Elizabeth Anne Finn - Diplomatic Life

Diplomatic Life

After her marriage to James Finn, who was appointed British consul, the couple moved to Jerusalem. The consuls were instructed to befriend in every possible way the Jews in Jerusalem and Palestine, who had no kind of European protection.

As a diplomat's wife in Jerusalem, Elizabeth Finn learned Arabic by asking her Dragoman for ten Arabic words each day, putting one on the fingers of each hand. In later life asked to translate the correspondence in Arabic dialect between the Mahdi Muhammed Ahmed and the late General Gordon ‘of Khartoum.’

In November 1849 she helped to establish the Jerusalem Literary Society to explore the natural and ancient history of the region objectively and free from religious controversy. The Finns who had formed a library of a thousand volumes and a small museum, would take advantage of the Saturday, on which no Jewish business could be carried out, to ride out into the countryside in search of antiquities and there make valuable discoveries.

Many eminent travellers attended meetings of the Jerusalem Literary Society, news of which attracted the notice of Albert, Prince Consort, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen and the Archbishop of Canterbury. During these years Finn became one of the first modern Europeans to be given permission to visit the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock.

Elizabeth Finn contributed as a pioneer of photography helping bring the newly invented art to the region and, also supporting indigenous photographers such as Mendel John Diness. When King Edward VII visited Jerusalem in April 1862, Finn took a photograph of him near a tree described as the "pine tree of Godfrey de Bouillon." It is included in a bound album of early photographs of the Holy Land taken by her, now preserved at Yad Ben Zvi in Jerusalem.

The landscape of Palestine and Jerusalem was of keen interest to Elizabeth Finn as is evinced by the meticulous depictions made in both word-paintings and pen and pencil sketches of various Biblical and historical landscapes. Her work is marked with a painstaking level of attention as to how the landscape is charged and altered by the effects of light at different times of day.

William Holman Hunt who visited the region in 1854 halfway through the Finns' time in Jerusalem to research and sketch for The Scapegoat (painting) provided an introductory letter to Mrs Finn's eventual published collection of sketches validating her work as "very excellent topographical studies of the localities and in colour by no means overcharged for the original effects which the mountains, sky and plains of Syria glory in."

She was also able to entertain both Prince Alfred (second son of Queen Victoria) and latterly his elder brother the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) in charming royal style, so forming the connections with Royal patronage that would later provide crucial early support for the Distressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association.

During her stay in Jerusalem, Finn organized training and employment of local men and women as carpenters, farm labourers and seamstresses. She raising money from abroad to battle malnutrition among the poor. She raised funds to purchase Kerem Avraham, a farm outside Jerusalem. She oversaw the excavation of extensive cisterns at Abraham's Vineyard to alleviate Jerusalem's inadequate water supply. In January 1854, she established the ‘Sarah Society’ which made home visits to poor women, providing relief in the form of rice, sugar and coffee.