Kingsley , Mary Henrietta , 1862-1900 , traveller and writer

Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862-1900) was the daughter of George Henry Kingsley (1827-1892) and Mary Bailey and the niece of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), she became known as an explorer, ethnologist and travel writer. After the death of her parents Mary Kingsley went to West Africa for six months in 1893, aged 31. She returned there in 1894, staying for a year and working as a trader. Whilst there she discovered a new genus of fish, six new species, an unknown snake and a rare lizard. Mary Kingsley donated pickled specimens of these to the British Museum. She lectured widely and wrote on her travels. Her most famous works include Travels in West Africa (1897), West African Studies (1899) and The Story of West Africa (1899). She worked as a nurse during the Boer War, departing for South Africa in Mar 1900 but dying in Jun 1900 of a fever contracted whilst nursing Boer prisoners of war. Mary Kingsley is known to have deliberately distanced herself from the women's movement and to have adopted a conservative position with regard to questions of equality, opposing, for example, the admission of women to learned societies. On 27 Feb 1900, in one of her last public engagements before leaving the country, Mary Kingsley participated in a debate on women's suffrage. This is recorded in a letter which she wrote to Sir Matthew Nathan: 'I have been opposing women having the parliamentary vote this afternoon and have had a grand time of it and have been called an idealist and had poetry slung at me in chunks. Argument was impossible so I offered to fight the secretary in the back yard but she would not so you can all write me down impracticable.'