Dr. Morrison asked him to go with him on a visit to a leper asylum. The visit changed his life, the suffering of the lepers so shocked him that he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to helping them. In the following spring Wellesley who was now only twenty-three years old, was left in charge of the mission when Dr. Morrison and his family went back to Germany for a holiday.

When Wellesley left Ireland he had been engaged to a Dublin girl, Alice Graham, and they kept up a correspondence. She decided to join him in India and to help him with his work, so she went out to the mission and they were married. But after some years Alice's health broke down and they had to return to Dublin.

During their stay in Dublin, they had opportunities to speak to others about the plight of the lepers. The Pim Sisters, from Mountmellick, decided to raise £30 a year for them, within a year it was £500 and within another year it was £1,000.

Eventually the Bailey's returned to India sponsored by the Church of Scotland and sent them to work in Chamba, a leper colony in the Himalayan foothills.

The Bailey's as well as doing their normal missionary work, began to build huts for the lepers' families instead of them having to stay in sheds separated from other families by hanging sheets. Through money being raised in Ireland the Bailey's were able to help other missionaries with similar problems. At this time there was no cure for leprosy. Bailey found out that Gurjan oil from a tree of the teak family helped in the treatment of the disease.

In 1886 Wellesley paid a visit to the Rev. Henry Uffman whose daughter Mary had died of leprosy at the age of eight. The Rev. Uffman lived and worked in Purulia and with the help of many friends had built a hospital.

Shortly after the Bailey's returned to Ireland where with friends they formed a society known as the Missions to Lepers in India. They returned to India and extended their work to Burma and China. People in the U.S.A. and Canada began to help them after Wellesley had toured these countries telling them about the plight of the lepers.

Wellesley continued with his wife to work tirelessly for the lepers and all who needed help. He died in 1937 at the age of ninety-one.

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