Wilfred Grenfell

Biography

Wilfred Grenfell was born in 1865 in Parkgate, England. He graduated from the prestigious Oxford University with a medical degree. In 1889 he entered the Royal National Mission to Fishermen, and was assigned to provide medical care and services for the impoverished fishermen of the North Sea. Grenfell started medical clinics, houses and medical vessels for them. In 1892 he sailed in the ketch "Albert", which had been fitted with a hospital amidships, to Newfoundland, Canada, and within three months of his arrival had treated more than 900 patients. Authorities there asked him to stay and work on the coast of Labrador, an isolated, wild, almost barren area in which there were, for all practical purposes, no medical facilities for the residents there, and he accepted. Again, he established medical facilities in the area, and wrote several books about his adventures in that harsh, unforgiving area. Grenfell established the International Grenfell Association, and had built it up to the point where it was operating six hospitals, seven nursing stations, four hospital ships and numerous clinics and other medical facilities. Hundreds of American and British medical students volunteered to work at his facilities. He was knighted by King George V in 1927, and in 1929 he was made rector of St. Andrew's University in Scotland. He died of a heart attack at age 75 at his home in Charlotte, Vermont, USA, on October 9, 1940.