Flora Shaw, Lady Lugard

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, and a French mother, Marie Adrienne Josephine (née Desfontaines; 1826–1871), a local of Mauritius.[1] 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.[3]

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.[4] 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".[4] The critic John Ruskin called Castle Blair "good, and lovely, and true".[5]

• Castle Blair: A story of youthful days (First published London, 1877)[6]
• Hector, a story (First serialized in Aunt Judy's Magazine, 1880–1881)[6]
• Phyllis Browne (First serialized in Aunt Judy's Magazine, 1881–1882)[6]
• A Sea Change (First published London, 1885)[6]
• Colonel Cheswick's Campaign (Boston, 1886).[7]
• The story of Australia (London: Horace Marshall, 1897), as part of the Story of the Empire series.[8]

Shaw first took advantage of a journalistic opportunity while she was staying with family friends in Gibraltar in 1886. There, over four months, she visited Zebehr Pasha, a slaver and former Sudanese governor, who was incarcerated there. Her reports purportedly led to his release.[9][10] Upon her return to England, she wrote for The Pall Mall Gazette and the Manchester Guardian.[11] She was sent by the Manchester Guardian newspaper to cover the Anti-Slavery Conference in Brussels, 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.[11][12] At The Times, she was sent as a special correspondent to Southern Africa in 1892; Australia in 1901; and New Zealand in 1892, partly to study the question of Kanaka labour in the sugar plantations of Queensland. Penneshaw, South Australia is partly named after her.[13] She also made two journeys to Canada, in 1893 and 1898, the second including a journey to the gold diggings of Klondike.[14][15]

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). Writing for the educated governing circles, she focused on the prospects of economic growth and the political consolidation of self-governing colonies within an increasingly-united empire, with a vision largely blinkered to the force of colonial nationalisms and local self-identities.[12]

The lengthy articles in a leading daily newspaper reveal a late-Victorian metropolitan imagery of colonial space and time. Shaw projected vast empty spaces awaiting energetic English settlers and economic enterprise.[16][12] When she first started writing for The Times, she wrote under the name of "F. Shaw" to try to disguise that she was a woman. Later, she was so highly regarded that she wrote openly as Flora Shaw. Her pseudonym is now little-known, and she was regarded as one of the greatest journalists of her time, specialising in politics and economics.

Shaw was required to testify before the House of Commons Select Committee on British South Africa during the controversy on the Jameson Raid into the Transvaal on 29 December 1895. The prominent journalist had corresponded frequently with those involved or suspected of involvement, including Cecil Rhodes, Leander Starr Jameson, Colonel Francis Rhodes, and Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain. She was exonerated from all charges.[17]

Shaw was close to the three men who most epitomised empire in Africa: Cecil Rhodes, George Taubman Goldie and Sir Frederick Lugard.[12] On 10 June 1902,[21] 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, he was named baron, and she became Lady Lugard. They had no children.[15]

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.

While they lived in Hong Kong, she helped her husband establish the University of Hong Kong. During the First World War, she was prominent in the founding of the War Refugees Committee, which dealt with the problem of the refugees from Belgium, and she founded the Lady Lugard Hospitality Committee. In the 1918 New Year Honours, she was appointed as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[15] She died of pneumonia on 25 January 1929, aged 76, in Surrey.[22]

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Flora Shaw

• "Catalogue of the papers of Flora Shaw, Lady Lugard". Bodleian Library. University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 17 August 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2014.