Congo series

Series of 147 black and white and tinted lantern slides covering the work of the Congo Balolo Mission in the Equateur region of the Congo Free State (later Belgian Congo, eventually the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The Congo Balolo Mission was founded in 1889 as a result of the expeditions undertaken by the Livingstone Inland Mission, which was founded in 1877 by Dr Henry Grattan Guinness and his wife Fanny Grattan Guinness with the Cory brothers of Cardiff and pastor Alfred Tilly. Irish evangelist Dr Henry Grattan Guinness (1835-1910) founded the East London Missionary Training Institute, which was to be renamed as Regions Beyond Missionary Union (RBMU) in 1900. The Livingstone Inland Mission made significant inroads into the Congo, before its sponsors could no longer support it, and it passed to the hands of the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU) in 1884. In 1888, a conference was held in England with ABMU, deciding that an auxiliary mission should be set up to what is now the Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr John McKittrick, a missionary of the Livingstone Inland Mission, was released to lead, and Dr and Mrs Harry Grattan Guinness (son and daughter-in-law of Dr Henry Grattan Guinness) were to be secretaries of the new mission. The resulting Congo Balolo Mission would be under the umbrella of the East London Missionary Training Institute, and subsequently under Regions Beyond Missionary Union from 1900. Dr Harry Grattan Guinness (1861-1915) was particularly active in fighting the atrocities committed on the Congo Free State on lands owned by King Leopold II of Belgium, and was joint founder of the Congo Reform Association (1904). ❧ The Congo Balolo Mission made slow progress on account of the deaths of so many of their pioneer missionaries from disease (including McKittrick, who died in 1891), but mission stations were established at Lulanga, Bongandanga, Ikau, Baringa, Mompono, Yuli and Yoseki. Congo Balolo Mission missionaries were active in education work, printing and translation (a printing press was set up at Bongandanga in 1903 under Edward Algernon Ruskin and his wife, Lily), providing hospital and dispensary services, and in orphanages. A large hospital was opened in Baringa in 1932, at Yoseki in 1945 and at Yuli in 1938. After Congolese independence in the 1960s the mission had to redefine its role, but continued working in the Congo area until RBMU was dissolved in 1990. ❧ The lantern slides in this series date from the earliest days of the Congo Balolo Mission in the 1890s to the 1930s. Although some of the slides have original captions, others have little supporting information. Whilst slides may have been originally produced as parts of slide sets, intended to promote the work of the Congo Balolo Mission to British audiences, most slides show few signs of such an order.