Fanny Jane Butler
| 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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