Flora Louise Shaw, Baroness Lugard (born 19 December 1852 – 25 January 1929), was a British journalist and writer. She is credited with having coined the name Nigeria.

Early life

She was born at 2 Dundas Terrace, Woolwich, South London, the fourth of fourteen children, the daughter of an English father, Captain (later Major General) George Shaw, Royal Artillery, and a French mother, Marie Adrienne Josephine (née Desfontaines; 1826–1871), daughter of French governor of Mauritius. She had nine sisters, the first and the last dying in infancy, and four brothers.

Her paternal grandfather was Sir Frederick Shaw, third baronet (1799–1876), of Bushy Park, Dublin, and a member of parliament from 1830 to 1848, regarded as the leader of the Irish Conservatives. Her paternal grandmother, Thomasine Emily, was the sixth daughter of the Hon. George Jocelyn, and granddaughter of Robert Jocelyn, first Earl of Roden.

Writing for children

From 1878 to 1886, Shaw wrote five novels, four for children and one for young adults. In her books, young girls are encouraged to be resourceful and brave but in a traditional framework, acting in support of "gentlemanly" fathers and prospective husbands, rather than on their own behalf. Shaw's writing has been interpreted by one academic as sexually conservative and imperialist. She also wrote a history of Australia for children.

Her first novel, Castle Blair, was translated into several languages and continued to be extremely popular in the UK and the U.S. well into the 20th century. It was based on her own Anglo-Irish childhood experiences. Charlotte Mary Yonge recommended it along with works of "some of the most respected and loved authors available in late Victorian England" as "wild... attractive and exciting".

Journalism

Shaw first took advantage of a journalistic opportunity while she was staying with family friends in Gibraltar in 1886. Over four months, she visited Zebehr Pasha, a slaver and former governor of Sudan, who had been removed from office and was incarcerated there. Her reports purportedly led to his release.

Upon her return to England, she wrote for The Pall Mall Gazette and the Manchester Guardian. She was sent by the latter to cover the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90, where she was the only woman reporter. She became Colonial Editor for The Times, which made her the highest paid woman journalist of the time. She also made two journeys to Canada, in 1893 and 1898, the second including a journey to the gold diggings of Klondike.

Her belief in the positive benefits of the British Empire infused her writing. As a correspondent for The Times, Shaw sent back "Letters" in 1892 and 1893 from her travels in South Africa and Australia, later published in book form as Letters from South Africa (1893) and Letters from Queensland (1893).

Naming Nigeria

In an essay that first appeared in The Times on 8 January 1897, by "Miss Shaw", she suggested the name "Nigeria" for the British Protectorate on the Niger River. (Upper Senegal and Niger and the Colony of Niger).

The Lady Lugard

She was close to the three men who most epitomised the British Empire in Africa: Cecil Rhodes, George Taubman Goldie and Sir Frederick Lugard. On 10 June 1902, she married Lugard. She accompanied him when he served as Governor of Hong Kong (1907–1912) and Governor-General of Nigeria (1914–1919). In 1928, her husband was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lugard, and thus she became "The Lady Lugard". They had no children.

Legacy

In her obituary, The Times foreign editor described her as “the finest flower of modern womanhood, a womanly woman, who at the same time possessed the reasoning capacity of a man”. Her biography was written in 1947 by Enid Moberly Bell, daughter of and assistant to Charles Frederic Moberly Bell, managing director of The Times.

In 2019, in the wake of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, The Times published an essay "How The Times helped Cecil Rhodes in his conquest of Africa" by columnist Ben Macintyre, reckoning with Shaw's role in Britain's colonial history. The essay concluded: "...Flora must not fall. Instead, she should stay right where she is, but with a new plaque attached: 'Flora Shaw, 1852-1929; pioneer journalist, fanatical imperialist, passionate, principled and wrong.'"

Works

In 1905, Shaw wrote what remains the definitive history of western Sudan and the modern settlement of Northern Nigeria, A Tropical Dependency: An Outline of the Ancient History of the Western Soudan, With an Account of the Modern Settlement of Northern Nigeria.

  • Castle Blair: A story of youthful days (First published London, 1877)
  • Hector, a story (First serialized in Aunt Judy's Magazine, 1880–1881)
  • The story of Australia (London: Horace Marshall, 1897), as part of the Story of the Empire series.
  • Letters from Queensland/ by the Times special correspondent (London, 1893)