Cuthbert Christy (1863 – 29 May 1932) was an English medical doctor and zoologist who undertook extensive explorations of Central Africa during the first part of the 20th century.

[2] He was educated at Olivers Mount School, in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, then won a Mackenzie bursary to the University of Edinburgh.

In 1902 he was chosen as a member of a three-man British government commission to investigate trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in Uganda.

[3] Christy was a member of a team sponsored by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine that arrived in the Congo Free State on 23 September 1903 to assess public health, and sleeping sickness in particular.

His companions were Joseph Everett Dutton and John Lancelot Todd, and they were joined in the Congo by Inge-Valdemar Heiberg.

[8] In part to reduce the spread of disease, the colonial authorities had imposed increasing travel restrictions on the local people.

[7] In 1929 an American missionary in Liberia reported that Liberian officials were using soldiers to gather tribal people who were shipped to the island of Fernando Po as forced labourers.

[7] While Arthur Barclay remained in Monrovia for reasons of health, after six weeks Christy and Johnston left the capital and travelled first together, then separately, into the interior where they took testimony.

"[14] The commission also found that as recently as 1928, Liberian Government officials and Frontier Force soldiers had been "...raiding and forcibly recruiting native boys for shipment to the island of Fernando Po (Bioko)".

[14] Landowners from the island had needed manual laborers and arranged to pay Liberian "recruiting agents", including the President's brother, for the shipment of 3000 boys.

[15] Some authors feel that Christy was generally negative towards the role of the United States in Liberia, and interested in showing that the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was complicit in slaving.

"[13] At root was a disagreement over whether the abuses could be remedied under black self-rule, with Christy eventually coming round to Johnson's view that the country should remain independent.