Today's Articles

People, Locations, Episodes

Sat, 06.25.1859

Benjamin Quartey-Papafio, Physician born

Benjamin Quartey-Papafio

*Benjamin Quartey-Papafio was born on this date in 1859.  He was a Black physician and politician on the Gold Coast. 

Benjamin William Quartey-Papafio was born into a leading Accra, Ghana family: his parents were Chief William Quartey-Papafio and Momo Omedru, a businesswoman from Gbese (Dutch Accra). His brother Emmanuel was an agriculturist and trader, and Arthur was a lawyer. Two other members of the Quartey-Papafio family, Clement W. and Hugh (children of Emmanuel William Kwate Quartey-Papafio), also became barristers.  

Before traveling to study in Britain, Quartey-Papafio was educated at the CMS Grammar School and Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Gaining a B.A. from Durham University, he enrolled as a medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College in 1882 before relocating to Edinburgh University. He graduated from Edinburgh with a degree in M.B. and M.Ch. In 1886, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.  Returning to the Gold Coast, he was a medical officer for the Gold Coast Government Service from 1888 until 1905 and was also in private practice. Quartey-Papafio had three children by Hannah Maria Ekua Duncan of a Cape Coast/Elmina family. 

On October 8, 1896, at St Bartholomew-the-Great Church in Smithfield, London, he married Eliza Sabina Meyer, daughter of Richard Meyer of Accra, and the couple had six children.  A member of the Accra Town Council from 1909 to 1912, Quartey-Papafio was also a member of the 1911 delegation to London that protested the Forest Bill.  He was an unofficial member of the Legislative Council from 1919 to 1924.  He was a practicing Anglican.  Benjamin Quartey-Papafio, the first African to receive a medical degree in the Gold Coast, died on September 14, 1924. 

To become a Doctor

New Poem Each Day

Poetry Corner

our mothers wrung hell and hardtack from row and boll. fenced others’ gardens with bones of lovers. embarking from Africa in chains reluctant pilgrims stolen by Jehovah’s light planted... AMERICAN SONNET (10)  by Wanda Coleman
Read More