Kirkina Mucko
Born
Elizabeth Jeffries

1890
near Rigolet, Labrador
Died1970
NationalityCanadian
Other namesKirkina Mukko, Elizabeth Mukko
Occupation(s)nurse, midwife
Years active1918-1970
Known fornurse, midwifery

Kirkina Mucko also known as Elizabeth Mukko, (1890-1970) was a Canadian Inuit nurse and midwife. Having lost her legs as a child, and possibly her parents, she was raised in a series of mission homes, hospitals and boarding schools. Returning from abroad around 1908, she worked at the Grenfell Mission in Labrador. After losing family members in the 1918 flu pandemic, Mucko trained as a nurse and midwife, providing services for her community until her later years. A women's shelter in Rigolet has been named in her honor.

Early life

Kirkina, (Elizabeth Jeffries), circa 1903

Elizabeth Jeffries was born in 1890[1][2] on the shores of Hamilton Inlet, near Rigolet, Labrador[3] to Adam Jeffries[4] (another source calls the father Emo Jeffery),[5] an Inuit-Scots trapper and his wife.[4] As a toddler, her legs were frozen and amputated below the knee by her father with an axe.[1][4][notes 1] Later, she was taken to the Indian Harbour Hospital for surgery to create proper stumps, where Wilfred Grenfell, the mission doctor, met her when she was around four years old.[11][notes 2] A nurse, took Elizabeth to a temporary school at Halifax, Nova Scotia[12] and by 1902, she was writing letters in English.[8]

By age ten, Elizabeth was able to agilely move about on the leather pads which her father had fashioned for her.[1] In 1900,[3] Grenfell, who renamed her Kirkina,[2] took her to Battle Harbour Hospital, where she remained for two years.[3] A letter dated 9 November 1902 from Kirkina to a Massachusetts family who had sent her a doll, said her legs would be completed within a week by Dr. John McPherson,[8] who was part of the mission staff.[13] He fashioned temporary wooden artificial legs, which she quickly learned to use.[3] Around 1903, Kirkina received her first pair of cork limbs from donors in Boston, Massachusetts[3] and when Dr. McPherson and his wife left Labrador later that year, they took her with them, first to Boston and then to Mexico.[14] Kirkina returned to New York for schooling for two years and then returned to the McPhersons in Mexico.[15] After four years in Mexico, she returned to Newfoundland,[2] in 1908[15] and initially lived with a nurse in Forteau.[16] In 1912, Gaffney secured a new set of legs for Kirkina through donors in the U.S.[17] Gaffney continued to use the story of Kirkina and other indigenous orphans to garner donations for his charitable works.[17][18]

Career

Jeffries began working at the Grenfell Mission at St. Anthony.[19] On 20 March 1916, she married a trapper who was thirty years her senior, Adam Mucko.[20] In the 1918 flu pandemic, she lost her husband and some of her children,[2][notes 3] deciding in the aftermath to study nursing and midwifery at the mission.[1]

Mucko lived in Rigolet and offered nursing services to anyone within a 35-mile radius of her property. In 1950, having worn out her previous artificial legs, airmen from the Royal Canadian Air Force and United States Air Force stationed at Goose Bay Canadian Forces Base donated a pair of legs and sent her to St. John's, Newfoundland for the fitting.[2] By 1961, those legs had worn out and airmen on the base again collected money to replace her limbs.[21] She continued nursing until the end of her life, though in her later years, lived with her daughter in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Mucko died in 1970 and posthumously, a women's shelter in Rigolet was named in her honor.[22]

Notes

  1. ^ There are many versions of the story. Some claim her father went to get help when her mother was giving birth.[6][7] Earliest accounts make no mention of that version.[8][3] Other versions claim the father was out trapping and returned to find his wife ill and daughter frozen.[9] In some versions, the baby died,[7] in others, the baby and mother died[10] and in still others, her father died two days after rescuing Elizabeth.[4]
  2. ^ In one version of the meeting of Kirkina and Grenfell, the child's father brought her aboard a boat and Grenfell then took her to the hospital.[9]
  3. ^ Some sources state she had seven children, who she buried in the flu epidemic. Some say she lost 6 in 1918, others say she lost 3 in 1918.[2][19] Ten years lapsed from her 1908 return to Canada and the 1918 pandemic, so it is possible. However, she worked for a mission service and did not marry until 1916.[19][20] Impossible to reconcile the number variances with known sources.

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d The Winnipeg Free Press 1961, p. 19.
  2. ^ a b c d e f The Gaffney Ledger 1950, p. 8.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1904, p. 22.
  4. ^ a b c d Forster 2011, p. 253.
  5. ^ Walters 2007.
  6. ^ Forster 2011, p. 388.
  7. ^ a b The Chicago Tribune 1950, p. 3-6.
  8. ^ a b c Forbush 1903, pp. 142–145.
  9. ^ a b Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1935, p. 18.
  10. ^ Fitzgerald & Thomas 2005, p. 28.
  11. ^ Grenfell 1919, pp. 245–246.
  12. ^ Grenfell 1919, p. 246.
  13. ^ Curtis 1963, p. 5.
  14. ^ Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1904, p. 25.
  15. ^ a b Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1908, p. 10.
  16. ^ Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1909, p. 8.
  17. ^ a b Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1912, p. 10.
  18. ^ The Congregationalist and Advance 1918, p. 154.
  19. ^ a b c Forster 2011, p. 254.
  20. ^ a b Newfoundland marriage records 1916, p. 492.
  21. ^ The Ottawa Journal 1961, p. 33.
  22. ^ Forster 2011, p. 255.

Bibliography

Categories