Spending my formative years in Lagos, I was hugely influenced by SRN’s so while working as a journalist I approached the Editor of West Africa Magazine to suggest that as it was the 100th Anniversary of the International Council of Nurses I should write a short article on the contribution of West African Nurses to the Nursing profession. I thought this was an article I would write, with the entire item being researched and published in a few weeks. Little did I know of the 200-year-old story of the history of modern nursing in West Africa that had never been told.
This is a story that began with the settlement of the black poor of Britain in Freetown on the West Coast of Africa in 1787, African Americans who had fought on the British side during the American War of Independence and had settled in Nova Scotia before re-settling in 1792 in Freetown, and the Maroons of Jamaica who had been punished and sent to Nova Scotia before settling in Freetown in 1800. Lastly came the re-captives or liberated slaves who were Ibo, Asante, but mostly Yoruba who had settled in Freetown from 1807 -1861 and with the aforementioned evolved into a group who became the Creoles of Freetown. Eventually, they were to spread along the West Coast of Africa as clergy, teachers, nurses and merchants in cities and towns such as Bathurst, Accra, Abeokuta and Lagos.
Nursing has existed from the beginning of time. However, the Creoles of Freetown also known as Black British, African descendants of the Dutch in Cape Coast in Ghana, Brazilian returnees of Lagos, Nigeria along with other groups were the first to have access to Western Education. They were pioneers in the field of modern nursing. The establishment of missionary hospitals by Anglican, Catholic, The Basle and other missions along the West Coast of Africa, the establishment of colonial hospitals and the intervention of the colonial authorities in the health and welfare of native Africans in the training of nurses gave rise to a professional class of nurses.
The first hospital set up on the West Coast of Africa principally to train nurses in the modern methods of nursing was The Princess Christian Hospital, Freetown in 1894 run by the Anglican Church. The hospital was to produce legendary Freetown nurses such as Nurse Cole. Eventually, hospitals along the coast of West Africa began to demand nurses trained at the Princess Christian Hospital.
Nurses such as Kofo Pratt, the first African Matron of The UCH at Ibadan were of Creole heritage and trained in Britain or under British nursing personnel at African hospitals. As many of these countries were approaching independence these nurses began to occupy senior nursing positions once held by British nurses.
The emergence of the NHS in 1948 witnessed another group of nurses from these countries who were to train in Britain as SRNs and nurse tutors, from London to Liverpool and beyond. They were to contribute to the NHS in Britain for the next 50 years and up to the present time.
On a personal note, having found I had to stop my research due to an illness, I am now receiving and responding well to treatment. After a break from administraton and research in public service I would like to return employment at a role in an archive or library or even administration or lecturing on the history of modern nursing in West Africa and Britain.
Copyright of Adenike Ogunkoya (c) October 2013
Adenike Ogunkoya read Modern European and African History at Birkbeck College and the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London. This was followed by a course in British Women’s History at London Metropolitan University. In the future she would like the opportunity to re-submit her dissertation on the same subject. She can be contacted at histjourn@hotmail.com
Editor’s note: At the request of Ms. Ogunkoya this blog was edited on 30th July 2020.
ARCHIVES INCLUDE: London Metropolitan Archives, Black Cultural Archives, The National Archives, Kew, British Newspaper Library Colindale, British Library St Pancras, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Local Studies Libraries and liaising with research centres around the UK and in the USA.
FURTHER READING
Angles of The West Coast Part 1
From Settler To SRN
By Adenike F Ogunkoya. For more information email histjourn@hotmail.com
