>John of Reading: /* Priscilla Winter and the Foundations of Delhi Female Medical Mission */Typo fixing, replaced: tole → toll

2021-02-16T13:55:33Z

Priscilla Winter and the Foundations of Delhi Female Medical Mission: Typo fixing, replaced: tole → toll

New page

{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2018}}
{{Use Indian English|date=July 2018}}
{{Infobox organization
| name = Delhi Female Medical Mission / St. Stephen's Hospital for Women and Children
| logo =
| type =
| founded_date = 1867
| founders = Priscilla Winter; Reverend Winter
| location = [[Brighton]], [[England]]
| origins =
| key_people =
| area_served = [[Delhi]], [[India]]; [[Karnal]], [[India]]
| product =
| focus = Humanitarian, Religious
| method = Aid
| revenue =
| hospitals_and_clinics = 1 Hospital, 2 Dispensaries
| num_volunteers =
| num_employees =
| num_hospitals_and_clinics =
| Mission = To both alleviate the physical suffering of women in Delhi bring them [[Christianity]]
| homepage = Modern Day Hospital: http://www.ststephenshospital.org
| dissolved =
| footnotes = }}

The Delhi Female Medical [[Mission (Christianity)|Mission]] (DFMM) was a medical mission in [[Delhi]], [[India]] that was founded in the mid-19th century by an Indian-born Englishwoman named Priscilla Winter. The organization started as a dispensary along the [[Yamuna]] River in Delhi, but over time developed into a mission, which was then established as St. Stephen's Hospital for Women and Children, a hospital that remains in operation today.<ref name= hosp>{{cite web | publisher=St. Stephen's Hospital | title=Welcome | url=http://www.ststephenshospital.org | accessdate=7 July 2018}}</ref>

==Priscilla Winter and the Foundations of Delhi Female Medical Mission==

Priscilla Winter (née Sandys) was born in [[Calcutta]], India to two [[Anglican]] missionaries. Winter spent the majority of her childhood in [[England]], but returned to Calcutta in 1858 at the age of sixteen to work for the Union Society for the Propagation of Gospel ([[USPG]]).<ref name= hosp /> She was sent to Calcutta to spread the word of the [[Gospel]] amongst the Indian women. This work was known as [[zenana]] work, where the missionaries went to the home of native women in order to convert them to [[Christianity]].<ref name= gupta>Das Gupta, Kaushik. "Missionary women doctors in nineteenth century Delhi." Science and Environment, 15 February 2004. http://www.downtoearth.org.in/node/10810 (accessed 14 October 2013).</ref> While working on Zenana missions, Winter wrote that, "Women in India get no relief from suffering... [because] the medicine man takes them in hand and his remedies are the crudest."<ref name= gupta /> Winter attempted to mediate the medical issues in Calcutta by "distributing simple remedies to all classes of Hindu women," who she described as "confine[d] to the [[purdah]]."<ref name= gupta /> While in Calcutta, Winter realized that the local women's only time out of the purdah was when they went to the river to pray, a concept that she would later use to advance her distribution of medicine to females. In 1863, Winter married Reverend Robert Winter, the head of the USPG operation in Delhi, and moved to Delhi with him.<ref name=bickers>Bickers , Robert A., and Rosemary Seton. Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues. Surrey : Psychology Press, 1996.</ref> In Delhi, Winter began medical work on the Yamuna river with a "box" of medical samples.<ref name=hosp /> Winter was not a trained doctor or nurse but rather described herself as a person responding to the needs of women in the area.<ref>St. Stephen's Hospital . "SSHCHD.ORG - ABOUT CHD." St. Stephens Hospital - www.sshchd.org. http://www.sshchd.org/content.php?id=1&sid=7 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160629065438/http://sshchd.org/content.php?id=1&sid=7 |date=29 June 2016 }} (accessed 16 October 2013).</ref> In 1864, cholera epidemics broke out in Delhi. During this time, Winter was able to observe the dramatic effect that illness had on the population of Delhi, specifically the toll it took on women.<ref name= dan>O'Connor, Dan. "From medicine chest to mission hospitals: the early history of the Delhi Medical Mission for women and children." In Three Centuries of Mission: The United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 1701-2000. online: Google E-Book , 2000. 341-355.</ref>

==Foundation of the "White Ladies Association" and the beginning of the DFMM at Chandi Chowk==

===Winter's Return to England===
In 1865, Priscilla Winter returned to England on furlough from the Mission, with the intention of figuring out a way to fund a medical dispensary dedicated to work on women. Winter worried that a project like this one could possibly be too controversial for the USPG to fund. Instead, she decided to found a new society to provide funds for what was to become the Delhi Female Medical Mission.<ref name= dan /> This foundation was called the White Ladies Association (WLA), and it made its founding statement in [[Brighton]], England in October 1866.<ref name= revell>Revell, F.H. , and John Talbot Gracey. The Missionary Year-book for 1889-90: Containing Historical and Statistical Accounts of the Principal Protestant Missionary Societies in America, Great Britain, and the Continent of Europe, Volume 1. online : Google eBook, 1889.</ref> The association aimed to "attend native ladies in their zenanas," "set on foot a dispensary for women only," and "train native women as nurses" with female medical workers. In addition, the association planned to "make an example of Christian life and philanthropy" to the local women, who were confined to prejudices about Christianity according to the members of the WLA.<ref name= bickers /> The mission statement was both medical and religious—the DFMM was to be "a medical mission among the native women on Delhi, with the double objective of alleviating much physical suffering, and of taking a knowledge of Christianity to them in their secluded homes." The Delhi Female Medical Mission was actually founded in 1867, when Winter returned to India. Between the years of 1867 and 1874, the Mission was just an open-air dispensary on the banks of the Yamuna River. The dispensary was located in [[Chandni Chowk]], a market region in old Delhi.<ref name=dan /> A "temporary hospital" with bed for ten women was later opened up alongside the dispensary.<ref name= bickers /> While the majority of the funding for the DFMM came from the White Ladies Association, capital also came from the USPG, [[Punjab]] government, and Delhi Municipality. The Punjab government gave the DFMM 410 [[rupees]] per year to fund medicinal purchases, and the Delhi Municipality gave 75 rupees a month to subsidize a scholarship to train local women nurses.<ref name= dan /> The Mission also hired English women, and their first employee, Mrs. Littler, was a trained [[midwife]] who worked from the Mission's opening until her death in 1873.<ref name= dan /> Between December 1870 and October 1871, the Mission made 1,446 visits to 191 different patients in their zenanas. In addition, records indicate that approximately 305 patients had made 1,917 visits to the dispensary.<ref name= bickers /> The Mission was beginning to make way on its manifest, and in 1871 Reverend Winter recorded that the DFMM had begun to train local female nurses.<ref name= bickers />

===Establishment of DFMM===
The DFMM was truly established between the years of 1875 and 1891 as it was taken over by a [[Germany|German]] woman known as Miss Englemann. Between October 1876 and 1877, the DFMM treated over 6,000 women and children at the dispensary plus another 1,000 in their homes. The Mission also enrolled eighteen local women in nursing classes. The Mission was only open on alternate days, but it averaged an attendance of thirty patients daily.<ref name = dan /> In the early 1880s, the leaders of the DFMM decided they needed a concrete place to treat women—one that was not in their own homes. They found that Indian homes were the wrong environment for medical and spiritual healing. The homes in Delhi were prominently [[Hindi]] and were therefore not the best locations to spread the messages of Christianity. In addition, it was difficult to treat women in their homes, spread out in Delhi, as opposed to a hospital-like building where medicine and medical knowledge is concentrated. The new goal of the mission was to a build a hospital, yet one that was appropriately sized to both the means and realities of life in Delhi because as Reverend Winter noticed, the cultural norms dictated that many women would not come to a hospital.

In 1881 Priscilla Winter died. Yet, in the same year, the Mission hired an experienced nurse from [[Germany]], Deaconess Jacoba Zeyen. Zeyen opened an outpost in [[Karnal]], approximately seventy miles from Delhi, which cemented the establishment of the DFMM.<ref name= dan />

==St. Stephen's Hospital for Women and Children==

The DFMM's dream to operate in a hospital was actualized in 1885 when St. Stephen's Hospital for Women and Children was founded in memory of Priscilla Winter.<ref name= revell /> The hospital was centrally located and was the first hospital solely dedicated to the care of women and children in Delhi.<ref name= hosp /> The hospital was known for its thorough hygiene and discipline. It was designed to teach women new ideas about religion, which they could then in turn take back to their homes. Therefore, patients were incited to read [[scripture]] and gospel before treatment was administered.<ref name= dan /> Although the hospital at first lacked both resources and staff, in 1891, it began to take off. The hospital hired their first female doctor, Jenny Muller, a woman of Indian-German origins who had attended the [[London School of Medicine for Women]]. In 1893, a second female doctor, Mildred Staley, was added to the practice.<ref name= dan /> By 1865, the hospital housed three doctors and still operated the two dispensaries in Delhi and Karnal. Local women worked as nurses in the hospital under the supervision of an Englishwoman, Matron Mary Roberts. In the late 1890s. the Mission's yearly numbers were between 600-700 patients treated in the new hospital, 15,000 at the dispensaries, and 1,200 through home visits.<ref name= dan />

In 1906, the Mission laid the foundations for a bigger hospital located in [[Tis Hazari|Tiz Hazari]], where it remains today. At the time, the director of the DFMM, GE Leroy, believed that a new hospital would establish the DFMM as a full-fledged medical practice. In 1908 the Mission actually moved into the new larger hospital building, which reflected a change in social customs as women were less hesitant to come to the hospital.<ref name= dan /> At the same time, St. Stephen's still had to cater to the Indian, and dominantly Hindi culture. The hospital therefore hired [[Brahmin]] cooks and allowed relatives in rooms with patients. At the new hospital, Alice Wilkinson, founder of the '''Trained Nurses' Association of India''', became the first trained British nurse to teach Indian women. In 1913, Helen Franklin, the first qualified surgeon to operate at the hospital, joined the practice.<ref name= dan />

Today, St. Stephen's hospital is still in operation. Its mission statement proclaims, "St. Stephen's Hospital is committed to serving all sections of society in the spirit of Christ, by providing quality, affordable healthcare as well as training healthcare professionals of excellence who would embody the Christian values of selfless service rendered with compassion and love."<ref name= hosp />

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{ course assignment | course = Education Program:University of Pennsylvania/HSOC 59 Medical Missionaries and Community Partners (Fall 2013) | term = 2013 Q3 }}

[[Category:Healthcare in Delhi]]

Delhi Female Medical Mission - Revision history

>John of Reading: /* Priscilla Winter and the Foundations of Delhi Female Medical Mission */Typo fixing, replaced: tole → toll