Paul Calvert spoke with Dr Garth Gilmour, the Executive Director of CMJ, about their work pioneering modern medical treatment in Jerusalem, and Christian education.

Subsequently to honour the hospital and thank the doctors, the family created an endowment that paid for the building of a ward in memory of their father. It also paid for the construction of the doctor's house, which forms one wing of the hospital and is part of the school today. In fact the director of the school that has replaced the hospital lives there today.

Paul: Were there many Jews living here at that time?

Dr Gilmour: At that time it is difficult to know, throughout the 19th century, but by the 1860's figures start to emerge, which appear to be reliable.

Not only did the Ottoman Turks conduct a survey themselves, a census, but various consular organisations and visitors also counted the number of people in Jerusalem. Including I dare say the French Console and the British Console. The general consensus is that there were about 15,500 people living in Jerusalem in the early 1860's. About 8000 of them were Jewish. So there was a Jewish majority in the 1860's.

Twenty years before the official founding of Zionism, the Arab population, which formed the other half, or just under half, was divided roughly equally between Muslims and Christians. The majority of Christians were of the Orthodox persuasion.

It is very interesting to see what happened in 1900, which is 18 years after the founding of Zionism. Jerusalem became clearly a hub for immigration, not just from abroad, and Jewish immigrants coming from Eastern Europe for example. They were escaping pogroms and immigrating to the land as part of the Zionist movement, rather than travelling as many more of them did across Europe and the United States.

In 1900 the official Ottoman census figures show there were 55,000 people living in Jerusalem, of whom just under 60% were Jews and just over 40% were Arabs. So in terms of the proportions there is virtually no change in those nearly 40 years of massive immigration. It shows that the immigration came from both communities, Arabs and Jews.

Paul: It was a hospital, but today it is a school. Tell us about the Anglican school.

Dr Gilmour: The other thing that CMJ did in the 19th century, in terms of reaching out with good works to the local Jewish community, was education.

We opened a girls' school at Christ Church in the mid-19th century.

The second bishop of Jerusalem, Samuel Gobat, was a great educator. He opened boys' schools all over the country. Over 50 of them, including one in Christ Church. But he did something unprecedented. He opened a girls' school in Jerusalem.

It should be stated that at that stage, school education for Jewish girls was simply not part of most Jewish peoples' tradition who lived in Jerusalem.

The records that we have in our archives are fascinating, because they show how wealthy Jewish families across the Middle East, from Baghdad to Damascus, to Alexandria, sent their daughters to Christ Church in Jerusalem, to get a good Jewish education for their daughters.

It was a remarkable time. We had this incredible privilege of training up these young women, many of whom later became influential, or married influentially, into important Jewish families.