Mary Bird (medical missionary)

Mary Rebecca Stewart Bird (1859–1914) was a London Church Mission Society (CMS) missionary who pioneered Christian ministry to Iranian women and women’s medical missions in the CMS.

Although she had received no official medical training, Bird was the first female medical missionary to be employed by the CMS and is most well known for her medical work in Iran which was widely popular despite strong resistance shown by Muslim authorities. Born in a weakened state, Bird died in 1914 at the age of fifty-five leaving behind a vibrant medical ministry in Iran.

Mary Bird was born into a family filled with Christian bishops, clergy, politicians, travellers, explorers, and philanthropists. Mary Bird’s father—Charles Robinson Bird (1819–1886)—was the rector of the English village Castle Eden, her grandfather—Robert Merttins Bird (1788–1853)—was the head of the Revenue Department of the North West Provinces of India, and Isabella Bird—the intrepid woman traveller, writer, and explorer—was the cousin of Mary Bird’s father. William Wilberforce (1759–1833), John Bird Sumner (1780–1862), Archbishop of Canterbury, and his brother Charles Richard Sumner (1790–1874), Bishop of Winchester, are also remotely related to Bird.

Mary Bird was the fifth child of a family of six. She was so small when she was born that she was nicknamed "Tiny" by her siblings. When she was five years old, a missionary guest of her father’s told her stories of Africa, inspiring her to pledge her life to Christian missions.

She worked closely with her father Charles at the Anglican Castle Eden Rectory until his death in 1886. Later she "refused an offer of marriage from one for whom she had the greatest affection, as she had already offered to go abroad and was convinced that her life-work lay in some foreign land, then unknown to her, and that a life of comparative ease in England was not for her".

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