Algiers Mission Band Journal Online

The journal of the Algiers Mission Band is a unique record of missionary work in a majority muslim country in the early 20th Century. The journals were written by the Mission’s founder, I. Lilias Trotter, as a means of informing her supporters (mainly in the United Kingdom) using an account of the progress of the work in Algeria. Several copies of the text were duplicated (the early ones were handwritten) and then each copy illustrated with postcards, photographs or some of Lilias Trotter’s paintings and drawings.

Lilias Trotter explained how the journal was intended to be used in 1909:

We have tried for 3 years the plan of an M.S. Journal, each copy to be passed round to a dozen or more addresses. This plan has involved much delay in news reaching the latter ones on the list, & many copies seem to have been lost or mislaid & have never finished their course.

We are now going to try another plan – that of sending every half year an autotyped or cyclostyled copy, each to go a round of 3 or 4 only. The following was begun in January on our new zinc press & being our first experiment then on had many vicissitudes. Before it was half through our dear fellow-worker Laurent Olives, who was working on it, fell ill, & he was taken from us in May. The press needs a man’s strength to work it, and no-one is now available, so we have had to begin again, having recourse to a cyclostyle which has grown a bit cranky, so please overlook both delay & defects this time.

When we meet again in the autumn I shall try to supplement this half-yearly story by a short monthly edition in M.S. for those who follow us closely in prayer. If you would like your name down for this latter, please let me know. Otherwise you will be on the list for copies somewhat like this present one. Please pass them on as indicated on the last page.

I.L.T.

Click here to visit the table of contents for this journal

This digitisation project was carried out in partnership with AWM-Pioneers. A full set of the original journals has been deposited with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the Univesity of London.

Main image: Arab riders on camels, frontispiece from March-April 1907 issue of the Algiers Mission Band Journal.