I am writing to inquire whether there are readers of Parsiana who might have information about a once well-known but now largely forgotten civic activist, the Parsi medical doctor "Dr (Miss) Jerbanoo Mistri, L.M.S.,” (pictured) as she generally signed her name or was listed in documents.
Based on information in the Bombay Chronicle and The Times of India and some archival references, she was active in social reform circles in Bombay in the 1920s in the Bombay Presidency Women’s Council and Women’s Graduates’ Union (as president for many years), the Bombay Council of Social Workers (as a founding member in 1925), the Bombay Branch of the Medical Women’s Association of India, the Bombay Social Purity Committee, and the Bombay Vigilance Association. She was a regular public speaker and author, particularly concerning prostitution, the welfare of mothers and children, birth control, women’s education and suffrage. She is also mentioned in Ramanna Mridula’s article on "Women Physicians as Vital Intermediaries in Colonial Bombay” (2008).
I would be very grateful for any information about her. She is an important voice in a book I am now completing, titled Moral Storytelling in New York, Odessa, and Bombay in the 1920s, a large part researched in the Maharashtra State Archives in Bombay.
You may write to me by email at steinb@illinois.edu.
Prof MARK STEINBERG
Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
steinb@illinois.edu