**Learning Objectives**<\/p>\n
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
\n– Describe Bailey’s activities during his final years in Travancore
\n– Understand the circumstances of his departure after thirty-four years of service
\n– Trace his continued translation work after returning to England
\n– Reflect on contemporary assessments of his life and work at the time of his death
\n– Appreciate the later life and contribution of Elizabeth Bailey<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 15.1 Declining Health and Continued Work<\/p>\n
By the late 1840s, Benjamin Bailey had been in Travancore for more than three decades. He was approaching sixty years of age\u2014an advanced age by the standards of the time, particularly for a European who had spent most of his adult life in the tropics. The physical toll of those decades was becoming apparent. Bailey had endured repeated bouts of fever, the constant challenge of the climate, and the cumulative exhaustion of a life lived at full stretch. His health, robust enough to sustain him through decades of punishing work, was beginning to fail.<\/p>\n
Yet Bailey did not slow down. The final years of his time in Travancore were as productive as any that had come before. The press continued to operate under his supervision, producing Bibles, textbooks, tracts, and the issues of *Njananikshepam*, the Malayalam periodical he had founded. He continued to revise his translations, finding improvements even in texts he had worked on for decades. He continued to correspond with the CMS, with colleagues, and with supporters. The habits of a lifetime\u2014industry, attention to detail, commitment to the work\u2014remained strong even as the physical capacity to sustain them diminished.<\/p>\n
The mission itself was in a period of transition. The first generation of CMS missionaries was passing from the scene. Joseph Fenn had died in 1840. Other early colleagues had retired or been transferred. A new generation of missionaries, with different backgrounds and sometimes different ideas, was arriving to carry the work forward. Bailey, the last of the original band, was a living link to the mission’s pioneering days, a repository of institutional memory and hard-won wisdom.<\/p>\n
His role in these later years shifted subtly from pioneer to elder statesman. He was no longer the young printer establishing a press against all odds, but the senior missionary whose experience and judgment were valued by younger colleagues. Visitors to Kottayam sought him out, wanting to meet the man who had translated the Malayalam Bible and created the first Malayalam type. He received these visitors with characteristic modesty, deflecting praise to the colleagues and Indian assistants who had shared the work.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 15.2 Departure from Travancore (1850)<\/p>\n
The decision to leave Travancore could not have been easy. Bailey had spent thirty-four years in Kerala\u2014virtually his entire adult life. He had arrived as a young man of twenty-five, newly married, full of energy and ideals. He was leaving as a man approaching sixty, his hair greyed, his health compromised, his life’s work behind him. Kottayam was more his home than Yorkshire had ever been; the mission compound, the press, the church he had helped to build\u2014these were the landscape of his life.<\/p>\n
The immediate reasons for departure were primarily related to health. Bailey’s physical condition had deteriorated to the point where the CMS and his doctors recommended a return to England. The decision was also shaped by family considerations: he and Elizabeth had children in England who needed their parents, and the pull of family, always present, had grown stronger with the passing years.<\/p>\n
The departure, when it came in 1850, was an occasion of mixed emotions. There were farewell services and gatherings, expressions of gratitude from Indian Christians who had been shaped by his ministry, and the quiet packing of a lifetime’s accumulations. Bailey left behind his press, his books, his home, and the community that had been the centre of his life for three decades. He would never return to India.<\/p>\n
What did Bailey feel as he sailed away from the Malabar Coast, watching the green shoreline of Kerala recede into the distance? The archival record gives us no direct statement, but we can imagine the complexity of his emotions: gratitude for the years of service, grief at parting, satisfaction in work accomplished, anxiety about what lay ahead, and perhaps a quiet relief at laying down burdens that had grown too heavy. The young printer from Yorkshire had given his best years to Travancore; now he was going home to die.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 15.3 Return to England and Continued Translation Work<\/p>\n
The return to England was not, as it turned out, a retirement into idleness. Bailey’s constitution, though weakened, proved resilient, and he lived for another twenty-one years after leaving India. His final decades were spent in quiet but productive activity, much of it still focused on the mission that had defined his life.<\/p>\n
Bailey settled with Elizabeth in a modest home, likely in or near London to maintain contact with the CMS headquarters. The transition from the heat and colour of Kerala to the grey skies of England must have been jarring, but the Baileys were not alone. A community of retired missionaries provided fellowship and understanding; they were among people who knew what it meant to have given their lives to distant places and now to find themselves strangers in their native land.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, Bailey continued his translation work throughout his retirement. The Malayalam Bible, which he had first published in 1841, underwent further revision. His mastery of the language, far from atrophying through disuse, seems to have deepened through continued study and reflection. He consulted with visiting Malayalam speakers, corresponded with colleagues still in India, and refined his renderings of difficult passages. The translation, like its translator, was a work in progress to the very end.<\/p>\n
The CMS continued to value his expertise. His opinion was sought on matters relating to the Travancore mission, and his linguistic knowledge remained a resource for the Society. Younger missionaries preparing to sail for Kerala visited him, seeking advice and counsel from one who had walked the path before them. Bailey, though physically removed from India, remained connected to the work through these relationships and through the ongoing labour of translation.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 15.4 Death in 1871 and Obituaries<\/p>\n
Benjamin Bailey died on 3 April 1871, at the age of seventy-nine. Elizabeth, his wife of more than fifty-five years, was at his side. His death, while mourned by family and friends, was not unexpected; he had lived a long life, and his health had been declining for some time. But the loss was felt deeply by those who remembered the young missionary who had sailed for India so many years before.<\/p>\n
The obituaries published in missionary periodicals and church newspapers provide insight into how Bailey was regarded by his contemporaries. The *Church Missionary Intelligencer*, the CMS’s official publication, carried a substantial notice that summarised his career and celebrated his achievements. The obituary emphasised his role in establishing the Malayalam press, his translation of the scriptures, and his long and faithful service. It presented Bailey as a model missionary: dedicated, industrious, and effective.<\/p>\n
The language of the obituaries reflects the conventions of Victorian missionary discourse. Bailey is described in terms that emphasise his piety, his humility, and his devotion to duty. His achievements are attributed to divine blessing as much as to human effort. The obituary writers, themselves products of the evangelical tradition, saw in Bailey’s life a demonstration of God’s faithfulness and the power of the gospel to transform lives and societies.<\/p>\n
What is less visible in these obituaries is the perspective of Bailey’s Indian colleagues and converts. We do not know how the news of his death was received in Kottayam, what memorials were held, what words were spoken. The voices of those who worked alongside him in the press, who studied his translations, who worshipped in the church he helped to build\u2014these voices are largely absent from the historical record. Yet their grief, like their labour, was real, and Bailey’s memory lived on among them in ways that the English obituaries could not capture.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 15.5 Contemporaneous Assessments of His Work<\/p>\n
The assessment of Bailey’s work at the time of his death was overwhelmingly positive within the missionary community. He was regarded as one of the most effective CMS missionaries of his generation, a man whose practical skills and linguistic abilities had enabled achievements of lasting significance. The Malayalam Bible, the dictionary, the press\u2014these were tangible products of a life well spent.<\/p>\n
Within the Syrian Christian community, assessments were more varied. Those who had aligned themselves with the CMS and embraced evangelical reform remembered Bailey with gratitude as a spiritual father and teacher. Those who had resisted missionary influence and remained within the traditional Syrian hierarchy may have had more ambivalent feelings, acknowledging the value of his educational and literary contributions while regretting the divisions that the missionary presence had exacerbated.<\/p>\n
The British colonial administration, to the extent that it took notice of missionary affairs, probably regarded Bailey as a positive influence\u2014a man who had contributed to education and stability in Travancore without causing the kind of political disruption that some missionaries provoked. His quiet, industrious approach, focused on institutions rather than agitation, suited the colonial preference for orderly progress.<\/p>\n
The wider British public, those who read missionary periodicals and supported the CMS, would have known Bailey as a name associated with the Travancore mission\u2014a faithful labourer in a distant field, whose work they had supported with prayers and contributions. The human reality of his life\u2014the heat, the illness, the bereavements, the daily grind\u2014was perhaps not fully communicated in the sanitised accounts that appeared in missionary literature.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### 15.6 Elizabeth Bailey’s Later Life<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Bailey survived her husband by several years, living into her eighties. Her later years were spent in the quiet of retirement, surrounded by family and supported by the church community. The CMS, recognising her long service, provided a modest pension that enabled her to live with dignity.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth’s life, like that of many missionary wives, had been one of sacrifice and service. She had left her homeland as a young bride, borne and buried children in a foreign land, managed households under difficult conditions, and supported her husband’s work in countless unseen ways. Her name appears only occasionally in the official record\u2014a mention in a letter, a reference in a colleague’s journal\u2014but her presence was woven through every aspect of Bailey’s missionary career.<\/p>\n
The later years of Elizabeth’s life were perhaps a time of quiet reflection. The children she had raised on the mission compound were now adults, some of them pursuing their own callings in Britain or in the wider world. The India of her youth\u2014the India of the early CMS mission, with its small band of pioneers and its sense of uncharted possibility\u2014had become a memory, a story to be told to grandchildren who could scarcely imagine the world their grandparents had inhabited.<\/p>\n
When Elizabeth died, she was buried beside her husband, reunited in death as they had been united in life. Her grave, like his, is marked with a simple inscription, recording the essentials of a life that, while less celebrated than her husband’s, was no less essential to the work they had shared.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
### The End of an Era<\/p>\n
Benjamin Bailey’s death in 1871 marked the end of an era in the history of the Travancore mission. The last of the original band of CMS missionaries was gone. A new generation, working in changed circumstances and facing new challenges, would carry the work forward. But the foundations they built upon were the foundations that Bailey and his colleagues had laid\u2014the press, the schools, the translated scriptures, the network of Indian workers and congregations.<\/p>\n
The decades that followed would see the growth of the indigenous church, the emergence of Indian leadership, and eventually the transition from mission to church that culminated in the formation of the Church of South India in 1947. These developments were the fruit of seeds planted by Bailey and his generation\u2014seeds that grew in ways the planters could not have anticipated but that bore the mark of their origin.<\/p>\n
Bailey’s life, considered as a whole, presents a picture of remarkable consistency and dedication. From his early years as a printer’s apprentice in Yorkshire to his final years as a translator in English retirement, he pursued a single calling with unwavering commitment. The gifts he brought to that calling\u2014practical skill, linguistic aptitude, patient endurance\u2014were not spectacular, but they were exactly what the work required. His legacy is not that of a charismatic leader or an original thinker, but of a faithful worker who used his talents wisely and well in service of a vision larger than himself.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Key Takeaways**<\/p>\n
– Bailey’s final years in Travancore were marked by declining health but continued productivity in printing, translation, and mission leadership.
\n– He departed Travancore in 1850 after thirty-four years of service, returning to England primarily for health reasons.
\n– In retirement, Bailey continued to revise his Malayalam Bible translation and served as a resource for the CMS and for younger missionaries.
\n– Bailey died in 1871 at the age of seventy-nine, and his obituaries celebrated his achievements as a printer, translator, and faithful missionary.
\n– Contemporaneous assessments of his work varied: the missionary community was uniformly positive, while Syrian Christian perspectives were more diverse.
\n– Elizabeth Bailey survived her husband by several years, her life of quiet service largely unrecorded but essential to the mission’s work.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Discussion Questions**<\/p>\n
1. How might Bailey have felt about leaving Travancore after thirty-four years? What would have been the costs and consolations of returning to England?
\n2. What does Bailey’s continued translation work in retirement reveal about his character and his commitment to the mission?
\n3. Why might Bailey’s obituaries have emphasised certain aspects of his life while omitting others? What do obituaries reveal about the values of those who write them?
\n4. Consider the life of Elizabeth Bailey. Why have the contributions of missionary wives been less visible in historical records, and how might we recover their stories?<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Primary Source: Obituary Notice for Benjamin Bailey (1871)**<\/p>\n
*”The Rev. Benjamin Bailey, for thirty-four years a missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Travancore, entered into his rest on the 3rd of April, in the 80th year of his age. Mr. Bailey was a man of singular devotedness and industry. To him belongs the honour of establishing the first printing press in Travancore, and of giving to the Malayalam-speaking people the Holy Scriptures in their own tongue. His translation of the Bible, and his Malayalam-English Dictionary, are monuments of his learning and perseverance. He was a faithful servant of Christ, and his works do follow him.”*<\/p>\n
*(Church Missionary Intelligencer, May 1871, p. 156. Spelling and punctuation modernised.)*<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
**Further Reading**<\/p>\n
Cox, Jeffrey. (2008). *The British Missionary Enterprise Since 1700*. Routledge. (For context on missionary careers, retirement, and the representation of missionary lives.)<\/p>\n
Neill, Stephen. (1985). *A History of Christianity in India: 1707-1858*. Cambridge University Press. (Provides biographical information on Bailey and his colleagues.)<\/p>\n
CMS Archives, University of Birmingham. (Bailey’s correspondence from his final years in Travancore and his retirement in England provides primary source material for this chapter.)<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
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