Dame Mary Ann Dacomb Scharlieb, DBE (née Bird; 18 June 1845 – 21 November 1930) was a pioneer British female physician and gynaecologist in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. She had worked in India and by her persistence she returned to the UK to become a qualified doctor. She returned to Madras and eventually lectured in London. She was the first woman to be elected to the honorary visiting staff of a hospital in the UK and one of the most distinguished women in medicine of her generation. Biography Raised by her grandparents, following her mother's death, in a strict Evangelical Christian household, she attended a boarding school in Manchester, then to one in New Brighton, and finally at Mrs Tyndall's School at 16 Upper Hamilton Terrace in London. Hers was a conventional middle-class upbringing. Aged 19, she met William Scharlieb, "who was engaged in eating his dinners at the Middle Temple, preparatory to his call to the Bar and subsequent practice in Madras as a barrister". His initial marriage proposal in February 1865 was met with prompt parental opposition. Mary persisted and eventually the marriage took place in December 1865, and the couple sailed for India almost at once. While in Madras, Scharlieb learned about the lack of medical services for women's gynaecological health and during childbirth, making the birth process dangerous. This situation motivated her to gain medical experience, and she was allowed to train as a pupil midwife. She then wanted to attend medical school. However, her husband did not want her to leave their young family to study in England, where women were starting to gain entrance into medical schools. In 1875, she entered medical school one of the first four women students at the Madras Medical College. In three years she gained her Licentiate in Medicine, surgery, and midwifery. She set sail to return to England with her children, old enough by then to travel, in a small ship, her eyes fixed on a degree in medicine. Part of her motivation in returning to England was to organize a female-staffed medical service to India. English institutions were more amenable to training women in medicine who would serve elsewhere, and it would also benefit the women in India. Upon her return to England in 1878, she called on Dr (Mrs) Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the only qualified medical woman until 1877, who had recently started the London