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Irene Mott Bose

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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

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.

Early life and education

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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

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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

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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

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  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. ^ a b "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. ^ a b "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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