Beck, Janet S.

Janet S. Beck was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 18, 1861. She was one of three sisters and the family belonged to Greenside Parish Church, a congregation with strong interest in missionary work. One of her fellow church members, David Clement Scott, was appointed leader of the recently founded Blantyre Mission in 1881 and soon afterwards was joined on the staff by his brother William Affleck Scott. When Janet offered to serve in Blantyre, it was on the basis that she would not require a salary since her two sisters had offered to cover her costs. For the next 29 years, this arrangement continued, her two sisters working in Edinburgh and using their income to support Janet’s work in Blantyre. Correspondence among the sisters shows that this was not only a financial arrangement but also a shared spiritual commitment.

She began her work in Blantyre in 1887, having travelled from Scotland in the company of Clement and Bella Scott. Her assignment was the Christian training of girls and young women. Her aim was to fit them to be good wives and mothers for the future generation of Christian Africans. [1] From the start she recognized the magnitude and difficulty of her task in doing what she could to redeem the girls and women from ignorance and dependence. Her policy was to bring her girls under her influence in school and boarding-house so that her personality might impress them, and thus lift them to a higher ideal of womanhood and woman’s influence than was possible in the surroundings of local village life. When the Mission newspaper looked back on her life, it noted that, “Work among the girls and women was then in its infancy, but into its development she threw herself with her whole heart, and from small things it grew under her care till it became the envy of many a worker among African women.” [2]

With the aid of the wives of the missionaries on the mission, she was able to give the girls instruction in housecraft. She taught such skills as reading, writing, cutting out and sewing clothes. Girls were also taught about laundry and ironing clothes. Her laundry and sewing students gained fame far and wide for the quality of their work. The result was seen in the homes of Christians in the villages around Blantyre. She also taught Bible lessons and organized the students’ choir. During the weekend the girls would go out on evangelistic excursions to pass on what they had learnt in their Bible study.

Miss Beck, as she was always called, was a woman of intense faith, of much and fervent prayer. She held the unconquerable belief that the best in her girls’ lives and characters would at last find its realization. From 1887 to 1916 she was the head of the Girls’ and Women’s Industrial Training Department in Blantyre. She left a deep mark on the home life of the women round Blantyre. As time went on, through the example of the girls she trained, her influence extended much further as Blantyre “graduates” spread across the Central African region. A measure of her standing in the Blantyre Mission is the fact that she was the first woman to be included in the membership of the Mission Council. One of her notable contributions was that, through her home craft funds, she was able to support Nthumbi Mission Station in Ntcheu, an extension of Blantyre Mission’s work pioneered by teacher-evangelist Harry Kambwiri Matecheta during the 1890s. [3]

For the girls whom she taught, Janet Beck became a mother figure. Since she was responsible for the education of girls at Blantyre Mission for 29 years, she also became a “grandmother” figure since she also taught the daughters of some of her first students. When she left Blantyre for the last time in 1916, Alexander Hetherwick, the Head of the Mission, remarked: “She has left a mark on the home and family life of the Christian native in these parts that will remain and grow deeper in all time to come. Her work and herself have been the envy of all the other missions in this country – none of whom have had anything like them to show. There are many native women who in after years will rise up and call her blessed.” [4] Hetherwick’s prophecy was fulfilled in the subsequent years through generations of the families of the girls that she taught.

For example, Agnes Chikanichaiche Nkausya enrolled at Blantyre Mission School in 1887, the year that Janet Beck arrived. After completing school, she became a home-craft worker at the Mission. Her daughter, Ella Panonyele enrolled at Blantyre Mission School in 1897 so that she too was taught by Janet Beck. On finishing school Ella became a teacher. Her daughter, Eddah Chitalo, who was also educated at Blantyre Mission, later became a prominent public figure in Malawi and was one of the champions of the pro-democracy movement in the 1990s. [5] Another member of Janet’s first class in 1887 was Ella Kumakanga who went on to serve as a matron and tailor at the Mission. Ella’s daughter Janet Somanje enrolled at the school in 1900 so that she too was taught by Miss Beck. Janet Somanje later became a teacher at Blantyre Mission and her daughter, Molly Dzabala, continues to be an influential figure in Blantyre Mission at the time of this writing in 2023. [6]. Visitors to Blantyre Mission are often accommodated at the Grace Bandawe Conference Centre, named after another of Janet’s pupils, Grace Ayufari, who, together with her husband Lewis Mataka Bandawe, played a leading role in Blantyre Mission from the time of the First World War until the 1960s. [7] In this way the influence of Janet Beck lived on for many years after she had left Blantyre. When the Mission marked the silver jubilee of her appointment in 1911, her long-time colleague and leader Alexander Hetherwick wrote of her utter devotion to her work and remarked, “I have seen what is behind and beneath and can truly say before God that Miss Beck is the greatest spiritual asset that the whole Mission has – aye that the whole of the Missions in Central Africa have.” [8]

Three years later, in 1914, Janet was involved in a serious accident. Early one evening she was riding down Mandala Hill, near the Mission, in the side-car of a motorbike when it crashed into another motorbike. She was found in an unconscious condition and there were fears for her life. [9] She was lovingly nursed back to health by colleagues at the Mission and was eventually able to return to work, but she was never quite the same again. When she went on leave to Scotland in April 1916, Hetherwick remarked: “Miss Beck goes home in doubt as to whether she will be able to return here. She has never recovered from her accident … but this has not kept her from her full measure of energy in her work this last year and half. She has been a wonder to us all. But whether she returns or not, she and we have the satisfaction of having done the finest bit of work it has been given to any woman missionary to do in this part of the mission field.” [10]

Janet Beck died at home in Scotland on July 19, 1917, fifteen months after leaving Blantyre and completing her 29 years of service. The following Sunday, when Harry Kambwiri Matecheta preached in Blantyre, he described her simply as “Our Mother.” “She lived for her girls,” remarked the Mission newspaper, “and their careers in after life were a constant source of interest and pleasure to her.” [11] While other deceased missionaries had been memorialized by their European colleagues, in Janet’s case it was the African congregation at St Michael and All Angels that honored her with a memorial plaque.

Gilbert Phiri

Notes:

1. Alexander Hetherwick, The Romance of Blantyre: How Livingstone’s Dream Came True (London: James Clarke, n.d.), 57.
2. Life and Work in Nyasaland, April-December 1917.
3. Harry Kambwiri Matecheta, Blantyre Mission: Stories of its Beginning, ed. by Thokozani Chilembwe and Todd Statham, trsl. from Harry Kambwiri Matecheta, Blantyre Mission: Nkhani za Ciyambi Cace, Blantyre: Hetherwick Press, 1951 (Mzuzu: Luviri Press, 2020), 54.
4. Alexander Hetherwick to W.M. McLachlan, April 3, 1916, Malawi National Archives 50/BMC/2/2/9.
5. Eddah Chitalo, a granddaughter and daughter to Agnes Nkausya and Ella Panonyele respectively, interview by the author, Chigumula, Blantyre, March 24, 2017.
6. Molly Bwanausi Dzabala, a granddaughter and daughter to Ella Kumakanga and Janet Somanje respectively, interview by the author, Michiru, Blantyre, April 7, 2017.
7. Lewis Mataka Bandawe, Memoirs of a Malawian: The Life and Reminiscences of Lewis Mataka Bandawe (Blantyre: CLAIM, 1971), 37.
8. Alexander Hetherwick to W.M. McLachlan, September 9, 1911, Malawi National Archives BMC/50/2/1/120.
9. Alexander Hetherwick to Melville Anderson, May 18, 1914, Malawi National Archives BMC/50/2/1/132.
10. Alexander Hetherwick to W.M. McLachlan, April 3, 1916, Malawi National Archives 50/BMC/2/2/9.
11. Life and Work in Nyasaland, April-December 1917.

Bibliography

Bandawe, Lewis Mataka. Memoirs of a Malawian: The Life and Reminiscences of Lewis Mataka Bandawe. Blantyre: CLAIM, 1971.

Chitalo, Eddah. Interview by the author. Chigumula, Blantyre, March 24, 2017.

Dzabala, Molly Bwanausi. Interview by the author. Michiru, Blantyre, April 7, 2017.

Hetherwick, Alexander. Letter to W.M. McLachlan, September 9, 1911. Malawi National Archives BMC/50/2/1/120.

Hetherwick, Alexander. Letter to Melville Anderson, May 18, 1914. Malawi National Archives BMC/50/2/1/132.

Hetherwick, Alexander. Letter to W.M. McLachlan, April 3, 1916. Malawi National Archives 50/BMC/2/2/9.

Hetherwick, Alexander. The Romance of Blantyre: How Livingstone’s Dream Came True. London: James Clarke, n.d.

*Life and Work in Nyasaland, April-December 1917.

Matecheta, Harry Kambwiri. Blantyre Mission: Stories of its Beginning. Ed. Thokozani Chilembwe and Todd Statham. Mzuzu: Luviri Press, 2020. (Translated from Harry Kambwiri Matecheta, Blantyre Mission: Nkhani za Ciyambi Cace, Blantyre: Hetherwick Press, 1951.)

This article, submitted in February 2023, was researched and written by Gilbert Phiri, Lecturer at Domasi College of Education and postgraduate student at Mzuzu University. It was supervised by Professor Klaus Fiedler, Professor Emeritus of Theology and Religious Studies, Mzuzu University, Malawi.

Photo Gallery

Janet S. Beck’s memorial plaque, St Michael and All Angels Church, Blantyre, Malawi