Laura HOPE

HOPE, LAURA (NEE FOWLER) (b. Adelaide, SA, 1870; d. 1952). Medical missionary to India.

Daughter of George Swan Fowler (q.v.), a prosperous Adelaide wholesale grocer, Laura Fowler was the University of Adelaide's first female medical graduate (1891). She married Dr Charles Hope in 1893. Charles and Laura shared a passion to serve the people of India with their medical skills. They worked in association with the Australian Baptist missionaries in Pabna, East Bengal, seeking to establish themselves independently. Miss Arnold (q.v.) was their first mentor. While not formally members of the Mission, they always had a Bengali evangelist, who was a mission worker, preach to the crowds who came to their house daily for treatment. Their survival was guaranteed by a generous settlement of £5000 from her father, and later by ongoing support from her admiring and devout brothers.

Charles, who was 'modesty personified', one who 'consistently avoided the limelight and rarely talked about his work', was diagnosed as suffering from Bright's disease, and there ensued years of alternation between India and Europe. When Laura's heart was found to be weak it was Australia to which they retreated. Amazingly, they returned repeatedly to serve Indian villagers and to support missionary endeavour in Pabna. There was a brief period of dedicated service in the Scottish Woman's Hospital in Serbia during World War One before again returning to India. They established links with the Church of Scotland mission about 1907, but continued their trustful and godly ministry of care to Indian people, eventually returning to Adelaide in 1933.

Meda Tilman, 'Letters of Hope', Class essay, Flinders University, 1992; Alison Mackinnon, The New Women: Adelaide's early women graduates (Adelaide, 1986); Fowler Papers, PRG34, State Library of SA

MEDA TILMAN