Mary Slessor

Mary Mitchell Slessor was born on December 2, 1848, in Gilcomston, Aberdeen, Scotland. Her father, Robert, was a shoemaker who became a drunkard, and her mother, Mary, was a devout woman who prayed for her children. The family was poor. They moved to Dundee when Mary was eleven, in search of work. Her father lost his job and could not support the family. Mary went to work in the jute mills at the age of eleven, as a half-timer, working half the day in the mill and the other half at school. By the age of fourteen, she worked full time, twelve hours a day, six days a week. She was a small, red-haired girl with fierce spirit.

Her mother was a member of the United Presbyterian Church and took her children to its services. Mary was a lively girl, who became the leader of a gang of street boys in her neighborhood. She was a tough girl who could stand up to bullies. As a teenager, she began to teach in a Sunday school in a mission for slum children. She was a gifted teacher. She was moved by the stories of David Livingstone and the missionary reports that she read. When Livingstone died in 1873, she felt a call to go to Africa. She was twenty-five. She offered herself to the United Presbyterian Church, and she was accepted after a period of training. In 1876, she sailed for Calabar, in southeastern Nigeria.

She was sent first to Duke Town, on the coast. She worked there for three years as a teacher. She was a plain woman, who lived with the people and adopted their way of life. She wished to reach the interior. In 1880, she took leave to rest and returned to Scotland, but she came back to Calabar the next year. She went up the river to Old Town and then to the Okoyong district. The people there were feared as warlike. They practiced human sacrifice and the killing of twins, whom they believed to be cursed. They had a violent culture and were known to murder strangers. She went and was received with suspicion, but she did not stop.

She lived among the Okoyong people for fifteen years. She learned their language. She lived in a mud hut and ate their food. She did not carry a weapon. She won their trust by her courage and her humor. She taught them the Bible and started a school. She intervened in disputes and was called upon to settle quarrels. She prevented the murder of twin babies. She rescued many twins who were left to die in the bush, and she took them into her home. She adopted several children, mostly girls, and cared for them as her own. She was called Ma, the mother, by the people.

She was a woman of exceptional courage. She faced down angry mobs. She stood between warring parties and persuaded them to stop. She served as a magistrate. In 1905, the government appointed her vice-consul for the Okoyong district, the first woman to hold such a post in the British Empire. She presided over a native court, where she dealt with cases of murder, theft and adultery. She worked to end the practice of killing twins and the poison ordeal, in which the accused were forced to drink a toxic potion. She won the respect of the chiefs.

She was a woman of great energy and of firm opinions. She was impatient with the formalities of the mission and often clashed with her colleagues, who thought that she was too independent. She did not mind going against the rules. She also was an eccentric who dressed in plain clothes and went barefoot. She was often ill with malaria and other diseases. She suffered from the effects of long years in the tropics. She was in pain in her later years and used a cart and then a bicycle to get around.

She died on January 13, 1915, at Use Ikot Oku, in Nigeria, at the age of sixty-six. Her funeral was a major event, and the flag was flown at half-mast throughout the colony. Her life shows the effect of a woman from the slums who was moved by the love of Christ and who changed the lives of a whole region. She remains one of the best known figures in the history of missions.