Another, equally outstanding, liberated African was Samuel Herbert Pearse, who is remembered by the elder Efiong U. Aye as having been 'an enormous towering trader in colonial Calabar'. ${ }^{4}$  
Liberated Africans also made a significant contribution in assisting the people of Calabar in the alleviation of the health problems that they faced. The leading figure in that regard was T. B. Duncan, a trained pharmacist who, instead of taking up employment at the Calabar African Hospital, decided to remain in private practice in order to attend to sick Africans. His medical prowess endeared him to the indigenes, who knew him only as 'Doctor' and, as a token of appreciation, a plot of land was donated to him on present-day Beecroft Street (Udoka, 1991, p. 309). The investments of African expatriates in the medical sector in Calabar enabled the Africans denied medical attention at European hospitals or unable to afford the charges at a hospital for Africans built by the Europeans, to still have access to medical care and helped to reduce local mortality rates.  
Apart from the traders and those active in the field of medicine, other enterprising and industrious liberated Africans in Calabar were artisans and became pioneering figures in vocations such as bakery, blacksmithing, carpentry, cinematography and photography, electrical and mechanical work, printing, tailoring and welding. They dominated those trades from the mid-nineteenth century until around the turn of the century when the Calabar indigenes that they had trained began to establish their own businesses. It is on record that:  
The major mechanical workshops, bakery factories, photographic studios and furniture industries and metal construction workshops in the region owe their existence to  
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[^0]:    4 From an oral interview conducted on 19 March 2009.