Labrado Days

Dr Sir Wilfred Grenfell (1865 - 1940) GRENFELL, Sir WILFRED THOMASON (1865-1940), medical missionary and author, was born at Parkgate, Cheshire, 28 February 1865, the second of the four sons of the Rev. Algernon Sidney Grenfell, headmaster and proprietor of Mostyn House School, Parkgate, by his wife, Jane Georgina Hutchinson, daughter of a colonel in the Indian army. He was educated at Marlborough, and resided at Queen's College, Oxford, for the Michaelmas term of 1888, during which he played Rugby football for the university. He studied medicine at the London Hospital medical school and London University, under Sir Frederick Treves q.v.], and qualified M.R.C.P. and M.R.C.S. in 1886. While studying medicine he came under the influence of Dwight Lynam Moody, the American revivalist, and of the brothers J. E. and C. T. Studd, and for a time conducted a Sunday school class, to which he gave instruction in the art of boxing. He was at the same time secretary in succession of the cricket, football, and rowing clubs in London University; and he thus became at an early an exponent of that 'muscular Christianity' which Charles Kingsley had made popular. In 1887, the year after qualification, Grenfell joined the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen as a medical missionary; and after serving for five years in this capacity from Iceland to the Bay of Biscay, he became a master mariner, and fitted out the mission's first hospital ship. In 1892 he visited Labrador, and he was so greatly shocked by what he later described as 'the poverty and ignorance and semi-starvation among English speaking people of our own race' that he decided to devote the rest of his life to the betterment of the lot of the people of Labrador. In 1893 he established at Battle Harbour the first hospital of what came to be known as the Labrador Medical Mission.; and as time went on he not only built other hospitals, but he also opened nursing stations, schools, orphanages, and social welfare centres. When, over forty years later, he retired, he had built up an organization that included six hospitals, seven nursing stations, four hospital ships, four boarding schools, fourteen industrial centres, twelve clothing distribution centres, a co-operative lumber mill, and a seaman's institute at St. John's, Newfoundland. What his lifework, as an example of practical Christianity meant to the people of Labrador, whether whites, or Indians, or Eskimos, it would be difficult to exaggerate. At first the Labrador Medical Mission was financed by the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen; but from an early date most of the necessary funds were raised by Grenfell himself. He made speaking tours through both Canada and the United States of America; and he roused such interest and support on these trips that the Labrador Medical Mission came to be almost better known in America than it was in England. In 1912 the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen withdrew its support; and Grenfell then organized the International Grenfell Association, with branches in England, the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland; and it was this association that stood behind Grenfell's work during the latter part of his life.