Jane Blissett Bardsley

Born in 1866 in Greenwich, Jane was the eldest daughter of the Reverend James Wareing and Jane Ann Bardsley. She had 2 sisters and 3 brothers.

In 1891 she went to India with the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (C.E.Z.M.S). Women in India at this time were segregated under the purdah system, being confined to a women's quarters known as a zenana into which it was forbidden for unrelated men to enter. The zenana missions were made up of female missionaries who could visit Indian women in their own homes with the aim of converting them to Christianity as well as helping them to access education and health care.

Jane took charge of the C.E.Z.M.S. Orphanage school in Katni, Central Provinces in 1901. She worked there for 30 years, during which time she raised the status of the school to a girl’s high school, known to this day as the Bardsley Girls Secondary High School.

The Bishop of Nagpur ordained her Deaconess in 1923.

In 1915 she had been awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal of the First Class and after she retired in 1932 she was presented with the gold medal by King George V. The medal was awarded to those who had distinguished themselves by important and useful public service in India.

On retirement she returned to England and went to live with her brother Cyril Bardsley who was the Bishop of Leicester. He retired in 1940 and they both intended to move to Tunbridge Wells. He had been appointed Assistant Bishop of Rochester but died suddenly in December 1940.

Jane lived in Tunbridge Wells in Sutherland Road, and she became the local president of the C.E.Z.M.S. She died in 1957, just after her 91st birthday. She left £100 to the C.E.Z.M.S. saying “I wish it could be more, but I have given as much as I could afford in my lifetime.” She left £150 to the Bardsley High School in Katni for the re-building of the servants’ quarters.

£100 was left to Miss C.P. Smith “as a token of love and gratitude for the many years we have spent together”. Charlotte Priscilla Smith shares the grave with Jane. She was the daughter of a vicar and was involved in the Zenana Missionary Society from at least 1920 to 1933.