[This is the third in a series describing Scots who won
distinction outside their native land]
At my Scottish prep school we had three school houses,
Nelson, Scott and Livingstone. Everyone knows the great Admiral of Trafalgar, or
the leader of the tragic expedition to the Antarctic, but the Scots missionary
and African explorer is now a fading historical figure. Yet he was hugely
celebrated in Victorian Britain. Mary Slessor was then less well known but she
is now admired as the epitome of feminine grit, charity and fortitude.
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| David Livingstone |
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| Mary Slessor |
David Livingstone
(1813 – 73) was born in the Lanarkshire mill-town of Blantyre, South of
Glasgow, into a working class family of 6. His father worked in the cotton mill,
but was an ardent Protestant Congregationalist handing out tracts and
determined to educate his children. David started work at the mill aged 10 but
was schooled in the evenings. He was interested in science and medicines and
wanted to study to become a doctor. His father would have preferred him to read
theology and to confine himself to one book, namely the Bible. David much
cherished the writings of Scots minister Thomas Dick who tried to reconcile
Christianity with Victorian scientific discoveries. They agreed between them in
1836 that David would study medicine and theology at Anderson’s College in
Glasgow (now part of Strathclyde University). He finished his education as a
doctor at various medical schools in London, while simultaneously training as a
missionary preacher at a church in Ongar, Essex.
Livingstone was an indifferent preacher but the London
Missionary Society took him on for his medical knowledge and in 1841 he was
sent to a mission station in modern Botswana, near to the Kalahari Desert. He
focussed his interest on travelling into and mapping the African Interior, spreading
Christianity and preventing the brutal exploitation of Africans by Arab slave
traders. He married Mary Moffat, daughter of another Southern Africa
missionary, in 1845. They were to have two children, delivered in the Interior
by David.
In his first expedition 1849-51 he sighted the then unknown
Upper Zambesi and in 1852 he embarked on a 4-year expedition to cross Central
and Southern Africa, “opening up” large tracts to contemporary geographers and
colonists. In 1855 he became the first European to set eyes on Victoria Falls
and in 1856 he found the mouth of the Zambesi on the Indian Ocean. He returned
a feted hero to Britain.
His missionary efforts achieved little. The African tribes
had their own gods but the native kings of the Interior, beset by Arab slavers,
at least did not fear unarmed Livingstone who preached earnestly from the back
of his wagon. He was actually useful with his knowledge of obstetrics and his
ability to treat eye problems. The sum total of Livingstone’s converts was one,
a certain Sechele, influential king of the Kwema people of Botswana. They
became shaky Christian adherents as they often reverted to polygamy and
rain-making rites, but it was a start.
The British government decided to sponsor Livingstone’s next
expedition from 1858-64, to find if the Zambesi were navigable; it was not, as
his earlier treks had not spotted the various rapids and cataracts making the
river impassable. Livingstone was out of his depth managing a large expedition.
He was secretive, self-righteous and moody, resenting any criticism. His own
physician Dr John Kirk wrote scathingly “Dr Livingstone is out of his mind and
is a most unsafe leader.” After several unfruitful excursions trying to map the
river systems, the government recalled him, judging his expedition a
failure. He had been joined by his wife
but she soon died of malaria in 1862.
He managed to raise the funds to launch his final expedition
from 1866 to 1873. Resigning from the missionary society, he started from
Zanzibar joining the likes of Burton and Speke to find the source of the Nile.
Spurning advice, he mounted too small an expedition and his native bearers and
sepoys soon melted away. He enjoyed being a loner but in his final years he was
wracked by tropical fevers and dysentery. He was mortified that he had to be
rescued by Arab slavers; he was later horrified to witness some 400 African
slaves being massacred beside Lake Tanganyika. For several years nothing was
heard of him and the New York Herald
financed Welsh-born but US-based journalist Henry Morton Stanley to search him
out. He duly found him in the Arab village of Ujiji, in modern Tanzania on 10
November 1871 with the famously polite greeting “Dr Livingstone, I presume!”
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| Stanley finds Livingstone in Ujiji |
Although Livingstone was the first European to see important
lakes in Central Africa, he did not find the source of the Nile. He died in
Ilala in modern Zambia in May 1873. Hailed as a hero, his body lay in state at
the Royal Geographical Society’s offices then at 1, Savile Row (now the
tailoring emporium of Gieves & Hawkes) and he was buried with full pomp at
Westminster Abbey.
As a proponent of Christian missionary work and a harbinger
of the imperialist “scramble for Africa” Livingstone is an unfashionable figure
these days. His courage and dour perseverance is beyond doubt, but there was an
unclubbable, narrow and contrarian side to him seen still in plenty of other
Scots. He makes a worthy but uncomfortable hero.
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| Livingstone and Slessor commemorated on Scots banknotes |
Mary Slessor
(1848-1915) was inspired by Livingstone’s example and may have done more
tangible good. She was born in Aberdeen, daughter of a poor alcoholic
shoemaker. Unable to find regular work, the family moved to Dundee, which has
subsequently rather adopted Mary, and she, aged 11, and her now widowed mother
worked in the famous jute mills there.
Her story is easily told. Always drawn to charitable work
and a devoted Presbyterian, Mary was inspired by news of the death of
Livingstone and aged 28 was sent in 1876 to a missionary establishment in
Calabar, a long established port in South Eastern Nigeria, to work with the
local Efik people. Contracting malaria she was invalided home to Dundee in
1879.
She returned to Calabar in 1881. With her red hair and blue
eyes she was a distinctive figure; she avoided the trappings of the European
missionary, wearing African clothes, eating local food, learning to speak the
local Efik language and living in an African mud-hut. Another bout of malaria
made her return in 1884 to her mother and sister in Dundee, but they were ill
too and died soon after. Mary became a
celebrity in church circles.
Mary returned to Nigeria finally and spent 15 years in the
interior with the Okoyong people, thought to be a danger to Europeans. Her
practical help and determination won them over. She made a particular point of helping
twins, as a local superstition held that one of the twins was an evil spirit.
The mother of twins was ostracised and the twins themselves left to die in the
bush. Mary brought up a number of twins and adopted one girl called Janie. Mary
also fought against the custom of human sacrifice after the death of a village
elder, based on the notion that the dead man needed servants and retainers in
the afterlife.
Mary soft-pedalled evangelism and concentrated on settling
disputes, encouraging trade and improving the status of women. She became a
judge in the native court and was a cherished influence. Weakened by her
persistent malaria, Mary finally died in Calabar in 1915. She had a
colonial-style state funeral there and the famed pro-consul Sir Frederick
Lugard in Lagos praised her unique contribution. Her centenary has this year
been marked with honour in her adoptive Dundee.
Mary was a good woman and hers was a life well-lived.
SMD
27.03.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
