ABSTRACT
The tombstone to Mary Hill is now in the British graveyard in South Park Street, Calcutta. It was moved there, along with other missionary memorial stones, in April 1987 from the Scottish Cemetery just around the comer in Karaya Road. The bare narratives of the tombstone text and the simple published chronological record reveal something of what such missionary labours involved - for instance, the huge number of months spent aboard ship, merely in transit, just travelling between England and India. For all the early hesitancies and grudging tributes, though, the work of the wives and widows was obviously indispensable, especially among women and girls, both Indian and European, and among orphan boys. Women’s education, conducted by missionary wives and widows, would be supported above all by women’s contributions. The kinds of social, religious and genderised marginalities that Mrs Hill lived with were well known back home.
