Jellett, Eva Josephine

Jellett, Eva Josephine (1868–1958), doctor, was born 6 January 1868 at 40 Wellington Row, Dublin, youngest daughter of John Hewitt Jellett (qv), clergyman, mathematician, and provost of TCD, and Dora Charlotte Jellett (née Morgan; 1823–1911) of Tivoli, Co. Cork. Educated at home by German governesses and at Alexandra College, she was among the earliest group of female students admitted to attend courses at the Catholic University School of Medicine in Cecilia St., Dublin (she registered as a matriculated student in 1897); however, she transferred to TCD in 1904 when women students were admitted to the college for the first time. On receiving her MB (September 1905), she became Dublin University's first female graduate in medicine. After a brief period employed as clinical clerk in the Coombe Hospital, Dublin (at which time she was living in her mother's home in Lower Leeson St.), she moved to India in 1906 to work with the Dublin University Mission in Hazaribagh. She was the first female doctor attached to the mission; her arrival coincided with plans to found a women's hospital, which she ran from 1908. In 1912 she was appointed head associate, and as such had control over all the mission's female staff in India. This work was only briefly interrupted by a period working at the British military hospital in Bombay in 1917. Having stepped down as head associate in 1923, she retired the following year, and on leaving India lived for some time in Switzerland before finally settling in Gorranhaven, St Austell, Cornwall, c.1938. She died there 1 December 1958.