The Life of Mary Kingsley

Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, Amerigo Vespucci – who doesn't know them? They are among the most famous explorers of their time. To this day, their journeys are often part of history lessons; younger researchers are rarely mentioned. Researchers like the Norwegian Roald Amundsen (*1872, +1928), who remains one of the most successful polar explorers to this day. Or the American John Wesley Powell (*1834, +1902), whose exploratory drive ultimately led to the exploration of the Grand Canyon. Over the centuries, there have been countless researchers and explorers whose achievements remain significant in most cases to this day. Yet what many may not be aware of is the fact that among those research travellers there were also those who did not even possess the right to vote at that time: women.

Women like Isabelle Eberhardt (*1877, +1904), who, wearing men's clothing, undertook a journey through the Sahara – alone.

Women like Gertrude Bell (*1868, +1926), who explored the Middle East and, on the basis of the knowledge she acquired, became a political adviser to Britain.

Women like Mary Kingsley, who was declared mad and abnormal when she left England in the summer of 1893 alone to explore the hitherto unknown: West Africa.

Mary Henrietta Kingsley was born on 13 October 1862 in Islington (a district in North London, Great Britain). She was the eldest and only daughter of the royal physician George Henry Kingsley and his cook. Due to her parents' marriage, which was not socially appropriate for that time, Mary Kingsley's childhood was marked by the rejecting attitude of other family members towards her mother.

Mary's younger brother Charles George was born four years later, in 1866, and ultimately received the schooling that Mary had longed for but was denied. Instead, she kept her ailing mother company, who in time became dependent on care, and read book after book. Over time, the self-taught Mary Kingsley acquired considerable knowledge in the fields of physics, chemistry and geography, as well as ethnology, theology, and much more. Moreover, she is said to have had a passionate fondness for literature that dealt with adventure and travel to distant lands.

Yet it was only the death of her parents in early 1892 that enabled Mary to regard the dream of travel, the longing for distant places, as a serious option to be realised. Her destination: West Africa.

But before she set off, she undertook a journey to the Canary Islands – her first journey as an unattached woman – and subsequently completed her training at the Kaiserswerth Deaconess Institution as a qualified nurse.

In August 1893, the time finally came; the now 31-year-old Mary Kingsley packed her bags and travelled with 300 pounds in her pocket to the distant, unknown Africa. In contemporary Victorian fashion – long black skirts, high-necked blouses, boots and small hats – Mary began her first research in the French colony of Congo by living among the locals, observing them and learning from them. Including the "Fang", a, according to Mary Kingsley, cannibalistic Bantu tribe, whom she "joined" for a time in order to explore both their religious customs and their way of life. She also used her stay to capture and collect rare, exotic fish, plants and reptiles, which she would pass on to the British Museum. According to reports, Mary Kingsley financed her stay on the African continent through trade with various tribes in the regions where she happened to be.

Her first African journey took half a year before it came to an end in 1894 in Calabar (a port city in Nigeria) and Mary set out on the return journey to England. Back in Europe, Mary Kingsley finally compiled the notes from her voyage of discovery and successfully published several books.

In December of the same year, Mary set off again to resume her research in West Africa. Like her first African journey, her second also began in the French colony of Congo. From there, she chose a route through the bush before travelling to Corisco (an African island, part of Equatorial Guinea) and to what was then German Cameroon, where she became the first European woman to climb Cameroon Mountain. This time too, Mary Kingsley financed her stay by bartering with locals.

Nearly a year later, in November 1895, she again set out on the return journey to England, where she resumed work documenting her latest discoveries in writing for posterity. Once again, her publications met with great success, particularly her book "Travels in West Africa", which found great favour with the English population and made Mary a highly sought-after speaker nationally. Furthermore, Britain's Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain regularly consulted her on British colonial policy in Africa.

Mary Kingsley's third and final African journey did not take her back to West Africa due to the Boer War, but to the south of the continent, where she drew on her nursing training and cared for Boers held as prisoners of war – until she contracted the disease from one of them.

On 3 June 1900, Mary Kingsley finally succumbed to typhus and received a sea burial at her request. She was 38 years old.

Tip:

• Mary Kingsley's "Travels in West Africa"
• Katherine Frank's "A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley"
• Julia Keay's "More Courage than Clothes in the Luggage"

Larissa-Marilyn Omaya