Francis George Hall

Francis George Hall (11 October 1860 – 18 March 1901) was a British administrator in East Africa, first for the Imperial British East Africa Company and later the East Africa Protectorate.

Early life Hall was born in Saugor, British India, the third son of Lieutenant-Colonel E. Hall. He was educated in England at Sherborne School and Tonbridge School.

He was educated at Sherborne before going to work at the Bank of England. In 1893 he succeeded as Commander at Fort Smith, following the premature death of his predecessor. Now he was responsible for all within the fort and the protection of caravans travelling upland through Kikuyu territory to Uganda. Responding to Kikuyu raids on caravans he would regularly launch punitive retaliatory raids. In 1894 he led an expedition of eighty guns and three hundred Maasai and Kikuyu on a raid at Liguru. Before Christmas that year, Ward was seriously injured when attacked by a rhinoceros and a few months later he was bitten by a leopard during a grapple.

Hall remained as District Officer after company control was ceded to the British government in 1895. Later that year he started construction on a fort in Ngong to maintain the peace amongst the Maasai and encourage them to abandon their pastoral lifestyle which provoked livestock theft. The fort was completed in September 1896 and named Fort Elvira. Hall became disillusioned with his role under the new Protectorate administration, complaining he was spending most of his time "slinging ink" with "silly despatches" and he was little more than a police officer guarding the track of the Uganda Railway. In 1899, famine and smallpox decimated the Protectorate, and Hall found himself burying six-eight people a day, extracting lymph from the infected to give to those not yet infected, and trying to feed over three hundred people at Fort Smith.

Death Hall was to have returned to England in April 1901, but died at Mbiri, present day Murang'a Town, after contracting dysentery on 18 March 1901. The fort at Mbiri, founded by Hall in 1900, would later be named Fort Hall in his memory.

Personal life He married Beatrice Russell in May 1898 whilst on leave in England.