Nurse Emily Godfrey (1884-1978) was a missionary for the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society (the Methodist Missionary Society after 1932). From 1921 to 1944, Emily Godfrey worked as the Matron of the hospital run by the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society in Ama Achara near Umuahia in modern Abia state, southeast Nigeria.
Godfrey was born in Loftus, Cleveland, United Kingdom and trained as a nurse in York County Hospital in 1913. After serving in military hospitals during the First World War (1914-1918) and receiving the Royal Red Cross Medal, she worked at the Welsh Hospital, Netley, Southampton, before being accepted into the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society in 1919. Godfrey trained as a missionary at Kingsmead Missionary Training College. After spending most of her missionary career at Ama Achara, Godfrey went to South Africa from 1946 to 1949 to set up a training hospital at Thaba Nchu. She then returned to the United Kingdom, settling in Middlesbrough where she died in 1978.
From the guide to the Emily Godfrey Photograph Collection, 1916-1949, (Centre for the Study of World Christianity)
