Ethel Murray AMBROSE

AMBROSE, ETHEL MURRAY (b. Mitcham, SA, 23 Sept 1874; d. Pandharpur, Poona, India, 17 Feb 1934). Pioneer medical missionary.

Daughter of William and Helen Ambrose, who both died while she was young, Ethel was brought up by her grandparents, Pastor and Mrs Finlayson (q.v.), Scottish Baptists who settled in Adelaide to undertake aboriginal mission work. They were strong minded people who tended to act independently of other Baptists in the colony; their influence on the Ambrose children was considerable. Ethel Ambrose attended Zion Chapel (where Finlayson was pastor) and Mitcham Baptist Sunday School. She was educated at Unley Park School (where she later taught to raise finance for her medical course) and the University of Adelaide, MB, BS (1903).

As a student Ambrose was active in the University Christian Union and was a delegate at an ASCM conference at which J. R. Mott was the speaker. This conference strengthened her missionary interest, and she and her sister Lily, a trained nurse, applied, not to the SA Baptist mission, but to the Poona and Indian Village Mission, an undenominational mission which had been established by the Tasmanian evangelist, Charles Reeve. Lily went to the mission hospital in Nasrapur, Poona, India, where Ethel, after residencies in Perth and Melbourne, joined her in Dec 1905.

Ambrose was concerned at the high infant mortality rate and, in 1909, moved to Pandharpur, a Hindu holy city, to start medical work for women and children. Despite opposition from local authorities she was able to secure premises for a dispensary there before leaving for furlough in 1911. In Australia Ambrose was able to generate significant support for the building of a hospital at Pandharpur, work on which began in 1917. While on furlough in 1919 Ambrose was for three months the RMO at the temporary influenza hospital set up in the Adelaide Exhibition Building.

Back in Poona, Ambrose initiated the reopening of medical work in Mohud. By the time of her death the mission's medical program touched over three hundred villages, and numbers of Indian workers had been added to the staff.

In 1931 Ambrose returned to Australia to nurse an aged aunt, returning to India in 1933 she was stricken with a terminal illness just after arriving and died within three months.

Ethel Ambrose is noteworthy as a medical pioneer and as an evangelical who served with one of the Australian undenominational 'faith' missions which had been started in response to the challenges issued by Hudson Taylor for urgent, world-wide evangelism.

Mrs. W. H. Hinton [Louisa], Ethel Ambrose, Pioneer Medical Missionary (London, nd)

GERALD B. BALL