Francina Sorabji

Francina Santya was born to a family in southern India, and converted from Hinduism and lived with Christian missionaries as a young girl.

[2][3][4] Her adoptive mother's father was Sir Ralph Darling, the British army officer who became a controversial Governor of New South Wales.

[5][6] Francina Sorabji founded the Victoria High School for girls at Poona, at first in her own home, and later in a separate stone building.

[2][8] She encouraged her students, and her seven daughters, into high education and professions, including law, medicine, and midwifery.

During an outbreak of plague in 1896, she helped to introduce preventive public health and sanitation practices in villages near Poona.