Fanny Jane Butler - Victorian Woman Doctor in India

I am so glad I started blogging about the female explorers, snippets of which I had saved in my research files. I’ve learned so much and, as a bonus, I’m coming across other women I’d never heard of until now.

It was in my post on Isabella Bird that I first read about Fanny Butler, one of the first fully trained female doctors in England.

Fanny Jane Butler was born on October 5th, 1850 in London to Thomas Butler and Jane Isabella North, the eighth of their ten children.

She didn’t receive a formal education, unlike her brothers, but they taught her informally. A regular churchgoer, she became a Sunday School teacher when she was 14.

A year later, Butler attended the West London College. But it was only for one year as she had to return home to help with housework.

In 1872, Butler moved to Birmingham to live with and nurse her elder sister. It was during her time in Birmingham that Butler met missionaries who had been in China. Strong in her religious beliefs, she wrote to her parents, asking for their permission to start missionary work, but they refused. Interestingly, they implied, she might be able to do so sometime in the future.

Not long afterwards, Butler’s sister came across an article by Dr William Elmslie, a prominent Scottish medical missionary, in which he appealed for women missionaries to travel to India to help the women there. Believing this to be her sister’s calling, Butler’s sister passed it to her.

This time, when she wrote to her parents asking to take up medical missionary work, they agreed with little hesitation.

In 1874, aged 24, Butler was accepted by the Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society, a non-denominational missionary group. Incredibly, for someone who had only received one year of formal education, she passed second out of 123 candidates, the majority of them, men.

In October of the same year, Butler was in the first class of the first medical school for women in England, the London School of Medicine for Women.

The London School of Medicine for Women (image courtesy of Wellcome Collection)

Butler graduated with excellent marks, receiving the prize of pathology in 1879 and the prize of anatomy the following year.

Although opportunities for female physicians in England were limited, they were allowed to use their training elsewhere in the world. India seemed to be the logical choice; the custom and practice of segregation meant the women were not comfortable being treated by male doctors.

Butler arrived in India in 1880, staying for a short time in Jabalpur in the Central Provinces before moving to Bhagalpur in the state of Bihar in eastern India, which is on the border with Nepal. She stayed there for 4 years, running 2 dispensaries. Apart from administering medication to her several thousand patients and dressing their wounds, she also performed surgery.

In 1887, she returned home for eleven months before returning to India in August 1888, having accepted an appointment to work in Kashmir. Because foreigners were not allowed to live in Srinagar, the largest city in Kashmir, Butler took up residence a little way out of the city, travelling into Srinagar daily.

She communicated with her patients via a translator for she not only treated them, she also spoke to them about religious matters in keeping with her role as a medical missionary.

In the first 7 months, Butler and her staff treated over 8,000 outpatients and performed 500 operations.

Butler also worked to obtain permission from the local government to allow her land to build a dispensary, missionary house and hospital for women. Eventually, they agreed.

It was around this time that Butler met Isabella Bird who was instrumental in funding the construction of the medical facilities. And so, the John Bishop Memorial Hospital was established in 1889, in memory of Isabella Bird’s late husband, John Bishop.

By now, the combined strain of work, the weather and the, usually, unsanitary surrounding conditions were beginning to take a toll on Butler’s health, and she contracted dysentery. Despite taking a short break, in which she carried on with her missionary work, she continued to deteriorate.

Fanny Jane Butler died on October 26th, 1889, aged 39, and was buried in a cemetery in Srinagar.

She did not live to see the completion of the John Bishop Memorial Hospital, which still functions today in its new location of Anantnag, where it was rebuilt in 1902 after the original building was destroyed in a flood.

To honour one of their first graduates, the London School of Medicine for Women established a scholarship in her name.

Her determination, sustained by her strong belief and steadfast faith, to improve the availability of medical services for women in a foreign country, makes Fanny Butler a truly remarkable young woman, one who deserves to be better-known.