Irene Petrie, Born 1864
MISSIONARY IN INDIA
Irene Eleanora Verita Petrie was a British missionary who died in Kashmir on the Indian subcontinent in 1897. Her father was a Colonel in the army. She was educated at home and then attended Notting Hill High School for Girls before taking the Cambridge Higher examination. She was presented at court in 1885. She decided to be a missionary but her father forbade it. He died in 1892 and her sister encouraged her to fulfill her ambition. The Church Missionary Society trained her in Stoke Newington and she was bound for Lahore in October 1893. She was initially a volunteer at the St Hilda's Diocesan Home which cared for the Christian poor. The following year she moved to the CMS's Kashmir mission in Srinagar where she improved her language skills. In 1895 she was sent back to England to rally support for their work. She was accepted as a full missionary and returned to Srinagar. She taught children and visited Indian women in their own homes. The British had built three churches and Petrie found that she preferred the service in Urdu at one church to the one delivered in English. Petrie died in Leh in 1897 from a fever. Her sister, Mary Louisa Georgina Petrie Carus-Wilson, wrote her biography which went to several editions.
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Source: This biography of Irene Petrie by her sister was archived in 2021, with acknowledgement and thanks, from the www.missiology.org.uk website.