Alice Maude Sorabji Pennell OBE (July 17, 1874 – March 7, 1951) was an Indian physician and writer. She was the daughter and wife of Christian missionaries, and the first woman in India to earn a bachelor of science degree.
Alice Maude Sorabji was born at Belgaum, the youngest daughter of Francina Sorabji and Reverend Sorabji Karsedji. Her mother was an educator and a Christian convert from Hinduism of tribal extraction;[1] her father was a Parsi Christian missionary. Her sisters included lawyer Cornelia Sorabji and educator Susie Sorabji.[2]
Alice Sorabji attended her family's Victoria High School in Poona, and earned a bachelor of science degree at Wilson College in Bombay, the first woman to earn that degree in India.[3] [4] She was trained as a physician in London, with her older sister Cornelia's encouragement and efforts,[5] completing her studies in 1905.
Alice Sorabji worked at the Zenana Hospital in Bahawalpur. For her work at the Pennell Hospital at Bannu (in present-day Pakistan), she was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal in 1917. She was also appointed an OBE in 1921, for her hospital work during World War I. She retired from medical work in 1925.[6] She was named an Officer of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1943.[7]
She wrote a biography of her husband published soon after he died,[8] and novels including Children of the Border (1925), The Begum's Son (1928), and Doorways of the East (1931). A fourth novel remained unpublished. She also worked on women's higher education in India.[9] Later in life, she traveled, and gave lectures on Indian women and health topics.[10] [11] "Absolutely fearless, she thinks nothing of taking an old Ford and proceeding, absolutely alone, into Afghanistan or up through the wilds of Persia," marveled a newspaper writer in 1930, when Alice Pennell was in her fifties, noting further that "she is the friend and confidente of women from all over India."[12]
Alice Maude Sorabji married fellow physician Theodore Leighton Pennell in 1908.[13] They had a son.[14] She was widowed when Pennell died in 1912, from septicaemia.[15] She died in 1951, aged 76 years, in Findon, Sussex.[16]