Kirkina Mucko

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 to Canada 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 woman's shelter in Rigolet has been named in her honor.

Kirkina Mucko
Born
Elizabeth Jeffries

1890
near Rigolet, Labrador
Died1970
NationalityCanadian
Other namesKirkina Mukko, Elizabeth Mukko
Occupationnurse, midwife
Years active1918-1970
Known fornurse, midwifery

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 a surgery to create proper stumps, where Wilfred Grenfell 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 Jeffries 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, Jeffries returned to Canada,[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.
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References

Citations
  1. The Winnipeg Free Press 1961, p. 19.
  2. The Gaffney Ledger 1950, p. 8.
  3. Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1904, p. 22.
  4. Forster 2011, p. 253.
  5. Walters 2007.
  6. Forster 2011, p. 388.
  7. The Chicago Tribune 1950, p. 3-6.
  8. Forbush 1903, pp. 142-145.
  9. 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. Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1908, p. 10.
  16. Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1909, p. 8.
  17. Among the Deep Sea Fishers 1912, p. 10.
  18. The Congregationalist and Advance 1918, p. 154.
  19. Forster 2011, p. 254.
  20. Newfoundland marriage records 1916, p. 492.
  21. The Ottawa Journal 1961, p. 33.
  22. Forster 2011, p. 255.

Bibliography
  • Curtis, Charles S. (April 1963). "It Should Be Told" (PDF). Among the Deep Sea Fishers. New York, New York: Grenfell Association of America. 61 (1). Retrieved 19 August 2016.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Fitzgerald, Jack; Thomas, Jocelyne (2005). Ghosts and Oddities. St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada: Breakwater Books. ISBN 978-1-894377-14-0.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Forbush, William Byron (1903). Pomiuk, a waif of Labrador; a brave boy's life for brave boys. Boston, Massachusetts: The Pilgrim Press. OCLC 644676105.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Forster, Merna (2011). 100 More Canadian Heroines: Famous and Forgotten Faces. Toronto, Canada: Dundurn. ISBN 978-1-4597-0086-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Grenfell, Wilfred Thomasoh (1919). A Labrador Doctor. The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomasoh Grenfell (PDF). Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company. OCLC 8992019.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Walters, Harold N. (1 October 2007). "'The Day Grenfell Cried'". Montreal, Quebec, Canada: The Packet. Retrieved 18 August 2016.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • "Cheerio, My Gallant Crew!" (PDF). Among the Deep Sea Fishers. New York, New York: Grenfell Association of America. 33 (2). July 1935. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  • "Dr. Grenfell's Home for Labrador Orphans". The Congregationalist and Advance. Boston, Massachusetts: Congregational Publishing Society. 103: 154. 8 August 1918. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  • "Her Hard Life an Understatement". The Winnipeg Free Press. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 12 October 1961. Retrieved 17 August 2016 – via Newspaperarchive.com.
  • "Items from the Grenfell Association of America" (PDF). Among the Deep Sea Fishers. Toronto, Canada: The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. 10 (1). April 1912. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  • "Items from the New England Grenfell Association" (PDF). Among the Deep Sea Fishers. Toronto, Canada: The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. 6 (1). January 1909. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  • "Jottings from the Grenfell Association of America" (PDF). Among the Deep Sea Fishers. Toronto, Canada: The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. 6 (2): 10. July 1908. Retrieved 19 August 2016.
  • "Kirkina" (PDF). Among the Deep Sea Fishers. Toronto, Canada: The Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. 1 (4): 22–25. January 1904. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  • "Legless Woman Aided to Return to Nursing Job". Gaffney, South Carolina: The Gaffney Ledger. 19 October 1950. Retrieved 18 August 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "Newfoundland marriage records, 1891-1922: Marriage registers, book 7". FamilySearch. St. John's, Newfoundland: Provincial Archives. 20 March 1916. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  • "New Limbs, New Life Given by Airmen". The Ottawa Journal. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 13 October 1961. Retrieved 18 August 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  • "Nurse Legless 57 Years Gets Two Gift Limbs". The Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. 16 October 1950. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
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