The Search for Patrick Kerr Dixon's family

The Times Newspaper obituary in 1955

This is just a quick post to mention an interesting contact received this week from the archive development officer for the Belfast Charitable Society linked to Clifton House, Belfast.

Clifton House recently uncovered a wonderful trove of over 180 letters dating from World War I, written by Lt Patrick Kerr Dixon, later Dr Dixon FRCSI (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland).

Dixon spent time in the Belgian Congo with the Garenganze Evangelical Mission and later worked for many years in Zambia at Chibambo, Mbereshi, and Lusaka.

He was a friend of Charles Fisher and the book 'Nswana' records that Fisher hoped to travel up the Nile to Palestine with Patrick 'a surgeon from Dublin whose mission hospital at Chibambo was many miles further south [from Kalene Hill] on the Luapula River. They gave up these plans when Patrick was called suddenly to another hospital vacant on account of a serious scandal, and Charles also received disturbing news of his father's increasing ill-health'.  Monica and Charles visited Dixon a few days after they were married.

We are told that the population at Chibambo provided plenty of patients for the hospital where Dixon operated and that he was 'the first doctor in Northern Rhodesia to recognize the cause of the very high incidence of blindness among the children in the Luapula Valley, writing a short paper describing the cases he'd seen.'  He also wrote a handbook for medical assistants, used in missions on the Congo side of the Luapula river.

Dixon's first marriage was to Olive Arther, fom Dublin. 'Nswana' records Olive died in childbirth. Dixon was conducting the delivery himself as no one else was available.

In 1934 he married Isabella H. Russell, of Mbereshi Mission, and had a daughter from his second marriage.

In 1953 he went to work at the African Medical Hospital in Lusaka as a surgeon, and taught at the African Medical School.

He died on April 21, 1955 and was buried at Aylmer May Cemetery, although their website register misrecords his name as Dion and his middle initial as R. They have his burial date as the 23rd of April.

I was pleased to be able to find his gravestone amongst my photos.

Patrick Kerr Dixon

1898 - 1955

I believe that the memorial reads "Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it", which is Matthew 16 verse 25.

Can you help find Patrick Dixon's descendants? If so, please contact the Belfast Charitable Society archivist - the email address is archive@cliftonbelfast.org.uk.

The Reckoning - Colin Morris

I first came to know about Colin Morris when he interviewed my father for a BBC programme in 1993. I wasn't in Zambia at the time, and was lying half-awake in the small hours of the morning listening to the world service on my earphones, so it was a bit of a shock when my father's voice was suddenly in my ear. I'm including some excerpts from that radio programme, The Reckoning, in this post.

The programme came in three parts, of about 40 minutes each.  It starts at Lubwa Mission, founded by the Church of Scotland at the turn of the century, near Chinsali. Here Morris reminisces about his time there. He speaks to an aging Noah Chulu, visits the burial site where Dr Brown, David Kaunda and Paul Mushindu are buried. We are told that Mushindu never wore shoes because a missionary once told him to take his shoes off before coming into their house, and he decided then that he would thereafter go barefoot. Mr Moywa shows Morris around the decaying Lubwa hospital. He also speaks to Kenneth Kaunda, graduate of Lubwa school, who laughs about David Brown telling a Roman Catholic priest off for straying into a Church of Scotland area.

Morris was closely associated with Merfyn Temple, who was one of the first people my parents met when they arrived in Zambia in 1967. In fact Merfyn immediately told my parents they should leave, as he intended to do, and as all missionaries should do, he felt. Morris revisits this question in The Reckoning as he returns to Zambia to ask what the impact of missionaries was in Zambia before independence and after.

Here is a selection of recordings from the programmes, including several mentioning the Lumpa Church affair.

Here also is a footnote on Lenshina from Ryszard  Kapuscinski's book 'The Shadow of the Sun'.  According to him, Alice had an old hand-cranked phonograph (where would she have acquired this, I wonder?) and just one worn out record to play on it. This was 'a recording of Winston Churchill's 1940 speech', although he does not make clear which one. Perhaps it was the famous 'We shall fight them on the beaches'. He says that Alice would crank up her phonograph and play this record to her followers. As the record was very scratched and degraded, not much could be made out apart from the emotion and drama. Lenshina explained that this was 'God's voice anointing her his emissary and commanding absolute obeisance.'  This recording was played at the start of each mass, when it would work up the congregation into a state of ecstasy.... And then he suggests that the political leaders were ashamed of such cults, and the fine temple that they had built in the bush was reduced to rubble by tanks.


1 Godfrey Sikazwe talking about Lubwa Mission

2 Merfyn Temple on why missionaries should leave

3 Flexson Muzinga (Livingstone Museum)

4 Jack Kyle

5 Sikota and Arthur Wina

6 Kenneth Kaunda

7 Margaret Senogles on an attack on the Chingola Free Church

8 Lumpa Church (Alice Lenshina)

9 Robert Kaunda on Alice Lenshina

10 Fergus Macpherson on Alice Lenshina


In concluding this thoughts, Morris says 'I received from Africa much more than I gave and learned much more than I taught'. It is interesting to contrast his humility, together with the warmth of Kenneth Kaunda in speaking about him, with Sikota Wina's combative stance in the interview above.

Names in The Reckoning (BBC radio programme)

 Some of the following are mentioned in passing. Others (*) are interviewed.

Baker, Colonel (fired red cartridge, Lumpa)
Brown, Dr David (Lubwa)
Burton, Lillian (assaulted during riots)
Chikani, Frank
Chulu, Noah (Revd)*
Dandala, Mvumi (Methodist, South Africa)
De Jong, Dennis (RC bishop of Ndola)
Dil, Pierre (Revd; Dean of Anglican cathedral at the time) *
Gore-Brown, Stewart
Hannah, John (megaphone, tried to get Lumpa to put down arms) *
Kaunda, David  (one of the founders of Lubwa)
Kaunda, Kenneth *
Kaunda, Robert (elder brother of KK, deacon in Lumpa church)
Kyle, Jack (Irish rugby player) *
Mason, Cedric (Methodist minister)
Mazubere, Crispin (bishop of Methodist Church, Zimbabwe)
Macpherson, Fergus  *
Milingo, Archbishop RC church
Mushindo, Paul b.1895 (graves at Lubwa)
Moywa, Mr. (Clinical officer, Lubwa hospital) *
Mulenga, Alice Lenshina
Musunsa, Doyce
Muzinga, Flexson (Livingstone Museum) *
Mwape, Jackson
Nolan, Albert (Provincial of Dominican order in South Africa)
Ogden, Val (Revd; St Andrew's Church, Ndola) *
Senogles, Howarth (?)
Senogles, Margaret
Sikazwe, John
Sikazwe, Godfrey (Revd, UCZ) *
Siwale, Donald (father of Euwan; his mother hid him in a tree to protect him from Arab slave traders)
Siwale, Euwan
Temple, Merfyn *
Todd, Garfield
Todd, Judith
Whitehead, Dennis (Revd; Livingstone) *
Wilkie, James (Africa secretary, Church of Scotland)*
Wina, Arthur *
Wina, Sikota *