Here and there a husband or a father is found who is conscious of the disadvantages under which the women of his family are laboring and would be glad to take upon himself the duty of instructing his wife and daughters, yet is prevented from doing so because the latter prefer to follow the example of their foremothers and remain ignorant.

While such conditions prevail it is impossible for the government to take any steps for the promotion of education among women, but a notable reform has been conducted by English women of India under the leadership of the Marchioness of Dufferin, Lady Curzon, and the wives of other viceroys, by supplying women doctors and hospitals, because, as you understand, men physicians are not permitted to enter zenanas except upon very rare occasions and then only in the most liberal of families.  Nor are women allowed to be taken to hospitals.  There are excellent hospitals and dispensaries in every part of India, but women are not permitted to participate in their benefits, and an untold amount of unnecessary suffering is the result.  Some years ago, inspired by Lady Dufferin, an association was formed to provide women doctors, hospital nurses, and establish, under the direction of women exclusively, hospitals for the treatment of women and girls.  This association is non-sectarian and no religious services or conversations are allowed.  The movement has received active encouragement from both the imperial government and the local authorities, and by the latest returns is responsible for 235 hospitals and dispensaries, 33 women doctors with degrees from the highest institutions of Europe, 73 assistants, and 354 native students and trained nurses, who, during the year 1903, took care of nearly a million and a half of women and girls who needed treatment and relief.  This does not include many similar institutions that are maintained by the various missionary boards for the same purpose.  Taking both the civil and religious institutions together, the women of India are now well supplied with hospitals and asylums.

Scattered over the country under the care of zealous and devoted Christian women are a large number of homes for widows, and no one who has not lived in India can appreciate the importance of such institutions and the blessing they offer, for the situation of widows is pitiable.  Formerly they were burned upon the funeral pyres of their husbands.  It was an ancient custom, adopted from the Scythian tribes, who sacrificed not only the wives, but the concubines and slaves and horses upon the tombs of their dead lords.

The British government forbade “suttee,” as widow burning was called, and although we hear that it is still practiced occasionally in remote parts of the empire, such an act would be punished as murder if the police were to learn of it.  But the fate of some thousands of widows is worse than death, because among the superstitious Hindus they are held responsible for the death of their husbands,