My first encounter with leprosy happened as a child while watching Ben-Hur with my family. For four years, Judah Ben-Hur’s (Charlton Heston) mother and sister have been locked away and forgotten in a dungeon as political prisoners. Cue dramatic music and we see a Roman official searching for them, accompanied by a jailer. The jailer prises open a cell door and, with the aid of a flaming torch, peers into the darkness: “Lepers!” he cries. (Young me thought he said “leopards”.) Fearful of this dreaded contagion, the jailer directs that, “They must be taken outside the city and released at once … then we’ll burn out the cell”. In a subsequent scene we witness a distraught Judah in the Valley of the Lepers, prevented from seeing his loved ones, and later, concluding the film, Charlton Heston at his dramatic best (spoiler alert) being reunited with them at last – divine intervention having cured the women of their afflictions.
Fast forward a millennium or so and hospices and refuges for lepers – often known as leprosaria or lazarettes – are being established all over Europe. In St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin there is a plaque commemorating the Pim sisters – Isabella, Charlotte and a third sister oddly recorded here as Lucy but known to have been Jane – the trio having been the original fundraisers for what is today known as The Leprosy Mission, the world’s largest organisation dedicated specifically to the care of people affected by leprosy. Through her childhood friendship with Dublin lass Alice Grahame, Charlotte in particular was celebrated for her collaboration with Alice’s future husband, Irishman Wellesley Bailey and his missionary work in India. Bailey was founder of the Mission that has provided care for thousands of people affected by leprosy and today continues his work in a dozen countries.
Date visited: 11 June 2025
Images source: author – unless stated otherwise
Travel tip: Elsewhere in the cathedral is the bust and memorial to Dr Connolly Norman, one of the pioneers of psychiatry (psychiatrists known then as “alienists”) in Ireland. But perhaps Dr Norman’s real claim to fame is that he is mentioned by name in James Joyce’s Ulysses. And outside Rome, with a little bit of daring, you can visit the film location of Valley of the Lepers at Latomies di Salone, an ancient rock quarry at Salone (just to the southeast of the junction of Via di Salone and Via delle Case Rosse).
Map coordinates: 53.3394°N, -6.2714°E
