n 9 August 1846, a mob of enraged islanders broke into the house of a British medical missionary who had practised on the island of Madeira for several years. They ransacked his property and proceeded to burn his books, prints, medicines and other possessions. The doctor was absent, having fled the previous night, forewarned of the impending outrage. After sheltering briefly with a friend, he managed to slip aboard a Royal Mail steamer in Funchal bay and left Madeira, never to return.
Robert Reid Kalley (1809-88) was only the most notorious of the several expatriate clergy who contributed to making Madeira a byword for religious dissent in the early Victorian period. The island’s turmoil was not home-grown but engendered by the activities of British incomers. Kalley, a Scottish Presbyterian of a strongly evangelical stamp, came to Madeira in 1838 on a temporary visit for his wife’s health. Discovering a benighted and poverty-stricken peasantry sorely in need of enlightenment, he abandoned his original intention to undertake missionary work in China and obtained a Portuguese medical qualification to enable him to practise on the island. He also returned briefly to London to be ordained by a Congregationalist minister.
