Irene Mott Bose

Irene Mott Bose (18 September 1899 – 22 December 1974), known socially as Mrs. Vivian Bose, was an American-born social worker and writer based in India, and the wife of Indian Supreme Court justice Vivian Bose.

Irene Mott Bose
Born
Irene Mott

18 September 1899
Wooster, Ohio
Died22 December 1974 (1974-12-23) (aged 75)
Nagpur, India
SpouseVivian Bose
ParentJohn Mott

Early life and education

Irene Mott was born in Wooster, Ohio, the daughter of John R. Mott and Leila Ada White Mott. Her father, a Christian pastor and writer, won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1946; her mother was a teacher.[1] Her older brother, John Livingstone Mott, received the Kaisar-i‐Hind silver medal in 1931, for his work with the YMCA in India.[2] Her younger brother, Frederick Dodge Mott, worked in healthcare planning in Canada, and was Canada's representative to the World Health Organization.[3]

Irene Mott graduated from Vassar College in 1922, with further studies in public health and health education at Harvard University and Columbia University.[4]

Career

Soon after graduating from college, Mott went to India to work with her brother, who was a missionary among cotton mill workers.[5] She helped establish a school and a small hospital,[6] and set up a training program for social workers in Nagpur.[7][8] She and her husband made an anthropological study of a nomadic group, the Rabari people of Kutch, from 1969 to 1973.[9]

Bose wrote two children's books about India, The Monkey Tree (1956)[10] and Totaram: The Story of a Village Boy in India Today (1933).[11] An excerpt of Totaram was included in an American school reader, Roads to Everywhere (1961), as "When Totaram Washed the Elephant."[12] She donated some of her father's papers to the Centre of South Asian Studies at Cambridge,[13] where her papers were also, eventually, archived.[14]

Personal life

Mott married judge Vivian Bose in 1930.[15] They had a son, Christopher, and a daughter, Leila. When Christopher was a toddler, the Boses traveled as a family by car, with her sister and his sister, from India to Albania.[16] She died in 1974, aged 75 years.[4] In 2006, a collection of her letters and diaries was published as An American Memsahib in India: The Letters and Diaries of Irene Mott Bose 1920-1951.[17] There are 13 folders of photographs and other materials related to Irene and Vivian Bose's studies of the Rabari people in the Walter Fairservis Papers at Penn Libraries.[9]

References
  1. "Mrs. John Mott, Wife of Religious Leader". The New York Times. 30 September 1952. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  2. "John Mott, Headed International Unit". The New York Times. 21 July 1973. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  3. Houston, C. Stuart. "Frederick Dodge Mott". The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  4. "Irene Bose, Aided Villages in India". The New York Times. 27 December 1974. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  5. Edmonds Mary D. (1947). Wonder and Laughter - Teachers Guide. Silver Burdett Company, New York. p. 82 – via Internet Archive.
  6. Rao, Mary C. (6 April 1975). "A Home Away from Home". Akashvani. 11: 602.
  7. Kabadi Waman P. (1937). Indian Whos Who 1937-38. p. 110 – via Internet Archive.
  8. "Social Work in India". Poughkeepsie Miscellany News. 9 March 1938. p. 5. Retrieved 25 November 2021 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  9. "Walter A. Fairservis papers, 1989-1994". Penn Libraries. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  10. Bose, Irene Mott (1956). The Monkey Tree. Dodd, Mead.
  11. Wells, Mary E. (November 1933). "Asiatic Cousins: Review of Totaram". Vassar Quarterly. 18: 394.
  12. Russell, David Harris; Gates, Doris; McCullough, Constance M. (1961). Roads to everywhere. Internet Archive. Boston : Ginn.
  13. "Mott Papers". Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  14. "Bose Papers". Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  15. "Class of 1922". Poughkeepsie Vassar Alumnae Quarterly. 1 February 1931. p. 87. Retrieved 25 November 2021 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  16. "Class of 1922". Poughkeepsie Vassar Alumnae Quarterly. 1 July 1935. p. 82. Retrieved 25 November 2021 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  17. Bose, Irene Mott (2006). An American memsahib in India : the letters and diaries of Irene Mott Bose, 1920-1951. Patricia Owens, British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. London: BACSA. ISBN 978-0-907799-85-6. OCLC 81249146.
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