Dr.

Fanny Jane Butler

First women doctor to Kashmir
Pioneer Medical missionary
These are they which follow the Lamb…..

We have been reviewing the lives of many of the remarkable women of the nineteenth century.
Many opportunities opened up for women to minister in the Kingdom of God in the 1800’s.
There was a tremendous new interest in religion that came as a result of the Great Awakenings
that would lead to the desire to spread the Gospel. A belief that Christ would come when the
Gospel was preached to the ends of the earth prompted many to be a part of a great missionary
movement within the United States and into foreign countries. Jesus said, “This gospel of the
kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end
will come.” (Matthew 24:14)

There was a particularly great need for women in foreign countries especially in the medical
field. Women in India for example were not comfortable with male doctors. Even today in
Muslim countries women are not allowed to be treated by a male doctor unless he is a close
relative. The need for female medical missionaries continues to be very great.

One woman who answered the call of God in her life to minister to women in India Dr. Fanny
Butler was Fanny Jane Butler. Though she only lived to be 39 years old, Dr. Butler was able to
assist in the treatment of thousands of women. She was also instrumental in founding a hospital
that is still in existence today.

Fanny was born on October 5, 1850 to Thomas and Jane Isabella Butler. She was the eighth of
ten children. Only her brothers received formal education. Fanny was an intelligent girl and had
a thirst for knowledge, but she had to be content with teaching of her older sisters until she was
nearly 15 years old.
When Fanny was thirteen she gave her heart to Christ. At fourteen she became a Sunday school
teacher. Her attention was directed to missions by her pastor who was very enthusiastic about
taking the Gospel to those who had not heard about Christ. Fanny developed a deep missionary
spirit. She asked her parents if she could be a missionary but they would not give her their
approval at this time.

A little later on Dr. Elmslie, a Scottish medical missionary, was trying to get female medical
missionaries to come to India. Fanny’s sister encouraged her to consider this. At first Fanny did
not think she could do it. Later she decided to seek God’s will and when she was sure that
medical missionary work was for her she again approached her parents. This time they
enthusiastically gave their support.

Fanny became a member of the Indian Female Normal Society. She attended the London School
of Medicine for Women for her medical training. This was a new school that only recently had
accepted women. Fanny passed second out of one hundred and twenty-three candidates applying
for the school; one hundred and nineteen of them were men.

She was a top student and received only flattering testimonials from her teachers. She took her
final examination in Dublin where her professor said that her paper was the best he had ever had
from any candidate. Fanny received the prize of pathology in 1879 and prize of anatomy in 1880.

In 1880 Fanny went to India as the first fully equipped female medical missionary sent from
England. Her first destination was Jabalpur in the central part of India. Owing to some
complications she traveled to Bhagalpur. She spent four and a half years in Bhagalpur pouring
her whole energy into working in the dispensaries and attending several thousand patients a year.

In 1887 Fanny returned home to England for a short furlough. After this she
srinagar__india_mapaccepted an appointment in Kashmir specifically in order to work with the
women there. She rented a little house close to Srinagar, the chief city in that area, and opened a
dispensary. She was immediately pressed from all sides for help. In the first year she treated five
thousand patients. At least two thousand heard the Gospel.

Fanny opened another small house for a hospital. This house was outside of the city
because missionaries had been forbidden to live inside the city. Fanny traveled daily by pony or
by boat the four miles into the city to see her patients. She dressed wounds, dispensed medicine,
performed surgical operations, read, prayed, and talked to the suffering about the great Healer,
the Lord Jesus.

The government was finally persuaded that Fanny only meant good and they let her have some
land for a dispensary, a hospital, and a mission house. Fanny had a longing to build a women’s
hospital but no funds. God graciously provided the money.

About this time an English woman named Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop was traveling in India. Even
while traveling in the East as a child, Isabella’s heart was saddened by the intense poverty of the
women in India. She longed to be used of God to serve them.

When she grew up Isabella married a Scottish doctor named Dr. John Bishop. After only a few
years of married life she became a widow. She again traveled to the East. In 1888 she visited
Srinagar and there she met Dr. Fanny Butler. She found out that Dr. Fanny Butler was a pioneer
woman doctor serving many thousands of poor women, but she had no hospital. Isabella
generously gave the money for the building of the hospital. It was named in memory of her
husband – the John Bishop Memorial Hospital.

Dr. Fanny was just as concerned for the spiritual well being of her patients as their physical
health. One by one she took many of them to an upper room to talk to them about Christ.

Thinking of how Dr. Fanny served the poor a helper later wrote, “I make my way with difficulty
up stairs to receive my instructions from the brave presiding genius of the place, the doctor, Miss
Sahib. Here she is, sitting at the table, with a little collection of poor sufferers at her feet. They
will look up in her face, with clasped hands, and say, ‘We heard your fame, and have come far,
far;’ and again the words come back, ‘I have compassion on the multitudes, … for divers of them
came from far.’” Truly Fanny showed the love of Christ to the Indian people.

Constantly pressed from all sides for help the strain became too much. Fanny Butler burned
herself out for the love of Christ and the Indian people. In the summer of 1889 she fell so ill that
she was unable to do her work. When she recovered she went right back to work because she
could not turn down the thousands of women and children begging for medicine.

By the fall Fanny was suffering so much that she was unable to attend the ceremony where they
laid the foundation stone for the new women’s hospital. She continued to grow worse. Her mind
remained clear and her last thought was for the work that she loved. Her dying wish was that her
post might be speedily filled.

Dr. Fanny finally succumbed to dysentery on October 26, 1889. She was buried in a cemetery in
Srinagar. The natives insisted on bearing her coffin to her grave. “They had eaten her salt, and no
other arms must bear her.” Many people came to show their respect for this woman who had
given her all to help the poor and downtrodden.

women dr's IndiaFanny Butler left a blessed legacy for both Indian and international women. She
was the first to provide medical care for many women in India. She inspired many women to join
the movement for education for women, especially medical education. Even though Fanny did
not live to see the John Bishop Memorial hospital completed, she is credited with its creation.
The John Bishop Memorial Hospital still exists today, although in a different location. A few
years after it was built the hospital was destroyed in a disastrous flood and it was rebuilt in
Anantnag. (At left is a modern picture of the women doctors at the John Bishop Memorial
Hospital in Anantnag.)

Dr. Fanny Butler is remembered today for her care in treating Indian women both medically and
spiritually. The London School of Medicine for Women established a scholarship in her honor
after her death.

She rests from her labors; and her works do follow her.
Related

on May 12, 2016 at 6:09 am | ReplyCathy Butler

Fanny’s family was deeply religious. Her grandfather, great-grandfather and three of her brothers
(including my own great-grandfather) were CofE priests. There was always a practical and social
dimension to their reilgion, though. Her grandfather Weeden had written against slavery in his
book *Zimao*, (1800); her father’s cousin had married Josephine Butler, the great social
reformer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Butler). And an interest in the Tractarian and
medical missionary movements was strong.

The family lived initially in a large house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where her great-grandfather
and grandfather had run a school; but in her chilldhood her father sold the house and the family
moved a little way, to Brompton Square.. Both parents appear to have supported her decision to
train as a doctor – which I can evidence not only from the account quoted below but also from a
newspaper clipping I have from the Standard, 16th March 1880, in which Thomas (her father)
protests against a hospital’s decision to refuse to appoint the best qualified doctor for a post, on
the grounds that he was “married to a lady doctor”.

“The ungenerousness and ungallantry of objecting to elect Dr. Sturgess as Senior Assistant
Physician to the National Hospital on account of his being married to a lady doctor is obvious,
and shines out in the more glaring colours from the fact that the Hospital owes its very existence
to the unselfish, long-continued, and indomitable exertions of a lady—Miss Johanna Chandler—
whose noble efforts, when they became known through the advocacy of the late Mr. Alderman
Wire, were promptly seconded by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and, later, were, largely by the
labours of women, carried into practical effect.”

Other than that, I can give you a relevant extract from her sister Annie Robina Butler’s book
*Nearly a Hundred Years Ago*, a memoir of their father:

“Somewhere around the beginning of the ‘sixties the visit of a missionary member of the
Giberne family stirred the heart of the younger Butler children to an interest in missions which
was never to die down till she herself was laid in a missionary grave; while my own missionary
quickening was due about the same period, in part at least, to a large-hearted Scotch cousin of
ours, who took the world as her parish, and all missionaries as her friends, friends to be shared
with others– and who finally gave Africa her life.
“My brother was accepted by the C.M.S. But the serious illness of an uncle–my father’s brother
Weeden–was the cause, incidentally, of a total change of plan. But it was well that the thought
had been in his heart, for the now kindled fire of missionary interest in our home was to be kept
bright by Mr. Scott-Moncrieff’s successor, Rev. (now Archdeacon) Robert Long. Were there
ever such missionary meetings as his quarterly gatherings were? I know of none. Being on the
Committee of the C.M.S. he could, and did, secure on the spot the most interesting of the
missionaries just arrived from the field, and rewarded him, on arrival at his little schoolroom, by
giving him practically the whole of the time of the meeting, and a keenly appreciative audience.
There was no padding at those meetings!

“And now the young daughter whose heart God had touched during Miss Giberne’s visit, got a
second and effectual call– a sense of personal responsibility in the matter of foreign missions–by
the loan from the Vicarage of The Finished Course, a record of the life and death of many
African missionaries. “If missionary work is worth dying for, it is worth living for,” was her
conclusion, and when a few years later, Dr. Elmslie came from Kashmir with an earnest plea for
women doctors for India, she was the first to answer the summons. And our father and mother
were wiling to have her go.

“I said a little while ago that there was no favouritism in our home. But let me add here, for the
encouragement of any who are thinking of a foreign field, that from the time any member of a
family hears and obeys the call to publish among the heathen the unsearchable riches of Christ,
that one becomes the favourite of the whole household, and everyone is pleased to have it so.”

I hope all that is of interest!

* The Gibernes were (fairly distant) cousins – Agnes Giberne was quite a well-known writer at
this time.

** Annie Robina later worked for the Medical Missionary Society.

*** I don’t know who this is!

on May 13, 2016 at 4:10 amJharna Gourlay

Thank u for the information. I will certainly look into Annie Robina Butler’s book when I go to
the British Library.
Fanny Jane Butler

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fanny Jane Butler

Born 5 October 1850

Chelsea, England

Died 26 October 1889 (aged 39)

Srinagar, India

Nationality English

Education London School of Medicine for Women

Medical career

Profession physician, medical missionary

Dr. Fanny Jane Butler (5 October 1850 – 26 October 1889) was a medical missionary from
England who was among the first female doctors to travel to India and the first fully trained
doctor from England to do so.[1] Prior to her work in Kashmir and other parts of India, Butler
was a part of the first class of the London School of Medicine for Women, becoming a member
of the forefront of female doctors. Butler spent seven years in India until her death in 1889 and
opened medical dispensaries in Srinagar and Bhagalpur, where no medical facilities had
previously existed.[2] Butler also initiated the building of the first hospital in Srinagar in 1888
called the John Bishop Memorial Hospital and provided necessary medical care for Indian
women, for whom little care had been available.[3]

Contents [hide]

1 Early life

2 Call to India

3 Missionary Work

4 Death/Legacy

5 References

Early life[edit]

Fanny Butler was born on October 5, 1850 in Chelsea, London to Thomas Butler and Jane
Isabella North. Butler was the eighth of ten children in her family. Only her brothers received a
formal education, and they informally taught her before she attended the West London College
in 1865 at the age of 15. After one year of school, Butler returned home to help with housework
and regularly went to Saint Simon Zelotes Church in Chelsea. Butler was interested in religion
and had become a Sunday school teacher earlier when she was 14 years old. In 1872, Butler went
to live in Birmingham to nurse her elder sister.[1] In Birmingham, Butler encountered an article
by prominent Scottish medical missionary William Elmslie, which solicited female missionaries
to aid the women in India. This article sparked Butler’s interest in medical missionary work, and
two years later in 1874 she was accepted to the India Female Normal School and Instruction
Society, a non-denominational missionary group that eventually became the Church of England
Zenana Missionary Society in 1880.[1][4] Later that year, Butler was admitted to the first class
of the London School of Medicine for Women, which was the first medical school for women in
England. Butler obtained a formal medical education there and graduated with high marks,
receiving the prize of pathology in 1879 and the prize of anatomy in 1880.[5][1][2]

Call to India[edit]

At the time, the opportunities available in England for female physicians were limited. However,
Butler’s medical training could be used elsewhere. In parts of India, female doctors were needed
because the purdah women who lived there were not comfortable receiving care from male
doctors. In response to this need, Butler was sent to India by the Church of Zenana Missionary
Society, an Anglican group specifically devoted to Christianizing the women of India through
various methods including medical missionary work.[6]

Missionary Work[edit]

Butler arrived in India in 1880, first staying in Jabalpur then traveling to Bhagalpur, where she
remained for four and a half years. In Bhagalpur, Bulter ran two medical dispensaries and saw
several thousand patients, dressing wounds, performing surgery, and administering medication.
After going back to England for an eleven-month furlough, Butler returned to India in August
1888 and was appointed to work in Kashmir. She moved to Srinagar, a city in Kashmir, but
resided four miles outside of the city because foreigners were not allowed to live there, traveling
into the city daily by pony or boat.[1][2] Butler continued to see patients in Srinagar, using a
translator to communicate, and also delivered religious speeches to those she treated and with
whom she worked. In the first 7 months, Butler and her staff saw 8832 outpatients and did 500
operations.[1] She eventually was able to obtain enough land from the government to build a
dispensary, missionary house, and hospital for women.[1] At that time, Butler met an English
woman named Isabella Bird who was visiting Kashmir. Bird was interested in medical
missionary work and gave Butler the money to build the medical facilities. Thus Butler
established the John Bishop Memorial Hospital, which was built in memory of Isabella Bird’s
late husband (the hospital was later rebuilt in Anantnag in 1902 after a flood destroyed the
Srinagar location).[3][7]
Death/Legacy[edit]

While working in Kashmir, Butler fell ill and died of dysentery on October 26, 1889. She was
buried in a cemetery in Srinagar.[1][2] Butler left a lasting legacy in India for both local and
international women. She was a pioneer in the medical field for female doctors, inspiring others
to join the movement. Butler provided Indian women medical care that was not previously
available, and although she did not live to see its completion, Butler initiated the creation of the
John Bishop Memorial Hospital, the first hospital in Srinagar, which still functions today in its
new location in Anantnag.[3] Butler was remembered for her method of a "double cure," treating
Indian women both medically and spiritually. After she died, the London School of Medicine for
Women established a scholarship in her honor.[1]

he Life of Isabella Bird

Isabella Lucy Bird was born in the English county of Yorkshire on October 15, 1831. Her father
was an Anglican clergyman, and her mother was the daughter of a clergyman. Bird was
physically small and frail, and she suffered from ailments throughout her childhood. In 1850,
when she was 19, a tumor was removed from her spine. Because the operation was only partially
successful, she suffered from insomnia and depression.

Bird’s doctor recommended that she travel to divert her attention from her poor health. In 1854
her father gave her £100, telling her she was free to do whatever she wanted with the money.
Bird chose to travel to North America and stayed for several months in eastern Canada and the
United States. On her return she used the letters she had written to her sister, Henrietta, as the
basis for her first book, The Englishwoman in America.

When Bird’s father died in 1858, she moved with her mother and sister to Edinburgh, Scotland.
During the following years Bird took several short trips, including three to North America and
one to the Mediterranean. The turning point in her life came in 1872, however. She was on a ship
that was headed for New Zealand when she decided to get off at Hawaii. She stayed six months.
During that time she learned how to ride a horse astride, which ended the backaches she had
suffered from riding sidesaddle. She also climbed to the top of Hawaii’s volcanic peaks. Later
she wrote about her pleasure in “visiting remote regions which are known to few even of the
residents, living among the natives, and otherwise seeing Hawaiian life in all its phases.” Bird
recorded her impressions of her visit in Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, which was
published in 1875.

Leaving Hawaii, Bird went to the West Coast of the United States. From San Francisco she
traveled alone on horseback to Lake Tahoe, located on the California border with Nevada, and
then to the Rocky Mountains and Colorado. During this extensive trip she had many adventures;
for example, she rode alone through a blizzard with her eyes frozen shut, spent several months
snowed in with two young men in a cabin, and was wooed by a lonely outlaw. All these tales she
told in A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, published in 1879. This book, along with her
volume about Hawaii, made Bird famous in Britain.

Travels through Asia

Bird’s next trip was to Japan, where she hired a young Japanese man to be her translator. They
traveled together to Hokkaido, the northernmost part of the country, where she stayed among
members of the Ainu tribe, the original, non-Japanese inhabitants of the islands. Her experiences
formed the basis for her book Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, which was published in 1880. Bird
continued her travels throughout Asia, visiting Hong Kong, Canton, Saigon, and Singapore.
From Singapore she journeyed to the Malayan Peninsula, where she stayed for five weeks
visiting the Malay states.

Soon after Bird’s return to Edinburgh, her sister Henrietta died from typhoid. In 1881 Bird
married John Bishop, the doctor who had taken care of Henrietta. They had a happy marriage,
but Bishop died only five years later. Following her husband’s death, Bird made a trip to India.
While there she established the Henrietta Bird Hospital in Amritsar and the John Bishop
Memorial Hospital in Srinigar. Traveling to Kashmir and Ladakh, areas of northern India on the
border with Tibet, Bird continued her daring excursions. During the trip her horse lost its footing
and drowned while crossing a river. Bird suffered two broken ribs in the accident.

Journey to Persia

Bird returned to Simla in northern India, where she met a British army major, Herbert Sawyer,
who was on his way to Persia (now Iran). She and Sawyer traveled together through the desert in
midwinter, arriving in Tehran in a state of extreme exhaustion. After leaving Sawyer at his new
duty station, Bird set out alone and spent the next six months traveling at the head of her own
caravan through northern Persia, Kurdistan, and Turkey.

On her return to England, Bird spoke out against the atrocities that were being committed against
the Armenians under the Ottoman sultan Abd al-Hamid II, who had ordered their extermination.
Bird met with William Gladstone, the British prime minister, and addressed a parliamentary
committee on the subject. Having by this time become a celebrity in her native land, Bird was
made a fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society; she also became the first female
member of the Royal Geographical Society.

Journey to Korea

In 1894 Bird traveled to Yokohama in Japan and from there into Korea. She spent several
months in that country, making an epic journey of exploration on the Han River, the Diamond
Mountain and on to the East Coast before being forced to leave at the outbreak of the Sino-
Japanese War, which would lead to the Japanese occupation of Korea. From Korea she went to
Mukden in Manchuria and photographed Chinese soldiers headed for the front In August 1894.
During her travels in Manchuria she witnessed devastating floods in which she nearly drowned.
Amidst great chaos, she took a German boat from the Chinese coast headed for Vladivostok by
way of Nagasaki and visited villages in Siberia where Koreans had settled. She then returned to
Korea, arriving by boat at Wŏnsan and from there went by boat to 'Fusan' then arrived in
Chemulpo (Inch’ŏn) on January 5, 1895. She arrived in Seoul just in time to witness the
ceremony on January 8 at which the King renounced the tribute relationship with China and
declared Korean independence. She went with Mrs. Underwood to meet the King and Queen, the
first of several visits. Before she left Korea in February 1895 for a voyage in China, she saw by
chance the heads and decapitated bodies of the leaders of the Tonghak rebellion outside Seoul's
Small West Gate (Sosŏmun). She returned from China to Nagasaki in October 1895 and there
heard reports that the Queen (oficially the Empress Myeongseong) had been murdered on
October 8. She returned to Seoul and her account of the murder and its sequels is fascinating. In
November she set off on her last long journey through Korea, through Kaesŏng to Pyŏngyang,
which had been looted after the Japanese victory over the Chinese in September 1894. From
there, despite the approach of winter, she continued northward before returning to Pyŏngyang
and Seoul.

Early in 1896 Bird went from Korea to the Yangtze River in China, sailing by boat up the river
as far as she could go and then traveling overland into the province of Szechwan. In Szechwan
she was attacked by a mob. Calling her a “foreign devil,” they trapped her in the top floor of a
house, which they set on fire. She was rescued at the last minute by a detachment of soldiers.
Later in her trip she was again attacked. Refusing to be intimidated, however, she traveled
through the mountains bordering Tibet before returning home in 1897.

Bird based her last book, The Yangtze River and Beyond, on her experiences in China. This
unusual and daring traveler continued to explore the world until the end of her life. She made her
first trip to Africa when she was 70 years old and traveled to Morocco in 1901. Upon her return
to Edinburgh she became ill, dying shortly thereafter