Hannah Forster (politician)

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Hannah Forster (born as Hannah Johnson on January 14, 1893 in Bathurst, today Banjul , died January 3, 1966 ) was a Gambian entrepreneur and politician.

Life

She first attended St. Mary's Elementary School in Bathurst. Since there were still no secondary schools in Gambia, she went to Freetown . After her mother's death in 1911, she returned and worked in Bathurst at her previous school as a junior teacher .

After the death of her husband, she gave up teaching and opened shops in Bathurst, Kau-ur , Kuntaur and Kartong . By the late 1920s she was a leading trader in the trade and export of kola nuts and also exported oysters . She later opened a European clothing and luxury goods store in Bathurst.

Forster was one of the first women to get involved in Gambian politics. In the 1930s she was an elected member of the Bathurst Town Advisory Council , a forerunner of the Banjul City Council . In 1946 she belonged to Cecilia Davies as one of two women in the newly founded Bathurst Town Council . In 1951 she was one of the founding members of the first Gambian party Gambia Democratic Party (GDP), which was largely driven by John Colley Faye, and supported the party substantially in terms of content and financial resources. In 1953/1954 she worked on the drafts for a new Gambian constitution .

In addition to her entrepreneurial and political activities, she was also involved in the church. She founded the Gambian Mothers' Union .

In 1996 a street in Banjul was named Forster Street after it .

family

Forster was a daughter of Elizabeth Johnson and CC Johnson , a civil servant of the Aku ethnic group. He had been sent from Freetown to Gambia to take on managerial functions in the administration.

Her husband died early. She had two children with him. Her daughter Catherine Collier studied in Great Britain and was the first Gambian x-ray assistant from 1954 and worked at the Royal Victoria Hospital (now Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital ). Her son Bani Forster studied at the University of Birmingham and was sent by the colonial administration to Ghana, where he was one of the first psychiatrists in sub-Saharan Africa .

literature

  • Hassoum Ceesay : Gambian women: an introductory history . 1st edition. Fulladu Publishers, Gambia 2007, p. 65-68 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e David Perfect: Historical Dictionary of The Gambia . Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4422-6526-4 , pp. 153–154 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ^ JB Asare: Comment: A Historical Survey of Psychiatric Practice in Ghana (1962) . In: Ghana Medical Journal . tape 46 , no. 3 , September 2012, ISSN  0016-9560 , p. 114-115 , PMID 23661822 , PMC 3645161 (free full text).
  3. ^ Tribute - Dr John Andrew Mahoney (1919–2012) Gambian surgeon, health administrator and international civil servant. Retrieved January 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Forster, Hannah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnson, Hannah (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Gambian entrepreneur and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Bathurst, now Banjul
DATE OF DEATH 3rd January 1966