Joseph Salter (missionary)

Joseph Salter (9 April 1822 – 3 March 1899) was a Christian missionary in London who worked with migrants to the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century.

[4][5] Salter was the missionary at the Strangers' Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders (opened 1857), Limehouse, on behalf of London City Mission[7][8] where he gained experience of working with lascars and taught himself several Indian languages.

[12] In December 1886, the Home had declared its intention to evict five Punjabi performers and their bear.

[13] Salter described them as in a "perilous" situation and after confirming the sale of the bear to the Zoological gardens, appealed to the India Office for help but received a clear refusal of responsibility.

In the first, which he dedicated to Maharaja Duleep Singh, The Asiatic in England: Sketches of Sixteen Years' Works Among Orientals (1873), he described the tortures received by lascars on sea voyages,[14][15] and his disbelief that anyone could think that "the coloured part of mankind existed only to be used like brute beasts, and to have the most insulting names language can supply heaped upon them".