Biographical
Registration number:
Surname:
Grace
First name(s):
Adelaide Ellen
Address(es):
Date of registration:
Qualifications:
Nursing and midwifery training at MiIdmay 1920-1924
Notes:
One nursing colleague with whom she trained at Mildmay was Molly Coleman (her married name) with whom she remained close friends for many years. See Adelaide's record in 'Staff Stories' (link below).
'Staff Stories' link:
Personal details
Date of birth:
1899
Place of birth:
Date of death:
1987
Place of death:
England
Additional personal details:
Professional details
Work experience:
In 1924, as a Protestant missionary in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Here, Ellen would work for the next twenty years with the Congo Balolo Mission, part of the international Regions Beyond Missionary Union. In 1926, with her husband, Harold Hall, Ellen started a similar hospital and a girls’ boarding school in Ikau on the Lulonga River, both buildings constructed by her husband. Missionaries served terms of four years, returning to the UK for furloughs of one year.
During the first of these, six months were spent in Antwerp learning French to facilitate working in the Belgian colony.
The medical care she provided included infectious diseases (malaria, sleeping sickness, intestinal parasites, filariasis, tuberculosis, leprosy), obstetrics, infant welfare, trauma and minor surgery. Prior to the arrival of the first mission doctor in 1929 women in obstructed labour died as caesarean section was not possible. However, on one occasion, she was able to save a man gored by an elephant by closing the abdomen, without anaesthesia, with more than fifty sutures.
Sources:
Her son, Reginald Hall, August 2024
