David Livingstone

 

 

We had no idea who David Livingstone was until we researched it, don't come for us. We came across the statue of him when visiting the Scott Monument and as such added it to our post planner so that we could learn about him.

However, we also found out come interesting information on the statue itself so you've got a 2 for 1 deal here really. We'll start with the statue before we go into the man immortalised.

David Livingstone died in 1873, spoiler, and three years later on the 15th of August the sculpture dedicated to him was unveiled. It was sculpted by Amelia Robertson Hill between 1875 and 1876, and depicts Livingstone wearing a cloak and haversack while holding a Bible. It also includes a lion skin from the time he survived a lion attack. We're not sure why a statue of him was commissioned, let alone so close to his death, but considering the famous phrase 'Dr Livingstone I presume' is connected to him, he was clearly quite an important man.

Now to the man himself and considering there are dedications to him all around the world, it is safe to say that this man deserves to have been cemented into  history as he has been. We think we've been living under a rock...

Born on the 19th of March 1813,  he died on this very day (1st of May) in 1873. He was a doctor, Congregationalist, Christian missionary, and explorer. Most of all he was Scottish. But despite being a Scot, Livingstone had become obsessed with finding the source of the Nile, which to be fair to him was for a noble cause, he had hoped that the fame he would acquire through doing so would give him enough influence to end the East African Arab-Swahili slave trade. It was this goal that made him become a posthumous hero.

It seems that his infamous goal was inspired by his own childhood, or at least we think so. Livingstone started life as the second of seven children, he and his brother were employed by Henry Monteith & Co's Cotton Mill at the age of 10 and they worked 14 hour days tying broken cotton threads to the spinning machines. Obviously child labour is something we frown upon today, but it seems clear based on who Livingstone became, and what little we know of his interests, that this forced labour felt like slavery and inspired him to make a change. 

His father was a door to door tea salesman and a Sunday school teacher with Christian views. He read books with vast topics like theology, travel, and missionaries and this rubbed off on his son who soon became an avid reader, likely to escape whatever came after his tiring work days. He soon developed an interest in science and travelled the countryside looking for specimens. This brought him at odds with his father who felt like his scientific interests had undermined their religion and forbade him from reading anything other than theology texts, but this spurred a young David into another direction, he decided to investigate the relationship between religion and science. It was at this point in his life that the Book Philosophy of a Future State by Thomas Dick came into his life and bore him an influence that would last a lifetime. During all this though, he remained at the cotton mill. He worked here until the age of 26! But after growing out of his role as a Piecer he became a Spinner and it was all to support his large family. 

You might wonder how a young lad who works 14 hour days was able to read, well Livingstone was one of the few children who had the energy to attend school alongside their jobs. His family being sticklers for studies also reinforced this commitment, but if anything it seemed it instilled some values into the man which is why he was so determined later in life. We can see this in his 21st year where he persuaded his father to allow him to answer a call from the church to become a missionary in China. These missionaries were to be trained as medical doctors, and so as he was told to support himself if he were to do such a thing, he agreed with his workplace to continue working from Easter to October and then joined Anderson's University in Glasgow where he studied medicine and chemistry. He also attended theology lectures at the Congregational Church College by anti-slave campaigner Richard Wardlaw, learnt Greek, and took tutorage of Latin from a local Roman-Catholic man (Daniel Gallagher) as he needed to know some Latin to enter medical school.

This idea to become a missionary was hard going though as it was not a quick process. Livingstone wasn't accepted by the LMS (London Missionary Society) until 1839. He had to first become a probationary candidate, move to Essex for studies, then actually study and learn the skills and knowledge the LMS thought would benefit the missionaries at the time. This included Hebrew, theology, Greek, and Latin. He very nearly wasn't accepted due to showing his rusticity, but as he was so good tempered the Reverend who had taught him felt it a shame to reject him.

He finally achieved missionary status in 1840. He was ordained as a minister on the 20th of November 1840 after taking his medical studies at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. He was finally set for China after years of hard work, but it turns out that China was not the destination for him. The First Opium War was on the horizon and made LMS cautious about sending recruits to China. At the time that Livingstone had asked for an extension of study at Essex they had aired the idea of instead sending him to the West Indies. Livingstone quite liked the idea of going to South Africa instead and so appealed to the LMS who agreed to him being stationed there.

Over the next few years Livingstone travelled South Africa and learnt until he settled in Mabotsa with another missionary family. He often went out trekking and was learning the lay of the land which must have been why he joined the villagers in defending sheep from a Lion attack which was a regular occurrence.  During this attack he was attacked by a large Lion and had his arm crushed but he was saved by Mebalwe. He set his own arm despite not actually knowing how, but it worked out okay and he recuperated in Kuruman where he was assisted by local missionaries the Moffat's daughter Mary who he ended up engaged to. His arm healed, but it still caused him pain during his life and he wasn't able to lift it higher than his shoulder. Regardless, it was an interesting tale, landed him a wife which he married on the 9th of January 1845, and explains why there is a lion skin on his statue in Edinburgh.

Livingstone and his wife then left his station in Mabotsa after he fell out with his missionary colleague Roger Edwards, they made to move to Chonuane but abandoned this due to drought and his hope to move beyond the region. In 1849, four years after they'd left Mabotsa, Livingstone had finally managed to covert Chief Sechele of Kolobeng after trying to do so for 2 years. The chief dropped the faith after a few months, but Livingstone's achievement still stood. It was after this that he moved on and began exploring other regions of Africa. The idea was to find locations to set up mission stations and improve his knowledge of the language and culture, but something shifted during this time as he began to be recognised more for his exploration than for his mission work. In 1850 he was recognised by the Royal Geographical Society for his journey to the lake of Ngami and two years later sent his family back to England so that he could investigate potential trade routes on the river in Linyanti. He was granted authority as a nduna and travelled with 27 warriors who acted as guides and interpreters. They went as far as the Portugese city of Luanda when they had to turn back. Livingstone had got a fever and almost died for one, but during the trek he also realised that the route they'd travelled would be too difficult for traders so they went back to Linyanti, borrowed 114 Kololo men from the Chief and moved east down the Zambezi river. 

During this route he picked up some honours, like being the first European to set eyes on the Mosi-oa-Tunya Waterfall which he named Victoria falls after the Queen, and mapped most of the Zambezi river which made him famous as the first European to cross south-central Africa at that particular latitude. While he was still pushing religious missions as well as trading, his new goal had become the abolishment of the slave trade within Africa. He'd adopted the moto 'Christianity, Commerce and Civilization' which they put on his statue at Victoria Falls, in order to try and give the culture and people dignity in the eyes of the Europeans.

1855 brought another recognition by the Royal Geographical Society this time in the form of a medal for his exploration of Africa and he returned home to England a year later. The LMS encouraged him to write up his journal but he decided to publish it under Missionary Travels and it made for a bestselling travelogue in 1857. This inspired him to continue with his exploring and he planned for future expeditions, the goal was once again finding trade routes to knock slavery on the head. As the missionary work had become second in his goals the LMS sent him a letter basically saying that they'd support his missionary expeditions, but as his planned travels wasn't in the interest of the faith they wouldn't support him going forward. However, Livingstone didn't resign from the LMS at this stage even though they were trying to restrict his plans. Thanks to the Royal Geographical Society he was able to get in touch with the foreign secretary who instead offered to fund his expedition by making him a consul and this was the factor that led to him resigning from the LMS in 1857.

Despite his resignation, the LMS still thought that he'd return to Africa with them after he had promoted a mission to Kololo. Back when he had been there he was subjected to over 30 attacks and of course had come down with a life threatening fever, but he had understated this in his journal and boasted instead of the quality of land. Unfortunately, the missionaries who followed in his footsteps took his word as an example and were short on much needed supplies and unprepared for what they would meet. As a result six people died from Malaria, three of which were children and Livingstone was later criticised for putting his goal and career above the mission and those around him. But by this point he was a British celeb! He was wanted everywhere as a public speaker and when he put out a public subscription to raise funds for his next expedition he was backed by the public without question. He got voted into the Royal Society and the government even gave him 5 grand to investigate the possibility of British trade via the Zambezi.

Livingstone strikes us as a bit of a loner, someone who enjoyed tracing new places as the singular underdog so that he could fully appreciate the moment. We mention this because it is recorded that he had wanted to go on another solo expedition with help from local Africans, but when the Foreign office proposed an expedition in which he was to lead some other Brits he wasn't too keen. He did agree to it and took them out in March of 1858, but it was as a second expedition to the Zambezi. During this expedition he hit a number of problems. The steamer they'd given him wasn't up to the rapids and conditions they were experiencing, there was a war on with the Portuguese (although both sides recognised the expedition as friendly), and the new vessel he requested was shipped out in sections with a mission party that also included his wife. This then caused delays which went on further when it was found that the bishop had died, but that was the least of Livingstone's problems. His wife died of Malaria on the 27th of April 1862 after coming to join him. We don't know if any of his six children were brought, we just know they had an absent father and lost their mother as she persued him.

It isn't recorded how Livingstone took the news of the death of his wife, but we can imagine that it was either quite badly, or he simply wasn't bothered due to his career. We say this because he took the Pioneer (the vessel) up the coast to investigate the Ruvuma River and John Kirk, the physician on the expedition, wrote that Livingstone was an unsafe leader and out of his mind. Now he either wrote that as the death of Mary drove him a bit mad so he went for his goal, or he was so obsessed he simply thought of nothing else and it struck his fellow men as odd as a wife should be grieved. Either way, we don't know.

The government recalled the expedition in 1864 which meant that funds were not as easily provided for Livingstone's next expedition as the newspapers back home had all published the failure of the expedition. But he still wished to explore Africa further. Two years later he did exactly that and this time he travelled to Zanzibar and from here set off to seek the source of the river Nile. This was the one that consumed him, his hill to die on. Other's had identified that the source was either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria but he believed that the source was further south and so took a team of freed slaves, Comoros Islanders, Sepoys, and two servants with him to prove his theory. Unfortunately, his group soon began abandoning him which may further prove our concern earlier about his headspace, it seems bad feeling was among the group which likely stemmed from his insistence to continue into unsafe terrain to prove his ideas. The Comoros Islanders went as far as reporting that he had died when they returned to Zanzibar so if that doesn't show either bad feeling or certainty that he'd got himself killed doing something unsafe we don't know what does.

He visited three lakes on his travels to find the source, all the while his health was rapidly on the decline as his supplies had been stolen. He sent a message to Zanzibar for supplies but then moved on to Lake Bangweulu and became the first European to see it. He then made a discovery that the Lualaba River was not part of the Nile and actually flowed into the River Congo so disproved his theory. The good doctor then fell extremely ill and nearly died before he was saved by Arab traders, however he ended up being a witness to 400 Africans being massacred by Arab slavers during his recovery. He recorded this in his field diary, but the event seemed to have been prompted by the slaves showing violence and sacking villages. He even mentioned the slaves sent by John Kirk to retrieve him acting out but this was edited out of the published version of his journal along with some other minor tweaks that led to the conclusion that the men on his own party may have been responsible for starting the massacre. The published version alluded to the fact the villagers were passive victims but missed out their earlier violent resistance to the Arabs. The passages are still being studied today to piece together quite how different the expeditions were to the final published accounts.

We do know that the horrifying scene that Livingstone witnessed broke the man. He abandoned his mission and travelled back to Ujiji still very ill in the last few months of 1871. Despite not finding the source he mapped several lakes and surrounding areas helping to build a picture of a region the Europeans had never explored. He got another medal from the RGS and was made a fellow of the society but this was it for the man. He was gravely ill for the last four years of his life but had actually been cut off from the outside world for the prior two. It was during this time that Henry Morton Stanley had been sent to Africa to find Livingstone and thus the famous phrase was born and yet there is no record of it actually have being used. Stanley had torn out his notes from the encounter and Livingstone's account of it didn't mention those words. But it appeared in the New York Herald and then later two other sources without verification. Stanley had urged Livingstone to leave Africa but Livingstone refused until he had completed his mission which further went to show just unwell he had become.

He died in 1873 at the age of 60 at a village in Chipundu under Chief Chitambo from the same illness as his wife, he also had internal bleeding due to dysentery. His faithful servants organised a funeral for him and his heart was removed and buried under a tree near where he died which is now a memorial for him. this memorial which has his date of death carved into the tree by Chuma and Susi actually states it as the 4th of May, but it is widely believed that his final day was the 1st as this was his last note in his diary.

His final expedition had his remains carried for 63 days until they reached Bagamoyo. He was then returned to England, laid at No.1 Saville Row which was the headquarters for the RGS as a sort of lying in state situation, and then he was buried at Westminster Abbey.

What we have learnt of this man through our research is that he was ultimately kind-hearted but also as stubborn as a mule. He was an absentee father due to prioritising his work, although he did later show regret at not spending enough time with them, and his stubbornness inadvertently caused the death of six missionaries, his wife, and one of his sons (he contracted an illness while living in Africa as a child that killed him at 27) all because he wanted to gain influence to do something great. He inspired an awful lot of good following his death and his cause was noble, it was just how he conducted this that was not. Several reports were made of his recklessness and inability to work with others on what he believed in. But his servants remained loyal to him, enough to carrying his corpse for 63 days which shows he meant something. Those he encountered in Africa all mentioned how he treated them with respect, this was not a bad man, just a man consumed with trying to make a wrong right. The need to abolish slavery consumed him almost as much as his scientific expeditions did. One fed into the other, it must have been maddening. We now understand why he has memorials, statues, and dedicated namesakes all over the world.