Alice Maude Sorabji Pennell OBE (July 17, 1874 – March 7, 1951) was an Indian physician and writer. She was the daughter and wife of Christian missionaries, and the first woman in India to earn a bachelor of science degree.

Early life

Alice Maude Sorabji was born at

Belgaum Belgaum (ISO 15919, ISO: ''Bēḷagāma''; also Belgaon and officially known as Belagavi) is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka located in its northern part along the Western Ghats. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous ...

, the youngest daughter of

Francina Sorabji Francina Ford Sorabji (''née'' Santya; 1833 — October 24, 1910) was an Indian educator. Early life Francina Santya was born to a family in southern India, and converted from Hinduism and lived with Christian missionaries as a young girl. She w ...

and Reverend Sorabji Karsedji. Her mother was an educator and a Christian convert from Hinduism of tribal extraction; her father was a Parsi Christian missionary. Her sisters included lawyer

Cornelia Sorabji Cornelia Sorabji (15 November 1866 – 6 July 1954) was an Indian lawyer, social reformer and writer. She was the first female graduate from Bombay University, and the first woman to study law at Oxford University. Returning to India after her ...

and educator

Susie Sorabji Susie Sorabji (1868 – 15 March 1931) was an Indian educator and Christian missionary. Early life Sorabji was born in Sholapur, Maharashtra, one of the seven daughters of Reverend Sorabji Karsedji, a Parsi Christian missionary, and Francina ...

.Alice Maude Sorabji Pennell
''Making Britain: Discover How South Asians Shaped the Nation, 1870-1950'' (Open University). Alice Sorabji attended her family's Victoria High School in

Poona Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

, and earned a bachelor of science degree at Wilson College in Bombay, the first woman to earn that degree in India. She was trained as a physician in London, with her older sister Cornelia's encouragement and efforts, completing her studies in 1905.

Career

Alice Sorabji worked at the Zenana Hospital in

Bahawalpur Bahawalpur () is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. With inhabitants as of 2017, it is Pakistan's 11th most populous city. Founded in 1748, Bahawalpur was the capital of the former princely state of Bahawalpur, ruled by the Abbasi fa ...

. For her work at the Pennell Hospital at

Bannu Bannu ( ps, بنو, translit=banū ; ur, , translit=bannū̃, ) is a city located on the Kurram River in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is the capital of Bannu Division. Bannu's residents are primarily members of the Banuchi tribe ...

(in present-day Pakistan), she was awarded the

Kaisar-i-Hind Medal The Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for Public Service in India was a medal awarded by the Emperor/Empress of India between 1900 and 1947, to "any person without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex ... who shall have distinguished himself (o ...

in 1917. She was also appointed an OBE in 1921, for her hospital work during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. She retired from medical work in 1925."Obituary"
''British Medical Journal'' (March 31, 1951): 706. She was named an Officer of the

Order of Saint John of Jerusalem The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headqu ...

in 1943. She wrote a biography of her husband published soon after he died, and novels including ''Children of the Border'' (1925), ''The Begum's Son'' (1928), and ''Doorways of the East '' (1931). A fourth novel remained unpublished. She also worked on women's higher education in India. Later in life, she traveled, and gave lectures on Indian women and health topics. "Absolutely fearless, she thinks nothing of taking an old Ford and proceeding, absolutely alone, into Afghanistan or up through the wilds of Persia," marveled a newspaper writer in 1930, when Alice Pennell was in her fifties, noting further that "she is the friend and confidente of women from all over India."

Personal life

Alice Maude Sorabji married fellow physician Theodore Leighton Pennell in 1908. They had a son. She was widowed when Pennell died in 1912, from

septicaemia Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is follo ...

. She died in 1951, aged 76 years, in Findon, Sussex."Deaths"
''British Medical Journal'' (March 17, 1951): 597.

References

External links

*Shane Gail Malhotra
"Reading between the lines, 1839-1939 : popular narratives of the Afghan frontier"
(Doctoral thesis, Open University, 2013). Includes a chapter on Alice Sorabji Pennell's writings. {{DEFAULTSORT:Pennell, Alice Maude Sorabji 1874 births 1951 deaths Parsi people 20th-century Indian medical doctors Indian women novelists Recipients of the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal People from Findon, West Sussex Indian women medical doctors 20th-century Indian women