Midday Sun - 'Lady Grigg, Joanie to her friends, was as strong a personality as her husband. Young, handsome, full of energy, and equally determined to set the mark of progress on the country, she saw that the wellbeing of women and their babies had been sadly neglected. Not a single maternity hospital for Africans had been established, nor had a single African nurse been even partially trained. Medical missionaries had done what they could ..........Starting from scratch, Joan Grigg set out to raise the money. She appealed, cajoled and bullied, set up committees and relentlessly chivvied commercial firms and businessmen, trusts and people like the Aga Khan, whose generosity was proverbial. The culmination of the appeal was a mammoth Child Welfare fete at Govt. House. Not everyone enjoyed being chivvied ....... however the fete made over £3000, and in time the Baroness [Karen Blixen] became reconciled to the Griggs. They could be 'tremendously pleasant', she wrote, in contrast to most of the British, whom she found bourgeois, dreary, ill-bred and philistine. But with the Griggs she could discuss Shakespeare and the Old Testament.'

The new maternity home was opened. .......... Nor did Joan Grigg confine herself to the welfare of Africans. An Indian maternity hospital followed, Indian girls were coaxed into training, and a hostel for European nurses was built. Joan Grigg's was a remarkable achievement, and her name is commemorated in the Lady Grigg maternity home in Mombasa.

Oxford DNB: In 1926 Joan Grigg created the Lady Grigg Welfare League as a way of providing nursing and maternity services for women and children of all races. It was supported by energetic fund-raising efforts in Kenya and in Britain. The first branch of the league, which opened in 1926, was a child welfare home for Arabs and Africans in Mombasa. The second branch, which opened the following year, was the African Maternity and Child Welfare Hospital and Training Centre at Pumwani, Nairobi. The league quickly developed into three combined enterprises: maternity hospitals and training schools for Africans in Nairobi and Mombasa; a maternity hospital, school for midwives, and infant welfare clinic for Indians; and a hostel in Nairobi for training nurses to serve the European community. Midwifery training was regarded by the league as a priority, and the first probationers passed their examination in 1929. Without these efforts, virtually nothing would have been done by the British administration for Kenyan mothers.