Biography, Politics, Women's History

The Smith Sisters of Sierra Leone – West African Nurses Extraordinaire

My intention was to write an article on the contribution of  West African Nurses on a particular anniversary of the International Council of Nurses.

However, wherever I went seeking primary source material on West African Nurses, I found the same names of members of the same family: Elizabeth, Hannah, Emma, Adelaide and Annette (Nettie) Smith.  These five mixed race Victorian Sisters, born in Freetown and living and dying between 1860 and 1960, were the articulate, cultured and genteel daughters of  the half English and half Fante civil servant William Smith Jnr. Their mother was heiress Anne Spilsbury Smith who hailed from a wealthy Freetown family.

On their mother’s side the Smith sisters descended from a famous Mandingo/Bambara re-captive woman, the feisty, flamboyant, wealthy, illiterate merchant Betsy Carew, rescued from a westbound slave ship and set free in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Her husband, Thomas Carew, the Smith’s great grandfather, was a Maroon whose ancestors had been exiled to Nova Scotia from Jamaica and then shipped to Sierra Leone. The marriage caused much controversy in an emerging bourgeoisie settler community made up of African-American Nova Scotians (who fought on the British side during the American War of Independence) and Maroon Nova Scotians who did not take kindly to illiterate re-captives (liberated slaves) marrying into their community. However, four generations along the female line from Betsy Carew to Hannah Carew Spilsbury to Anne Spilsbury Smith and the five Smith sisters. There is a shift from traditional African mercantilism and apparel to European schooling, knowledge and prowess and a firm foot in established elite Creole society. While Betsy Carew was not readily accepted into settler society, three generations of women later her great granddaughters were being entertained by European nobility.

Annette (Nettie) Smith

In a book on her life Adelaide Smith describes her childhood in London and on the Isle of Jersey, brought up by nannies and their widower father, educated at home by governesses before being sent to some of the pioneering ladies colleges of the day, at a time when most black women in the Western hemisphere were workingclass or servants.

As a British born historian of West African descent having been tutored on the English Literature classics in West Africa and the UK and absorbed with relish (no political correctness here), I had to pinch myself when I read the accounts of how, when the Smith Sister’s mother died and they lost the trust fund set up for her, they had to cut back financially and wear each other’s hand me downs. I had to confirm I was not reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, albeit none of the Smith Sisters was forced into domestic service like Josephine March. At any given time the Smith family had at least two domestic servants.  Furthermore their anxious father, retired civil servant and lay Methodist preacher, was anxious they marry well, knowing there was no great inheritance to sustain them. Yet again I had to make the comparison with  Pride and Prejudice. Marry well they did as four of them wed leading professional men from the West Coast of Africa.

Emma Smith, the middle sister, was to become the strict maiden aunt of the family, helping raise her numerous nephews and nieces. My research, however, reveals all the sisters deserve an account of their own lives and the role they played in Adelaide’s life needs to be highlighted.

The Smith sisters, brought up with a high sense of civic and religious duty by their father, at post secondary education had a choice of attending finishing schools, art school and music conservatoires and a tour of Europe where they improved on their languages, especially French and German.

When the Smith sisters returned to their city of birth, Freetown, they caused a sensation with their musical talents and charm, and founded two schools. But that era also witnessed them and others forming a stronger African cultural identity amidst growing racial discrimination in West Africa. The beginning of the century also witnessed some Smith sisters identify themselves with organisations in West Africa and Britain that would preserve the identity and dignity of the black race.

Amongst their  friends were Queen Victoria’s African Goddaughter  Victoria Davies and her family friend Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Together with the Smith Sisters they were frequent visitors to theatres and concerts in Edwardian London, where the Smith sisters returned. The music for some of those concerts was composed by Samuel Coleridge Taylor himself.

I have been approached by members of my own community who have said they want our own period drama on the Smith sisters and, yes, one of them did live in a stately home as she was taken under the wings of a German aristocrat’s wife.

I have lectured On The Smith Sisters Of Sierra Leone During Black History months of 2004 and 2005. This is the 150th Anniversary of the freeing of Slaves in the United States of America and now is the time for people to know the story of these remarkable sisters.

Adenike Ogunkoya (c) March 2013

Adenike Ogunkoya read Modern European and African History at Birkbeck College and the School of Oriental and African Studies  University of London (SOAS). This was followed by a course in British Women’s History at London Metropolitan University. Having to halt her research due to illness and now responding well to treatment, in the future she would like the opportunity to re-submit her dissertation on the same subject. After a break from administration and research in  public service she anticipates a role in an archive or library.

ARCHIVES USED 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

A Hundred Years of Freedom:The Smith Sisters of Sierra Leone 1860-1960

By Adenike Ogunkoya

A Hundred Years of Freedom: The Smith Sisters of Sierra Leone: 1860-1960 is a book about the five mixed race, middle class Smith sisters of Sierra Leone. British women’s studies lack an African perspective and this book, detailing the lives of the five Smith sisters 1860-1960, will appeal widely as they had strong associations with the USA, Nova Scotia, Jamaica, Ghana, Sierra Leone (where they were born), Nigeria as well as Britain (where they were educated and settled). The book is unique because for the first time it gives an account of the lives of black middle class ladies in Victorian Britain and also   the central role played by women amongst the black literati in Edwardian Britain. Several autobiographies and biographies of people like that of the half-Egyptian and half Sudanese writer, playwright, actor and journalist Duse Mohamed Ali, a friend of Samuel Coleridge Taylor and a member of the black literati in Edwardian London and a great friend of the Smith sisters, have excluded the Smith sisters. The Smith sisters were also friends with the musician Samuel Coleridge Taylor having been introduced to him by Queen Victoria’s African Goddaughter, Victoria Davies;  again very little is mentioned in the books on Samuel Coleridge Taylor who was a great friend of the Smith sisters and Godfather to one of their daughters, whilst composing music with another daughter of one of the Smith sisters. The Smith sisters other friends were Dr John Alcindor mentioned in Jeffrey Green’s book on Black Edwardians, and John Eldred Taylor a Co—Founder of the African Times & Oriental Review. Duse Mohamed Ali later edited the African Times & Oriental Review and Gold Coast nationalist JE Casely Hayford financed it – but not before asking for Adelaide’s Smith’s hand in marriage. Despite the Smith sisters’ providing lots of information to the African Times and Oriental Review, they were never mentioned in it.  The title of the book is an emphasis on their slave and re-captive (liberated slave) ancestors and their own privileged status as well as how easily they moved from one continent to another at a time when most black women in the western hemisphere were working class. The title also emphasises the year the first Smith sister was born and the year the longest living Smith sister died. This book more than any other will highlight the growing number of women from West Africa and the West Indies who were part of the history of black Edwardians in Britain, which includes some now well known, including Victoria Davies.

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