Empire: World History

Podbit · Empire: World History

371. The First British Indians: Last Sikh In Lahore (Ep 3)

Explore episode Jun 24, 2026

Where this was said

A Woman Who Wants to Be a Doctor: Chicago and the Women's Medical College

At 12:52 · chapter starts 12:40

Unable to study in Britain and barred from India by the authorities who feared a Duleep Singh on the loose in Punjab, Bamba's only realistic option was America — the one English-speaking country where a woman could genuinely obtain a medical degree. On 30 January 1900 she boarded the König Albert, a German ocean liner, headed for San Francisco via Japan. American reporters, primed for an exotic Indian royal, got something very different: a small, unsmiling woman who screamed at them to leave her dogs alone — a Great Dane named Leon and a Russian Wolfhound whose name she refused to divulge. In Chicago, she walked to the Women's Medical College daily through unpaved, frozen streets, pelted with snow by locals, and wrote furiously to the press: 'Such things would never be permitted in England.' She was one of very few non-white women in US medicine in 1901, in a country with fewer than 1,000 medical students in total. She endured nearly three years of this. Then, in the summer of 1902, Northwestern University's trustees ruled — with the direct quote Anita cites — that 'women cannot grasp surgery,' and revoked the possibility of female medical qualifications entirely. Bamba had completed her coursework. It was taken from her.

Health & Fitness
The First South Asian Woman to Attempt a US Medical Degree

371. The First British Indians: Last Sikh In Lahore (Ep 3) · Jun 24, 2026 Health & Fitness

In 1901, Princess Bamba was attending the Women's Medical College in Chicago — one of fewer than 1,000 medical students in all of America and among the very few non-white women in US medicine. She finished her coursework, then Northwestern's trustees declared 'women cannot grasp surgery' and revoked her qualification.

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