Twenty women are in the grainy photograph — in saris, dresses or nuns’ habits — presumably taken in the early 1940s, outside the Woman and Child Hospital in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram. Among them is the familiar figure of Dr Mary Poonen Lukose, celebrated as India’s first female Surgeon General. Around her are doctors, nurses, and — to the surprise of the man who found the photograph — several white nuns, understood to be German-speaking Swiss nurses.
What were they doing here in Kerala when a war was raging across the world, he wondered. Little did he know the photo would unravel a little-known chapter in the history of nursing in Kerala.
Retired professor P Vijaya Kumar discovered the photograph during a visit to his aunt, Sobha Ramakrishnan, in Thrissur. One of the women in the picture was Sobha’s mother, Dr Kunjulakshmy, standing right above Dr Mary Poonen. After consulting with his friend and renowned historian Robin Jeffrey, Vijaya Kumar dated the photo to the 1940s, likely taken during Dr Mary’s retirement in January 1942.
His aunt gave him the names of the other doctors in the picture – Dr Meenakshi Amma, Dr Chellamma, Dr Gomez, Dr Thankamma, Dr Daisy Vedakkana, and Dr Kamalamma.
But the identities of the nuns remained a mystery — until he spoke about it to Dr Amar Fettle, the state nodal officer for adolescent health at the National Health Mission. Dr Amar said that Swiss nuns had come to Kerala in the early 1900s to provide nursing services, and that two convents built for them still existed within the General Hospital and the Thycaud Woman and Child Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.
Strolling through the compound of the GH, which you don’t expect to stretch so much, a faded sign on a muddied fence reads: Holy Cross Sisters Quarters. From there, a small uphill leads to the nunnery that Dr Amar Fettle mentioned. It is beautiful the way old tiled houses are, with blue grill doors and a nice little compound decked with a garden that the resident nuns like to take care of. Six nuns live there now, five of them nurses in service at the government hospital, and the sixth, a retired nurse called Theres Martin.
“I am the oldest here,” Sr Theres tells TNM. “I stay on to accompany the young woman who lives here and does odd jobs.” As she speaks, the woman is nearby, sweeping the compound, which ends in an overgrown yard where a tree planted by the first Swiss nuns still stands tall.
The building has been great, not a leak in it for 116 years, says Sr Theres. However, she is perturbed by the placement of gigantic water tanks just outside the building, blocking the way for anyone wanting to visit or go out of the nunnery.
Occupying, of all places, a part of the General Hospital compound, the nunnery comes as a surprise. Few seem to know of its existence, but Sr Theres says it has been there since 1909, to house the first batch of Swiss nuns who came here on the invitation of the King of Travancore. The Sisters, she says, had come to Kerala three years before that, in 1906. “The story I heard is that they arrived in Kottiyam, Kollam, where we now have our provincial house, and then moved to Thiruvananthapuram, where they stayed under the care of the Maharani, before this building was built,” Sr Theres says.
Moolam Thirunal, who had ruled Travancore at the time, got in touch with Bishop [Aloysius Maria] Benziger, a Swiss Catholic priest and missionary who had served in Kollam at the time. This part of the story is shared by Sr Reshmi, a nun and nurse residing at the Thycaud nunnery — the other convent Dr Amar told us about.
This too is a well-kept tiled house, surrounded on all sides by a flower yard. On a wall inside are the photos of the Bishop, the king, and the last German Sister who passed away – Francis Xavier. “The king had sought the Bishop’s help for bringing nursing services to Travancore, when there was a huge rise in smallpox cases. Young women in Kerala were not, at the time, encouraged to do nursing. So the Bishop arranged for six nuns of the Holy Cross [congregation] to come to Kerala in 1906. When they began a nursing school, girls from Kerala began to join the course. The nursing school in GH is the first in the state,” she says.
There is also allusion to the nurses in an autobiography of Dr Mary Poonen, Trailblazer, put together from her writings by Leena Chandran. She quotes Dr Mary from the book: “I liked the company of the European nursing sisters in the Hospital and moved closely with them. They were very considerate to me, and the love and affection they showed me endeared them to me in a special way and I responded with feelings equally fond and ingenuous.”
Dr Mary and her group of European Sisters had once worked in the Thycaud hospital, and the photograph of her with the Swiss nuns was likely taken there.
Madelaine Healey’s Indian Sisters: A History of Nursing and the State (1907 - 2007) corroborates the nuns’ account. She writes that the Swiss Sisters were invited by the Maharaja of Travancore, to supply nursing services at the GH and to run a school of nursing.
Madelaine also writes that, until after India won independence, the main facility for training nurses was the school started in GH, at which “often unqualified Swiss nuns gave Indian women the most basic training.”
However, an anecdote passed on by Dr Kunjulakshmy, Prof Vijaya Kumar’s great aunt, says how the nurses had been exceptionally good and how, once, when she became unwell, they looked after her with great care.
Nuns are believed to have migrated until Independence, Sr Theres says, stressing that these are all hearsay, passed onto her by a German nun called Sr Sebastina. “I met her when I joined Holy Cross in 1972. She would tell stories about the nuns spending time with Maharani, how well they were taken care of, and how she sang German lullabies to the little prince Avittam Thirunal.”
Nuns from Switzerland mostly stopped coming after Independence, says Sr Theres. Only one remaining Swiss nun is alive but not keeping well — Sr Waltrudiz, who is being taken care of in the Kottiyam House. “The other Sister was Francis Xavier, the German nun [whose photo is at the nunnery], who passed away from COVID-19,” Sr Reshmi says.
After the European Sisters stopped coming, Indian followers of the Holy Cross continued the service. Sr Reshmi says there are 20 nuns in service in four government hospitals now, all of them working for an honorarium of Rs 11,500 a month. There was news of this being increased to Rs 19,000, but that is yet to happen, says Sr Theres.
The story of the Swiss nuns and the beginning of nursing in Kerala resonates with another tale, concerning American missionaries and a nursing school in Bihar. Professor Vijaya Kumar, who made the connection from Jyoti Thottam’s book Sisters of Mokama writes about it here.