The indomitable Lady Grigg & the first Goan female doctor in Kenya

 

The indomitable Lady Grigg

Lady Joan (Joanie) Alice Katherine Grigg

Wife of Sir Edward Grigg, Governor of Kenya 1925-30

'Lady Grigg, Joanie to her friends, was as strong a personality as her husband. Young, handsome, full of energy, and equally determined to set the mark of progress on the country, she saw that the well-being of women and their babies had been sadly neglected. Not a single maternity hospital for Africans had been established, nor had a single African nurse been even partially trained. Medical missionaries had done what they could ..........Starting from scratch, Joan Grigg set out to raise the money. She appealed, cajoled and bullied, set up committees and relentlessly chivvied commercial firms and businessmen, trusts and people like the Aga Khan, whose generosity was proverbial. The culmination of the appeal was a mammoth Child Welfare fete at Govt. House. Not everyone enjoyed being chivvied ....... however, the fete made over £3000, and in time the Baroness [Karen Blixen] became reconciled to the Griggs. They could be 'tremendously pleasant', she wrote, in contrast to most of the British, whom she found bourgeois, dreary, ill-bred and philistine. But with the Griggs, she could discuss Shakespeare and the Old Testament.'

 

The new maternity home was opened. .......... Nor did Joan Grigg confine herself to the welfare of Africans. An Indian maternity hospital followed and  Indian girls were coaxed into training, and a hostel for European nurses was built. Joan Grigg's was a remarkable achievement, and her name is commemorated in the Lady Grigg maternity home in Mombasa.

 

Oxford DNB: In 1926 Joan Grigg created the Lady Grigg Welfare League as a way of providing nursing and maternity services for women and children of all races. It was supported by energetic fund-raising efforts in Kenya and in Britain. The first branch of the league, which opened in 1926, was a child welfare home for Arabs and Africans in Mombasa. The second branch, which opened the following year, was the African Maternity and Child Welfare Hospital and Training Centre at Pumwani, Nairobi. The league quickly developed into three combined enterprises: maternity hospitals and training schools for Africans in Nairobi and Mombasa; a maternity hospital, a school for midwives, and an infant welfare clinic for Indians; and a hostel in Nairobi for training nurses to serve the European community. Midwifery training was regarded by the league as a priority, and the first probationers passed their examination in 1929. Without these efforts, virtually nothing would have been done by the British administration for Kenyan mothers.

Mary Mathilda de Sousa (1890–1953) was an Indian-Kenyan doctor. She was the first Asian female doctor in Kenya, practising from 1919.

Mary Mathilda Pereira was raised in Mazagon, Bombay, one of fourteen children of Peter Paul Pereira. She graduated from Grant Medical College in 1914 as a Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery. She worked as a medical officer in the Bhavnagar district and Chhota Udaipur district before returning to Bombay to work at the Kerrawala Maternity Hospital. In 1919 attended the Lahore session of the Indian National Congress.

After marrying Dr Alex Caetano Lactancio de Sousa in 1919, she moved to Nairobi with him. There she worked as a doctor and midwife.^[1] After the Lady Grigg Welfare League was formed in 1926, de Sousa successfully fundraised to build a maternity hospital, the Lady Grigg Indian Maternity Home, for Indian women.^[2] She and her husband refused a place on the board of governors, since the hospital's constitution did not provide for balanced representation of Indians and Europeans on the committee. She was also involved in the Indian Education Board, and in the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts.^[1]

Mary de Sousa hosted important Indian visitors in her house, such as Sarojini Naidu, who led the East African Indian National Congress twice. In the mid-1940s she became ill, and was mostly confined to her house for the last decade of her life.

Mary Pereira married a fellow medical doctor, Alexio Caetano Lactancio de Sousa, in 1919. He survived her when she died in Nairobi in 1953, aged 63 years. They had three children, Theo, Peter, and Aura; their son Peter A. de Sousa became a doctor like his parents. (Wikipedia)