Lucy Toulmin Smith

“ In the society of cultivated men and women, congenial to her father and herself, she gained confidence in her own powers, winning friends and appreciation for her own sake. About the spring of 1888 a friend took her to Paris for a week — her first taste of foreign travel. During the four years that followed she devoted herself with tender capability to nursing her mother, who had been attacked by serious illness, and during the latter part of the period she also had the care of her father, who had returned home broken in health after rheumatic fever. ”

“ Removing with her brother to Addison Road, London, filled by the hereditary passion for travel, she renounced an intention of studying medicine in order to pursue the study, which she had already begun with her father, of early religion and law. She was resolved personally to investigate the subject in uncivilised countries; she had formerly thought of going to India for the purpose, but instead she now prepared for a voyage to tropical West Africa. ”

“ Memorials to her memory were immediately set on foot at Cape Town, at Liverpool, where a hospital bearing her name is to be erected; while other friends in England and West Africa hope to carry on her work, which has had an important influence for good on West African affairs, by the establishment of a Mary Kingsley West Africa Society, for inquiry into native custom and law, and for the mutual enlightenment of the black and white man. ”