Haimabati Sen

Haimabati Sen (1866 – 5 August 1933)^[1] born Haimabati Ghosh, was an Indian physician.

Haimabati Sen
Born	Haimabati Ghosh 1866 Kulna district, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died	5 August 1933
Other names	Haimabati Ghosh Mitra Sen
Occupation	Physician
Spouse	Kunjabihari Sen (m.1890)

Early life

Haimabati Ghosh was born in the Khulna district, Bengal Presidency (now Bangladesh). Her father was a zamindar, a wealthy member of the Kulin Kayastha caste.^[2] As a very young widow, she trained as a teacher in Benares. After her second marriage, she attended the Campbell Medical College in Calcutta,^[3][4] and graduated at the top of her class in 1894.^[5]

Career

Sen was a physician at the Lady Dufferin Women's Hospital in Hooghly from 1894 to 1910,^[3][6] and had a private practice in Chinsurah, until her death in the early 1930s.^[5] She wrote a "valuable"^[2] memoir in the 1920s, detailing her own struggles and her concerns for all young women: "Do I have to suffer all this simply because I am a woman? Would anyone have inflicted so much suffering on a man? Why are they so worried as to whose wife I am or whose daughter?"^[2] Her memoir was translated from Bengali and published in English many years later, in 2000.^[7]

Personal life

Haimabati Ghosh married twice. She was first married at age 9, to a widower with two daughters; a year later, she was a child widow. Without the support of her husband, parents, brothers, or in-laws, she sought assistance at a widows' house in Benares, and joined the Brahmo Samaj community.^{[citation needed]} In 1890, she married again, to Kunjabehari Sen. They had five children together. Haimabati Sen died in 1932 (or 1933),^[8] in her sixties.^[5]