Joan Grigg

Joan Alice Katherine Grigg, Baroness Altrincham ( Dickson-Poynder; 11 September 1897 – 1987) was a British organiser of maternity and nursing services in Kenya. She disagreed with the Governor of Kenya (her husband) about race issues and she established medical facilities for all races.

Life Joan Alice Katherine Dickson-Poynder was born in the country house called Hartham Park near Corsam in Wiltshire. She was the only child of Ann Beauclerk Dundas and John Dickson-Poynder, 1st Baron Islington. Her father volunteered his time to a hospital and her mother took an interest in nursing. In 1910, her father became Baron Islington and Governor of New Zealand.

During the First World War she became a nurse after being one of the thousands who volunteered for the Volunteer Aid Detachment. Aged nineteen, she was first based in Canterbury where she worked in a military hospital before she moved out to work in a hospital in Rouen in 1917. She went on to work with the French army before the war ended. In 1925, her husband was made Governor of Kenya. He was tasked with merging Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya but ended up creating fine buildings and a steady administration that attracted investment. He believed that Africans were not ready to rule themselves She intended to create nursing and midwifery services to Kenyans irrespective of their race. That same year the league funded a welfare home for Arab and African children in Mombasa. The facility in Pumwani in Nairobi was also known as the African Maternity and Child Welfare Hospital and Training Centre. She wrote a letter to The Times which attracted donations but many were earmarked for European hospitals. The league had created hostel facilities for trainee nurses for Europeans, but had also established welfare facilities for Indians and importantly maternity facilities for Africans. African women could have difficult and sometimes fatal births due to female circumcision which was practised at that time.

They had three children: John Edward Poynder Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham (15 April 1924 – 31 December 2001), journalist and author Hon. Annabel Desirée Grigg (b. 19 November 1931), Anthony Ulrick David Dundas Grigg, 3rd Baron Altrincham (b. 12 January 1934)