Edith Letitia Price: Making her Mark

Edith Letitia Price 

Edith Price

 Edith Letitia Woodward was born in Birmingham, England, on June 24, 1880.   She met Ernest Price at Graham Street Baptist Church in Birmingham where,   for six years, Price worked to try to revive a down-town city church that   appeared  to be near the end of its useful life.  Their marriage took place in 1904   at Sheffield in the British Midlands, to which Price had moved to serve a   different congregation where he had a far more positive experience.[1] It was not   long, however, before Price responded to an invitation issued by the Baptist   Missionary Society (BMS) Committee and gave up his pastorate in Sheffield.   Mrs. Price accompanied her husband to Jamaica where Price was to serve as   president of the Calabar Theological College. They remained in Jamaica from 1909-1938.

Coming to Jamaica with the Prices was their first son, Ernest Woodword, who was born in Sheffield in 1907. He received his early education in Jamaica and eventually became a famous medical doctor, orthopaedic surgeon and leprosy specialist. Dr Price is credited for discovering the tropical disease of podoconiosis[2] while he was serving as Baptist medical missionary in the Belgian Congo from 1935-1956.

While in Jamaica, the Prices enlarged their family through the birth of two additional children – Neville Grenville Price, born May 26, 1911, and Bernard Henry Price, born January 27, 1913. Meanwhile, Mrs. Price fulfilled the unpaid role of matron responsible for coordinating the whole process of catering for the students at Calabar, which was then a boarding school. She also hosted special visitors to Calabar. She set in train a tradition that was to be replicated by the wife of successive Calabar College principals, for example Mrs. Tucker, when her husband, Keith Tucker, served as principal of Calabar.[3]

In 1972, when Calabar was celebrating its 60^th birthday, Noel White wrote about the founding of the school. Among his remarks was the following:  

Rev. Price worked with a right arm and a left arm both of whom he readily acknowledged. His right arm was Mr. Davis, a jack-of-all-trades who made up time-tables, taught myriad subjects, did accounts, planned and supervised the erection of buildings, and the swimming pool to boot. His left arm was his wife. Mrs. Price kept the account books and occupied the difficult position of matron at the same time.[4]

When Calabar was relocated to Chetolah Park, Mrs. Price joined her husband in establishing a Baptist church in Jones Pen (now Jones Town). She played a major role in the church’s life. She is credited with starting both the Sunday School and the Women’s Federation[5] which she led to become a large and vibrant body. This is not surprising because Mrs. Price had been involved in the Women’s Federation from its founding. In fact, at the inaugural meeting of the Jamaica Baptist Women’s Federation (JBWF) in Bethel Town, Mrs. Price was chosen JBWF Second Vice President. 

Mrs. Price and the Jones Pen Women's Federation at a Tuesday morning meeting in the 1940s.

Mrs. Price visited the people of Jones Pen in their homes and helped to build a strong relationship between the church and the community. Such was her effectiveness as a spiritual worker in the Jones Pen church and community that the main street in Jones Town, named “Main Street” was changed to Price Street in honour not of Rev. Price but of Mrs. Price. In his book, Bananaland, Ernest Price jokes about the Main Street in Jones Pen being named after his wife, while “two side streets” in the community were named “after people of less social importance” – Asquith Street named for the Prime Minister of United Kingdom, 1908-1916, and Woodrow Street named for Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States of America, 1913-1921!

Upon her husband’s retirement from Calabar, Mrs. Price and her family returned to England where her husband became pastor of another Baptist Church in Birmingham. In the final letter he wrote to the Church of the Redeemer, Birmingham, before his death, Price said this: 

 

In the ministry now being laid down, my wife has shared in the measure that you know as well as I…. You are our last congregation and your faces and names and love will be an unfading memory. Now, give to my successor and his wife what you have given us in loyalty, in cooperation and in love.[6]

In Ernest Price’s, Bananaland: Pages from the Chronicles of an English Minister in Jamaica,[7] a clear picture emerges of the partnership between Mrs. Price and her husband in forming Christ Church, the first Baptist Church in Jones Pen (now, Jones Town).

 

In the aftermath of Mrs. Price's death in 1964, S. R. Panton, a former Calabar student from Cayman Islands, wrote gratefully about how “Mother Price” took him over a track to Sunday School at Jones Pen. He recalled with pleasure the walks he took with her on the lawn after the Sunday service when he and others “surrendered their hearts to the Lord.”[8]

 

Whether at school, church or community, Mrs. Price was a partner to her enterprising husband. She played her own part in the ministry the couple fulfilled in Jamaica.

 

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[1] 132^nd Annual Report of the Baptist Missionary Society (London: Carey Press, 1924), 130.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_W._Price. Podoconiosis manifests itself in extreme swelling of a person’s feet and legs.

[3] See the enthralling account given by Monica Carly, a daughter of former Calabar Principal, Rev Keith Tucker in Island in the Sun: Growing up in Jamaica (Shakespeare Editorial, 2023) that characterises the role her mother played as wife of the Calabar principal. See especially chapter 3.

[4] Noel White, “The Founding of Calabar High School,” The Gleaner, October 29, 1972.

[5] Jones Town Baptist Church 75^th Anniversary, 1911-1986 – Souvenir Magazine.

[6] Jamaica Baptist Reporter, September - October 1946.

[7] London: Carey Press, 1930

[8] The Gleaner, October 15, 1964.