Archive / Audio / DR R. HARDY

Interview number: 043

Interviewer: Pickering, C. and Thatcher, M.T.

Interview date: 1983-06-23

Length 65 minutes

Condition notes: [Clean]


Dr. Ruth Hardy, formerly, as Ruth Bocock, a Medical Doctor/Missionary with the Dublin University Mission at Chota Nagpur, and later as the wife of the Rt. Rev. Alec O. Hardy, Bishop of Nagpur from 1937 to 1948, talks to Carol Pickering and Mary Thatcher on 23 June 1983.

She speaks briefly, but with enthusiasm about her medical work. She makes interesting comments on the differing attitudes of Irish and English towards Indians. As the wife of the Bishop of Nagpur, they became part of the Establishment, but impatient with the protocol and critical of Britain’s past, with concentration on law and order at the expense of industrial development, but with high praise for the dedication of most government officers.


Coverage notes: I.C.S.; hospitals; attitudes to Indians; Anglican, Roman, Lutherans, Jesuits, German Evangelicals, Mahabharata, Episcopal Church of Scotland; Chaplain; Gandhi; Transfer of Power; Bihar, Orissa, Nagpur; 1929-1948