The Jalpaiguri Bear-Girl

One of the missionaries of the New Dispensation Church (the late Babu Keshub Sen's Brahmo Somaj), in his recent tour of Jalpaiguri, came across an idiot girl of about eight years of age. The girl roved through the streets, appeasing her appetite with whatever food the people offered her, and at night slept under trees or under the open sky. The history of the girl is wonderful. We sometimes read in books of legendary stories of human beings nursed by lions, wolves, and bears, the girl is a living instance of such nursing. The girl has the features of the hill people. She was discovered by some coolies belonging to a tea garden in the den of a bear. It is presumed that she was brought there by some unaccountable circumstances, and when very young was nursed by her bear-mother.

When just taken out of the den, she was a strange combination of a bear and a man, she was ferocious like a bear, and attempted to bite and scratch men when she saw them. In her locomotion she used her legs as well as her hands and moved like a bear. She growled at intervals like a bear and ate and drank as a bear; in short, all her habits were like those of a bear, while by her features no one could fail to recognize her as a human being. The police afterwards took her under their custody; this happened when she was about three years of age. She was then put in the Jalpaiguri hospital, where she forgot much of her strange habits.

She learnt to walk, eat, and drink like a human being, and showed certain emotions which were peculiar to man. The hospital authorities retained her about three years, and afterwards thinking her an incurable discharged her. The said missionary, who is the manager of an orphanage, took pity on her, and brought her down to the office of the Unity and the Minister newspaper (organ of the New Dispensation Church of the late Babu Chunder Sen) at No. 20, Patuatolla Lane, Calcutta. When we first saw her we were greatly impressed by her amiable and innocent appearance. She is rather bulky and has long hair. Even now she has not forsaken bear-like growls, and it is with some difficulty that she can walk like man. The only emotion which she incessantly expresses is by means of smiles, which oftentimes develop into loud laughter. She is more a laughing girl than anything else. She does not seem to understand human language, though her powers of hearing and seeing have been found on examination to be unimpaired. When food was brought to her, she readily stretched forth her hand to grasp it, and when she was in possession of it, or when she was engaged in consuming it, she laughed loudly and her smiles and laughter at times appeared very attractive and sweet. If there is anything about her that commands human sympathy, it is her smile, The Orphanage being considered an unsuitable place for her, she has been removed to the Das Asram, a philanthropic institution of Calcutta, founded by some Brahmo gentlemen on the lines of the Salvation Army, to afford an asylum to the poor and homeless waifs and strays of the Calcutta streets, where she is now taken care of. Hundreds of men and women now go to see her daily but she shows an aversion to being exhibited as an object of curiosity before a large number of people. By contact with society she is now generally acquiring human habits. It has been pronounced by medical men that she will gradually regain her humanity