Born October 13, 1862,
Cambridge, England
Died June 3, 1900,
Simontown, South Africa
Mary Kingsley was born in Cambridge, England, on October 13, 1862, into a prominent British family. Her father, George, was a doctor and the younger brother of the well-known writers Charles and Henry Kingsley; Charles was the author of the popular children’s book The Water Babies. As a child, and even as a young woman, Mary Kingsley did not have the opportunities enjoyed by other members of her family. Although her parents spared no expense in educating her younger brother, they refused to provide formal schooling for her. Like many girls of that era, she was taught to read at home and then was allowed free use of the family library.
At an early age Kingsley was forced to take charge of the household. Her father, who frequently traveled abroad, was rarely home and her mother was an invalid. She later wrote, “The whole of my childhood and youth was spent at home, in the house and garden.” Her life changed when her mother and father both died in 1892. She felt she no longer had a reason to live. At the age of 30 she found herself, as she put it, “dead tired and feeling no one had need of me any more, when my Mother and Father died within six weeks of each other in ‘92, and my Brother went off to the East, I went down to West Africa to die.”
Kingsley did not die when she went to West Africa; in fact, the trip opened an entirely new world to her. During a previous vacation in the Canary Islands, off the coast of northwest Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, she had watched cargo vessels being loaded for a voyage to West Africa. Intrigued by images of an exotic land, she returned to England and began planning her own trip to West Africa. For her first journey in 1893, Kingsley chose an unusual mode of transportation for a lady traveling alone: a cargo ship. One of only two women on board, she spent four months on the West African coast, going from Freetown in Sierra Leone to Luanda in Angola. She also took advantage of the opportunity to learn about navigation and piloting.
Kingsley embarked on her second voyage to West Africa in late 1894. She had decided to operate as a trader in order to finance the trip, so she brought along a supply of cloth to trade for ivory and rubber. For 11 months she traveled from Gabon up the Ogooué River to the land of the Fan tribe. Although the Fan were reputed to be extremely hostile to the presence of Europeans in West Africa, they received Kingsley with great hospitality and she quickly made friends among the tribe. On this journey she had many other adventures, such as facing down two leopards and being attacked by crocodiles.
Once she undertook an expedition simply for the thrill of discovery, climbing Mount Cameroon, which at more than 13,000 feet is the tallest peak in West Africa. She scaled the mountain alone through a rainstorm and was disappointed to find, when she finally reached the top, that the rain blocked the view. Nevertheless proud of her achievement, she claimed to be “the third Englishman to ascend the Peak, and the first to have ascended it from the south-east face.” On all of her trips Kingsley wore a typical Victorian lady’s costume: a shirtwaist dress with stays, a long skirt, and a cap. She commented that “You have no right to go about Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home.”
Upon her return to England in 1895, Kingsley wrote a book titled Travels in West Africa, which was published in 1897; she also wrote a number of articles on African subjects. Because she opposed the methods the British and other Europeans were using to colonize Africa, she immediately found herself to be the center of controversy. Her views made her a hero among certain interest groups and a target for others.
Kingsley wanted to return to West Africa, but in 1899 the Boer War broke out between Great Britain and the Afrikaner republics of South Africa. She instead went as a journalist and nurse to South Africa. Soon after her arrival she became ill with typhus and died in the port of Simonstown near Cape Town on June 3, 1900, almost four months short of her thirty-eighth birthday. In her honor, the Mary Kingsley Hospital was founded in Liverpool, England, for treatment of tropical diseases, and the African Society was established for the study of African anthropology.
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