John Fordyce (1819–1902) was a Christian missionary, evangelical minister and administrator who launched the female education initiative in India known as the Zenana Missions.
[11] He embarked on a programme of consultation, persuasion and negotiation with influential Hindu (notably the Tagore) families “to overcome their scruples, learn their objections, and gain their support”.
[12] He produced a series of pamphlets (“Flyleaves for Indian Homes”) containing “short, strong and striking appeals to husbands and fathers”, which circulated widely in India.
In February 1855 there began a series of zenana visits by Miss Eliza Toogood, the most able of Fordyce’s staff who was also fluent in Bengali, and these continued in three houses during the next seven months.
On 7 September 1855, Fordyce reported the result of his experiment to the Bengal Missionary Conference, which “rejoiced in the hopeful commencement of the Zenana School Scheme both as a sign of progress and a new means for the elevation of women”.
[15] Due to his wife’s ill health, Fordyce returned to Scotland in 1856, but his scheme was continued across India by a large number of missionaries’ wives, notably including Hana Catherine Mullens (“the Apostle of the Zenana”).
[19] During this period he travelled extensively, lecturing on church work in India, and edited the Eastern Female’s Friend, the quarterly magazine of the Ladies’ Society (of which he became president).
[25] In 1876 at least 104 European and American women, some with medical diplomas, were teaching across India,[26] and Fordyce’s longer term ambition (“to secure many who shall carry the lamp of knowledge into the zenanas of the rajahs... and if successful, a few illustrious examples will be followed by many, and the middle classes will then send their daughters to a public school”[27]) was in the course of fulfilment.
He invented the rickshaw.” Coolie quotes some verses of doggerel as evidence that “the people of Simla still remember his magnificent model”: The hood of that first rickshaw Was square and trimmed with fringe, Such as dangled from the mantelpiece In many a Berlin tinge.