Mabel Shaw

Mabel Shaw OBE (1889–1973) was an English missionary and educator in Northern Rhodesia. In her time "she was the most renowned missionary in Africa".

Life Shaw was born in 1888 in Wolverhampton. She was the first born child of Elizabeth Anne, born Burgess and Walter Shaw who would have six more children. Her father was a grocer and managed a tea-shop.

Shaw joined the London Missionary Society and in 1915 sailed for Africa where she was the first unmarried female missionary to be sent by the London Missionary Society to their Central African mission. She left the London Missionary Society in 1941,

She died in 1973 in Guildford when she was poor and no longer well known.

Works Children of the Chief. LMS Gift Book for 1921. Dawn in Africa: Stories of Girl Life. Edinburgh House Press, 1927. God's Candlelights: An Educational Venture in Northern Rhodesia. Edinburgh House Press, 1932. A Treasure of Darkness: An Idyll of African Child Life. Longmans, 1936.