8/22/2023 0 Comments British socialite 1910![]() Instead, she wrote to a number of prominent organisations requesting help and received a tremendous positive response from British dignitaries including Florence Nightingale, who petitioned to allow her to attend. But despite being the first female graduate of Bombay University and meeting the entrance requirements of Oxford University, she was still denied a place.īut Sorabji did not give up. Born in 1866 in India, after hearing the story of how an elderly lady had been swindled out of her land by her grandson, her mother advised her that if she really wanted to help women, she should study law. Yet it wasn’t an easy road to the university. Sorabji is one of the first female south Asian barristers (although she was never actually called to the bar) and was also the first woman to sit the law exams after studying law at the University of Oxford. Fortunately, in her lifetime Singh saw the enactment of the Representation of the People Act, which allowed women over the age of 30 to vote and her later trips to India boosted the cause of female suffrage in the country. ![]() During World War 1, she joined a 10,000-woman strong protest march against the prohibition of a volunteer female force and served as a British Red Cross nurse where she tended to the wounds of Indian soldiers in Britain. She became a leading member of the women’s right to vote movement, using her title and position to lead meetings, protest and sell newspapers on the streets and using her wealth to fund suffragette groups. Upon her return, Singh joined the Women’s Social and Political Union which included suffragettes like Emmeline Pankhurst. Although Singh first lived as a socialite, attending parties, breeding dogs and pursuing hobbies, following a trip to India where she saw abject poverty and realised the scale of the empire her family had lost to the British, she was a changed woman. When Sophia came of age, she was given an apartment in Hampton Court Palace by her godmother, Queen Victoria. ![]() Her father, Maharaja Duleep Singh was forced to abdicate the Sikh kingdom and exiled to the UK at 15.
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