Leprosy in Cyprus
[PHOTOS BELOW]Leprosy (or Hansen’s disease, named after the Norwegian doctor who discovered the bacterium in 1873) is an ancient disease that was brought to the Middle East and Greece by the armies of Xerxes and Alexander the Great, and from there to Europe by the Roman armies and later the Crusaders. For centuries, anybody who displayed the disfiguring marks of the disease were feared and banished from their homes and communities.
According to historians, Cyprus was free of leprosy until the 17th century. Some experts believe that it was Christian pilgrims from Palestine who first brought the disease to the island in the late 1600s and that the Monastery of Panagia Trooditissa near Platres, was most likely the place where the disease first took hold.
In Ottoman times, many lepers in Cyprus were known to huddle together outside the walls of Nicosia surviving on charity or alms from nearby traders or passers-by. Around 1807, the Ottoman Administration provided these outcasts with some land and huts not far from Nicosia where they could live as an isolated community and grow their own food however many soon returned to begging outside Famagusta gate.
According to historical records, the Turkish Pasha of Cyprus, accompanied by his dragoman (interpreter), Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, were passing through the Famagusta Gate in Nicosia and saw some lepers begging there. The Pasha was so annoyed by their deformed appearance and the smell of their wounds that he ordered his soldiers to round up all the lepers and shoot them dead. Kornesios intervened and begged the Pasha to take pity on them. He offered to create a small farm on his property in Aglandjia, to accommodate all the lepers. The property was located about two miles from Nicosia near the Agia Paraskevi hill. One source suggests that Kornesios’property was around 190 acres in size. Thankfully, the Pasha accepted Kornesios’ plan and by 1807, Cyprus had its first leper colony, thereafter known as the Leper Farm.
At first, many lepers on Kornesios’ property survived by cultivating his land, but without any other financial assistance from the Ottoman administration, except for the construction of some makeshift huts, many lepers left the Leper Farm and returned to begging on the streets.
In 1873, the Archduke of Austria, Ludwig Salvator was shocked by what he saw when he visited Nicosia as a young man. ‘What horrible sights on the side of the road! Human beings crawling, covered with leprosy, stretching out their bony arms towards passers-by, trying to attract their attention with frightful screams, begging for alms. They pray to God for relief from their horrible pain, and as they are not allowed to enter the city, they make the open fields their abode…’
By the time the British occupied Cyprus in 1878, the Leper Farm was so poorly managed that many lepers had escaped and were found wandering hopelessly and desperately all over the island begging for food and shelter. To entice the poor wretched souls back to the colony, the British government offered to give them each a ration of bread and twenty paras (a penny) a day. This time, a large fence was erected around the farm to contain them.
Although most of the lepers who arrived at the farm were single, some marriages did occur after they had arrived. In 1879. there were five marriages legally registered at the farm. One of the couples had a healthy child but he was sent away at the age of two to avoid any risk of him contracting leprosy. In another case, a woman who had no history of leprosy married a leper who then transmitted the disease to her. Their two children also contracted leprosy.
In a report written by the British High Commissioner Sir Robert Biddulph in 1879, the Leper Farm included a dwelling containing 25 rooms, a small Greek chapel, and a wash room. Married couples were housed in separate quarters from the unmarried and single lepers. The main yard at the farm was divided by a fence with families, women and children on one side, and single men on the other side. Unmarried male lepers were strictly forbidden to enter at any time the rooms set aside for female lepers, and vice versa. Biddulph described the water supply at the farm as very good due to the numerous wells on the property. Adjacent to the farm were orchards of carob and other trees. Six acres were set aside for growing cereals which the lepers helped to cultivate. The oldest leper on the farm was a woman aged 80 who was blind, deaf, bedridden and greatly disfigured. There were 33 male lepers and thirteen female lepers. Forty three were Christian and two were Muslim. Each leper was provided with a daily ration of three loaves of bread and paid 75 piasters a month. The mukhtar (headman) of the colony was a man named Hagi Nicola, who was paid around 135 piasters a month to keep order and look after the needs of the lepers.
An unnamed British journalist from the Daily Chronicle newspaper visited the Leper Farm in 1879 although communication with the inhabitants was forbidden by the Government. ‘The sight presented to my gaze was simply appalling,’ he wrote. ‘This is a matter to be viewed with terror that such a place should exist but a couple of miles from the principal town on the island, and that there should be gathered together about 100 souls, all more or less victims of this frightful disease. Men, women, and children, into whose flesh the disease was eating its way, passed before me, and those wretched beings afforded the most ghastly spectacle. There were all stages of leprosy visible. Upon some, the fatal sign had only just set its mark, while others were but little else than a living mass of corruption. The unfortunate creatures become at once isolated from the community to which they once belonged, their property being confiscated and divided among their relatives, and they are then banished to this village to endure a living death, until death itself – mercifully relieves them from the curse that has befallen them. The mode in which the lepers live is almost as horrible as their condition, for the sexes, in all stages of corruption, are huddled indiscriminately together. There are about a hundred houses in the village, but all the employments of life appear to be neglected, with but one or two exceptions, and many of those who have been banished from their homes go mad. One of the least-afflicted lepers is permitted to go to Nicosia once a week to buy supplies for the farm with money supplied by the Government. Beyond this, the lepers have no communication whatsoever with the outside world.’
Many Cypriots at the time viewed leprosy as a punishment from God and believed that the inflicted were cursed, deranged and therefore damned. When the Swedish physician, Frederick Charles von Heidenstam was appointed Chief Medical Officer by the British government in 1882, he spent eleven years investigating the cause of leprosy in Cyprus and concluded that the disease was most likely spread by close and continuous contact with an infected person. He also stated that fewer Muslims were affected by the disease as they went to greater lengths to ‘avoid the leper as they would a mad dog’.
Dr. Heidenstam believed that the profound and pronounced disgust felt by the inhabitants of Cyprus towards anyone afflicted with the disease might have actually prevented the spread of leprosy in Cyprus. No sooner did anyone show the first signs of the disease – they were forbidden by their fellow villagers from entering their homes or staying in the village. The outcast leper was therefore forced to live as a vagabond beggar. Heidenstam reports that at the time of the British occupation, 150 lepers were safely locked up at the Leper Farm but twice as many lepers were still loose and scattered across the island. At one time, Dr. Heidenstam had proposed the idea of moving all the lepers of Cyprus to a remote and deserted Greek island opposite Apostolos Andreas, however his proposal was rejected by the British Governor as unprofitable.
In the summer of 1879, Esmé Scott-Stevenson visited the leper village with her husband Captain Andrew Scott-Stevenson who was the Civil Commissioner of Kyrenia at the time. With handkerchiefs covering their mouths and noses, a guardian escorted them around the farm. They observed the inmates and noted their parched and withered skin. Mrs. Scott-Stevenson writes how the fingers and toes of many sufferers had dropped off with many displaying limbs that ended with a stump. She also noted how their voices often sounded harsh and husky on account of the severe ulceration of their throats. It was widely known that many lepers had numbness to pain, which was perhaps in itself a great mercy. ‘The lepers at the colony seemed kind to each other,’ she writes. ‘Those who were the least afflicted helping and nursing the sick or guiding the steps of the blind. Although the farm was established to provide a sanctuary for the lepers, they are mostly unfit for any laborious work and take no part in cultivating the fields. In fact, they seem to do nothing at all but feebly cook their food and herd together in sunny corners in one indiscriminate mass.’
When it was time for Mr. and Mrs. Scott-Stevenson to leave the Leper Farm, they were advised by their guide to toss a handful of ‘piastres’ onto the ground and watch as the lepers scrambled desperately to collect the coins.
Mrs. Scott-Stevenson also writes, ‘when a man is first suspected of leprosy in Cyprus, the frightened villagers go to the Mukhtar to complain. In most cases, the accused is then separated from his family and friends; his goods are divided amongst his relatives and he is banished from their presence and the village forever.’
Mrs Scott-Stevenson praised the British administration, which from its first days in Cyprus had tried to improve the lives of lepers. In fact, just six months after the British occupation of the island certain rules for the operation of the Leper Farm were drawn up to define the distribution of financial assistance and food for the lepers and the role and duties of the mukhtar (village headman). There were rules strictly forbidding the patients from going out otherwise they would be deprived of their monthly subsidy and rules forbidding the possession of donkeys except for the one used for the daily transport of bread.
With the enactment of the Leprosy Law which provided for the forced isolation of lepers, the Leprosy Home was declared an official government asylum by the British in 1891. It was the first time in almost 200 years that the lepers of Cyprus were finally treated as people who needing proper care and attention and not simply regarded and discarded as a scourge to humanity.
It all seems so desperately sad that these unfortunate human beings, through no fault of their own were banished from their families and homes to live out the rest of their miserable lives in a compound that resembled a prison asylum. With no cure or proper medicines at that time their isolation must have been particular horrific with many forced to endure a living death. Sadder still, prior to the 20th century, whenever a leper died in Cyprus, their body was thrust into the earth without any religious rite, ceremony or prayer. They were buried as though they didn’t exist. It’s all so terribly sad and cruel.
In August 1909, American doctor, Calvin McCarroll visited the leper colony with a few other American missionaries. He described his visit in a letter that was published in a Church journal called the Olive Tree. ‘The colony is situated on more than 100 acres of ground, with plenty of pine trees. There are two rows of houses or streets, with a fine large church for the 75 Greeks that reside there and a mosque for the 25 Mohammedans. All the buildings are made of stone and the houses appear to be very comfortable. Near the centre of the village is a nice coffee house of hewn stone, where the people may gather and pass their time, talking and playing cards. On the inside walls of this building were hung many pictures, among them the picture of ‘The Good Shepherd’ and ‘Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness,’ which formed excellent texts for a good long talk on spiritual things and to which the people listened attentively, and afterward they were all anxious to have their pictures taken. I took a photograph of a group of men in front of the coffee shop. Those in the front show the disease in the deformity of the hands and fingers, while the faces of nearly all show a thickening about the forehead, eyebrows and nose. The man-in the middle of the doorway with a shawl about his head is so changed that he has somewhat the appearance of a baby. The boy next to the end in the front row has but recently gone to the colony, and is apparently healthy, but reports a small sore on one foot, which the health officer said was leprous. On the three women you see the disease in a more advanced condition, the fingers and toes being entirely destroyed, leaving only clubs or stumps. One form of this disease is called anaesthetic leprosy, which, of course, affects the nerves, and one woman said that if her hand were injured or burned she would not feel the pain until the fifth day after. There were two or three unable to leave their rooms, but sat dressing or bathing their sores with some lotion given them for the purpose.’
Dr. McCarroll goes on to say, ‘when any Cypriot is found suffering with leprosy, he or she is taken at once to the colony, where they receive the proper treatment. If the sufferer has children not yet infected with the bacillus (bacterium), they are placed in a home provided for such children, so they have the same chance in life that children born of healthy parents enjoy. When a patient goes to the colony – it is for life, as there is no guaranteed cure. The oil of chaulmoogra has done much to relieve them, but does not seem to have effected a cure.’
Since 1891, the Leper Farm was regularly maintained by a staff of 19 attendants of both sexes. There was no case reported of the disease spreading to the staff. Two guards were always on duty to ensure that no lepers escaped. The medicine administered to the lepers was free, although there was a case against Dr. Bairmian, who was caught charging some inmates a fee for their medicine.
With regards to children born at the Leper Farm, they are usually given away as soon as they are born to any healthy relatives or family members to raise as their own. On the 28th of March in 1913, two children are recorded as being sold for five pounds each. If no one is willing to adopt a newborn baby from the Leper Farm then the child is sent to a place in Nicosia where other children, born of leper parents reside. In 1916, there were eleven children aged between six and seventeen living as orphans at this special home. Fortunately, the children are all educated and taught a trade and given a Government grant of five pounds for their livelihood when they are finally discharged. I have found no evidence or documentation to suggest that these children have ever known or seen their biological parents. I can only imagine what hardships and mental trauma these children and their biological parents must have felt and endured.
From 1910 onwards, a remarkable man named Christofi (Tofi) Savvas (1895-1968) from the village of Apesia (Limassol) went to the Leper Farm to visit his uncle for the first time who was a patient there. Apparently, his own mother had suffered with leprosy. Upon meeting his uncle, Savvas asked ‘how are you doing uncle?’ His uncle replied, ‘this is a place of weeping. Those who wait for pennies from the government are starving. Only those who have food sent by their relatives are doing a little better. I cannot express the suffering of leprosy. Only those who live this life of suffering will understand it. There is no doctor here or medical staff. Is this a hospital or a prison. They even have guards to stop us from escaping as though we are criminals.’
As he walked around the farm, Savvas saw a wretched soul singing a mournful tune. ‘Dear Fate, I am no longer afraid of whatever you have planned for me. If you have other sufferings, then place them on my body. Since I am dying and my body is melting away, why do I need this life.’ Savvas later writes in his journal. ‘It was a pitiful sight. His eyes could not see, his hands had no fingers and his feet had no soles. He was as thin as the pruned branches of a vine.’
After talking to his uncle and some of the other patients Savvas became very emotional. He decided to fight to improve the living conditions at the farm. In 1918, he led a group of 44 patients from the Leper Farm on a protest march to the Governor’s residence in Nicosia demanding better living conditions and more medicines. When they arrived, a police force was there waiting for them with their batons drawn. They were ordered to leave but Savvas and his group stood their ground. ‘Do whatever you want,’ Savvas shouts. ‘We are not leaving unless we make our complaint. We are honest members of Cypriot society, worthy of sympathy because we have done nothing wrong. Our confinement is not due to bad deeds. We live as outcasts of society, deprived of our freedom and family comfort for the sake of public health.’ In time, Savvas’ efforts ultimately helped to improve the conditions on the farm and the treatment of the poor, unfortunate lepers who resided there.
By 1920, the farm was expanded to include many buildings made of stone. The dense wood surrounding the farm had many mature pines, cypress, wattles, oaks, juniper, carobs and other trees. It seemed that the lepers had now succeeded in creating their own community, evening building their own church out of stone which they dedicated to Agios Charalambos, who was a revered Orthodox martyr, and known for his miracles and healing powers.
In 1928, the British Government decided to construct a hospital at the Leper Farm. The Leper Farm Hospital was officially opened in 1929 with accommodation available for up to twelve patients at a time. The hospital was well equipped and the treatment was well organised thanks mainly to a caring and sympathetic Matron who worked hard to destigmatise the impression outsiders had of leprosy.
The first effective global treatment for leprosy became available in the 1940s, leading to a significant decrease in the number of cases around the world. After the discovery of the sulfone drug for the treatment of leprosy, the number of lepers in Cyprus also fell significantly.
Following the post war treatment of lepers in Cyprus, the British government decided in 1955 to move the leper colony to Larnaca, to an area of approximately 100 acres full of pine trees, near Aliki. One of the lepers wrote about this decision to move the colony to Larnaca. ‘The newspaper Kypros published that the leper colony will be transferred far from Nicosia and a college will be created in its place. The news fell like a bombshell considering that the farm is ours, coming from the donation of the late Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios. We asked Dr. Russell to deny the allegation but he confirmed that we will be transferred to the forest of Alyki in Larnaca. This confirmation caused us psychological turmoil.’
The move to Larnaca took place gradually, starting in the first days of September 1955. The lepers slowly created their new home which was called the Agios Charalambos Home. Each patient had their own living space, as well as a piece of land, which they could cultivate and raise animals. They also had the freedom to engage in activities outside the institution. Furthermore, the state provided them with a monthly income and a clothing allowance at the beginning and end of each year as well as a monthly gas allowance and a Christmas table allowance. The Home also had a kafenion, a restaurant, a cinema, a hospital and of course the church of Agios Charalambos, which was miraculously transported from the Leper Farm in Nicosia and rebuilt stone by stone, exactly as it was.
Unfortunately, despite the cure and the fact that the lepers of Cyprus were no longer contagious, the fear of approaching a leper still existed in Cyprus throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Many doctors and nurses who visited the Agios Charalambos colony in Larnaca wore masks and gloves and treated the patients with a certain level of disdain. Outsiders who attended the church service on Sundays demanded a separate chalice for the distribution of holy communion.
For the patients who lived out their lives at the home, their only regret was that they were treated as outcasts and therefore robbed of any real human compassion or interaction. One elderly woman known as Kyria Eleni is credited with attracting outsiders to the end-of-month mass at the church of Agios Charalambos. At this time there were 18 patients at the Home. Kyria Eleni was extremely social and intelligent and went out of her way to invite people. To alleviate any fears, she would show them a special cupboard in her home that only had cups and glasses for guests. Another resident who refused to shake hands with visitors admitted that he was taught from a young age to avoid touching people in order to alleviate their fears. Towards the end of the 1970s, more locals began to visit the patients at Agios Charalambos. One patient aged in her 80s boasted that her brother would visit her every Sunday without fail. Sadly, some residents claimed to have never received any visitors at all – other than the priest Papa George and the kind staff.
In a documentary that was made in 2010, a head clerk recalls how there was once accommodation at the colony for up to 120 patients. ‘We would all go on excursions by bus to various parts of Cyprus together,’ she says. ‘We mostly visited churches and monasteries. The nursing staff, who cared for the patients, stayed with them for a long time. They felt their sadness, their isolation, their stigma.’ The film crew also interviewed three elderly women all cured of leprosy, who were the last surviving leper patients at the home. The first woman is aged 84, stated that she arrived at the institution when she was nineteen years old. ‘I lived my whole life here,’ she says. ‘I met my husband here and I got married here. The second woman is named Androniki Iosifi. ‘I was 23 years old when I came and got married here,’ she says. ‘Was it love? Who knows. I was sad, because I was far from my family, but what was I to do? The third woman recalls her life spent at the Leper Farm in Nicosia. ‘At the age of just 13, in 1943, I entered the hospital there, already diagnosed with leprosy. I remember that I was the youngest in the ward and the others took care of me. Thank God, our life was not very difficult, not compared to before, when the English were here. But we had our president Christos Savvas who organized the brotherhood ‘The Pain’ (Ο Πόνος). He fought a lot for us, and we won rights and benefits.’
Androniki Iosifi was the last leper to reside at the Agios Charalambos home. She died in 2017. Since then, the site has been abandoned and largely neglected, overgrown with weeds and in a most worrying state of decay. Apparently, the only building left standing is the former Director’s office and thankfully, the old church of Agios Charalambos. The church however, is often looted and a place where bored local youths sometimes congregate at night to cause havoc. Father George who has been the caretaker priest of the church for many years is at his wits end. In a recent interview for the tv series, ‘24 Hours’ he admits spending a few thousand euros repairing the broken doors and windows of the church and even replacing the air-conditioning unit which was stolen by some local men. ‘Thieves have even climbed onto the roof of the church to steal the tiles and plaster,’ he says wide-eyed and shaking his head. ‘They have destroyed this place. They even throw our holy books onto the floor.’ Father George pleads with the interviewer to help raise the alarm before everything is destroyed.
What a pity that the property wasn’t preserved by the government and turned into an educational outdoor museum. Despite its harrowing history, the buildings that once housed the lepers of Cyprus should have been restored and protected in honour of all the poor souls who lived and died there.
When asked what he remembers mostly about the residents of the Leper colony in Larnaca, Father George appears to choke back tears before answering. ‘You know, despite all the prejudice and all the suffering that these poor souls had endured throughout their life, they were always polite and kind to everyone they met. They were always so polite. They never complained. Can you believe that? Such polite and lovely people.’
Thanks mainly to the writings of Dr. Frederick Charles von Heidenstam, Mrs. Scott-Stevenson and Dr. Calvin McCarroll together with the academic research conducted by Kyriakos Chatzikyriakidis, Güven Dinç and Lakis K. Anastasiadis, I have been able to gauge a valuable glimpse into the history of leprosy in Cyprus and the life of the Cypriot lepers.
As always, I eagerly wait for your comments and especially any further information on this fascinating topic. I am especially keen to hear from anyone who had a connection to the Leper Farms mentioned in this story or perhaps any family member or ancestor who had contracted the disease.
