Benjamin Quartey-Papafio

Dr. Benjamin William Quarteyquaye Quartey-Papafio (25 June 1859 or 1863 – 14 September 1924) was a physician and politician in the Gold Coast, the first Ghanaian to obtain the degree of M.D.[1][2]

Life

Benjamin Quartey-Papafio was born into a leading Accra family: his parents were Akwashotse Chief William Quartey-Papafio, also known as Nii Kwatei or "Old Papafio", and Momo Omedru, a businesswoman from Gbese (Dutch Accra) and Amanokrom Akuapem.

He was educated at the C.M.S. Grammar School and Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone, before travelling to study in Britain. Gaining a B.A. degree from Durham University, he entered Edinburgh University as a medical student in 1882, earning his M.B. and M.Ch. in 1886 and becoming a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.[1]

He was the first African to receive a medical degree in the Gold Coast

Returning to the Gold Coast, he was a medical officer for the Gold Coast Government Service from 1888 until 1905, and was also in private practice.[1] Quartey-Papafio had three children by Hannah Maria Ekua Duncan, of a Cape Coast/Elmina family; on 8 October 1896 at St Bartholomew-the-Great Church in Smithfield, London, he married Eliza Sabina Meyer,[3] daughter of Richard Meyer of Accra, and the couple had six children.[4][5]

A member of the Accra Town Council from 1909 to 1912,[1] he was a member of the 1911 deputation to London that protested the Forest Bill.[6] He was an unofficial member of the Legislative Council from 1919 to 1924.[1]

Family

Quartey-Papafio's son and five daughters were educated in Britain: Mercy, Ruby and Grace became teachers in the Gold Coast.[6] His son, Percy, trained as a doctor but was unable to practise due to failing eyesight caused by cataracts. Dr. B.W.Quartey-Papafio, Nene Sir Emmanuel Mante-Kole, K.B.E (Konor of Manya Krobo), Dr.F.V.Nanka-Bruce, Hon. Sir Thomas Hutton-Mills, along with Nana Sir Ofori Atta (Omanhene of Akim Abuakwa), Nana Amonoo, F.J.P Brown of Cape Coast, J.Ephraim Casely-Hayford of Sekondi were architects of founding of Achimota College. Dr. Ruby directed her efforts and passion into being an Economist and an accomplished Headmistress at Accra Girls High School. In addition to ghost-writing and being of great assistance to the late Kwame Nkrumah and his cohorts/co-nationalists actualization of Ghana's independence, Mercy's pacesetting genes also resulted in her being appointed as the first Ghanaian headmistress at Achimota. After achieving highly accredited fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, her only child Nana ffoulkes Crabbe Johnson continued the distinctions of leadership by being the first Ghanaian Professor and Head of Department in a foreign medical institution and female President of the West African College of Surgeons

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Michael R. Doortmont, The Pen-Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison: A Collective Biography of Elite Society in the Gold Coast Colony, Brill, 2005, p. 347.
  2. ↑ Tetty, Charles (1985). "Medical Practitioners of African Descent in Colonial Ghana". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 18 (1): 139–144. doi:10.2307/217977. JSTOR 217977.
  3. ↑ Jeffrey Green, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life, Routledge, 2015, p. 90.
  4. ↑ Karin Barber, Africa's Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, Indiana University Press, 2006, p. 316. ISBN 978-0253218438.
  5. ↑ The Times, 19 October 1896.
  6. 1 2 Jeffrey P. Green, Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain, 1901-1914, Taylor & Francis, 1998, p. 147.
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