Nursing in Central Africa and Ceylon

SOPHIA CHARLOTTE McLAUGHLIN (1845-1929), when freed from home ties, took up the nursing profession. After training at St Mary’s Hospital, London, Sophia was Matron at King’s College Hospital, London, and later at the Warneford Hospital, Leamington.

In 1888 she resigned to join the Universities' Mission to Central Africa. She left London at the end of July. On her way she stopped at the mission school in Matope, Malawi, to distribute prizes. Not until mid-November did a steamer finally bring her to her destination. It was the mission station at Lukoma, an island inside a deep bay of Lake Nyassa, now bordered by Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

The station was repeatedly threatened by raids from the blood-thirsty Makwangwara tribe and by the Machingas, feared even by the Makwangwaras. Sophia replaced the wife of the Rev. George H. Swinny. The couple, who came to the mission in 1884, had both died the previous year. The mission provided a school for 33 Swahili-speaking girls, 15 of whom were boarders. Although they looked like children, many of them were married women who had to hurry home to cook their husbands' food.

A year later the Mission's Bishop Charles Smythies visited Lukoma. One missionary "rejoiced that his Bishop saw the people in their normal state of inattentiveness to their message, behaving no better than usual, and yet blessed the work."

After a feast in 1892 a crow picked up a piece of porridge with a live ember in it and dropped it on the thatched roof of the headquarters dining room. Buildings not destroyed in the ensuing fire were burned in a subsequent incident on Guy Fawkes Day. Sophia was therefore sent off to work at the mission's newly built hospital in Zanzibar, where slavery was still practiced.

The next year Sophia left the Mission. She went to work at the Civil Hospital in Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Soon she was running the entire hospital from the administration block shown at the bottom of the page.

Returning to England, Sophia worked for the Girls' Friendly Society, being Superintendent of the Homes of Rest at Llandudno, and seven years at Malvern Wells. She died at the age of 83, having spent her final two years at Overdale, Malvern Link, with her brother, the Rev. Alfred Harry McLaughlin, the last surviving member of the family of 12.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
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