Sophia (born 1815). After the death of her second child, Henry, of whooping cough, Sherwood began to consider converting to evangelical Christianity. The missionary Henry Martyn (after whom she had named her sixth child) finally convinced her, but it was the chaplain to the company who first made her aware of her "human depravity" and need for redemption. After her conversion, she was anxious to pursue evangelical missionary work in India, but she first had to persuade the East India Company that its policy of religious neutrality was ill-conceived. The social and political support for missionary programmes in Britain eventually persuaded the company to approve her endeavours. Sherwood set up schools for the children of army officers and for the local Indian children attached to the camp. They were often taught in her home because no buildings were available. The first school began with 13 children and grew to over 40, with pupils ranging from the very young to adolescents; uneducated soldiers attended at times. Sherwood discovered that traditional British teaching materials did not appeal to children raised in India and so wrote her own Indian and army-themed stories, such as The History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814) and The Memoirs of Sergeant Dale, his Daughter and the Orphan Mary (1815). Sherwood adopted neglected or orphaned children from the camp. In 1807 she adopted a three-year-old who had been given too much medicinal gin and in 1808 a malnourished two-year-old. She found homes for those she could not adopt and founded an orphanage. In 1816, on medical advice, she and her family returned to Britain. Sherwood relates in her autobiography that she was continually ill in India; it was believed at the time that neither she nor her children could survive in a tropical climate. Return to Britain and death When the Sherwoods returned to Britain, they were financially strapped. Captain Sherwood, having been put on half-pay, opened a school in Henwick, Worcestershire. Relying on her fame as an author and her teaching experience in India, Sherwood decided to establish a boarding school for girls in Wick; it remained in operation for eight years. She taught English, French, astronomy, history, geography, grammar, writing and arithmetic. At the same time, she wrote hundreds of tracts, novels, and other works for children and the poor, increasing her popularity in both the United States and Britain. The History of Henry Milner