User:JosScharrer

Friday the 19th December is the 161st birthday of the famous journalist - Flora Shaw. She became Colonial Editor of The Times despite the male prejudice against career women at the time. When she was first appointed Special Correspondent of The Times, she wrote under the name F. Shaw so that the conservative readers of The Times would not know that she was a woman. She was the world's first international woman journalist, and was so influential that she was the behind-the-scenes contact between the British Government, Cecil Rhodes and the Uitlander leaders in the Transvaal in the build-up of their plot to seize the Transvaal goldfields for the British. Her 3 day cross-examination at Westminster Hall into the Jameson Raid, made her a household celebrity. She stood her ground and the Inquiry were unable to prove that the British Government or The Times in any way were involved in the plot to take the Transvaal or knew anything about it. A result which helped them get off the hook. At the age of fifty she married Sir Frederick Lugard who is recognized as the founder and was the first Governor of Nigeria - a country which Flora herself named. She was awarded the DBE (Dame of the British Empire)for her work in caring for 250 000 Belgian refugees in WW1. She died in 1929 shortly after Lugard was elevated to a peerage for his work in Uganda, Hong Kong (where he had been governor for five years) and Nigeria - the country which he worked hard to create out of the various territories around the Niger River and the northern regions.