ABSTRACT
Unlike Britain, the tropical climate of the Gold Coast created a fertility that sustained the needs of the population without demanding overdue toil on the part of the majority that worked the land. However, it also facilitated the production and diffusion of fatal diseases such as smallpox, malaria and sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis). Of the ten children born to Annie Florence Wharton (nee Grant), three survived to adulthood. Life expectancy was 35 years (similar to the present average for (Black) males in the Harlem district of New York, and Bangladesh). Despite the establishment of schools of tropical medicine at several universities in Britain to research into the origin of fatal equatorial diseases, the reputation of the colony as an indiscriminate reaper of fragile and sturdy physiques - demonised as the 'white man's grave' - continued until well into the twentieth century. A founder teacher at Achimota College - the first publicly assisted secondary school for Gold Coast Africans - en route from England in 1924 with his wife and infant son, had the accusation 'murderers'1 spat at them by a fellow passenger. To take a female and child to the colony was selfish, reckless and, in the mind of the accuser, criminal.
