The Call and Contribution of
Dr Robert Arthur Hughes OBE, FRCS
1910-1996
Edited
by D Ben Rees
Modern Welsh Publications Ltd
for
North East India-Wales Trust
First Edition: June 2003
©
Modern Welsh Publications Ltd
and
North East India-Wales Trust
Cover Design: Siôn Morris
Price: £5.00
Contents
Preface
Mrs Nancy Hughes
Chapter 1
- The Life and Work of Dr Arthur Hughes OBE,
FRCS by Dr
D Ben Rees
Notes
-
Chapter 2
- The Mission Understanding of Dr Arthur
Hughes FRCS by D Andrew Jones
Contributors -
Copyright
© D Andrew Jones and D Ben Rees and Modern Welsh
Publications Ltd / North East India-Wales Trust
First
published: June 2003
Published
by Modern Welsh Publications Ltd, 32 Garth Drive,
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PREFACE
I am so indebted to my faithful minister, Revd
Professor D Ben Rees for ensuring that the first two
lectures in memory of my husband Arthur, see the light
of day. I gather that it was Dr Rees who suggested
the idea of a Memorial Lecture at the first Missionary
Committee of the Liverpool Presbytery of the
Presbyterian Church of Wales after his death. The
first lecture was to take place at the Medical
Institution in Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, with Dr Emyr
Wyn Jones, a fellow student with Arthur at the
University of Liverpool, invited to deliver the first
lecture. When he declined, due to ill health, the
Missionary Committee asked me to suggest a name and
that is how my minister gave a memorable introduction
to the life and work of one his faithful elders,
which, at last, sees the light of day.
It was a delightful occasion. So many of my late
husband's colleagues from the University of Liverpool
came as well as Welsh Presbyterians from all over
Merseyside, and from Flintshire; and the event was
chaired by Revd Harri Owen Jones, BA, then at Menai
Bridge, who, also, was the Moderator of the
Presbyterian Church of Wales.
In June 2001 the second Memorial Lecture was held,
this time at Bethel Chapel in Heathfield Road, under
the chairmanship of another dear friend of mine, the
Revd C Eleri Edwards, who, herself, served for nearly
twenty years as a missionary in Madagascar. The
lecture on the second occasion was delivered by the
Revd Dafydd Andrew Jones, MA, who travelled up from
Cardiff to be met by a sizeable congregation; and his
visits to the old mission field in India has endeared
him to so many of our friends in the Churches of
Shillong and in the other towns and villages of
Meghalaya.
I hope that this book will circulate to Shillong,
which is every day in my heart and mind. I remember H
Mashel Rapthap as Senior Executive Secretary of the K
J P Synod writing these words to us on 28 February
1991:
Many of our people and members of the Church are
eagerly waiting for your arrival and they will be very
happy indeed to see and meet you again.
That was our last visit to the town and the Church and
the Hospital that means so much to both of us. I
feel, as does John, my son, and his family, that this
book is a fitting tribute to one that did so much in
the power of God and as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
It was Arthur who wrote these words on Christian
compassion:
True Christian compassion is absolutely
unconditional. Compassion is not to be shown to prove
anything, not to be used to convince anyone, and not
to be done to ease one's own mutual distress.
Then, he added:
A mission hospital doesn't exist so that patients of
another religion may be persuaded to accept the Gospel
because compassion is shown to them there. It is
never a
means to an end, it is the end itself. Compassion is
the manner in which the Christian and the Church faces
suffering.
I have tried to face life without my late husband's
physical presence in the philosophy and faith that he
proclaimed in his life, in the pulpit, at his home,
and in the meetings and assemblies of the Church.
I acknowledge, also, the generosity of the North East
India-Wales Trust which owes so much to the generosity
of the family of Gwyn Phillips, the loyal brother of
another extraordinary missionary, the Revd T B
Phillips for sponsoring this volume. I am grateful,
also, for a grant towards the publishing cost by the
Missionary Committee of the Liverpool Welsh
Presbytery.
I look forward to the visit of another friend of
Arthur, the Revd Dr Elfed ap Nefydd Roberts, Wrexham,
to deliver the third Memorial Lecture on 1 June 2003
at Bethel Chapel.
In great gratitude
Nancy Hughes
Liverpool
4 January 2003
Back to contents list
Chapter 1
The Life and Work of Dr R Arthur Hughes, OBE, FRCS
by D Ben Rees
Background
Robert Arthur Hughes was born in the market town of
Oswestry, Shropshire on 3 December 1910. He and his
brother, John Harris Hughes, were twins, and both gave
of their utmost in their adult lives to the
Presbyterian Church of Wales. Their father was a
Presbyterian Minister, who came from a Liverpool-
Welsh family. The Revd Howell Harris Hughes
ministered at the Oswald Road Presbyterian Chapel in
Oswestry. He began his ministry in a Forward Movement
chapel and the Revd D S Davies, Liverpool (who also
served as a missionary) remembers the young people
flocking in during the period that he ministered at
Cardiff to hear him. The fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of Man were the fundamentals of his
theology. It was after he left Oswestry for a
Welsh-speaking chapel in Tabernacl, Bangor, that he
became a well-known Minister through his pacifism and
anti-war stance. He became, with Dr J Puleston,
George M Ll Davies, Peter Hughes Griffiths (London), D
Francis Roberts, J Morgan Jones, Merthyr, Dr J H
Howard, one of the leading Welsh Presbyterian
pacifists. It is of interest to me that of these
seven men of conviction, four of them were connected
sometime or other with the Liverpool Welsh. Indeed,
George M Ll Davies and Howell Harris Hughes were born
and bred in Liverpool.
His mother, Annie Myfanwy (née Davies), hailed from
Garth, near Acrefair, in the Collen Valley. She had
received higher education and had served as a
headmistress in the mining village of
Rhosllanerchrugog, on the outskirts of Wrexham. They
moved as a family from the border area to the
university city of Bangor, and both boys, Robert and
John, received most of their elementary education at
Garth School. From Tabernacl Welsh Calvinistic
Methodist Chapel, Bangor, his father received a call
to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in Crosby
Road South, Waterloo. The twins received their
education at Christchurch and at the Grammar School of
Waterloo near Scaforth (1921-25), before moving to
Siloh Presbyterian Church of Wales in Gloddaeth
Avenue, Llandudno. There, Robert and his twin brother
Harris attended the well-known John Bright Grammar
School. He became greatly attached to Llandudno and
he always enjoyed visiting the town in his adult life.
From John Bright Grammar School he was accepted to the
Faculty of Medicine at the University of Liverpool,
which he entered in 1928. He proved himself to be one
of the best students of his generation, and was
awarded the Gold Medal in Surgery.
At the University he was a member of the Student
Christian Movement (SCM) and leader in the student
study circles. He also attended a number of SCM
Conferences at Swanick and the Quadrennial Conferences
at Liverpool and Edinburgh. R A Hughes was asked to
speak at the pre-terminal conference in Liverpool and
at the Welsh SCM Summer Conference. For four years he
was the chairman of the Student Voluntary Movement
Union in Liverpool which existed to unite all those
who hoped to make missionary work their life service
and to bring all members of the SCM to realise their
missionary challenge.
Like his father, pacifism was important to him and he
admitted this in his application to be a missionary
I have always regarded my work in the Christian
pacifist movement as work for the spiritual good, both
inside and outside the churches, because in discussion
groups and open air meeting one sees that the
ambiguity of the churches reaction to the question of
war has made many doubt, both the sincerity of the
churches and the relevance of Christianity in the
modern world.[1]
After he had qualified in 1933, he was appointed house
surgeon to the Liverpool Welsh Presbyterian elder, Mr
(later Professor) O Herbert Williams, and house
physician to Dr (later Professor) Norman Capon at the
Royal Southern Hospital, Liverpool. Dr R Arthur
Hughes was then appointed the John Rankin Fellow in
Human Anatomy at the University before spending two
years at the David Lewis Northern Hospital as Surgical
Tutor, Pathologist and Registrar. After being
accepted with tremendous joy by the Executive
Committee of the Welsh Mission of the Presbyterian
Church of Wales, he gained an added qualification in
Tropical Medicine in the University of London (staying
in Gower Street), as well as further training at the
Radium Institute and the Mount Vernon Hospital.
At the David Lewis Northern Hospital he met a young
nursing sister, Nancy Wright, one of three children of
William Clyde and Mary Elizabeth Wright, Claughton,
Birkenhead. Her nursing career began when she had
completed her training at a secretarial college, and
had arrived at the Isolation Hospital, Bidston, where
she spent three years. Then she went on the Northern
Hospital, Liverpool, where she received general
training. She then moved to Oxford Street Maternity
Hospital and later returned to the Northern, where she
undertook responsibilities as a Sister. There, she
was to meet Dr R Arthur Hughes, then a Surgical Tutor,
and they married at Palm Grove Wesleyan Methodist
Chapel (where she was a member) by the bridegroom's
father, the Revd Howell Harris Hughes, and the
Minister of the local church, the Revd F Bainbridge.
After two farewell services, one in Llandudno and the
other in Liverpool, both sailed on 28 January 1939
from Birkenhead on the cargo boat City of
Marseille for Calcutta. Nancy Hughes suffered greatly
for the first fortnight on board from seasickness, but
eventually she overcame it, arriving at Calcutta, and
then travelled from that teeming city to the more
acceptable town of Shillong in Cymry India.
Shillong: a Little England in India
Shillong was designed originally by its founder,
Colonel Henry Hopkinson, Commissioner of Assam and
Agent to the Governor-General of India, to be a
'little England' for the British civil servants,
entrepreneurs in Cymry India away from sweltering
plains. The cool, bracing breeze of Shillong was
always acceptable to the Welsh missionaries as well as
the English entrepreneurs in Assam. To Indira Gandhi,
Shillong, in the post-second war period, was one of
the most attractive towns in the whole of India. The
pine trees and the luxuriant forests gave it an
atmosphere all of its own, and she remarked on the
pleasant situation of the township situated on the
plateau of gentle hills, five thousand feet above the
sea level.
The summer months bring torrential rains to Shillong
but the atmosphere clears quickly after a heavy
downpour. Shillong is cradled in the rain shadow of
Shillong Peak, the tallest in Meghalaya, flanked by
Mawpat Hill on the North, allowing a panoramic view of
the never-to-be-forgotten Diengiei Hills.
Shillong can claim numerous waterfalls. It is well
worth a trip to the Spread Eagle Falls, the Elephant
Falls, Bishop Falls, Beadon Falls. There are plenty
of beautiful areas in which to relax, such as Ward's
Lake and the Lady Hydari Park with its mini-zoological
centre. Today, near the State Central Library
building is a statue of Indira Gandhi, who was so
loved and respected as a politician, in particular as
a champion of the tribal people. The hub of Shillong
is the market place known as Jewduh. It is what
Chandi Chowk is to Delhi. The market place, Jewduh,
is dominated by the Khasi women, clever, resilient and
hardworking. The Khasis that Dr R Arthur Hughes came
to serve, speak a non-Khmer language which is spoken,
also, by the people in Annam of Cambodia. Their
culture is old and rich and they follow a matrilineal
system of society, unparalleled in the whole of
India. This was the town that became their home on St
David's Day, 1939.
Dr Hughes had come to assist the Liverpool-born
surgeon, Dr H Gordon Roberts, who, single handed had
brought into existence a Welsh Mission Hospital on the
hill to the north west of the town. It was an area
known as Jaiaw, on the site where the Welsh missionary
Ceredig Evans lived before the devastating earthquake
of 1897.
Dr H Gordon Roberts was a living dynamo.[2]
He planned the Hospital and then ensured that as the
outbuildings went up in the 1920s, an engine room, a
laundry house for the Indian nurses, other premises
for the local doctors, dispensers, friends of poor
patients, hospital orderlies, along with missionary
doctors and nurses were built along with a segregation
area for infectious diseases. Kitchens were
constructed to feed the nurses and the patients, and a
new chapel was erected for the Jaiaw congregations.
Dr Gordon Roberts had one great worry in the mid
1930's when he began to contemplate his successor at
the hospital. His delight was evident when, in 1939,
a young, highly-competent surgeon arrived in the
person of Dr R Arthur Hughes. Since its opening in
1922, the Welsh Mission Hospital of Shillong had
gained an enviable reputation. Dr Hughes built on
this foundation, even enlarging it by his dedication
and skill. He took charge of all the general wards,
while Dr Roberts continued with the administration.
When the latter retired in 1942, Dr Hughes became the
Senior Medical Officer, Administrator and Finance
Officer.
The Second World War
We must emphasise the uniqueness of this hospital in
the early 1940s when Dr Hughes became the Senior
Medical Officer. In all the government hospitals of
Assam at that time, 1942 onwards, there were fewer
nurses employed in the Welsh Mission Hospital in
Shillong. There were fewer major surgical operations
performed annually in all the civil hospitals of
Assam, including the Berry White Medical School, than
were performed at the Welsh Mission Hospital.
As if that were not enough Dr Hughes was seconded for
service as a liaison officer between the Indian Army,
the Assam Government, the Civil Health Authorities,
the British Army Forces and the Tea Industries'
Medical Services. This involved dealing with the
recruited labour forces then working on the widening
of the road from Kohima to Dimapur – the famous Burma
Road – and the evacuation of civilian refugees. When
the Japanese bombed Juphal, Dr Hughes was involved in
treating the wounded at the Dimapur Refugee Camp
before being posted back to Shillong to serve as the
surgeon to the military hospitals; that is, the
Indian Military Hospital, the British Military
Hospital, as well as the Welsh Mission Hospital, a
total of 1500 beds. This continued from 1942 to 1945
when 2,851 officers and soldiers from all over the
world, many fellow Welshmen from his own denomination,
were treated by him over and above the usual
clientele.[3]
The Welsh Mission Hospital, under the care of Dr R
Arthur Hughes, became one of the great hospitals of
India, comparable with St Luke's Hospital in Hirampur,
Bihar, with patients being received from all parts of
India. Among these patients were senior government
civil servants, and tea planters or their wives from
the plains of Assam and Cachar, as well as individuals
from as far as Calcutta. These patients constituted
the main source of income for the support of the
Khasia Hills Welsh Mission Hospital, and enabled him,
and his staff, to provide the same high standards of
surgery and nursing care for the very poor, some of
whom would have travelled 200 miles on a round trip to
seek physical relief.
His weekly workload was tremendous. Dr Hughes started
the day with a religious service for the staff and
himself at 7.40 am; and then it was a matter of
visiting the wards before attending, after 1942, to
administration and seeing those outpatients who needed
urgent investigation. This was done regularly on
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings. The surgical
work was undertaken on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
from 8.30 am until 8.00 pm. The clinics on Tuesday
and Thursday would often continue until 10.30 pm. In
a typical response, Dr Hughes argued:
It does sound ridiculous that we were involved in
seeing outpatients until as late as that, but it would
have been heartless to send them away to come back the
following week when they had already walked through
the jungle for some hours before getting a bus,
perhaps, on the main road.
Dr Hughes did not consistently have surgical
colleagues throughout the years. Dr Stanley Russel
was the first colleague, from 1942-47, thus enabling
Arthur and Nancy Hughes to take their first furlough
after nearly seven years in Shillong. Then came Dr
Norman Tunnell, making it possible from them to take
another break. Afterwards, Dr Peter Shave came for a
short period, as well as young medical missionaries
for a few months. But the fact remains that Dr Hughes
did not have a medical missionary colleague brought up
in the Presbyterian Church of Wales to assist him in
Shillong during the whole of the thirty years, despite
many appeals in the monthly magazines Y Cenhadwr
and Glad Tidings. Like Dr Gordon Roberts
before him, he realised that training men and women
from India was the most sensible solution and the only
real solution to shortages of specialist staff. As we
know, this is what actually happened.
Above all, Dr Arthur Hughes is remembered as the
medical pioneer.[4]
His achievements are extraordinary. He was the first
surgeon to introduce lower segment Caesarean section
before the days of antibiotics. When his assistant,
Dr Drinsing, whom he instructed in the technique
before being placed in charge of the maternity ward,
wrote an article for the Christian Medical Journal
on their experience, in Shillong, it became clear that
this was a first, not only in Assam, but in the whole
of the India sub-continent. Dr Hughes was the first
to introduce vagus nerve resection in the treatment of
Duodenal Ulcer in Assam; he introduced the Oxford
Ether Vaporiser into general anaesthesia in North East
India and recognised Rickets in the infant population,
in addition to recognising the protein calorie
deficiency which he called 'Kwnashiorkor', developing
the clear principles for its treatment.
Dr R A Hughes in full flight, 1945-51
The end of the Second World War did not change the
style or the way of life of the missionary doctor.
His regular week meant 80 solid hours work, excluding
emergencies, but at a cost, as he admitted in a letter
to the Revd David Edwards at the office in Liverpool.
The cost entailed a certain 'reduction in one's
expectation of life' and to be away for lengthy
periods from his beloved wife Nancy. He needed help
in the administration of the hospital and the
compound.
He poured out his heart to the Revd David Edwards who
had been a missionary himself;
As things are, you may hope till kingdom come for
financial statements about the hospital, I am not
going to spend any more hours out of the twenty four
doing accounts.[5]
He had done such tasks throughout the war years but
now Dr Hughes was getting very frustrated at the
failure of the Central Office to fund him assistance
in the hospital. He was blunt in his threat to the
Liverpool office:
If you cannot find a thoroughly competent doctor at
the very latest a year before my next furlough is due,
I shall probably have to decide not to return.[6]
He was not confident of help from the Khasi people
themselves. In uncharacteristic style he criticised
those that he was serving so conscientiously:
They [the Khasis] have little zeal, little passion for
helping their own people, and I sometimes think even
less desire to learn medicine or surgery.[7]
Dr Hughes had undertaken a huge task in this period.
With the hospital as a base, he was beginning a new
task of bringing medicine to the people of the
villages of the Khasi Hills. In 1945 he had been on
the road in a big vehicle for a month, calling at the
markets of Umsning, Nongpoh, Laitlyngkot, Lyngkyrdem,
Dowki and Mawphlant, and not forgetting the market in
Sylhet Road, Shillong. He was sensitive to those who
were calling for continual care. Cherrapunji wanted
Dr Hughes and his helpers to call. It was not easy
because the market at Cherra was held on the same day
as the market in Lyngkyrdem. But these visits were
not just to do with medicine: they were to do also
with presenting the gospel news. The evangelistic
services went with a swing but he had to remind the
Khasi preachers that they were not addressing an
assembly of the converted and that a busy market place
is not the time or place for a long winded sermon of
three quarters of an hour in length. He used the
evenings to convey his feelings as he reviewed the
campaigning.
On these journeys Dr Hughes saw the need for wide
ranging educational campaigning. He felt that Khasia
needed a revolutionary change in its whole way of
life. It was a big task. The agricultural system
needed modernising. Their campaigning suffered from a
lack even of simple technology. He saw the need for a
public address system to work effectively in the
market places, but he was thrilled to be involved in
this campaigning. He took a particular interest in
the Bhoi country. In 1948 he was involved, with a
senior Khasi pastor, the Revd Eglington Catphoh in the
restructing of villages in the Bhoi Country. The main
reason for the decision to break up some of the old
villages was the prevalence of diseases due to the
unhealthy environment. Dr Hughes had been called in
order to help the secular and religious authorities to
decide on the creation of three new villages after the
destruction of a large number of the old infested
villages. They expected him to decide which were the
healthiest sites in the Bhoi area for these
newsettlements; and also to put into practise that
which could be done to improve the state of health of
the inhabitants of the fourth village. Dr Hughes
started off in a well-laden jeep at 8 am and would be
driven down the road from Shillong for 19 miles to
Umsning. That journey took a person down 2000ft from
a region of pine forest to one of evergreen jungle and
rice field. It poured torrential rain when they
arrived in Umsning and they waited for the weather to
improve before they set off on a walk along a narrow
and muddy road to the first of the three villages.
Most of the way was along the bottom of a fairly deep
valley, sometimes tight-roping along the mud ridges
between the terraces of rice fields, sometimes
climbing over the spires of the hills before
descending into the valley or crossing the streams by
bridges made of tree trunks, with a bamboo railings
suspended from the branches of the trees above. It
was unbearably humid, and so different in every way
from Shillong. The birds and the foliage were so
different and the leeches and mosquitoes were there in
their thousands.
The jeep was borrowed. But in 1948 he organised the
building of a new jeep. A Ford chassis arrived on 11
January 1948 and soon he had a new jeep on the road.
Using this new vehicle, Dr Hughes could arrange weekly
visits to Mawngap. It was a means of bringing sick
people into Shillong Hospital from the non-Christian
community. His whole aim was to extend God's
Kingdom. When he visited Mawphlang for his holiday he
could not relax completely. Life was too short.
There was so much to do. He gave four lectures in
Mawphlang: two on the first week, and another two the
following week using the Socratic method to instruct
the inhabitants on health care. It led him to be
invited to a number of non-Christian homes. He told
me of how friendly these families were, and he came to
the conclusion that what needed changing were not the
people's food habits or hygiene but, rather, to
impress on these kind-hearted folks the need for a
completely new way of life. The only possible way
would be for them to become gospel orientated. He
spoke at Mawphlang emphasizing the need for a radical
change in the whole agricultural system. But he could
not change it single-handed for already he had too
much on his hands.
He was the pastor for the whole missionary
fraternity. Dr Hughes was deeply concerned for the
people. He decided in the spring of 1948 to send Jane
Beryl Edwards home because of her health. She had
gone out at the beginning of 1945 with Winnie Thomas
and Mollie Parker and had had the opportunity of
working in the Shillong Welsh Mission Hospital. Beryl
Edwards was given a great deal of responsibility, and
she still remembers the atmosphere enriched by the
prayers of Dr Hughes.[8]
The scholar missionary, Basil Jones, also became a
patient of Dr Hughes. He had frequent attacks of
Tonsillitis and ended up with Diphtheria. Dr R Arthur
Hughes was concerned also with the situation of Thomas
Edwin Pugh (1888-1951). A native of Talgarth in
Breconshire he had been ordained in 1929 and sailed
out with his wife, Elizabeth Ellen Pugh (1883-1957),
and their daughter, in January 1930 on his
appointment as Headmaster of the Shillong High
School. T E Pugh returned to Cardiff in 1945. He
stayed in Cardiff for over two and a half years,
drawing full salary and he also received a grant of
£50 to help in the considerable expenses involved in
the education of Enid who was dedicating her young
life to missionary work. The office in Liverpool was
deeply concerned about the Revd T E Pugh. They felt
he should not return to Shillong. David Edwards tried
to persuade him to take a church or apply for a
headship in Wales. But he stubbornly refused. He
longed for India and his pupils in Shillong. The Revd
Pugh sailed on 4 February 1948 for Calcutta and was
given a warm welcome by his staff when to took up his
responsibilities at Shillong High School and by his
loyal friends, Arthur and Nancy Hughes.
Dr Hughes had other worries to keep him occupied
also. He arranged in October 1946 with Messrs D A J
Tallis and Company of Clydebank, in Strathclyde,
Scotland, for the Hydro Extractor to be sent to the
Shillong Hospital. But due to a number of blunders,
and it is difficult to pin down the real problem, it
took Tallis over eighteen months to get the order
processed, shipped and executed. The shipment took
place in May 1948 but the cost had gone up to £280, an
increase of £120 on the original estimate. Dr Hughes
was encouraged to obtain the services of Dr Ian
Patrick for twelve months in the summer of 1948, and
he was also grateful to receive a cystoscope for the
hospital. For years he had borrowed an instrument
from the military hospital, which was entirely
unsatisfactory. The Mawphlant area had a soft spot in
the generous heart. In the summer of 1948 he and the
Revd Thomas John Griffiths (1916-1998) went on a
special visit to the villages in the Mawphlang area.
Dr Hughes had healed T J Griffiths from a serious
attack of malaria, and, as a sign of his gratitude, he
accompanied the Schweitzer of Assam to the people who
had suffered considerably from the epidemic - an
epidemic that had taken the lives of thirty seven
individuals in the two months. Dr Hughes examined
every one of the sick and persuaded the authorities to
spend some money to check the epidemic. The following
Sunday (this was the first Lord's Day in August) they
both were invited back to the Presbyterian Church in
Mawphlang where a group of men and women were
committing their lives to Christ. T J Griffiths
administered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and
the devout doctor gave the address on the relationship
that clean and healthy home had in relationship to the
Christian faith. Dr Hughes was flabbergasted that
respectable, God fearing families could live in filth,
and he emphasised with his godly authority that
one cannot expect to see the imperatives of the
Christian life appreciated where even the difference
between cleanliness and filth is not understood.
To him, as with Martin Luther, 'cleanliness was next
to godliness'. The post- war period was a time ripe
for a real revolution in the Christian homes of
Presbyterians in the Khasi hills, and he honestly
believed that
If we give them the weapons for healthy living we
shall see an accession to the Christian Church within
the next few years.
Dr Arthur Hughes had a number of loyal supporters on
Merseyside. One of the most loyal of his supporters
without any doubt, was E R Jones, a Liverpool Welsh
builder and a Presbyterian elder, and father of Mrs
Leah Clement-Evans, who had worked with Dr Hughes
within Bethel Presbyterian Church of Wales, Heathfield
Road, Liverpool 15. 'E R Jones "Briarley", Alexandra
Drive, Liverpool' as he was known, expressed his
willingness in this period to finance any special
scheme associated with Dr Hughes.[9]
In August 1948 he offered to pay £400 for a Hillman
motor car to carry out preventative work on diet and
general health. E R Jones guaranteed, in all, the sum
of £1,000 which would mean that the experiment could
be implemented for at least two and a half years.[10]
By 29 October E R Jones had sent a cheque for £250 to
the Mission office in Falkner Street, Liverpool.[11]
A powerful tribute was paid to Dr Hughes in the autumn
of 1948 by the author of the popular daily column in
the Liverpool Daily Post, 'Wales Day by Day'.
It brought great joy to all his admirers in north, mid
Wales and Merseyside.
Dr Hughes also had his concern for the Hospital that
was being built in Jowai. At the beginning of autumn
1949 he had left Miss Morfydd Jones to go to Jowai to
relieve Miss Marian Pritchard.[12]
He hoped to go himself in September or October 1949 to
Jowai, to see the condition of the road and to inspect
the work of clearing the site.[13]
He had hoped that there would have been radical
improvements to the Shillong to Jowai road, but this
was not so. It was easier to travel during the dry
weather, and although the road was bumpy, it would
still be possible to drive the standard on it without
undue damage to the vehicle. Even the Rover car was
not particularly comfortable to drive in on such
uncaredfor Khasi Hill roads. It was annoying also
that the year's petrol allowance was so low. Dr
Hughes himself had an attack of Infectious Hepatitis,
and his matron, Miss Margaret Owen, was desperately
overworked at Shillong. The other missionary nurses
also enjoyed poor health in 1949. Miss Morfydd Jones
had a backache and was off work for weeks. Miss
Mollie Parker had a severe attach of pleurisy. Dr
Hughes pleaded for additional experienced nurses. He
informed the Revd David Edwards that the Hospital in
Shillong needed sisters of experience for dealing with
patients, nurses that were not too afraid of hard work
or liable to crack up under the amount of work which
will fall to their lot in Shillong, possessed of what
he called 'a certain amount of gras ataliol
(restraining grace). He argued that such women were
not lacking in the Presbyterian Church of Wales, and
he concluded his letter, 'please find a few and send
them out to Shillong.'[14]
The travelling dispensary was in full swing. So was
the evangelistic, medical holistic campaigning. It
had been on the road for a whole month with tremendous
success. The big vehicle had taken Dr Hughes to the
market places of Umening; Nongpoh; Sylhet Road,
Shillong; Laitlyngkhot; Lyngkyrdem; Dowki and
Mawphlang (Mawngap), Cherrapunji.[15]
They were all happy to welcome the Welshman who
incarnated his Saviour to them. The evangelistic
services had all gone with a swing. He had met
informed, inspired men and women throughout the Khasi
Hills. The generosity of E R Jones had been
well-used, and the experiment was well underway.
There were two men being trained at Martandam, and the
hospital compound was going to be utilised to
establish a full scale experimental plant breeding
station.
Meanwhile, David Edwards was trying his level best to
find a doctor that could be of assistance to the
Shillong Welsh Mission Hospital. In a letter to Dr
Hughes, dated 21 July 1950, he mentioned that the
Liverpool Welsh doctor, Dr Charles Evans, FRCS, who
later distinguished himself as a conqueror of Everest
and as Principal of the University of Wales, Bangor,
was going to work on the frontier of Tibet and Nepal.
He was sailing from Bombay on 23 August and Edwards
had asked Dr Charles Evans whether he could consider
spending six months at Shillong. But nothing came of
it.[16]
But he was hopeful that he could find an assistant.
In his letter of 7 September 1950 David Edwards
mentions how he and two other Liverpool Welsh
Presbyterian Ministers, the Rev C Lloyd Williams,
Anfield, and R Gile Williams, Stanley Road, Bootle,
had travelled to Cardiff to visit the Revd D S Davies
(1887-1950), minister of Waterloo Welsh Presbyterian
Chapel, North Liverpool. David Stephen Davies had
been a missionary in Shangoong and minister of
Waterloo since 1927. While staying with his sister
during the National Eisteddfod in Caerphilly he had
been taken ill when he was diagnosed as suffering from
Cancer of the Pancreas. They were given a warm
welcome in the wards of Llandough Hospital, and
Edwards realised that he
might be particularly glad to receive a letter from
you. Send him a short note to cheer him up.
Edwards had the right hunch, for D S Davies had a high
regard for Dr Hughes.[17]
He was one of three who had written glowing references
in support of his application to be a missionary.
Professor O Herbert Williams had said:
I know of nobody who from the point of view of
disposition, special academic attainments and the
experience of surgical appointments is as suitable as
he is for the work.[18]
Another Liverpool Welsh surgeon, W R Williams also
stated
I can think of no one more fitted that Arthur Hughes
to take up this great work.[19]
D S Davies had added in Welsh
Yn fy marn i nid oes ymgeisydd cryfach wedi ei gynnig
ei hun ers rhai blynyddoedd
[In my opinion there had not been a stronger candidate
which has offered himself as candidate for a number of
years].[20]
But the Revd D S Davies had died before the letter
arrived on 19 September 1950.
David Edwards had his own personal problems. His
mother was coming to the end of her life. Her heart
was been troublesome for some years, and the
missionary-cum-administrator was travelling from his
office in the Abercromby area of Liverpool to the
village of Rhosllangerchrugog, outside Wrexham, every
evening to see her. It proved a great strain, and he
himself suffered a heart attack in June 1951. He died
on 18 June 1951 at the early age of forty five,
denying Missionary work a remarkably enthusiastic
minister who had experienced the fruits of the Holy
Spirit in the Lushai of the 1930s. One of his last
letters to Dr R A Hughes was a happy one in which he
disclosed that a first class surgeon, in the person of
Dr Norman Tunnel, and his wife, Phyllis, were willing
to come to Shillong.[21]
The never-ending missionary of the nineteen fifties
Dr R A Hughes had his hands full, keeping up his
continual communications with the office in Liverpool,
arranging a full day's involvement at the hospital,
travelling with the dispensary to the villages, and
keeping in contact with the local political, social
and religious leaders. He acknowledged in March 1950
the cheque that he had received from Lady Chow and her
husband, Sir Andrew Chow. He had been overwhelmed
with joy that the Revd Dr H Gordon Roberts had
returned to take charge of building a new hospital in
Jowai which relieve him of that added responsibility.
He told Lady Chow:
It is a great joy to us that Dr Roberts should have
decided to come out, for no one has his range of
experience in building affairs and, moreover, he has a
capacity for extracting the last ounce of co-operation
from engineers, contractors and workers, an ability
which is of tremendous value in those days.[22]
Dr Hughes and the hospital received a visit from the
Governor General, Mr Rajagopalcharia. During this
visit Dr R Arthur Hughes took the initiative for some
plain speaking, for he had been distressed by the
Shillong talk that the Welsh Presbyterian Mission was
giving up or that the Government had taken over the
hospital. He stressed the independence of the
hospital and while he was in charge it would remain a
beacon of hope for the whole region in Cymry India.[23]
Dr Hughes was still travelling some 1000 miles a month
to the main market towns. Political changes within
the Indian sub-continent were to have considerable
effect for all the missionaries. The troubles in
Calcutta after Independence brought more people up to
Shillong and fewer people came up from Sylhet. Dr
Hughes and Mrs Nancy Hughes had seen big changes in
the Shillong area since they arrived in 1939 and more
were to come. It was now unusual, he claimed, to
'meet white faces' in the bazaar out shopping'.[24]
Shillong had experienced changes beyond
comprehension. He regretted some of these though he
welcomed others. In particular he welcomed the
facilities to travel by air to different regions of
the vast country of India. In 1956 he was able to
travel to Vellore in southern India for a medical
conference and stayed with the Governor General of
Madras.[25]
The Governor General was acknowledging the kindness
that Dr Hughes had shown to his brother who he had
been operated on at Shillong for Acute Gangrenous
Cholecystitis. Dr Hughes visited the Union Mission
Sanatorium at Arogyavarum which was, indeed, a time of
inspiration. The Sanatorium performed medical wonders
of the highest possible standard, and their laboratory
work was truly amazing. Then he arrived at
Arogyavarum for the Biennial Conference of the
Christian Medical Association where he was regarded as
one of the most distinguished leaders of the
fraternity.
Dr Hughes was still concerned with the need to have
British personnel, like himself preparing young men
and women for the task of taking over the hospital
that had been set up by the missionary societies. He
was a seer when he wrote on 31 January 1956 these
words
If it then happens that we, as missionaries, are
turned out, we ought then to have a group of competent
young people who could carry on if the Government will
let them, but it would be of the utmost value to us if
we could get, even for one term, sound and
enthusiastic people from home who could help us to get
this training established, and make it possible for
someone like me to specialise and achieve a higher
standard in a narrower field instead of being a Jack
of all trades – and its collorary.[26]
Dr Hughes was going to sail from Calcutta in March
1956 for Liverpool. He was longing to see Nancy and
their son, John. Dr Peter Adeane Shave had been
assisting, and Dr Hughes felt the difficult decision,
of returning to Shillong or staying in Liverpool,
where most of his friends lived. But the call of
India could not be silenced. The situation was truly
desperate in the villages.
The statistics were appalling. Infantile morality
rates of approximately 300 per 1000 people were the
best that they could find, and in some villages the
rates reached 500: that is, 500 of every 1,000
children born alive died before reaching the age of
ten or twelve. Every child over the age of six months
had an enlarged spleen, for the area was one where
Hyperendemic Malaria was endemic. If Malaria and
Dysentery could be controlled, infant and child
mortality could be drastically reduced. In addition
to these two killers, there was frequent evidence of
malnutrition, Maramus, Rickets, Kwnashiorkor,
Phrynoderma, Yeropthaslmia, Anaemia, Goitres and
Keratomalacia, and it seemed that Vitamin A deficiency
was possibly the commonest cause of blindness among
the young.
Dr Hughes also came up against total superstition and
ignorance that was deeply rooted. The older
generations in the villages resented his new
knowledge. They claimed to know best and were most
resistant to change. He felt that the whole success
of his missionary philosophy was at stake. As he
expressed himself years later:
This kingdom of disease, death, ignorance, prejudice,
fear, malnutrition and abject poverty was most surely
a kingdom which ought to be overthrown by the Kingdom
of our God.
It was a radical mission, as he admitted:
It seemed obvious that we had one duty of those
people, namely, 'In whatsoever city that we entered
in, to heal the sick – and say unto them, the Kingdom
of God is come nigh unto you' – and, to effect this,
to change their diet, clean their homes, protect the
water supplies, use Prophylactic medicines for Malaria
and have emergency stocks of Sulfas for dysentery'
indeed to turn their world and their thinking upside
down.
This could be achieved by establishing a travelling
dispensary service to take over from the experimental
unit that had been in operation for three years. The
opportunity came when the women of the South Wales
Auxiliaries made a donation in memory of the late Miss
Margaret Buckley. With this gift Dr Hughes was able
to purchase and equip a vehicle as a travelling
dispensary, which for almost twenty years travelled a
thousand miles a month on the main roads of the Khasia
Hills, bringing medical aid to the people in the
market-places. It is not surprising that future
generations came to call him the 'Schweitzer of
Assam', for he embodied the skills and vision of Dr
Albert Schweitzer and his personal life even excelled
the famous doctor of Lambarene.
Before Dr Hughes's son, John, returned to Britain, he
walked with his parents to these villages. His father
said it all when he wrote the sentence
We shall miss him dreadfully when he has to go to
school at home, and we shall have to do our best to
make these years here memorable.[27]
The 1960s in Shillong
Dr Hughes had a fairly bad coronary attak at the
beginning of the 1960s. It happened shortly after he
had returned back to Shillong from Liverpool. He was
off work for three months but he was able to welcome
General Srinagesh, Governor of Assam, on his visit on
30 March 1960, and to thank him for the generous
donation of 1000 Rupees for the Extension Account.[28]
His determination to teach the Khasi people healthy
living did not leave him. He preached the need for
healing the whole person. Dr Hughes argued that a man
or woman who is ill as an individual is separated from
the rest of humanity. They are isolated, often
lonely, and are unable to experience fellowship in the
community. The sick person is often bereft of
dignity. He or she is a weak, helpless individual.
Dr Hughes argued that the hospital or medicine or the
nurse must restore them. But so much depends on the
individual himself. He gives an example of a Khasi
who had Calculus Cholecystitis which he had concealed
for months. Eventually, he agreed to be treated. The
operation, however, was postponed twice, because of
his own fear. Finally, it was performed at the Welsh
Mission Hospital. There was no difficulty in so far
as the experienced surgeon was concerned. After the
successful operation, the Khasi folded his hands on
his chest and began muttering prayers without ceasing,
indeed till he died some 36 hours later. Within a few
hours of the operation his pulse was 140. His fear,
in other words killed him. At the post-mortem there
was no signs of Haemorrhage or and Cardiac Lesion. It
was sheer panic, he had been given hope, but his mind
and fear was stronger than his heart.
The pastoral concern of Dr Hughes was still fully
evident to his fellow Welsh missionaries. This is
reflected in a long letter to the Revd Llewellyn
Jones, dated 3 July 1960, on the death of Mrs Edwin
Adams. The service was held at Mawkar Chapel,
Shillong, on Monday 4 July 1960. Dr Hughes portrayed
her as a brilliant organist. She, a native of
Pembrokeshire, played the organ at Mawkar. Her sense
of humour was a delight. He added
Those who knew her will treasure the memory of her
sense of humour, for without malice, it was of the
order which belongs to faith and which knows that God
has the complete answer, even when, fretful self, in
its importance, doubts God's capacity to deal with
man's situation.[29]
In her last days she was calm, and she asked Dr Hughes
'How is the battle going?' He replied: 'Hardly – but
you are not beaten yet', and she replied, 'Oh, no.'[30]
Dr Hughes added on behalf of his fellow workers
As missionaries we have a sense of deep personal loss,
and we know that her memory will remain green in our
minds as long as we sing.[31]
At the time of the General Assembly the Presbyterian
Church of Wales at St David's Chapel, Pontypridd, in
June 1966, Dr Hughes was on furlough and I will
remember hearing him addressing us in the Church of
his twin borther, the Rev John Harris Hughes. On 20
June the Revd Alun C Morgan gave to the Revd Wellburn
Manners a Communion set in memory of Revd and Mrs
Edwin Adams. Revd Edwin Adams was a member of
Rehoboth Chapel of Hakin, Pembrokeshire and his
beloved wife had been an organist.
Dr Hughes was proud of the extension of the Gospel to
the lives of communities in Cymry India. The increase
in size in the 1960s was around three thousand new
members a year. In 1962 the communions of the
Khasia-Jaintia Hills amounted to 108,756. It was a
young church. The schools needed encouragement and,
in particular, needed well-qualified teachers. But
his main concern was medicine. This remained a huge
task. He mentioned in 1962 that it would take two
hundred years before the village communities of the
Khasi hills would have one doctor for every ten
thousand of the population.
I well remember my first introduction to Dr Hughes at
the General Assembly in Pontypridd. The floor of St
David's Chapel was full to hear him speak. It was a
moving address. I remember the impact that he made on
me as a young minister who laboured a few miles up the
valley in the mining townships of Abercynon and
Penrhiwceibr. When a patient leaves a hospital, said
the saintly surgeon, he should praise God. To thank
the nurses, doctors and the surgeon is all right but
the important thing is to praise Almighty God. It was
pure Calvinism. Gratitude is not enough. For God
will not be worshipped by men obligated to Him, but by
those believers who love Him. I felt that we had the
privilege that night, 20 June 1966, to praise God for
missionaries of the spiritual calibre of Dr R Arthur
Hughes; and I was full of admiration for the young
Presbyterians who were going out to Cymry India: a
daughter of missionaries, and a Liverpool-born
minister and his wife who was a native of Cardiff.[32]
A week earlier, Dr Hughes also had addressed, at
Lampeter, the South Wales Women's Association. At the
Sasiwn, he spoke of Tuberculosis
Meningitis in the children of the Khasi Hills. The
source of infection was near to them, most likely
their own parents, or elderly members of the family.
He mentioned the case brought to him by Miss Blodwen
Harris. The boy, named Weiloi, died at Shillong. So
did his brother. Then he treated the mother and the
youngest daughter for Chronic Tuberculosis. The
mother was the source of the disease and she had
managed to infect all her children. This was
happening daily.
He undertook a survey of school children in Mawphlang
to assess the nutritional status of the population, to
investigate all the families suspected to have a TB
case amongst them, and to teach them the principles of
better living and eating. Poor housing, bad diet,
overcrowding were all responsible for Tuberculosis.
It was foolish to minimise the connection. Poverty
and ignorance were enemies of medicine. The need was
obvious. Vitamins and aids to good nutrition in the
form of milk and multipurpose food, were essential to
build up their strength and resistance.
Dr Hughes was honoured at the National Eisteddfod of
Wales when it was held at Llandudno in 1963. He was
invited to be the leader of the delegation for the
impressive ceremony to welcome the Welsh from all over
the world back to their homeland. The Cymry ar
Wasgar ceremony, as it was called, gave a great
deal of joy to leaders of the Presbyterian Church of
Wales. Dr Hughes had been honoured in the town where
his father, the Revd Howell Harris Hughes, had
ministered so faithfully for a quarter of a century.
The Revd D O Calvin Thomas of Tenby, a well-known
preacher, wrote to him on 18 August 1963 to thank him
for the eisteddfod address.
I was particularly grateful for the whole emphasis of
your words and the strong sense of the supreme
importance of the Gospel they conveyed.[33]
Revd D O Calvin Thomas invited both of them to stay
with him at Narberth Road, Tenby, 'a pleasant town in
summer', as he rightly calls it.
Returning to Liverpool
Dr Arthur Hughes and his supportive wife Nancy retired
from Inida and left Shillong on 16 May 1969. Two days
earlier, the citizens of Shillong met in a farewell
party, with the hills men of Khasia there in their
hundreds.[34]
He had become a living legend. They came to pay
homage to a missionary who had brought them the
blessing of medicine and the Gospel, for in 1944 he
had been elected an elder and played his full part in
the life of the Presbyterian Church at Mawkar. When
he rose to reply, he had to halt frequently, for he
did not want to leave Shillong. Within three years he
and his wife had returned for the Jubilee Ceremony of
the Khasi Hills Presbyterian Hospital on 25 March
1972.[35]
He delivered another thought-provoking address,
quoting William Shakespeare, William Blake and
Rabindranath Tagore. Dr Hughes emphasised the need
for friendship and compassion for each other. He then
concentrated on the value of the healing process, for
it meant freedom from bondage. It was Dr Hughes at
his best:
But we have believed that when men have been freed
from bondage to disease they might perhaps become free
men for the first time, to decide in liberty, their
own responsibilities of greater stature and
responsibility, and able to be, perhaps, better
Christians, Hindus, Muslims, more loving and more
concerned for all men.[36]
Then came this classic statement of his own deep
concern for others:
But the greatest of all liberties which even the sons
of God can achieve, is the glorious liberty of being
able to serve each other in love – free to serve
across the barriers of language, race and creed.[37]
In the subsequent twenty-seven years that he was spent
in Liverpool, he was daily in communion by letter,
telephone and in his conversations with his friends in
Cymry India, and he made frequent references to them
in his sermons and his prayers at the monthly Monday
missionary prayer meetings. Also he welcomed Khasi
men and women to his home to stay and these visitors
helped him recall the years of service. His lasting
memorial as a surgeon is the Hospital at Shillong,
together with the excellent souvenir volume published
in 1997. It was most fitting that Dr Pherlock Lamare,
who occupies Dr Hughes' post today, should travel to
his funeral at Bethel Presbyterian Church of Wales,
Heathfield Road, Liverpool on Monday, 10 June 1996.
After returning to Liverpool Dr Hughes was appointed
Sub-Dean in the Faculty of Medicine. His colleague,
Professor T Cecil Gray said of him in an obituary:
He was a pioneering Sub-Dean in that he encouraged 'in
situ' training in general practice years before this
became generally accepted.[38]
In 1984 Dr Hughes was asked to go back to Shillong
Hospital to help in a difficult situation and again in
1991 he and Nancy, with others from the Mother Church,
participated in the celebrations of the 150th
anniversary of and of the arrival of Thomas Jones[39]
and the coming of the Gospel to the Khasia Hills. It
gave him great joy to open a new building in the Ri
Lyngngan and to take part in the open-air service on a
Sunday afternoon at the golf course before a
congregation estimated at a quarter of a million
people.[40]
He was honoured by his own Church in Liverpool, being
elected an elder in 1971, and then Secretary. He was
elected Moderator of the Presbytery and finally was
invited to be Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of
Wales. His twin brother, the Revd John Harries
Hughes, was elected Moderator at the General Assembly
held in Liverpool in 1975, while Dr Arthur Hughes was
nominated as Moderator-elect at another
Liverpool-based General Assembly (literally three
hundred yards from his home) in 1991.
Through the loving care of his wife, the kind
sensitivity of the administrative office in Cardiff,
the prayers of the Church and the devotion of his own
doctor, Dr Colin D McKean, he was able to attend the
committees, meetings and services, the Association
meetings and the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland, which he thoroughly enjoyed, as well as
presiding at the General Assembly Board and the Annual
Assembly of his own Church, held that year, 1992, at
Selly Oak College, Birmingham. This was most fitting,
as so many of the missionaries had received training
before their journey to India.
As his Minister and close friend, I was glad to be
given the opportunity at his bedside on Saturday, 1
June 1996 at the Cardiothoracic Centre, Thomas Drive,
Liverpool 14, to lead a Presbyterian (Church of
Scotland) service of Preparation for Eternal Life.[41]
His smile was evident as I read the commendation of
the Lord Jesus Christ his Saviour, 'Well done, good
and faithful servant.' Together with his wife, there
were also present his fellow-elder, the physician Dr
John G Williams, his only son Dr John Hughes with his
daughter-in-law, Mrs Hughes. Later that month we
travelled to Llandudno where his father had spent
twenty-five years ministering at Seilo and Hyfrydle, a
chapel on the Great Orme. We felt privileged to have
known this man, and a fourteen year old girl, Bethan
Evans, from the Bethel, Heathfield Road Sunday School,
summarised it all for us when she wrote in her school
project on Dr R Arthur Hughes 'I miss him very much.'
So do all who knew him in Shillong and Khasia Jaintia,
as well as in Britain.
Back to contents list
Notes
[1]
NLW CM Archives 27, 413. Letters 1939-1950.
[2]Dr
R Arthur Hughes had a tremendous admiration for D
H Gordon Roberts and wrote a fine tribute to him
in Nine Missionary Pioneers: The story of nine
pioneering missionaries in North East India,
ed: J Meirion Lloyd, Caernarfon, 1989, pp 61-85.
[3]A
ward was set aside in the Welsh Mission Hospital
for British soldiers who needed surgical care.
For the greater part of the War, the Hospital also
undertook x-ray work for the military hospitals
of Shillong.
[4]Nigel
Jenkins mentions how time and time again he met
older Khasis who wanted to talk to him about Dr R
Arthur Hughes: 'Dr Hughes saved my life in 1964';
'Dr Hughes cured my son's cancer'; Dr Hughes was
a saint – if poor people couldn't pay, he'd cut
their bill in half'; 'Dr Hughes worked so hard
that he'd take his breakfast and lunch in the
operating theatre…'; See, Nigel Jenkins,
Gwalia in Khasia, Llandysul, 1995, p 303.
[5]NLW
ms:Letter of R A Hughes to David Edwards dated 6
July 1948.
[8]There
are entries on all these missionaries (that is,
Beryl Edwards, Basil Jones, T E Pugh etc) in the
Welsh language volume that I edited, Llestri
Gras a Gobaith: Cymry a'r Cenhadon yn
India, Lerpwl/Liverpool, 2001. William Carey,
Publisher, will produce the English version in
June, 2003.
[9]Letter
of R A Hughes to David Edwards, letter dated 5
August 1948.
[10]NLW
ms: Letter of R A Hughes to David Edwards, letter
dated 27 September 1948.
[11]NLW
ms: Letter of David Edwards to R A Hughes, letter
dated 29 October 1948.
[12]NLW
ms: Letter of R A Hughes to David Edwards, letter
dated 3 September 1949.
[14]NLW
ms: Letter of R A Hughes to David Edwards, letter
dated 15 March 1949.
[16]NLW
ms: Letter of David Edwards to R A Hughes, letter
dated 21 July 1950.
[17]D
S Davies had written a warm appreciation of his
father in the Liverpool Welsh monthly journal,
Y Glannau, after the death of the Revd H
Harris Hughes. See D S Davies 'Y Diweddar Barch H
Harris Hughes, BA, Llandudno', Y Glannau,
Mai 1950, p 10.
[18]For
a biographical note in Welsh on Professor Owen
Herbert Williams (1884-1962), see, D Ben Rees,
Cymry Adnabyddus 1952-1972, Lerpwl a
Phontypridd, 1978, pps 195-6.
[19]For
an appreciation of W R Williams, see D Ben Rees,
'The life and work of Dr William Robert Williams'
in The Welsh of Merseyside in the Twentieth
Century – Volume 2 by D Ben Rees, Liverpool,
2001, p 55.
[20]NLW
CM Archives 27, 413. Letters 1939-1950.
[21]Letter
of David Edwards to R A Hughes, letter dated
January 24, 1951.
[22]Letter
of R A Hughes to Lady Chow, undated letter of
March 1950.
[25]Letter
of R A Hughes to Dr Brockfield of Vellore, dated
31 January 1956.
[27]An
undated letter from Dr R A Hughes to Dr Brockfield
sometime in February 1954.
[28]Letter
of Dr R A Hughes to General Srinagesh, dated 6
April 1960.
[29]Letter
from R A Hughes to Revd Llywelyn Jones, dated 3
July 1960.
[32]The
three were Bethan Williams, the Revd William
George Barlow and Pamela Barlow
[33]Letter
from the Revd D O Calvin Thomas, Highway, Narberth
Road, Tenby to Dr R Arthur Hughes, dated 18 August
1963.
[34]He
received letters from many of those whom he had
been treated at Shillong Hospital. For example,
Pastor Chawna, from Tripura, India, sent him a
letter to his new home on 12 August 1969. Dr
Hughes had treated him and his wife and had healed
thousands of other people of all classes, the rich
and poor. Pastor Chawna was, in the summer of
1969, serving the Riang people, primitive,
half-naked animists, who lived mostly on wild
potatoes, roots, bamboo shoots and jungle
bananas. He wrote to Dr Hughes in a Calvinistic
spirit: 'The Lord restored my life through your
kind surgery I must not be idle, I must work
more. I have an experience that the more I work,
the more happy I am.'
[35]R
Arthur Hughes ' Address at the Jubilee Ceremony of
the Khasi Hills Presbyterian Hospital, 25 March
1972, The Treasury, July 1972, pp 23-24.
[38]T
Cecil Gray, 'Robert Arthur Hughes', British
Medical Journal, Volume 313, 3 August 1996.
[39]When
he visited Shillong in 1972, 1984 and 1991 he was
visiting the new state of Meghalaya. It came into
existence as an autonomous state on 2 April 1970,
and became a fully-fledged State on 21 January
1972. It was the homeland of three ancient hill
communities, the Khasis, Jaintias and Caros. The
area comprised 22,429 square miles. It has 4,902
villages and twelve towns. The principal
languages are Khasi, Jaintis, Garo and English.
While he visited Shillong in 1991 he was invited
to lunch by P P Kyndish (speaker of the Meghalaya
Legislative Assembly), a distinguished leader of
Meghalaya, at his home in Mahatma Gandhi Road,
Shillong. Later, Dr Hughes read his book,
Meghalay: Yesterday and Today, (New Delhi,
1990, pages 1-107), on his flight back from Delhi
to Heathrow. P P Kyndiah in a letter to Dr Hughes
from Shillong, dated 13 May 1991 wrote of Thomas
Jones, 'the legacy he gave us cannot be measured
in human terms.' He added on Thomas Jones
(1810-1949) 'God in his greatness and fathomless
wisdom chose him to be a pioneering missionary to
bring light of unique meaning to our race, in
dimension that could not be foreseen and
understood, until today.'
[40]Nigel
Jenkins has captured the atmosphere in Gwalia
in Khasia (Llandysul), 1955, pps 11-12. 'But
in 1991 in Shillong, capital of the Indian state
of Meqhalaya, some 250,000 people, a quarter of
all Khasis, walked, drove, rode and scootered from
every corner of the land to celebrate the life and
work of a Welshman who, unknown in Wales, is a
people's hero in the Khasi Hills. The crowd that
assembled on Shillong golf course to mark the 150th
anniversary of the coming of Thomas Jones, a
carpenter's son from Manafon, Montgomeryshire,
numbered thousands more – the Rev Tomlin would
have been gratified to note – than even the Pope
managed to muster at a similar golf course
jamboree in 1986…. Not the least of his legacies
is the church he founded which, with a growing
membership of 300,000, is considerably more vital
that the 'beleaguered' mother Church in Wales with
its dwindling platoon of 55,000 souls.'
[41]A
bilingual volume was published in 1991 under the
title The Presbyterian Church of Wales, A Book
of Services (Caernarfon) under the editorship
of the Revd Dr Elfed ap Nefydd Roberts to replace
both the previous Welsh Llyfr Gwasanaeth
(1958) and The Presbyterian Service Book
(1968) but none of them had a service of
Preparation for Eternal Life. The is why as a
Presbyterian I followed the Church of Scotland
service on 1 June 1966.
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