by Christine Nicholls | Aug 21, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
Odoriferous Mombasa In the first decades of the twentieth century Mombasa was often a far from pleasant place to work or live in. The old town had a graveyard where leg and skull bones stuck out of the thin layer of soil. In the Old Harbour there was a large deep tank...
by Christine Nicholls | Jul 21, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
Hugo van Lawick, Wildlife Photographer One of Hugo van Lawick’s wives, Jane Goodall, is perhaps better known to the public than he is. But van Lawick’s work was important in bringing the issue of conservation to the forefront of people’s interest. Hugo was born in...
by Christine Nicholls | Jun 19, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
The Donovan Maule Theatre Many of you will remember Nairobi’s Donovan Maule Theatre. My abiding memory is of us Kenya High School girls trying to persuade our headmistress, Miss Stott, to let us go to see Lock up Your Daughters there in 1960. She eventually relented....
by Christine Nicholls | May 23, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
Herbert Hugh Cowie On 9 July 1902, at St Mary’s church in Johannesburg, Captain Herbert Hugh Cowie (born in South Africa on 8 September 1870) married Ada Evelyn Harries, the eldest of the nine children of Charles and Olivia Mary Ann Harries. She was born in Maseru,...
by Christine Nicholls | May 23, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
More about Thomas Remington In last month’s blog I wrote about Thomas Remington. One of Remington’s relatives has contacted me and kindly given me more information about this extraordinary man who established postal services in East Africa. The Frenchwoman he married...
by Shel Arensen | Apr 24, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
How did the Mail get Delivered in East Africa before 1910? The postal service of East Africa was first begun as a branch of that of Zanzibar, and its first postmaster-general resided in Zanzibar for eight years before coming to British East Africa in 1899. In...
by Christine Nicholls | Mar 27, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
The Rise and Decline of Cotton Growing in Kenya Some pioneer settlers thought cotton might succeed in East Africa. So the British East Africa Corporation Ltd was established in 1906 with the aim of spreading the work of the British Cotton Growing Association, a body...
by Shel Arensen | Feb 20, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
Stories of Workers on a White Farm Elspeth Huxley recorded some stories of the workers on the farm of her mother, Nellie Grant, which give a fascinating insight into the history of Kenya. The Grants’ first farm was near Thika and then they moved to a farm at Njoro....
by Christine Nicholls | Jan 20, 2017 | Christine Nicholls
How Farm Workers Came to Settler Farms We can get an idea of the motivation of African farm workers if we look at some specific cases. Nellie Grant (Elspeth Huxley’s mother) went to Kenya in 1912 and farmed coffee at Thika. After the First World War she heard she had...
by Christine Nicholls | Dec 18, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
The Jewells and Mombasa Hospital Last month I talked about the Mombasa Hospital. From 1920 onwards Norman Jewell was in charge of the establishment, and his letters and diaries show us what medical hazards were faced by Mombasa’s inhabitants in the 1920s. Jewell had...
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