This audio recording is raw, unedited footage of an interview with Dr M. Morton, a woman who became a Missionary Doctor and travelled to work in Africa in the early 20th Century.

The interviewee speaks about entering into studying medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women, which many women did after being paid gratuities for doing work during the First World War. Dr Morton speaks of how she had wanted to follow many others in leaving school at age 14 to do “war work”, but her father had kept her in school and later paid for her studies.

The interviewee graduated in 1918 and discusses the limited opportunities for female doctors and the difficulties of finding work. She speaks about how she felt that there were lots of practitioners in the UK and not enough in Africa, which is why she wanted to go and do missionary work. She took a post with the London Missionary Society who advertised for a female doctor to travel to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to teach African girls about maternity and child welfare. She also speaks about teaching nursing, learning the local language and health precautions to be taken at the time.

Dr Morton goes on to speak about attitudes to women and work during and after the First World War. She also discusses her family, Christmas traditions, the strictness of her father and his attitudes towards women. She discusses her return to England, being a General Practitioner in London and her last job as a Government Medical Officer in South Africa. This audio recording last 55 minutes and 53 seconds.

The original recording is held by the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA ref: 757, LO/125/076).