Mary Helen Margaret Leishman was born at Bunbury Western Australia on 17 April 1902. She died on 7 May 1995 in Launceston, Tasmania. Helen Leishman gave 22 years service to the Anglican Church's Melanesian Mission in the Solomons and New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) as both lay missionary nursing sister, then as a member of the religious sisterhood, the Community of the Cross. That Community corporately moved to the Roman Catholic church in July 1950, after which Helen Leishman spent more than 38 years in a Carmelite Monastery in Tasmania.

Helen Leishman trained as a nurse in Perth WA, completing her midwifery in Adelaide SA. While living and working in Perth she heard a clergyman preach on the work of the Anglican church's overseas missions. Some time later, on an impulse, she enquired about missionary life, was accepted on the spot, sent to Mission headquarters, Siota, Solomon Islands for training, then was assigned to a school in the New Hebrides.

Her enculturation programme was conducted by the Community of the Cross, an Anglican Sisterhood of three members established only a year previously. She subsequently joined the Community. She taught in the Community's school, was nurse, dentist, midwife and otherwise multi-skilled member of the Community, became the de facto mother of the babies taken in as orphans, taught personal and community hygiene and mothercraft to the older students at the school, trained indigenous women who joined the Community in hygiene, child care, midwifery and other elementary medical skills. Either alone, or with colleagues (mostly one or two Taina), she worked in remote locations, went periodically to distant islands to preach Christianity, teach, and attend to the sick. She was in the Solomons during World War II when the Japanese invaded, remained in seclusion in the mountains under the protection of the indigenous people until after the battle of Guadalcanal, when evacuated to the New Hebrides. After some years back in the Solomons the Sisters decided to join the Roman Catholic church, an event described by Mother Margaret Wilson, the Community Superior (see PMB 145). (From T.W. Campbell, “The Hidden Lives of Helen Leishman”, <i>Women-Church</i>, 33, Spring 2003.)

These letters cover the period 1930 to 1948. The originals, held privately, are to be placed with St Mark's Library, Canberra ACT. <b>See Finding aids for details.</b>