Mary Kingsley
Born on 13rd of October 1862
Died on 3rd of June 1900
For most of her life Mary Kingsley led a fairly conventional life for a young well-bred woman in the Victorian age: she received little formal education (but made up for it by reading voraciously), then cared for her mother and father when they became seriously ill. Her father, a doctor, had travelled widely, and Mary was bitten by the bug. Mary’s inheritance allowed her to travel in Africa, where she studied local cultures, coming to criticise missionaries for the social disruption they brought, and the excesses of imperialism, while believing intervention by ‘the white man’ was necessary. She died nursing Boer POWs, aged just 37.
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