Matilda Johanna Clerk (2 March 1916 - + 27 December 1984) was a medical pioneer and a science educator on the Gold Coast and in West Africa as well as the second Ghanaian woman to become an orthodox medicine-trained physician. The first woman in Ghana and West Africa to earn a postgraduate diploma, Clerk was also the first Ghanaian woman in any field to be awarded an academic merit scholarship for university education abroad. In addition, M. J. Clerk was the third West African woman to become a physician after Nigerian, Agnes Yewande Savage (1929), the first West African woman medical doctor and Susan de Graft-Johnson, née Ofori-Atta (1949), Ghana's first female physician. These three pioneering physicians were all early advocates of maternal health, paediatric care and public health in Ghana. For a long time after independence in 1957, Clerk and de Graft-Johnson were the only two women doctors in Ghana. By breaking the glass ceiling in medicine and other institutional barriers to healthcare delivery, they were an inspiration to a generation of post-colonial Ghanaian and West African female doctors at a time the field was still a male monopoly and when the vast majority of women worldwide had very limited access to biomedicine and higher education. Pundits in the male-dominated medical community in that era described Matilda J. Clerk as "the beacon of emancipation of Ghanaian womanhood."
Video Matilda J. Clerk
Early life and family
Matilda Johanna Clerk was born in Larteh in the Akuapem Mountains on 2 March 1916 where her father, Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862 - 1961) was stationed as a Basel missionary at the time. Her Basel-trained theologian father was the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1918 to 1932. and a founding father of the all boys' boarding high school, Presbyterian Boys' Secondary School, established in 1938. Her mother, Anna Alice Meyer (1873 - 1934) was of Ga-Dangme and Danish heritage. Meyer was the cousin of Emmanuel Charles Quist (1880 - 1959), a barrister and judge who became the first African President of the Legislative Council from 1949 to 1951, Speaker of the National Assembly of the Gold Coast from 1951 to 1957 and Speaker of the National Assembly of Ghana from March 1957 to December 1957.
Her paternal grandfather, Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820 - 1906), a Jamaican Moravian missionary, arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg (now the suburb of Osu) in Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1843, as part of the original group of 24 West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, Switzerland. Alexander W. Clerk was a pioneer of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and a leader in education in colonial Ghana, establishing a boarding middle school, the Salem School at Osu in 1843. Her paternal grandmother, Pauline Hesse was from the Gold Coast, and was of German and Ga-Dangme ancestry.
M. J. Clerk's older brothers were Carl Henry Clerk (1895 - 1982) and Theodore S. Clerk (1909 - 1965). She had six other siblings and belonged to the notable historical Clerk family of Accra, Ghana. Carl Clerk was an agricultural educationist, school administrator, editor, journalist and church minister who served as the fourth Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast between 1950 and 1954 and Editor of the Christian Messenger newspaper from 1960 to 1963. Theodore Clerk was the first Ghanaian architect of the Gold Coast who planned and developed the port city of Tema while her older sister, Jane E. Clerk (1904 - 1999), a teacher, was a pioneer female education administrator in colonial Ghana.
Maps Matilda J. Clerk
Education and training
She had her primary and middle school education at Presbyterian schools at Adawso and Aburi respectively. At the all girls' middle boarding school Matilda Clerk attended at Aburi, the European missionary teachers dubbed her the "Dux of the School." M. J. Clerk then studied at Achimota School on a Cadbury scholarship. At Achimota, she obtained a 2nd Division Teachers' Preliminary Certificate (1935), Cambridge Senior School Certificate with exemption from London Matriculation (1937) and completed the intermediate preliminary course in medicine (1942), taking advanced courses in physics, chemistry, botany and zoology. The British colonial government at that time effectively allowed only male students to participate in the intermediate preliminary medical course in basic science. Thus, before Achimota permitted M. J. Clerk to enroll in the school's intermediate medical science programme, her father had to formally petition the then Governor of the Gold Coast, Arnold Wienholt Hodson for a special waiver. She was the only candidate, male or female, to pass the first preliminary baccalaureate medical examinations (1st M.B., London) in 1942. She was elected the Girls' School Prefect in her senior year. Matilda Clerk was also a trained pianist and harpist.
Based on her superior academic performance, she was awarded a rare Gold Coast medical scholarship by the colonial government to study medicine (MBChB) at the University of Edinburgh from 1944 to 1949. By winning the award, she became the first Ghanaian woman in the annals of history and in any field to secure a scholarship for higher education abroad. The second Ghanaian woman and fourth West African woman to receive a university baccalaureate degree, M. J. Clerk was also the first woman in Ghana and West Africa to pursue postgraduate qualifications when she obtained a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene (DTM&H) in 1950 from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a constituent college of the University of London; she returned to her homeland in January 1951. In 1933, Sierra Leonean political activist, Edna Elliot-Horton, became the second West African woman higher education graduate and the first to complete a bachelor's degree in the liberal arts. Many leading lights in the Gold Coast medical profession during that period, including her fellow pioneering colleagues, Charles Odamtten Easmon, Emmanuel Evans-Anfom and Susan Ofori-Atta also attended Achimota School and the University of Edinburgh Medical School.
Career
Science teacher
In between her teacher training/secondary education and preliminary medical course at Achimota, she was a science teacher at the Wesley Girls High School from 1938 to 1940. She later taught biology for two years at her alma mater, Achimota School from 1942 to 1944.
Medical doctor
Shunning a more lucrative private medical practice, she spent her entire career working in the public sector in the fields of primary care and public health. She was a medical officer and superintendent in the Gold Coast Civil Service. Hospitals she worked at include the Maternity Unit of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (1951 - 1953), Kumasi Central Hospital (1954 -1957), Effia-Nkwanta Hospital, Sekondi (1957 - 1962) and Tema General Hospital (1962 - 1968). She also worked at the Health Education Division of the School of Hygiene in Accra from 1969 to 1971 and the Senior Medical Officer (sometimes acting as the Regional Officer in-charge) at the Communicable Diseases Unit of the Regional Medical Officer of Health's Office (Ministry of Health) in Accra from 1971 to 1973. She was also a principal medical officer at the Princess Marie Louise Hospital for Women (now Accra Children's Hospital) with Ghana's first woman physician, Susan de Graft-Johnson (née Ofori-Atta).
Death and funeral
Matilda Clerk died suddenly on 27 December 1984 at her home in the suburb of Osu in Accra. Her funeral service was held at the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church, Osu; her remains were buried at the church's graveyard, the Basel Mission Cemetery, also in Osu, Accra.
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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