David Hynd was a Nazarene minister and medical missionary in Swaziland. Hynd was born in Perth, Scotland. A graduate of the University of Glasgow and London School of Tropical Medicine, he prepared for both ministry and medicine and was ordained in 1924. He began missionary work in 1925 in Swaziland, establishing the first Church of the Nazarene and the nation’s first hospital, Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital. Through remarkable energy and leadership, he established rural outpatient clinics, the country’s first nurses training college, the first branch of the Red Cross, and the first colony for persons with leprosy. He developed primary and secondary schools and the first teachers training college.

In 1947 Hynd was made Commander of the British Empire, one of a number of honors he received over the years from the British and Swaziland monarchs. After his retirement in 1961, the Swazi government issued a postage stamp that bore his image. He received the LL.D. from the University of Swaziland in 1987. He died at Manzini, Swaziland.

Robert H. Scott

Bibliography

J. Fred Parker, Mission to the World (1988); Mendell Taylor, Fifty Years of Nazarene Missions (1956). Numerous documents and personal papers are held in the Nazarene archives, Kansas City, Mo.

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, copyright © 1998, by Gerald H. Anderson, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.