Essi Matilda Forster

Essi Matilda Forster was the first Gold Coast woman to qualify as a lawyer, and the third woman in British West Africa. She was born in Sekondi on 12 September 1922 and died in August 1998.

Her father, George James Christian, was a lawyer from Dominica who settled in Sekondi and sat on the Legislative Council for the Western Province; her mother came from Shama. She was educated in England from the age of five and was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in November 1945, and to the Gold Coast bar in April 1947.

She practised in The Gambia until 1951, then returned with her husband, the psychiatrist Edward Francis Bani Forster, and for 25 years, from 1957 to 1982, was legal counsel to Mobil Oil Ghana. She was a founder of the Ghana International School committee and of FIDA Ghana, which she led, and she was vice-president of the YWCA, chaired the board of the Accra Nurses and Midwives School and led the Ghana Girl Guides. When she died she was the most senior lawyer at the Ghana Bar. She was a member of Accra Ridge Church, where she was Sunday School secretary for 17 years. Her niece is the lawyer Phyllis Christian.