Miss Martha Rose Greenfield

Martha Rose Greenfield was a Scottish missionary who, with her sister Kay Greenfield, began medical missionary work in Ludhiana in 1881. The Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, names the two sisters, "Evangelists and Educationalists from Scotland", as the first step towards its medical training and health care programme. She is in this record as part of the Christian missionary presence in colonial Punjab.

What the sources record. The college says the work began in 1881 under Martha Rose and Kay Greenfield, who with their associates organised health care and education services in the city. Its prospectus separately names a "Miss A. Greenfield", head of the Zenana Mission at Ludhiana, as the woman who had opened the Charlotte Hospital in the city some ten years before she asked for a woman doctor to take charge of it. That request brought Dr Edith Mary Brown, who joined the Greenfields in 1893. The sources do not settle which sister, or which initial, the prospectus means.

Key moments

• 1881: the Greenfield sisters begin medical missionary work in Ludhiana.
• 1893: Dr Edith Mary Brown joins them.
• 1894: Dr Brown and her colleagues open the North India School of Medicine for Christian Women, to train Indian nationals, especially women, for medicine and health care.
• 1952: the college, by then the Women's Christian Medical College, takes the name Christian Medical College.

What she is remembered for. The Greenfield sisters are named in the college's own history as its starting point. Her birth and death dates are not given in the sources found.