My friend Jean Alderman, who has died aged 90, was one of the last British government nursing sisters to be appointed to a leprosy colony in Nigeria. The Methodist leprosy colony at Oji River was set up to treat and care for patients ostracised by their communities. In her 11 years there from 1956 onwards, Jean nursed thousands of patients in the colony and outlying clinics suffering from this painful and highly disfiguring disease.
In June 1967 Jean came home to be made an MBE by the Queen, who had visited the Oji River settlement in 1956. Jean returned to Oji River knowing it was now in the newly created territory of Biafra and in the middle of the Nigerian civil war. Biafra made worldwide news with reports of the deaths of thousands of civilian and horrendous pictures of starving children.
By July that year Jean was forced to flee with many other refugees, and make a perilous journey home with only £5 tucked into her bra. When she arrived in the UK, this bought her a train ticket home to Yorkshire and a cup of tea.
Jean was born in Lymm, Cheshire, the daughter of Reginald Alderman, a commercial traveller, and his wife, Ginny (nee Vosd). The family moved to Ilkley, in West Yorkshire, in 1934, a year after Jean’s brother, Dennis, was born, and Jean was educated at Skipton girls’ high school.
In 1948 she trained as a nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary in the newly created NHS. Subsequently she trained as a midwife at St Thomas’ hospital in London and then as a health visitor at the Royal College of Nursing. In 1956, she applied for the post of nursing sister at Oji River. Jean later described her love of the work and people of Nigeria in a self-published book, Jean’s Story, One Woman’s Story of the Biafran War.
On her return from Nigeria Jean worked as a health visitor in Yorkshire and then in Harlow, Essex. She finished her career as a community nursing officer in Stockton on Tees and retired there to live near her brother.
Jean’s kindness and generosity stayed with her. For her 90th birthday, she requested that she should not have presents but asked for contributions to a food bank collection she started in the care home where she ended her days.
Jean had many friends and as a committed Methodist a strong affiliation to the church.
Dennis predeceased her. She is survived by two cousins.
