{{Short description|Indian medical doctor and suffragist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Use British English|date=February 2025}} {{Infobox person | honorific_prefix = Dr | death_date = 25 September 1920 (aged 48) | death_place = Lahore, British India | education = Croyden High School | alma_mater = Newnham College, Cambridge, London School of Medicine for Women | occupation = doctor, educator and suffragist | employer = Royal Free Hospital, Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women | organization = Indian Women’s Education Association, Church League for Women's Suffrage | father = Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee }}
[[File:Susie-Bonnerjee-NC-1881.jpg|thumb|Seated third from left is Dr Susila Bonnerjee at a meeting of the Church League for Women's Suffrage in Brighton, 1913. Newnham College archives, Cambridge.|310x310px]] '''Susila Anita Bonnerjee''' (died 25 September 1920) was a medical doctor, educator and suffragist who advocated for women's education and health in England and India in the late 1800s.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Susila Anita Bonnerjee|url=http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/taxonomy/term/291/janaki-agnes-penelope-majumdar|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-10-15|website=Making Britain: Croyden}}</ref>
== Life and education == Bonnerjee was born to Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (a founder and the first president of the Indian National Congress) and Hemangini Motilal. She was one of six children (four sisters and two brothers), and was educated and lived primarily in Croydon, England, where her parents owned a home. They travelled frequently to their ancestral home in Kolkata as well.<ref name=":0" /> She died in Lahore, Pakistan (then part of British India), in 1920.<ref name=":0" />
== Education and career == Bonnerjee was educated at the Croydon High School for Girls, and later attended Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied the natural sciences.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Newly-discovered photograph highlights the role of Indian suffragists – Newnham's Dr Susila Bonnerjee (NC 1891) |url=https://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/newnham-news/newly-discovered-photograph-highlights-the-role-of-indian-suffragists-newnhams-dr-susila-bonnerjee-nc-1891/ |access-date=2020-10-15 |website=Newnham College}}</ref> She went on to study medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women,<ref name=":2" /> and earned an M.B. degree in 1899.<ref name=":1" /> Bonnerjee was one of a small group of Indian women (including Rukhmabai, Alice Sorabji, and Merbai Vakil) who trained in medicine in England in the 1800s, later returning to India to help establish the medical profession for women and to open educational institutions for women's education.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last1=Burton|first1=Antoinette|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0cML3XpbOucC&dq=Susila+Bonnerjee&pg=PA170|title=Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism|last2=Sinha|first2=Mrinalini|last3=Bayly|first3=C. A.|date=2011-05-03|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=978-0-8223-4902-0|location=|pages=170|language=en}}</ref>
Bonnerjee initially practiced medicine at the Royal Free Hospital. She later moved back to her familial home in Kolkata, India, and worked in Delhi, at Cambridge Mission Hospital.<ref name=":0" /> Her sister Janaki has recorded in her memoirs that Bonnerjee was the only available doctor at her mission station during a plague epidemic, and that the strain of treating patients in this time affected her own health.<ref name=":1" /> Facing objections from her family over her desire to establish her own practice, she returned to Cambridge in 1906, but was unable to establish an independent practice there either, frequently encountering incidents of racism and harassment that were recorded by her sister Janaki in a family history.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Majumdar|first=Janaki Agnes Penelope|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FhNuAAAAMAAJ&q=Janaki+Majumdar+family+history|title=Family History|date=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-566360-0|language=en}}</ref> Bonnerjee later joined the Balfour Laboratory at Newnham College, where she conducted research and taught physiology to students at Girton and Newnham Colleges.<ref name=":0" />
In 1911, Bonnerjee was elected the president of a private organisation named the Indian Women's Education Association, and worked to raise funds to help educate Indian women in England. She was also active in the suffragist movement in England, and in 1913, she became a branch president of the Church League for Women's Suffrage in Ealing, England.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Unearthed photograph highlights important role of Indian suffragettes|url=https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2019/g-July-2019/Unearthed-photograph-highlights-important-role-of-Indian-suffragettes.aspx|access-date=2020-10-15|website=London School of Economics and Political Science|date=July 2019 |language=en-GB}}</ref>
During World War I, she was given a temporary post as Home Surgeon in a hospital in Bristol.<ref name=":1" />
Bonnerjee continued to travel between India and England to teach medicine and raise funds for women's education until her death in Lahore in 1920,<ref name=":0" /> when she was 48 years old.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u8g7AQAAMAAJ&q=Susila+Bonnerjee |title=The Late Miss Susila Anita Bonnerjee |date=1920 |work=Britain and India |volume=1 |pages=360 |language=en}}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonnerjee, Susila}} Category:1920 deaths Category:Activists from Kolkata Category:Women medical researchers Category:Medical doctors from Kolkata Category:Women scientists from West Bengal Category:20th-century Indian medical doctors Category:20th-century Indian women scientists Category:Indian feminists Category:Indian suffragists Category:British suffragists Category:Medical doctors from British India Category:20th-century Indian women medical doctors Category:Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge