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LILIAN WFXSH, M. D., LL. D.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY
YEARS IN BALTIMORE
REMINISCENCES
OF THIRTY YEARS
IN BALTIMORE
By LILIAN WELSH, M. D., LL D.
ILLUSTRATED WITH
SIX PHOTOGRAPHS
1925
THE NORMAN, REMINGTON CO.
BALTIMORE
Copyright, 1925, by
THE NORMAN, REMINGTON CO.
Published December, 1925
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTORY xi
CHAPTER I. — Observations on Secondary Education for Girls in
Baltimore, 1892-1900.— Physical Education 1
CHAPTER n. — Opportunities for College and University Educa-
tion of Women in Baltimore, 1892-1916. — Baltimore Associa-
tion for the Promotion of University Education of Women... 16
CHAPTER HI. — Baltimore's Great Contribution to Medical Educa-
tion with Special Reference to the Medical Education of
Women 31
CHAPTER IV.— Medical Experiences in Baltimore, 1892-1924.—
Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls 48
CHAPTER V. — The Woman's Club Movement in Baltimore. — The
Arundell Club, The Arundell Good Government Club, The
Maryland State Federation of Women's Clubs 62
CHAPTER VI.— Women's Activities in Public Health.— The Tuber-
culosis Commission. — The Vice Commission. — Child Welfare.
— Food Conservation. — Clean Milk 79
CHAPTER VII. — Personal Experiences in the Suffrage Campaign.. 98
CHAPTER VIII. — Personal Experiences as a Member of the Goucher
College Faculty 114
CHAPTER IX. — Personal Experiences with Goucher College
Students 140
CHAPTER X.— Conclusion 160
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Lilian Welsh, M. D., LL. D Frontispiece
Page
Lilian Welsh and Mary Sherwood, as Students at the University of
Ziirich, 1892 50
Dr. Lilian Welsh and Dr. Mary Sherwood 82
Photographs of the Suffrage Parade, March 3, and the Inauguration
Parade, March 4, 1913, Showing Contrasts in Police Pro-
tection 112
Goucher College 134
Future Campus of Goucher College at Towson, Maryland 156
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY
YEARS IN BALTIMORE
INTRODUCTORY
From time to time my students in Goucher College
have asked me to put into some permanent form the
personal experiences and observations from which I
drew many illustrations to emphasize special points in
my course with them in personal and public hygiene.
One year ago, when I talked informally to the Alumnae
Council I said I should employ some of the leisure com-
ing to me with my retirement from active connection
with Goucher College in writing reminiscences of my
life in Baltimore, covering as it has a very interesting
period in the history of the education of women, of
their political enfranchisement, of their organizations,
and of their part in the applications of the principles of
hygiene to social ills. In the year that has passed I have
been asked a number of times about the book I had
promised the Goucher Alumnae. I should probably
have returned to Baltimore without any attempt at keep-
ing this promise had not a combination of circumstances
in the last week thrown me so completely on my own
resources that I took to my pad and pencil as a last re-
sort for amusement and diversion. I arrived at this
charming resort on Lake Maggiore in the rain. For five
days and nights it rained almost without intermission,
sometimes gently when we ventured out of doors, but
mostly in torrents which kept us under shelter. Walk-
ing, motoring, lake trips were impossible and no books
were available for reading. I have, therefore, spent
several hours each day in writing what has proved so
interesting to me that I venture to pass it on to the alum-
nae as a contribution to their share of the Greater
Goucher Fund. If its publication and sale yields nothing
there will be at least no loss to the fund. As its contents
may be of interest not only to my Goucher students, but
to that large body of women of Maryland with whose or-
ganizations I have had so much pleasure in working, I
have ventured to dedicate the small volume to these two
groups of women — to my Goucher students and to the
women of Maryland with whom I have worked and
with whom I have seen some of our dreams come true.
Baveno, Italy, June 1, 1925.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY
YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Chapter I
Observations on Secondary Education for Girls in Balti-
more, 1892-1900 — Physical Education
On the 22d of February, 1892, I arrived in Balti-
more to join my friend. Dr. Mary Sherwood, in an at-
tempt to establish ourselves in the practice of medicine.
Dr. Sherwood had come to Baltimore fourteen months
previously to join members of her family temporarily
resident in Baltimore, while her brother was completing
his graduate work in the Johns Hopkins University. Her
family had departed and left her in a lonely office, but
she had found herself in the stimulating atmosphere of
the pre-medical-school days of the Johns Hopkins Hos-
pital when anyone, man or woman, able to work in medi-
cal laboratories or to profit in medical wards, and de-
sirous of doing so, was made welcome to a share in the
most stimulating medical companionship that possibly
our country has ever known. We regard it as a lucky
chance which took us to Baltimore at that particular
time. Neither of us was quite convinced that we wanted
even to try to practice medicine. We had both been edu-
cated for the profession of teaching and had served an
apprenticeship as teachers before we were drawn to
medicine primarily by our interest in science. Our inter-
est in education, and especially in the education of girls
2 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
and women, was naturally keen and we made early con-
tacts in Baltimore with women interested in advancing
opportunities for women's education.
At that time the standard school for girls of genteel
families in the city of Baltimore was the finishing school
or the young ladies' seminary. The high schools were
looked upon as places for girls who could not afford
to pay for their education, or as places for "females"
who were unfortunate enough to be compelled to teach
school, or to earn a living in some way that needed at
least a modicum of education. A little more than fif-
teen years after the Bryn Mawr School appeared on
the Baltimore horizon, the old-fashioned boarding and
day school for educating young ladies had disappeared
and the high schools were preparing girls for college
and otherwise giving them a liberal education.
It would be difficult to estimate the influence of the
Bryn Mawr School for Girls upon the advancement of
educational opportunities for women in Baltimore. It
was a direct assault upon the intrenched prejudices of
a conservative community as to what constituted a fitting
education for its daughters. College education was
taboo. So far as I can ascertain previous to the found-
ing of this school for girls, primarily intended as a col-
lege preparatory school, only two native Baltimore
women had obtained college degrees from any standard
institution.
In the same year that the Bryn Mawr School was
opened the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church had taken action to establish in Baltimore
a college for women. When the Woman's College of
Baltimore, now Goucher College, opened its doors it
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 3
was obliged to begin its career on a non-collegiate basis,
receiving as students those whose preparation for col-
lege must be completed in so-called college classes;
otherwise it could receive few students from Baltimore.
Subsequently when it was able to exclude from its col-
lege classes students preparing for college entrance it
was found necessary to carry on a college preparatory
school, the Girl's Latin School, for ten or twelve years
until the Eastern and Western High Schools were able
to prepare students to meet college entrance require-
ments.
I have often heard Dr. Goucher say that when the
Woman's College opened for the reception of students
the only girls from Baltimore public schools who could
have passed the entrance examinations were those gradu-
ated from the colored high school. The reason for this,
he said, was that the colored voters demanded that their
boys should have opportunities for education equal to
those of white boys in the City College, and as the col-
ored high school was coeducational the girls could get
there a kind of education not available to girls in the
Eastern and Western High Schools.
It is to be hoped that someone who knows the his-
tory of the Bryn Mawr School from its beginning will
permanently record an adequate description of its found-
ing and its founders. I am merely trying to record my
own observations and inferences. In 1892, when I came
to Baltimore to reside, I found what to me was unique
in my experience of secondary schools for girls. Here
was a beautiful building, built for school purposes,
adequately equipped not only with the ordinary school
appliances, but with an esthetic setting lacking in any
4 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
school I had hitherto seen, a curriculum designed to
make girls work their minds, arranged in orderly se-
quence leading to a definite end; a staff of teachers, all
college graduates, carefully chosen and well paid. As
a teacher eager for the improvement of conditions for
the education of girls it was a great joy to find such a
school; as a physician, however, who was seeing the
dawn of the era of preventive medicine one department
of this school made an especial appeal. I found an old
acquaintance of mine. Dr. Kate Campbell Hurd, in the
position of medical director of this school. Dr. Hurd
had been selected by the Board of the school and had
been required to make special preparation for this posi-
tion by study and observation in the United States and
Europe. She was brought to Baltimore for the special
object of doing health work in the school. She was not
a Baltimore physician who snatched a few hours of a
busy day from the practice of medicine to devote to
seeing children referred to her by some more or less
observant teacher. She was engaged by the school to
devote her time primarily to the study of the health
needs of the children of the school, and was permitted
to practice medicine only in so far as it did not inter-
fere with her school duties. This was pioneer work in
medical inspection, and so far as I know was the first
time a secondary school either for boys or for girls had
made adequate provision for such work.
The same year Dr. Hurd came to Baltimore as medi-
cal director to the Bryn Mawr School, Dr. Alice Hall
was called to the Woman's College of Baltimore to lay
the foundations of preventive health work in a woman's
college. This, too, was pioneer work. Physicians had
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
been attached to schools and colleges before this time,
but their duty was primarily to care for the sick. In
these two schools in Baltimore the physicians were em-
ployed for an entirely different purpose. At the Wom-
an's College it was not thought advisable to put the care
of the resident students when they were sick in the hands
of a woman physician. Dr. Goucher told me this when
I became associated with the college six years after Dr.
Hall had inaugurated her work. He said the resident
students came from all parts of the country and their
parents might not be satisfied to feel that they were in
the care of a woman physician. The Bryn Mawr School
had no provision for resident, boarding pupils. All
pupils came from well-to-do families in Baltimore, hav-
ing their own physicians, so that the medical school
work was designed to be exclusively preventive and cor-
rective.
There was, of course, opposition to this health work
and the methods instituted to carry it on both from par-
ents and from physicians on the usual ground of inter-
ference with personal liberty, that is the liberty of the in-
dividual to enjoy poor health unmolested, or to dissemi-
nate disease to others. I remember well the letter an irate
father wrote to the President of the Woman's College
after I had made a physical examination of his daugh-
ter. He said if he sent his daughter to school in clean
clothes it was no one's business to make any further in-
quiries about her health; his own physician would at-
tend to that. Dr. Sherwood in her early experience as
medical director of Bryn Mawr School had many de-
pressing encounters with family physicians as well as
with parents in her earnest efforts to prevent physical
6 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
deformity and correct physical defects. Both at the
Bryn Mawr School and Goucher College, however, the
authorities have always been in thorough sympathy with
all measures and methods recommended by their medi-
cal directors for the prevention of disease and the pro-
motion of health, and have fearlessly carried them out.
Health supervision of some kind has today become such
a sine qua non in connection with schools that it is diffi-
cult to realize that it made its way so slowly and with
so much opposition.
More than thirty years passed after the Bryn Mawr
School and the Woman's College had inaugurated
methods of health supervision for their students before
the Eastern and Western High School girls had any
similar provision. In 1921 a school nurse was assigned
to each of these schools, and in 1922 a woman doctor
was attached to them to make medical examinations. It
is to be hoped that thorough-going courses in modern
hygiene may soon form part of the required courses for
all our high school girls. Medical examinations of chil-
dren and follow-up work by school nurses was begun
in primary schools much earlier, about 1906.
When under its new charter Baltimore obtained a
small and efficient school board, Mr. Joseph Packard,
President of the Board, called on Dr. Sherwood and
me to discuss possible physical examinations of pros-
pective teachers for the Baltimore public schools.
The public health campaign for the study and preven-
tion of tuberculosis was in its first stage. This was the
first great public health educational movement in our
country systematically undertaken, and under its stimu-
lus the supervision of health in schools, industrial es-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 7
tablishments, etc., made steady progress. Mr. Packard
explained that the Board had taken action requiring that
prospective teachers for the schools must be free from
physical disabilities that would interfere with their work
as teachers. He asked if we would be willing to ex-
amine the young women applicants for teachers' posi-
tions. He explained that the Board did not desire a
complete medical examination such as was made for
life insurance, and that the compensation would be a
nominal sum. The commercial side of medicine never
made a sufficient appeal to Dr. Sherwood and myself
and we thought not at all of the compensation offered,
but were glad of the opportunity to increase the num-
ber of observations we could make on the health of
young women, and the opportunities offered to stimu-
late in teachers an interest in all health problems as
well as to try to give them a sane and sensible attitude
toward their own health. We have always looked upon
a physical and medical examination as an opportunity
to get at the personal attitude of the girl as to her health
and to try to change it if desirable.
I have never ceased to be surprised at the permanent
impression often left by a chance word or sentence
used during these examinations. As I meet my for-
mer students of Goucher College years after they have
graduated, one of the commonest forms of greeting is:
"Oh, Dr. Welsh, I have never forgotten something you
said to me when you examined me;" and, strange to say,
no two girls seem to remember the same thing.
Appointed in Mayor Hayes' administration, from
then until 1923, when the examinations of prospec-
tive teachers were taken over by the Health Depart-
H REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
merit, Dr. Sherwood and I examined all candidates for
teaching positions. At first, until traditions had been
established, we occasionally found difficulty in breaking
down the opposition and securing the co-operation of the
girls we examined. I remember one girl, sullen and
resentful at being compelled to undergo what she evi-
dently considered an ordeal and a violation of her per-
sonal liberty. When questioned about her personal
hygienic habits they all seemed pretty bad, and, at last,
in spite of all the tact I could use she broke out angrily
telling me that I was impertinent, that it was none of my
business as to how she ate and slept and what kind of
clothes she wore. I told her what she said was quite
true, that the School Board simply required me to cer-
tify that she had no contagious disease and no physical
disability that would prevent her from teaching, but that
I felt quite confident the time would come when a young
woman who had the attitude she expressed towards all
questions of health would be regarded as a greater
menace in the schools than one who had certain physical
disabilities. Gradually the candidates themselves, I
think, came to look on these examinations as helpful
and as giving them an opportunity to talk over very
freely with a woman physician questions of the most
intimate nature upon which they desired to have some
authoritative statement.
As a whole, in later years these physical examinations
of high school graduates showed that few girls entered
the training school with marked physical disabilities.
We were able, however, to secure needed attention to
adenoids, tonsils and bad teeth by refusing to pass stu-
dents physically who did not have such defects reme-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 9
died within a certain given time, I remember saying
once to a Goucher student from Baltimore, in her senior
year, whose tonsils were a constant source of depressed
health and whom I could not persuade to have them
removed: "Well, it is a pity you did not go into the
training school instead of coming to college; then I
wouldn't have passed you to graduation until you had
had those offensive organs removed." "Yes," said she,
"I know that. You got my sister's out." "Is her health
better?" I asked. "Yes, indeed," she said, "but I can't
bear the idea." "Better bear the idea than the tonsils,"
I urged.
At the same time that Dr. Sherwood and I were asked
to serve as examiners for the School Board we were
asked to serve in a similar capacity for the Teachers'
Retirement Fund Board, and from its beginning we have
examined the women teachers who have been retired. I
remember well the first group that presented themselves,
three women all, I think, over seventy-five years of age,
and all able to do their day's work — a healthy trio. On
general principles I have always certified that in my
opinion a woman over seventy might be retired for phy-
sical incapacity even though ordinary clinical methods
could find no decided disability. I remember seeing in
my office one hot afternoon a woman of eighty who had
walked from Lombard and Green Streets to Charles and
Mount Royal Avenue. She was a teacher of sewing
and thought it time for her to retire. She had no
marked disability that would have prevented her con-
tinuing teaching sewing, but I gave her the required
certificate stating the exact truth. The following Sep-
10 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
tember she was back asking for reinstatment. It was
during war time and the supply of teachers was short.
After the first few years the entire work for the Re-
tirement Board fell to me, and I had all my communi-
cations with the Board through Miss Mollie Hobbs, its
efficient secretary. For years I knew Miss Hobbs only
through letters and telephone conferences, and I learned
to have great regard for her sympathetic attitude and
friendly helpfulness to the teachers of advancing years
and those who suffered from illness. Some of the most
pathetic cases my profession as a physician has brought
me in contact with, I have found among these teach-
ers grown old or disabled in a service hitherto so illy
paid that provision, by themselves unaided, for sickness
and old age has been impossible.
Somewhat to our surprise, Dr. Sherwood and I found
the public school system of Baltimore seemed behind
those which we knew most about in states north of Mary-
land. In 1893 a friend of Dr. Sherwood's, a wealthy
woman from New York State, accustomed to spend the
winter months in the South, decided to take residence in
Baltimore in order to put her son into the public schools.
Her husband in his lifetime had insisted upon sending
the children to public schools, and she was anxious to
put her youngest son in a good public school. She as-
sumed she would find schools of high grade in a city of
the size and importance of Baltimore. She and Dr.
Sherwood tried to visit the school to which her boy
would be assigned and were refused admission. Appli-
cation to the Superintendent's office disclosed the rule
that visitors were not welcome in the schools and could
not be admitted except by special permission from the
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 11
Superintendent's office. This visit to the Superintendent
decided the lady that it would be to the advantage of
her son to place him in one of the good private schools
for boys in Baltimore.
I remember well with what indignation a professor
at Goucher College, from the State of Massachusetts,
told me in 1894 he had been refused admittance to the
school where his children were pupils. The reason as-
signed for the closed door was that shortly before the
Baltimore schools had won unenviable notoriety in a
widely published report on their inefficiency.
Subsequently in 1897 I had for a limited time op-
portunity of freely visiting the schools and gaining di-
rect information about them. When Mr. Alcaeus
Hooper was elected Mayor of Baltimore he offended his
political friends and astonished his enemies by a radi-
cal change in the kind of appointments he made to pub-
lic boards. In addition to selecting his appointees for
their fitness rather than for political influence he, for
the first time in the history of the city, appointed women
to public boards. One morning in January, 1897, Dr.
Sherwood, who, with Miss Kate McLane, had already
been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Poor,
now called Supervisors of City Charities, reading aloud
to me the headlines in the local news of the Baltimore
Sun read: "Mayor Hooper has appointed a new school
board." "Good," I said. "He has appointed a woman."
"Better," I said. "Why, he has appointed you." My
breath being taken away by this surprising statement I
made no further comment.
The School Board at that time consisted of as many
members as there were councilmanic districts in the
12 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
city, about twenty-three, I think, and the councilman of
the district usually, I was told, controlled the appoint-
ment. The school system was undoubtedly deeply in
politics. Mr. Hooper had served as a school commis-
sioner for many years and knew the situation thor-
oughly. He was determined, I think, to completely re-
form the entire system. He thought with the advice of
the city solicitor that the law could be interpreted as
giving the Mayor the right to appoint a new board. The
personnel of the Board had been carefully chosen. On
the afternoon of the day the appointments had been an-
nounced Mr. Hooper came to the Woman's College
and in the President's room he administered the oath of
office to my colleague. Dr. Joseph Shefloe, who had been
named a member of the Board from the twenty-second
or twenty-third ward, and to me, who was to represent
the eighth ward. He asked us to come to the City Hall at
eight o'clock that evening when he proposed that the new
Board should take possession of the School Board offices,
its books and records. These offices were then in the
City Hall and I remember well that, after we had
all assembled in the Mayor's office, we marched, a
silent group, through silent halls as if to storm a pro-
tected fortress. The Mayor's plans, however, had been
laid carefully, the Secretary of the old board had been
won over with his keys, and we found ourselves in pos-
session of the offices without opposition. President
Gilman of the Johns Hopkins University was imme-
diately elected president of the new board and organiza-
tion was completed. We all accepted the position in the
spirit expressed by President Gilman as an opportunity
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 13
to Stand by the Mayor in the performance of a great
public duty.
I found myself occupying the seat and desk of Mr.
Michael Sheehan, my next neighbor was Mr. Daniel Mil-
ler. I was the only woman on the board and was the
subject, I suppose, of considerable curiosity. I was,
however, treated with the greatest courtesy and never
felt at all queer or out of place. Indeed I felt quite in
place, and even had I found it necessary at any time
to cross swords with my colleagues on questions of edu-
cational policy I should have done it not as a novice.
I had been trained to be a public school teacher in one
of the oldest and largest normal schools in the State of
Pennsylvania. These normal schools were coeduca-
tional and the number of men students at that time al-
ways exceeded the number of women. I had taught in
coeducational schools of all grades in my native state
and also in its normal schools. I had served for sev-
eral years as the only woman member on the Board of
Control of the Woman's College. I was accustomed to
study educational problems, to form opinions upon them
and to defend these opinions, especially where girls and
women were involved.
The tenure of Mayor Hooper's reform School Board
was, however, short. Possession may be nine points of
the law, but the courts decided that the appointment of
this board was not legal and at the end of about three
months we vacated our seats as quietly as we had taken
them.
In the months I served on this board I was enabled
to get a good knowledge of the general conditions of
14 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
the Baltimore public schools. Whatever of good or bad
there was in the system it lacked unity, co-ordination,
direction and supervision. Mayor Hooper knew the
schools well. He had served as a school commissioner
for many years and he was determined if it was within
his power to effect a complete reorganization. One of
the first committees appointed was a small committee,
of which I was a member, to consider this particular
subject. Mr. Gilman was chairman and we had many
meetings in Mayor Hooper's office with Mr. Hooper al-
ways present and always taking a leading part in the
discussions. He was determined that the boys and girls
in the public schools of Baltimore should have oppor-
tunities as good as the best in the country. Mr. Gilman
insisted that the first step was to search the country for
the best public school man that could be found and to
call him to Baltimore as Superintendent of Schools.
The soundness of such a proposition was so obvious
that we were all in agreement. I often wonder what
would have happened if Mayor Hooper's School Board
had continued in office and proceeded to carry out this
plan. What did happen subsequently when, under a new
charter and a small and efficient board, this plan was
put into operation is common history. It is not for me
to discuss the troubled and unhappy period of the tran-
sition of the public schools of Baltimore from an old to
a new order. I do not know why Mr. Hooper, who as
a member of the Board of School Commissioners was,
I think, one of the committee which eventually invited
Mr. Van Sickle to lead the schools into a promised land,
became his bitter opponent, but I have always thought
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 15
that if he had given Mr. Van Sickle his continued sup-
port the outcome of that particular historical period
would have been different. However, "when an irresis-
tible force meets with an unsurmountable obstacle,"
nothing can happen but disruption.
When the School Board, under the new charter, took
office, far from trying to keep visitors out of the schools
it attempted by a system of "school visitors" to create
a closer contact of parents and citizens with the schools.
In 1900 I was appointed on a board of visitors to the
Eastern High School, then housed very inadequately in
an old building. It had, however, sent out from its
doors many able women who have taken an active part
in all the various associations of women which have
worked in our city for social and civic betterment. By
these various direct contacts with the public schools of
Baltimore I have kept myself well informed as to the
education offered to the girls of our city. In addition
to this, I number among my good friends all of the
Goucher graduates who, as teachers in the Eastern and
Western High Schools, have had a large share in bring-
ing these schools to a high state of efficiency. It is im-
possible to estimate the influence of these high schools
for girls upon the life of the community. I often think
that no greater opportunities for social service exist than
those to be found by teachers in great high schools for
girls. To follow this thought would take an entire book.
Secondary education for girls in Baltimore has been
marked by steady progress in the thirty years I have
watched its development.
16 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Chapter II
Opportunities for College and University Education of
Women in Baltimore, 1892-1916. Baltimore
Association for the Promotion of Uni-
versity Education of Women
In 1892 a boy who desired to have as complete a gen-
eral education as was offered by any schools in our
country could secure it in Baltimore at moderate ex-
pense. He could prepare for college in the public
schools, could proceed to the Johns Hopkins University
for his college degree, availing himself of the many
scholarships offered there to boys from Baltimore and
Maryland. If he desired, he could go on to graduate
work and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in an in-
stitution which was the leader of our country in the
character of its university work.
With a Baltimore girl the case was quite different.
The community was indifferent to the collegiate educa-
tion of women and the Johns Hopkins University was
averse, if not hostile, to their university education. The
high schools could not prepare girls for college, and the
Woman's College of Baltimore had begun a precarious
existence founded on high hopes, but a very insufficient
financial basis. In order to secure students at all it
was necessary for it to offer a combined preparatory
and collegiate course which with the lack of endowment
kept this college for many years without the pale of the
standards college women themselves were setting up as
necessary for a school designated as a college.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 17
It is an interesting fact that the first systematic at-
tempt to define a standard American college was made
by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae for the pur-
pose of upholding standards for women's education.
This organization, founded in 1885, numbered among
its leaders able women of the generation that had fought
their way to college education and were determined
that a woman's college course must be the same as a
man's if it were to be considered as good as a man's.
This principle once established, then, they said, there
might be grafted upon the woman's college a curricu-
lum which might give some consideration to the de-
mand that a woman's education should include some
special preparation for her functions as a mother and
homemaker, or for some other special field of woman's
work if it could be shown that a general education failed
to give such preparation. Early in its history the As-
sociation appointed a committee to study the subject
and to draw up a definition of a standard college. How
well it did its work is evidenced by the fact that the
Carnegie Foundation practically adopted the definition
as worked out by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae
as its definition of a standard American college. While
some of the colleges which had been admitted to the
Association as charter members did not meet the re-
quirements laid down, the Association jealously guard-
ed the entrance of others of the same class. The Wom-
an's College of Baltimore, whatever other qualifications
it had or had not, lacked an endowment fund adequate
for its maintenance or sufficient to insure its perpetuity,
so for many years, even after its record for scholarship
placed it in the first rank of women's colleges, it could
18 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
not qualify for admittance to membership in the Asso-
ciation of Collegiate Alumnae.
Dr. Van Meter has long promised us a history of
Goucher College. He alone can tell us what were the
motives that led the Methodist Conference of the Balti-
more District to undertake to establish a woman's college
in a city which had no interest in the collegiate educa-
tion of women and no desire for it. Dr. Guth tells me
that he has found in some of the early literature of the
college records that the original idea was born in the
mind of a woman, a member, I think, of the First Metho-
dist Church. At any rate, it is to the Methodists that
Baltimore owes the founding in the city of a college for
women.
In 1892, when I took up my residence in Baltimore,
I heard very little about this college. It was usually
spoken of as the Methodist College for girls and re-
ceived scant consideration. I had first heard of it in
1889 while I was studying medicine in the Woman's
Medical College of Pennsylvania. A meeting had been
called there in the interests of founding a chair of pre-
ventive medicine in this medical college, to be the first
of the kind in the world. All I remember of the dis-
cussion was that the leaders had very hazy ideas of what
should be included under such a chair, and that the most
attractive speaker was Dr. Alice Hall of the Woman's
College of Baltimore, who explained that she had been
called to a professorship in this college of liberal arts
to develop a department of health supervision which
should deal with the promotion of health of students
rather than with the cure of their diseases.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 19
When I arrived in Baltimore Dr. Hall had married
and gone west and had been succeeded by Dr. Mary
Mitchell, a sister of Mrs. Froelicher and an old ac-
quaintance of mine. Dr. Sherwood had known both
Dr. and Mrs. Froelicher before they were married, when
she was a student of medicine in Zurich and they were
students, at the same university, both candidates for the
doctor of philosophy degree. It was through Dr. and
Mrs. Froelicher and Dr. Mitchell that I learned what
was really going on in this youngest of the women's
colleges, and it is to the Froelichers and Dr. Van Meter,
I believe, more than to any other persons that the col-
lege owes the soundness of its early scholastic ideals.
In 1894, when Dr. Mitchell resigned to marry and
return to Pennsylvania, she suggested me as her suc-
cessor. I was not her first choice for the position, but
the other women she suggested were not available. In
1894, when I became a member of the college faculty,
the Girls' Latin School had been built and equipped as
a preparatory school to be carried on, it was stated, by
the Woman's College, until the girls' high schools of Bal-
timore should be able to fully prepare their students for
college entrance. Some members of the college faculty
taught in both institutions and students were accepted
for college work who were still doing preparatory work
in the Latin School. Finally, about 1897, all such re-
lationship was discontinued and academically the col-
lege was making good. In 1893, when the Johns Hop-
kins Medical School was opened for the reception of stu-
dents. President Gilman stated that the University had
investigated the academic preparation that could be ob-
20 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
tained in the Woman's College and that it was accept-
able for entrance into its Medical School.
At this time and for many years subsequently the
catalogues of Johns Hopkins University stated that
women were admitted to the medical school, but not to
any other department of the University. For a girl in
Baltimore, then, at the close of the last century, the con-
ditions were about like this: she could not completely
prepare for college in the public schools, but if by hook
or by crook she could get preparation she could proceed
to the A.B, degree in the Woman's College. If she de-
sired graduate work she could not get it in Baltimore
unless she desired to proceed to the study of medicine.
From time to time it was rumored that the ban on the
admission of women to the graduate departments of the
Hopkins was to be lifted. Occasionally women had suc-
ceeded in getting some measure of recognition. One of
the early fellows of the University was a woman, Miss
Christine Ladd, afterwards Mrs. Fabian Franklin. The
story as I always heard it was that among the applicants
for the fellowships oflFered by the University was one
signed "C. Ladd." The credentials accompanying her
application indicated such a high grade of ability
and attainment that the award of a fellowship in
mathematics was granted. When it was discovered that
"C. Ladd" was a woman, Professor Sylvester, the dis-
tinguished professor of mathematics, insisted upon re-
ceiving her as a student. When I asked Mrs. Franklin
once if this story was true she smiled enigmatically.
Not only, however, had this one fellowship been
awarded to a woman, but in 1893 a woman was granted
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 21
of Geology. It was said at that time that her work was
of such distinguished character that the University did
not desire to lose so promising an investigator, and she
refused to proceed with her work at the Johns Hopkins
unless she could expect a degree if she fulfilled the re-
quirements. At the commencement, however, she took
her degree by proxy and did not appear with the other
candidates.
In 1897 it was rumored that the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity was ready to do something for women if there
really seemed to be a demand for such action. A group
of women well known for their efforts to obtain such
recognition, some of whom had been most active in se-
curing the funds which opened the medical school,
formed a small organization and drew up a petition to
the President and Trustees of the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity. This petition stated that an organization had
been formed by a number of persons interested in se-
curing university advantages for women for carrying
out such measures as shall from time to time be con-
ducive to this end — that the organization had adopted
the name "The Baltimore Association for the Promo-
tion of the University Education of Women." The peti-
tion proceeds: "The undersigned representatives of this
Association beg to urge upon the Trustees of the Johns
Hopkins University the desirability, in view of the con-
ditions existing at the present time, of opening its gradu-
ate courses to those women who are qualified to pursue
them. We submit that such objections and difficulties
as apply to the question of undergraduate coeducation
are either totally absent or exist in an altogether insig-
nificant degree in the case of graduate students, and that
22 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
a number of the most important and distinguished uni-
versities of this country and Europe have in the past
decade recognized the propriety and the need of ad-
mitting women to the privilege of their lecture rooms
and laboratories. The increasing demand on the part
of women for advantages which only a university can
furnish, is one of the most salient and unmistakable
phenomena of our time, and whatever doubts upon the
subject may have been justifiable twenty or even ten
years ago, such doubts can now be fairly said to have
been dissipated by the action successively taken by so
many leading universities in all parts of the world.
"Being fully convinced that this step is not only of
importance for the interests of learning in general, but
also that it will distinctly promote the welfare of the
Johns Hopkins University, we trust that the request of
this Association for the opening of the graduate courses
of the University to women will secure your prompt
and favorable consideration." This petition was signed
by thirteen women. The Trustees in answering it stated
that it seemed inexpedient at that time to open the ques-
tion of admitting a new class of graduate students.
A majority of those who had signed the formal
petition decided to preserve the organization for
the purpose of assisting Baltimore women to pursue
graduate work at universities that would receive them
and of advancing in other ways the general cause of the
university training of women. In pursuance of this ob-
ject the Association offered in 1898 and every year fol-
lowing until 1922 a fellowship of the value of $500 to
a Maryland woman, subsequently to a woman from
Maryland or the south, for graduate study in some ap-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 23
proved university in Europe, subsequently in the United
States or Europe. The name adopted for the organiza-
tion was the Baltimore Association for Promoting the
University Education of Women. I acted as its Secre-
tary during the entire period of its existence.
In the same year the woman's College of Baltimore
instituted a fellowship of the same value to be awarded
to one of its graduates to proceed to graduate work at
some university in Europe; subsequently, too, the fel-
low was permitted to choose where she would study.
These fellowships corresponded to a similar European
fellowship which had been established by the Associa-
tion of Collegiate Alumnae as one of its first activities.
The reason for founding these fellowships for study in
Europe is significant of the fact stated in the petition
quoted — the great universities of Europe accepted
women students before our own universities of similar
grade would receive them.
The graduates of the Woman's College of Baltimore
were not at that time eligible for the fellowships of the
Association of Collegiate Alumnae so that these two fel-
lowships established in Baltimore were the only aids
Baltimore young women could look to for proceeding to
graduate work.
As I served continuously on the Committee of Award,
both for the Baltimore Association and for the Woman's
College, it was possible to co-ordinate the work of the
two committees in such manner that with few exceptions
every Baltimore young woman able to proceed to gradu-
ate work and desirous of doing so received aid from
one or the other of these funds. The generous provision
made by Bryn Mawr College for graduate fellowjs was
24 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
another great source of helpfulness to Baltimore women
seeking opportunities for graduate work.
The Baltimore Association awarded its fellowship
every year from 1898 until 1908, when the Johns Hop-
kins University admitted women to its graduate courses.
The question of disbanding was then considered, but
the friends who had for so many years taken special in-
terest in the Association and had secured the funds for
its work decided to go on accumulating an annual in-
come and reserving it for aiding women's research work.
At the beginning of the Great War the long period,
covering more than a century, of securing for women
all educational opportunities enjoyed by their brothers
from the kindergarten through the university, was over
in Baltimore as elsewhere in the United States. For
women who desired to do research, opportunities for
preparation were as freely available as to men.
The same could not be said of opportunities for pursu-
ing research by women trained for the purpose. For a
time, awards in the shape of fellowships, grants, prizes,
etc., will be necessary. This is evidenced by the fact
that of the last annual awards made by the Association
of Collegiate Alumnae by its fellowship committee, all
but four were made to women who have completed their
university work and are seeking opportunity for carry-
ing on some special piece of research.
The Woman's College fellowship, discontinued in
1914, was revived by the alumnae of Goucher College
a few years later and a permanent fund established.
This fellowship now known as the Dean Van Meter
Alumnae Fellowship is awarded by preference to an
alumna who has a university degree and who is capable
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 25
of carrying on independent research. The amount of
these fellowships, too, has been increased in recent years
so that at least $1,000 shall be available for each award.
The last award made by the Baltimore Association was
to Dr. Helene Connet, A.B., Goucher, Ph.D., Johns Hop-
kins, to continue research in a problem of physiological
chemistry in the University of London. The Associa-
tion had decided to make her a grant of $1,000, but
before the official announcement was made she received
a fellowship of $1,000 from the Association of Col-
giate Alumnae, and at the suggestion of the chairman
of their committee our Association made a grant of
$500 in addition to theirs.
Mrs. Fabian Franklin was the original chairman of
the committee that petitioned the Hopkins for admission
of women graduate students, and was chairman of the
first committee on award of fellowship of the Baltimore
Association. In the second year when a permanent or-
ganization was effected. Miss Kate M. McLane was
elected President and has continued in that position ever
since. It is due to her more than to any other person
that the Association continued its existence for so many
years. It is rather unique, I think, that an organization
composed mainly of women of wealth and leisure should
be maintained for so long a period in the interest of the
somewhat abstract notion that to train women for re-
search is a very important contribution to social and
community service. This is due, I think, to the tradi-
tions established by that small but remarkable group
of Baltimore women who secured the foundation for
the Johns Hopkins Medical School and established its
standards.
26 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
How difficult it is to convince the average laywoman
of the value of research may be illustrated by the fol-
lowing incident:
On one occasion an attempt was made to bring the
work of this Association before the Maryland State Fed-
eration of Women's Clubs. I secured from President
Guth permission for the State Federation to use the
Goucher College auditorium for one of their annual
meetings on condition that an evening meeting should
be devoted to a consideration of university education of
women, the program to be arranged by the Baltimore
Association. Miss McLane presided at the meeting and
Dr. Florence Sabin and Dr. Bertha May Clark, both
former fellows, were the speakers. Dr. Sabin spoke
on the relation of pure research to fundamental social
and civic problems. Dr. Bertha May Clark, an A.B. of
Goucher College and a native Baltimorean, head of the
science work in the girls' high schools of Philadelphia,
spoke on the necessity of a knowledge of the methods
and applications of research to the high school teacher.
Mrs. Sanderson, President of the Federation of Women's
Clubs, was on the platform. So little interest, however,
was manifested by the members of the Federation that
the audience would have been nil had it not been for our
own small group of the Baltimore Association and the
faculty and students of Goucher College.
Two incidents in the history of the Baltimore Asso-
ciation for the Promotion of the University Education
of Women may be recorded because of their special in-
terest. Some time in the year 1900 Dr. Mall, then
Professor of Anatomy in the Johns Hopkins University,
called on Dr. Sherwood and me to propose a scheme
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 27
whereby our Association could secure the appointment
of a fellow in the University. Dr. Florence Sabin had
then graduated from the medical school and was serv-
ing an interneship in medicine in the Johns Hopkins
Hospital. Dr. Mall had discovered in her when she was
his student a special aptitude for research and was
anxious that she should enter the field of scientific re-
search rather than go into the practice of medicine. He
suggested that our Association offer the Trustees of the
University funds for a fellowship for one year to be
used by the department of anatomy, the holder to be a
woman. Our Association was, of course, delighted to
have an opportunity of such a character. It was unani-
mously decided to offer our annual fellowship to the
University. When Miss Garrett, who had been a mem-
ber of the Association from the first, heard of this sug-
gestion, she entrusted Dr. Sherwood, under terms of
strict secrecy as to the donor, which need not now be
observed, to offer to the Association an additional sum
of three hundred dollars to be applied to this fellow-
ship so that the amount offered would be eight hundred
dollars. The University accepted our offer and Pro-
fessor Mall appointed Dr. Sabin to the fellowship.
In the light of subsequent history the Baltimore Asso-
ciation feels its existence justified if it had made no
other contribution to the higher education of women
than to be one of the factors that decided Dr. Sabin
to enter the field of research. She is not only our
most distinguished fellow, not only an eminent re-
searcher, but she is also one of the most distinguished
scientists of our country. In the year Dr. Sabin occu-
pied this fellowship she made a brilliant study of the
28 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
origin of the lymphatic system, which brought prompt
recognition of her ability in scientific circles as well as
a substantial reward in the shape of the first prize of
one thousand dollars offered by the American Associa-
tion to Promote Scientific Research by Women, then the
Naples Table Association.
The second instance has to do with opening of the
other departments of the Johns Hopkins University to
graduate students. In 1908 our Committee of Award
was assembled for its final meeting. The candidates to
be considered had been reduced to two, one a Balti-
morean, a Goucher graduate in her third year of uni-
versity work at Bryn Mawr College; the other a south-
ern woman, an instructor in the University of Texas,
who applied for the fellowship to continue graduate
work at Radcliffe. I was empowered to say that the
Goucher College fellowship would undoubtedly go to
the Goucher graduate so that the Association fellowship
could be awarded to the Texas candidate. Mrs. Morris
Carey, a member of the committee, came to the meet-
ing a little late. She said she had just been talking to
Professor Elliot, then head of the department of Ro-
mance Languages at the Hopkins, who had told her that
it had been decided to open to graduate women students
those departments of the Hopkins willing to receive
them. We at once agreed that our candidate for that
year should enter the Hopkins and that it would be a
fitting occasion to have this woman fellow a Baltimore
product, one who had had her preparatory and collegiate
education in Baltimore. We had such a candidate be-
fore us. Moreover, her strongest endorsement for the
fellowship was the letter in her credentials from the
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 29
professor in Bryn Mawr College with whom she was
doing her graduate work. He had recently been ap-
pointed to the head of a department in the Johns Hop-
kins University whose duties he was to assume at the
beginning of the next academic year. Dr. Eleanor Lord
of the Goucher faculty, a doctor of philosophy of Bryn
Mawr, undertook to interview the Bryn Mawr professor
as to his willingness to receive a woman in his Johns
Hopkins department. Much to our surprise he was very
averse to the proposition. The committee then inter-
viewed Professor Morley, head of the department of
mathematics, as to his willingness to receive the Texas
candidate, Miss Florence Lewis. He was perfectly will-
ing, especially as she had a brilliant record as a student.
We telegraphed her asking whether she would accept
the appointment with the specification that the fellow-
ship be used at the Johns Hopkins. She accepted, sub-
sequently took her degree of Doctor of Philosophy under
Professor Morley and was promptly incorporated into
the Goucher faculty, where for many years she has been
one of its best and ablest teachers. A few years subse-
quently all departments for graduate work at the Johns
Hopkins were freely open to women and the long strug-
gle for equal educational opportunities for women in
Baltimore was over.
As I write this chapter a letter comes to me from Mrs.
William Cabell Bruce, for many years Treasurer of the
Baltimore Association and one of its most helpful mem-
bers, that the Association has voted to give its accumu-
lated funds, amounting to two thousand dollars, to
Goucher College for the founding of a lectureship "in
memory of the modest effort of the Association in pio-
30 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
neer days to express its interest in the higher education
of women."
In view of the fact that the Maryland Agricultural
College has become an integral part of the University of
Maryland and that it makes provision not only for spe-
cial courses, but for academic courses leading to the,
bachelor of arts degree, it may be of interest to record
here a note on its charter provisions: "That women shall
be admitted to all its courses on the same terms as
men."
In 1914 I was asked by Mrs. William H. Ellicott to
serve as the women's representative on a committee of
the City Wide Congress interested in the reorganization
of the Maryland Agricultural College. This committee,
under the able and energetic chairmanship of the Rev.
D. H. Steffins and the guidance of Mr. Hecht, Secretary
of the City Wide Congress, undoubtedly was influential
in securing the thorough-going reorganization of the
Maryland Agricultural College and the adoption of its
new charter by the Maryland Legislature in 1914. I
asked that this committee recommend two provisions in
the new charter, one, that one member of the State Board
should be a woman, and second, that the charter should
state that women would be received in all departments
on the same terms as men. The sub-committee, of which
I was a member, incorporated these two recommenda-
tions in their final report on a charter to be approved
by the City Wide Congress. Determined opposition,
however, developed to both propositions. I remember
at a joint meeting of several committees all at work on
this new charter I was asked if I did not think the ques-
tion of appointing a woman could be left to the discre-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 31
tion of the Governor of the State without making it a
charter provision. I replied that women had not found
it so in their history for securing educational privileges
and we preferred to have it "nominated in the bond."
Eventually I saw that it would be impossible to get into
the charter the first of these provisions, but we did
succeed in incorporating the clause making women
eligible to entrance on the same terms as men. At first
it stood: "Women to be admitted on such terms as shall
be prescribed by the Board of Trustees," which mani-
festly was not acceptable to women contending for equal
privileges.
If, as is now proposed, the Johns Hopkins University
becomes strictly a graduate institution, it will be inter-
esting to watch how quickly the city and the state will
take action to provide adequate collegiate opportunities
for its boys. Fortunately women may view the situation
in regard to women's educational opportunities in Bal-
timore and Maryland with equanimity.
Chapter III
Baltimore's Great Contribution to Medical Education
With Special Reference to the Medical
Education of Women
The present anatomical building of the Johns Hop-
kins Medical School was the first of the group built for
the purposes of the Medical School apart from the hos-
pital proper. Across its facade in iron letters is the
legend: "The Woman's Fund Memorial Building, 1894."
32 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
This simple legend records an epoch not only in the
history of the education of women in our country, but
in the history of medical education in general.
A small group of Baltimore women had seen Johns
Hopkins University founded and had watched its growth
and development with eager hopes that it could be per-
suaded to permit women to share in its opportunities of
graduate work. Having failed in fifteen years to secure
entrance to the University proper, they turned their at-
tention to the proposed medical school of which the
Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in 1889, was to be an
integral part. By their efforts they attained two objects,
the elevation of medicine as a study to university rank
and the admission of women to at least this department
of graduate work in Johns Hopkins University.
In 1890, when I returned from medical study at the
University of Zurich, I was appointed to a position as
assistant resident physician in the State Hospital for the
Insane at Norristown, Pa. This was the first hospital
for the insane where women patients were entirely un-
der the medical care of women. Dr. Alice Bennett was
the Medical Superintendent, and among the interesting
things she told me when I began my service under her
was that she was a member of a committee in Philadel-
phia seeking funds to offer the Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity provided, when it opened its medical school, it
would admit women on the same terms as men. Similar
committees had been organized from Baltimore as a
center in Boston, New York and other cities. In 1890
the sum of one hundred thousand dollars had been com-
pleted by these committees by a final gift of forty-four
thousand dollars by Miss Mary Garrett, and was offered
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 33
to the University Trustees on condition that women
should be received on the same terms as men. The Trus-
tees accepted the offer with its conditions, but announced
that the Medical School would not be opened until an en-
dowment fund of five hundred thousand dollars had been
obtained. In 1892 Miss Garrett completed the fund by a
gift which, when added to the Women's Fund of one
hundred thousand dollars, amounted to the sum fixed by
the Trustees for opening the Medical School. Miss Gar-
rett's gift was made under certain conditions, among
them: (1) That entrance to the Medical School should
require candidates to have an A.B. degree, which should
represent certain definite preparation in biology, physics
and chemistry, or to pass an equivalent examination.
(2) That all positions, prizes, etc., established by the
school should be open to women on the same terms as
men. The first condition was so far in advance of the
requirements for the study of medicine exacted by any
medical school in the United States at that period that
it is said neither the group of medical men charged with
the duty of organizing the school nor the Trustees be-
lieved that a medical school could be successfully estab-
lished with the conditions of entrance demanded by Miss
Garrett. The conditions were, however, accepted and
subsequent events proved the wisdom of this decision.
The twenty years succeeding the founding of the Johns
Hopkins Medical School saw the thorough reorganization
of medical education in the United States, and the suc-
cess of the Johns Hopkins experiment was one of the
most potent contributory factors in this development.
The statement then is possibly not too extravagant that
the rapid advance in the standards of medical education
34 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
in our country owes much to the wisdom, the foresight
and the persistence of one Baltimore woman.
When the Women's Fund of $100,000 had been ac-
cepted by the Board of Trustees "in order to further
the endowment of the Medical School, the Trustees of
the Hospital invited the members of the various com-
mittees to visit Baltimore, to partake of a luncheon, and
to inspect the hospital." I remember well assisting Dr.
Bennett in her preparations for going to Baltimore and
on her return hearing with profound interest her account
of what had happened. It was, of course, a great oc-
casion for women physicians who were entirely unac-
customed to be the objects of much attention in any
public meetings, especially where medical subjects were
discussed. Dr. Bennett dwelt on the prominent lay-
women from Washington, Philadelphia, New York and
Boston who were present, among them the wife of the
President of the United States, Mrs. Benjamin Harrison.
She described the brilliant reception given by Miss Gar-
rett at her residence on Monument Street, now the Mu-
seum of Art, at which Cardinal Gibbons was present.
But what gave me the greatest pleasure then, and always
since, in thinking of this really great occasion in the his-
tory of the education of women was the presence of
women physicians who had blazed their way into the
profession as pioneers. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the
first woman in modern times to get a medical degree,
had at that time taken up her permanent residence in
England, but her sister. Dr. Emily Blackwell, the sec-
ond woman in medicine, was there, and Dr. Elizabeth
Cushier and Dr. Frances Emily White of Philadelphia
and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, the most brilliant woman
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 35
in medicine our country had produced until the Johns
Hopkins itself gave us Dr. Florence Sabin.
At the luncheon Dr. Jacobi responded in behalf of
the invited guests to the address of welcome by Mr.
Francis T. King, President of the Trustees of the Hos-
pital, and I think it is worth while to transcribe here
her words as reported in the Johns Hopkins Hospital
Bulletin. She said: "I do not think I shall be accused
of exaggeration by any of the ladies in whose behalf I
speak, when I say that this is really a great occasion.
As the term greatness is relative I can explain what I
mean best by comparing it with something else. When
Goethe was asked to interest himself in the French revo-
lution he said that the French revolution did not interest
him at all; that he considered the speculations which
were then being carried on in France by Lamarck on
the origin of the species as far more important. For
these were concerned with an idea, and an idea far out-
lasted in permanent influence any political turmoil.
Something in the same way we may say — that we are
here today under the inspiration of two ideas, either of
which tends to dwarf the significance of even such politi-
cal turmoil as that which has just prevailed among us.
There is, in the first place, the idea that medical educa-
tion properly belongs to a university; that it is an in-
tellectual matter, and not a mere trade, to be practiced
for pecuniary profit, and then there is the further idea,
and which more especially concerns us, that women
are to participate to the full in this intellectual aspect
of medicine, and to follow it to the highest plane of in-
tellectual development to which it can be carried. This,
I repeat, is another great idea. It is the first time it has
36 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
been distinctly enunciated, at this plane of thought on
the American continent. Throughout the West it is true
the most generous intention has been developed for
women to enter all departments of the principal univer-
sities, but in none of them has medical education reached
the plane intended here. It is interesting to contrast
what has been done here with what has been done in
Europe. The majority of European universities have
opened the doors of their medical, as of their other
schools to women. This has been a gift from above
with very little popular demand and without the aid of
either popular effort or private munificence. But here
it is the women themselves who have been aroused to
feel the necessity of these higher intellectual opportuni-
ties for women and to exert themselves personally and
energetically to secure them. For the munificence of
the noble woman who has so generously sustained this
enterprise, for the generous energy of all those who
have taken part in it, we medical women do feel espe-
cially and profoundly grateful. It is a great occasion,
and once more, Mr, President, on behalf of all the guests
whom you have gathered together, I thank you."
Dr. Sherwood and I are frequently asked whether we
are graduates of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, but
as we both went to Baltimore as doctors of medicine be-
fore 1893, that is, before the Johns Hopkins Medical
School existed, we can not claim that honor. What in
general the status of women physicians was in Balti-
more at this date may be indicated by a few of our ex-
periences. I can recall the names of six medical schools
in Baltimore in 1892. One of these was a small school
on McCulloh Street for women. One or two of the other
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 37
schools had at some period in their history admitted
women and given them degrees, but in 1892 the Wom-
en's Medical College of Baltimore was the only medi-
cal school in Maryland admitting women. How well
this small school, in spite of its lack of money and its
poor equipment, did its work is evidenced by the fact
that in 1890 two of its graduates were appointed
as internes in the Philadelphia Hospital (Blockley)
after a competitive examination which would have been
glad to disqualify them, if possible, on two counts, first
because they were women, and second because they were
neither residents of the State of Pennsylvania nor had
they received their medical training in Philadelphia.
These two. Dr. Claribel Cone and Dr. Flora Pollack,
are worthy representatives of the character of the work
of this school, which very properly went out of existence
with the changed conditions of modern medical educa-
tion. Dr. Amanda Taylor Norris still, I believe, in ac-
tive practice, a graduate of the Woman's Medical Col-
lege of Pennsylvania, was, so far as I can ascertain, the
first woman to practice medicine in the city of Balti-
more.
I have already said it was by chance that Dr. Sher-
wood went to Baltimore, but after a year's residence it
was by deliberate choice that she stayed there and per-
suaded me to resign my position in the Norristown
(Pa.) State Hospital for the Insane and join her. As I
look back on those early years in Baltimore I wonder
how we lived them through. The proverbial wolf
howled loudly at our door, patients were few and far
between, and our office hours were periods of solitary
confinement. In 1893, when our fortunes were at their
38 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
lowest ebb, Dr. Sherwood was offered an attractive posi-
tion in one of the best northern colleges for women at a
salary large for that period with opportunities for prac-
tice unusual for a woman. About the same time I had
a chance to resume work in a woman's department of
another Pennsylvania State hospital at a good salary and
an assured future. Three things were, I think, the de-
cisive factors in keeping us in Baltimore: first, Dr.
Sherwood's unbounded optimism and a kind of charac-
teristic obstinacy — a fixity of purpose — which will not
permit her to yield a course on which she has started
until she has proved to herself the impossibility of car-
rying it through; second, our proximity to the Johns
Hopkins Hospital with its laboratories and workers fur-
nishing an indescribably stimulating atmosphere to
young men and women with medical training and medi-
cal outlook; third, the Evening Dispensary for working
women and girls with which we had become closely
identified.
When Dr. Sherwood went to Baltimore to reside she
took an office on Cathedral Street around the corner from
the Johns Hopkins University buildings and its under-
graduate school. Her sign on the outside under her one
window was promptly stolen and doubtless adorned the
walls of the room of one of the Johns Hopkins boys.
After that she always kept her sign on the inside of the
window. I think to this day she never passes that win-
dow without a feeling of desolation coming up from the
subconscious implantations of the lonely hours spent
there. She, however, made early connections with the
Johns Hopkins Hospital and its laboratories. When
she had determined to turn from teaching chemistry to
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 39
the Study of medicine, after investigating opportunities
for study in the United States and finding that the two
best schools open to her were exclusively women's
schools, in order to be sure that her opportunities were
equal to any man's, she decided to pursue her medical
studies at the University of Ziirich where women had
been received from 1865. After one year at Ziirich,
desiring to continue her studies in her own country, if
possible, she applied for admission to the College of
Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, New York
being her native state. Her application was answered
about as follows: "This Medical College has never re-
ceived a woman as a student." It may be added it never
did receive a woman as a student until 1920, about
thirty years later.
Even without credentials Dr. Sherwood would have
been received as a worker in the laboratories and the
wards of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, as all they asked
was a medical degree and a desire to work, but armed
with letters from Professor Klebs and Professor Eich-
horst of Ziirich, the one a distinguished pathologist, the
other a distinguished teacher of internal medicine, she
easily found a place in Dr. Welch's laboratory and a
hearty welcome to Dr. Osier's wards, and to those of Dr.
Kelly. When one considers the profound influence made
upon the lives and work of the men who had the privil-
ege of those early associations of the Hopkins Hospital
in its pre-medical-school days, one can easily under-
stand how a woman with education, understanding and
ideals was willing to make any personal sacrifice to en-
joy the opportunities to be found at that time in no other
medical atmosphere in the world.
40 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
In the interval which elapsed between the acceptance
of the "Women's Fund" and the completion of the re-
quired endowment fund by Miss Garrett, the women of
the Baltimore Committee did not remit their efforts in
behalf of the recognition of women in medicine by the
hospital authorities. The positions of residents and in-
ternes in the various departments of the hospital were
eagerly sought by young medical men from the United
States and Canada. So these active Baltimore lay-
women, having found two candidates who they thought
would make good. Dr. Alice Hall and Dr. Sherwood,
proceeded to bring all possible influence to secure their
appointment as residents.
A few months ago among some old letters I found
one from Dr. Sherwood jubilantly announcing that Dr.
Osier had asked her to go into the hospital on his staff.
I remember very well that she was not satisfied to write
me such a thrilling piece of news, but followed it with
a personal visit to Norristown to tell me all about it.
Dr. Kelly at the same time had asked Dr. Alice Hall,
who had come to Baltimore, as I have already told, to
organize a department of hygiene at the Woman's Col-
lege, to become a resident of the hospital on his staff.
Their appointments were to begin in the fall of 1891 and
that summer Dr. Sherwood joined her family in New
York for a vacation with a light heart and great expec-
tations. On her return to Baltimore she was doomed to
a bitter disappointment caused by what Herr Dr. Froe-
licher would designate "Das ewig weibliche." Again I
find preserved one of her letters in which she says: "Yes-
terday I went to a meeting of the Woman's Literary
Club and the President announced the marriage during
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 41
the summer of Dr. Alice Hall. Nobody seems to know
anything about it, as I asked her friend, Dr. Kate Camp-
bell Hurd, after the meeting, and she was as surprised
as I was. This morning I have the enclosed letter from
Miss King, followed later by a visit from her when she
was so sorry for my disappointment that she quite took
back what she had said in her letter."
Miss Elizabeth King (afterwards Mrs. William Elli-
cott), daughter of Mr. Francis T. King, President of the
Board of Trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, was
one of the most ardent workers for the Women's Fund
and for the appointment of women physicians as in-
ternes. She knew that the authorities of the hospital
would not admit a married woman as an interne, nor
would they sanction the appointment of one woman. In
her letter referred to by Dr. Sherwood she expresses
her surprise that Dr. Hall had not seen fit to acquaint
those interested of her intentions and her resentment at
the failure of the scheme, and practically says for the
future she washes her hands of women doctors. This
was, of course, simply an acute reaction of disappoint-
ment. She not only did not give up her interest in the
progress of women in medicine, but she gave her friend-
ship and support to Dr. Sherwood not only in those early
trying years, but throughout the remainder of her life.
It was, of course, a bitter disappointment to Dr. Sher-
wood not to have that much coveted service under Dr.
Osier, but she had gained the privilege of his friendship
and good will, in a measure of which I was subsequently
included, one of the rarest privileges life has brought
to either of us. The year 1891 was one of the early
years of Dr. Kelly's brilliant surgical career. In addi-
42 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
tion to his work at the Johns Hopkins Hospital he had
a large and growing surgical and obstetrical private
practice in Baltimore. When the scheme for the interne-
ship of women in the hospital failed he asked Dr. Sher-
wood to assist him in his private work at a yearly modest
salary.
In those early days of gynaecological surgery women
physicians, as a rule, were very ambitious to enter that
field. Naturally the early cases that come to every
woman in her practice are gynaecological and obstetri-
cal. Elizabeth Blackwell is said to have turned her at-
tention to medicine as a profession for women because
one of her friends, a great sufferer, frequently told her
it would be a great comfort if she could have the attend-
ance of a woman trained in medicine. Gynaecology had
been in 1891 a rather recent entrant into the field of
medical specialties and it was then becoming clear that
its future lay more and more in surgical procedure.
Personally I had made up my mind while I was study-
ing medicine that neither surgery in any of its branches
nor obstetrics made the same appeal to me as the study
of internal medicine. Dr. Sherwood did not feel exactly
that way, but no matter how she felt she was offered an
opportunity that no woman physician at that time would
have declined. I was glad enough when I arrived in
Baltimore to have the slightest share in Dr. Sherwood's
work with Dr. Kelly. It is needless to say that Dr. Sher-
wood accepted Dr. Kelly's offer promptly with enthu-
siasm.
Dr. Kelly was a stimulating and inspiring chief.
Something of his unbounded energy he managed to in-
fuse into those who worked with him. He always had
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 43
some problem on hand upon which he would set his
assistants working. He had the mind and courage of
an explorer. A field once worked over lost interest for
him, and he was constantly seeking new worlds to con-
quer. The charm of his personality, his generosity, his
broad human interests claimed our admiration and re-
spect. Our association with him laid the foundations
for us of an enduring friendship that is one of our preci-
ous possessions. He not only made Dr. Sherwood his
assistant in his private work, but for the summer of
1892 gave her a place on his staff in the hospital with-
out residence.
Optimistic as to the future, Dr. Sherwood now felt
surely there was room in Baltimore for more women
physicians, and urged me to join her. She is accus-
tomed to say that it took one-third of a year to persuade
me. However that may be, I did join her there on Feb-
ruary 22, 1892. She had just taken possession of the
office suite in the Arundel Apartments at Charles and
Mount Royal Avenue, the first apartment house to be
erected in Baltimore. Wyatt and Nolting were the archi-
tects and Mr. Wyatt was the manager. Dr. Sherwood's
brother had suggested that she take this, the only office
suite the building was to contain, and went with her to
interview Mr Wyatt while the building was under con-
struction. After a little hesitation a lease was given her.
The hesitation about leasing to a woman physician may
have been due to the feeling put into words by two small
boys whom I overheard one night in the early days of
our occupancy. The building was advertised to contain
bachelors' suites and housekeeping apartments. Sitting
in the front office one evening, our signs safely on the
44 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORK
inside of the windows, I heard two small boys reading
them: "Dr. Mary Sherwood, Dr. Lilian Welsh;" then
with loud laughter: "Bachelors' apartments and old
maids livin' in them!"
In those days it was occasionally borne in upon us
that we belonged to a class apart. Dr. Osier jocularly
said: "Human kind might be divided into three groups
— men, women and women physicians." We never had
any reason to complain of the treatment we received
from our male colleagues. Those whom we knew were
uniformly courteous and friendly and helpful in a pro-
fessional way, but women doctors were in 1892 in Bal-
timore somewhat of a curiosity. We early learned not
to presume that an acquaintance made in a professional
capacity in assisting Dr. Kelly or in our own offices en-
titled us to any recognition in a social way, even as one
passed in the streets. Dr. Sherwood's sister-in-law at
a large afternoon tea was asked by her hostess whether
she was related to Dr. Mary Sherwood. She answered
with some pride that Dr. Sherwood was not only her
sister-in-law, but her cousin as well. Her hostess rather
frigidly replied that she knew Dr. Sherwood profes-
sionally, but, of course, it would not be possible to know
her in a social way.
I remember once hearing someone ask Dr. Kelly's
little daughter, then about three: "Well, Olga, when you
grow up will you be a doctor like papa?" "No," replied
Olga promptly, "I shall be a lady." In the Norristown
Hospital for the Insane, while I was resident, it was cus-
tomary for the entire staff of three women physicians to
go through all the wards together Sunday morning. Dr.
Sherwood on one of her visits accompanied us on this
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 45
weekly visit. We reached the last ward where the most
excitable patients were confined and the one who at the
time was giving us most trouble planted herself firmly
in our way and, looking at Dr. Sherwood, said: "Say,
are you a doctor or a lady?" To the laugh with which
we greeted this she continued: "Well, you look so young
and pleasant I thought you might be a lady." Out of
the mouths of babes and defectives come often current
social opinions.
In 1895 the American Medical Association met in
Baltimore. Most of the women physicians in Baltimore
were members and, of course, had paid their dues into
the local society which was making arrangements for
entertaining the visiting doctors. An auxiliary commit-
tee of laywomen had been appointed, as usual, to look
after the entertainment of the ladies who would accom-
pany their male relatives. Among the entertainments
arranged by this committee was an afternoon reception
to be held at the rooms of the newly formed Arundell
Club, then occupying a house on West Madison Street.
We were afterwards informed that the "Ladies' Com-
mittee" had spent several hours in discussing whether
they would invite the women doctors, local and visiting,
to this reception and finally decided with great reluct-
ance to include them. Dr. Sherwood was much mysti-
fied the afternoon of this reception to be followed per-
sistently by one or two of her friends of the Arundell
Club, of whose board of trustees she was a member, who
insisted upon introducing her to many Baltimore ladies,
in order as they told her afterwards to prove that be-
ing a lady and being a physician were not incompatible.
46 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
What the general public thought of us did not trouble
us. We were too much occupied with our own work,
our own outlook and our own hopes. Indeed it did not
occur to us that anyone thought of us at all, but of the
occasional gossip that reached us that which amused us
most was the assumption that any woman who took up
the profession of medicine must have done so from
some profound emotional disturbance, some secret grief,
presumably a disappointment in love. I was frequently
approached with a demand to know why Dr. Sher-
wood had not married and what "her story" was.
An acquaintance of mine, a trained nurse who had
known me from early girlhood, told me she had had a
special visit from a woman who desired to know "what
concealment like a worm in the bud was gnawing on my
damask cheek." The truth is neither of us had any story
behind us. We were two ordinary women who had
looked forward from early girlhood to the possibility
of self-support, who had gone into teaching because it
was the only profession with any intellectual outlook
which promised self-support and who had, following our
intellectual bent, gone into medicine because we were
interested in science and in human nature.
Possibly nothing so well illustrates the change thirty
years has wrought in the world's attitude towards women
than just such incidents as I have related. The word
lady has largely disappeared from our vocabulary as a
designation for young women, and no one assumes today
that there must be some peculiar underlying reason for
a young woman choosing a professional or business
career as an outlet for her energies.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 47
I once heard a medical instructor of mine, a man,
say that the first five years after he had opened an office
he did not have one office case, but that these years v^ere
the most important and fruitful of his professional life.
While in the years between 1892 and 1894 Dr. Sher-
wood and I did have a few office patients, not by any
means nearly enough to pay the office rent, we can say
that those two years were for us the most important in
our professional lives. We formed close and lasting
friendships; we had access to the wards, the clinics, the
laboratories, the lectures, the courses, the libraries and
societies of the Johns Hopkins Hospital; we learned to
understand the social traditions of Baltimore and to bear
with tolerance those we could not always observe; we
acquired a taste for the Baltimore Morning Sun that
always yet leaves us unsatisfied with any other daily
newspaper. In 1892 Dr. Sherwood's brother, Prof.
Sidney Sherwood, was called from the Wharton School
of Finance in the University of Pennsylvania to the As-
sociate Professorship of Economics at the Hopkins, and
he was our ever present help in time of trouble.
During those two years we came to see clearly that
so far as practical medicine was concerned our inter-
ests lay definitely in the field of preventive medicine.
This we owe in such large measure to our work in an
Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls that
I shall take a separate chapter for my experience here.
Early Goucher students will remember how largely I
drew my illustrations for my lectures on hygiene from
my experiences in this dispensary.
48 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Chapter IV
Medical Experiences in Baltimore, 1892-1924. Even-
ing Dispensary for Working Women and Girls
When women sought to study medicine in modern
times it became necessary to establish separate schools
in order to secure opportunities for them. The first of
these, the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania,
grew out of Elizabeth Blackwell's visit to Philadelphia
in 1848 when she was seeking a medical school that
would admit her. It was the only woman's medical
school in the United States that ever secured money for
a permanent endowment. This amounted to about two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 1893 when the
Johns Hopkins Medical School was opened with an en-
dowment of five hundred thousand dollars. This school
is still in existence, the only woman's school surviving
in our country, and has just celebrated the seventy-fifth
anniversary of its founding.
After the school was established its friends organized
a hospital that would furnish clinical opportunities for
women students. In New York later Dr. Elizabeth Black-
well and her sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell, organized a
hospital first and subsequently a medical school — the
Medical School of the New York Infirmary. When
Cornell Medical College was reorganized about 1898
and admitted women, this medical school was closed, but
its hospital was continued. In Boston the women organ-
ized a hospital for the use of women physicians, the New
England Hospital for Women and Children, but no sue-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 49
cessful medical school for women. These women's hos-
pitals among their other activities — two of them claim
the honor of having organized the first training school
for nurses in the United States — organized special eve-
ning clinics for working women and girls — the first eve-
ning clinics, I think, in the field of dispensary practice.
This movement began about 1890. Dr. Alice Hall and
Dr. Kate Campbell Hurd, whom I have already referred
to as coming to Baltimore about 1889, one as medical
director of the Woman's College of Baltimore, the other
as medical director of the Bryn Mawr School, both
graduates of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsyl-
vania and both having served interneships in the New
England Hospital for Women and Children, had prob-
ably worked in evening clinics. These two women evi-
dently made early contacts with Baltimore laywomen
most interested in the success of the Women's Fund
for the Johns Hopkins Medical School. They are the
only women physicians whose names are included in
the Baltimore group of women invited to the luncheon
when the Women's Fund was formally received by the
hospital trustees. At all events, they succeeded in in-
teresting some prominent citizens of Baltimore in or-
ganizing an evening clinic for working women and girls
to be in charge of women physicians.
The Evening Dispensary for Working Women and
Girls of Baltimore City was incorporated March 21,
1891, by a group of prominent men — Francis T. King,
Louis McLane, John Glenn, James Hodges, Ferdinand
C. Latrobe, Daniel Miller, John Curlett, Lawrason Riggs.
The Dispensary was opened at 621 South Charles Street
March 1, 1891, under a board of managers consisting of
50 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Alice T. Hall, M.D., Kate Campbell Kurd, M.D., Eliza-
beth T. King, Julia R. Rogers, Bertha M. Smith (Mrs.
R. Manson Smith), Kate M. McLane, Anne Galbraith
Carey (Mrs. Francis K. Carey). When this dispensary
was finally closed on March 1, 1910, with the exception
of Miss King, the lay members of the board were the
same as at the beginning with the addition of Mrs. Caleb
N. Athey, so it is seen that for eighteen years this small
group of women, together with a small group of annual
subscribers, gave continued and loyal support to a cause
which made no great appeal to the general Baltimore
public — that is, they gave opportunities to women who
might desire in sickness the services of their own sex,
and they gave opportunities for experience in the prac-
tice of medicine to young women physicians at a period
when such opportunities were difficult to find.
I recall appearing once with the Dispensary Board
before a committee of the Board of Charities and Cor-
rections which controlled appropriations to the various
hospitals and dispensaries of the city. This Board had
decided to withdraw all appropriations to special hos-
pitals and dispensaries and on the ground that women
physicians for women patients represented a specialty
they had decided to withdraw the city appropriation
which the Evening Dispensary had received from its
start. In the hearing the Committee granted us to pro-
test against their ruling I made the point that they had
granted an appropriation to the homeopathic dispensary
and asked whether that was not more of a specialty than
our own. The chief spokesman for the Committee, a
fair and socially-minded man, replied that city patients
might desire to be treated homeopathically, but in his
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{First Course in Bacteriolouy ever giveyi at Ziirieh)
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 51
judgment there was no demand by women for treatment
by women physicians and instanced his wife as an ex-
ample of all women, saying she had never felt the neces-
sity for the services of a medical woman. One of our
members, Mrs. Carey, responded promptly that that was
possibly true as to the women of the class to which she,
herself, and the wife of the gentleman belonged, but
that she had become convinced that large numbers of
women served by the free dispensaries of the city did
desire the services of women physicians. We did not,
however, win our point and the city appropriation was
withdrawn.
How well the Dispensary fulfilled its two purposes
may be indicated by the statement in its final report that
in the eighteen years of its existence twenty-two thou-
sand women and children had received medical care in
its clinics and out-practice and that fifty-two women
physicians then practicing in various parts of the world
had gained valued experience in the opportunities they
had found for medical work in this Baltimore Dispen-
sary.
At first the Dispensary had a resident nurse, but after
several years a woman physician was in residence
who was on duty at all clinics and on call day and night.
The conditions for living offered the resident were sim-
ple— a furnished room and salary sufficient to pay for
moderate board. The inducements were opportunity
for work at the Hopkins and an increasingly good serv-
ice in medicine, gynaecology and obstetrics in the clinics
and out-practice. That the position of resident was al-
ways filled after it was established under these trying
and exacting conditions is evidence of the difficulty
52 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
women physicians had at that time in finding opportuni-
ties for hospital and clinical service.
Two of the women who came to Baltimore as resident
physicians of the Evening Dispensary took up perma-
nent residence in Baltimore. They were both Canadians.
One, Dr. Frances Carpenter, settled first in South Balti-
more, where she established a large, lucrative and
successful practice. She is still in active practice in Bal-
timore. Dr. Carpenter, although a Canadian, had stud-
ied medicine at the Woman's Medical College of Phila-
delphia. The second Canadian, Dr. Elizabeth Hurdon,
came to us from Toronto, where she had taken her medi-
cal degree at the first Canadian University to admit
women to its medical school. The chief attraction Bal-
timore had for Dr. Hurdon was the opportunity for
work at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Thomas
K. Cullen, now professor of Gynaecology at the Hop-
kins, a Canadian too, was there as a member of Dr.
Kelly's Gynaecological staff and had charge of the
pathological work of this service. Dr. Hurdon promptly
associated herself with him and it was largely through
his assistance that she was able subsequently to develop
her surgical technique.
The medical and surgical services of the dispensary
so far as its residents and staff were concerned were
hampered by the fact that women physicians had no
access to hospital beds where they could care for
patients. So far as our patients were concerned, they
were well taken care of as beds for them could usually
be found — except the obstetrical cases — in some of the
various city hospitals. They then, however, passed out
of the hands of women physicians. Through Miss
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 53
McLane's influence a free bed was granted the dispen-
sary for surgical patients by the Church Home and In-
firmary, and there Dr. Hurdon got her chance for prac-
tical surgery. So well did she succeed that the follow-
ing year Dr. Gavin, the superintendent, granted the Dis-
pensary the use of a second bed for Dr. Hurdon's
patients. When the Church Home and Infirmary was
reorganized under a woman superintendent this privilege
was withdrawn. Fortunately about this time the Wom-
an's Hospital of Maryland was rebuilt and reorganized,
and Dr. Hurdon was appointed to its staff^ and thus was
able to continue her work as a surgeon.
When the American College of Surgeons was organ-
ized Dr. Hurdon was admitted to membership among the
original fellows of that Association. For many years
before she left Baltimore she was an Associate in
Gynaecology of the Johns Hopkins Medical School and
taught to its students the pathology included in the
course on gynaecology. When the Great War began Dr.
Hurdon grew restive to join her family who were then
living in England and to get, if possible, into some active
service. So she wound up her affairs in Baltimore, we
hoped for a temporary absence. One evening in June,
1915, Dr. Sherwood, Dr. Sabin and I saw her off from
Union Station on a midnight train for New York from
where she was to sail the following morning for Eng-
land. She thought she might be able to get service in a
laboratory to take the place of a man gone to the front,
but even then England was finding a shortage in physi-
cians and surgeons, and in a few weeks a letter from
Dr. Hurdon said: "I am on board a steamer with a con-
tingent of doctors bound for Malta." She had a com-
54 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
mission and was in active service as a surgeon with the
British Army until the armistice was declared.
Had the dispensary served but the two purposes of
giving working women an opportunity of being cared for
by women physicians in the evening, at a time they were
free to consult a doctor, and of giving women physicians
an opportunity for practical experience in the treatment
of the sick, it would have performed a useful function
in community service. It did, however, much more
than this. From the outset its work took on a distinctly
social character which was then unique in a dispensary
service.
When Dr. Hall and Dr. Hurd married and left Bal-
timore Dr. Sherwood and I took their places on the Dis-
pensary Board and were thereafter responsible for the
medical work and medical policies. At first we took
charge of all the clinics, having occasional help from
some of the other women physicians living in Baltimore,
and a resident trained nurse, subsequently of a resident
physician. From 1892, when we began our connection
with the Dispensary, until 1910 when it was given up.
Miss Kate M. McLane was chairman of our Board, and
to her was due the social service features that character-
ized our work. Those who are acquainted with the his-
tory of the evolution of the social service movement in
Baltimore need not be told that any organization that
could receive from Miss McLane not only financial sup-
port, but her time, her thought, and her active interest
must of necessity do work having distinctively social
value. It was to our association with Miss McLane on
this Dispensary Board that Dr. Sherwood and I owe
much of our early interest and our early opportunities
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 55
in the field of medical sociology. Her friendship, ad-
vice and sympathy have been ours for thirty years and
have been to us an unfailing incentive and source of
courage and help.
The foundation for many of the subsequent activities
of Dr. Sherwood and myself in public health, whether
in the field of education or in practical service on com-
missions and boards, or in administrative positions, was
laid in the experience and knowledge gained in this dis-
pensary service and in the associations to which it led.
This is evident from an enumeration of public health
activities in which the final dispensary report shows it
was engaged. The report says:
"In addition to caring for the sick and giving medical
opportunities to qualified women physicians the Dispen-
sary managers have always clearly recognized the im-
portant function a medical dispensary may perform in
preventing disease and promoting health. Its work has
been isolated and its sphere of influence limited, but it
may justly claim to have done pioneer work in using a
medical dispensary as a means of investigating causes of
distress, and of applying remedial measures in the do-
main of preventive medicine. In this final report it may
be permitted to enumerate briefly some of its activities
in this field.
"(1) Public Health Instruction. The medical staff
and resident physicians have from the beginning freely
offered their services to organizations of women and
girls for health talks, and have responded to hundreds
of invitations for talks on hygiene.
"(2) Instructive Work in the Home. In 1893 a
resident nurse was employed to follow up patients in
56 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
their homes and instruct them in the care of the sick and
the hygiene of the household. This was the first instruc-
tive visiting nurse employed in Baltimore.
"(3) Clean Milk Distribution. As part of its origi-
nal equipment the dispensary had several milk sterili-
zers for the use of mothers of infants. For several years
during the summer a supply of clean milk from a pri-
vate dairy was distributed to sick babies, the first dis-
tribution of this kind in Baltimore.
*'(4) Public Bath. The Dispensary opened with one
public indoor bath installed in its house, the first in Bal-
more. It was well patronized by the women of the
neighborhood.
"(5) Midwives. In 1893 the obstetrical service of
the Mothers' Relief Society was undertaken by the Dis-
pensary staff. In connection with the Mothers' Relief
Society it investigated the conditions of the practice of
midwives in Baltimore City. The published results of
this investigation proved an efficient aid in securing the
new midwifery law enacted by the last session of the
Maryland Legislature.
"(6) Birth Registration, During the past year the
Dispensary has undertaken a study of some of the con-
ditions of birth registration in Baltimore, the results of
which will be published in the near future.
"(7) Tuberculosis. In the early days of the tuber-
culosis agitation the Dispensary undertook for the
Health Department a statistical study of the deaths from
tuberculosis in Baltimore for ten years — 1890 to 1900
— with the purpose of ascertaining infected houses and
infected localities. The result of this study was graphi-
cally presented in a map exhibited by the Health De-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 57
partment at the Maryland Tuberculosis Exhibition and
reproduced in its annual report of 1904.
"(8) Sodal Service Department. The Evening Dis-
pensary was the second dispensary in Baltimore to or-
ganize a social service department under a trained social
worker. This has become in the opinion of the Mana-
gers an indispensable adjunct to the efficiency of the
Dispensary."
I could cite many illustrations of the lessons we
learned in our work with individual cases. Early and
insistently it was borne in upon us that the remedies
needed by our patients were often economic and social
rather than medical; that many times the best we could
do for them was to cheer them up, to give them help and
encouragement to meet the exigencies of their daily lives
and this required far more time and patience than to
give them a bottle of medicine. I remember Dr. Sher-
wood coming home once about 1 o'clock in the morning
— our evening clinics often found us still working at
midnight — and the way home by the horse drawn street
cars with a change and usually a long wait at Baltimore
and Hanover Streets took much time. As she divested
herself of her outer garments, which always needed to
be carefully investigated after an evening's work, she
said emphatically: "I am now through giving young
women tonic drugs to stimulate their appetites when
they have no food to satisfy them." She related a case
of the evening, a young woman whom she had watched
struggling to support herself and her sister on inade-
quate wages, too proud to seek or receive alms, whose
story she had drawn out with the greatest difficulty. I
could heartily agree with her, as I was haunted by the
58 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
white face of a young girl whom I was giving iron for
anemia when she and her mother were trying to live on
their combined wages of three dollars per week.
It was our obstetrical service, however, and the con-
ditions under which we found women bearing their chil-
dren that stirred most deeply a feeling of medical re-
sponsibility. We early determined to use all our oppor-
tunities to instruct women in the hygiene of maternity
and infancy, and to lead women to demand more en-
lightened care for themselves in childbirth and for their
children; to seek opportunities to aid every movement
in our city and state that showed promise of furthering
the health and welfare of women and children. With
the Mothers' Relief Society, the dispensary undertook
in a small way pioneer work in that we instituted ante-
natal care of mothers, scientific care of women in child-
birth and post-natal supervision of mother and child —
now recognized as basic principles in the child welfare
movement.
In the first year of the obstetrical service Dr. Sher-
wood and I took all the cases; later we were assisted by
Dr. Pollack. We became well acquainted with the small
streets and alleys of South Baltimore and more than once
walked from our own office at night or early morning the
twenty squares or more necessary to reach our cases. We
were never molested nor were any of our doctors who
subsequently did the same work, although we often
found ourselves in uncomfortable and unsavory districts.
I remember only once, and that in my student days, hav-
ing a man, a stranger, speak to me at night. Another
medical student and I on our way home from an obstet-
rical case were waiting on a corner in Philadelphia in
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 59
one of the poorer sections of the city for a street car.
A half tipsy man in gentlemen's clothes said: "Good
evening, ladies." We turned our backs and he tottered
around in front of us and repeated his salutation. Again
we turned our backs and again he staggered around and
addressed us. When this had occurred three times, I
said: "Sir, we are two medical students who are out in
the line of our duty. We have just come from seeing a
sick woman and we shall be obliged to you if you will
let us alone." He straightened up instantly, took off his
hat, apologized and passed on.
This obstetrical service was not only a source of edu-
cation to us, a source of despondency at times, but also
a source of pleasure. We were admitted to share the
joys as well as the distress and sorrows of our patients.
One of our friends came into our office one morning to
tell us that she had gone into her church for some pur-
pose and found two women in the vestibule waiting to
have a baby baptized. She asked whether the baby was
a boy or girl and what its name was to be. The mother
proudly responded it was a girl and was to be baptized
"Dr. Mary Sherwood." That she was to be so honored
was quite unknown to Dr. Sherwood. I have myself
several name-sakes dating from that dispensary service,
whether they politely prefix "doctor" to their names or
not, I do not know.
The Dispensary service was large and varied and gave
us valuable experience. We had no help in the early
days from the City Health Department. There was no
place to send scarlet fever, diphtheria and other infecti-
ous diseases needing isolation, nor had we the laboratory
aid to diagnosis and treatment which are now so freely
60 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
given by City and State Health Departments. I remem-
ber Dr. Hurdon, while she was resident, coming to our
office late one evening saying she was much concerned
about a small boy she had been called to see who she
feared had laryngeal diphtheria and was in bad shape.
We had never seen a dose of diphtheria antitoxin, but we
decided to go to Hynson and Westcott and see if they
had by chance the German product of von Behring. For-
tunately they had it. We paid for it ourselves, went
down and injected all we did not lose with a hypodermic
syringe. It acted like magic — the boy was better the
next morning and made an uneventful recovery. To-
day in all cases of infectious disease the City Health
Department is the physician's best friend. It is only
when one can look back over a long period of years that
one can realize the rapid strides made by so-called State
Medicine.
Very early our experience in the dispensary was lead-
ing us to the belief that the solution of many of the medi-
cal problems for the care of the rich as well as of the
poor lay in the application of the generalizations of
medical science through public health measures. While
our practical experience with the sick was enforcing this
lesson a more powerful influence was emphasizing the
same point of view. Modern preventive medicine and
public hygiene had its origin in the rise and develop-
ment of bacteriology. Yet in 1889, when I took my
medical degree, so recent had been the entrance of this
new science into the group of the medical sciences that
it was not, I think, taught to medical students as part
of their course in any of the medical schools of the
United States. Dr. Sherwood and I in 1889 took the
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 61
first course in Bacteriology offered in the University of
Zurich, sacrificing a spring vacation for the purpose. It
was given as an optional special course in the depart-
ment of hygiene by a young physician who had been a
student in Koch's laboratory. Whether it was in the
Hopkins Hospital laboratories organized by Dr. William
Welch that the first opportunities for studying bacteri-
ology were given in the United States I am not sure, but
it is not an exaggeration to say that it was the work done
in his laboratories and the influence that went out from
them that laid the foundations and gave the impetus and
direction to the public health movement in our country.
During my first year in Baltimore, the year before the
medical school was opened. Dr. Welch, I remember,
gave a weekly lecture at 5 o'clock in the afternoon on
bacteriology to which the physicians of Baltimore were
invited. Dr. Welch is a great teacher and could pos-
sibly have made any subject fascinatingly interesting,
but this new field itself was one of absorbing interest to
students of medical etiology. Each lecture was some-
thing to look forward to for an entire week. Dr. Sher-
wood and I felt that it was "only death or sudden ill-
ness" that could keep us from attending.
Our proximity to the Hopkins, then, with its stimu-
lating atmosphere of research as the foundation for
medical practice was continually increasing our inter-
est in the domain of public health and preventive medi-
cine.
It is possibly more than a simple coincidence that be-
tween 1890 and 1900, the years that marked the rise
and progress of public health as an outgrowth of the
scientific study of disease, another great movement was
62 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
taking place which has furnished the leaders who ad-
vanced the cause of public health probably their most
efficient aid for propaganda, for public education and
for securing that legislation and administrative control
necessary for progress. I refer to the growth of the wom-
en's club movement in the United States and the con-
centration of much of their interest on problems relating
to civic and social betterment.
The progress of this movement as I saw it in Balti-
more and Maryland has been one of the most interest-
ing experiences of my life. It would take a whole book
to record its history.
Chapter V
The Women s Club Movement in Baltimore. The Arun-
dell Club, The Arundell Good Government Club,
The College Club, The Maryland State
Federation of Women s Clubs
When I returned from Ziirich in 1890, each of two
of my best friends, one living in eastern Pennsylvania
and one in the western part of that state, unacquainted
with each other, told me that the most interesting and im-
portant thing that had happened to her in the year I had
been absent had been attending, as a delegate, a meet-
ing in Chicago to form a Federation of Women's Clubs.
One represented a Shakespeare club and one a history
club. I suspect that at that original meeting in Chicago
most of the delegates represented similar clubs having
for their object the promotion of individual self-culture.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 63
"The diffusion of sweetness and light" was a favorite
term used by the press to designate their activities. At
that date I was free from membership in any
woman's organization which is proof to me that such or-
ganizations were not very numerous in any place where
I had lived. When I went to Baltimore in 1892 the only
woman's club I heard of was the Woman's Literary
Club. This club has had a long and interesting history
as a purely literary club. Miss Lizette Woodworth Reese
ought to record this history as she has been for many
years one of its most distinguished members.
Dr. Sherwood was a member of the Woman's Literary
Club until the Arundell Club was organized in 1894.
We were both charter members of this club and Dr.
Sherwood was one of its original Board of Managers.
It was organized to meet a demand for a club for women
whose scope of activities should not be limited except
by a careful consideration of those subjects in which
ladies might properly show an interest in public. Sec-
tions on art, literature and music were formed, and
others heralded as sections for serious study were an-
nounced from time to time, but were short-lived as seri-
ous study is not a function that can well be carried on
through the medium of a woman's club. One section,
however, of great practical value did persist owing to
its capable leadership and to the subjects considered,
the section on Home Economics — a relatively new term
at that time destined to elevate and dignify a very an-
cient profession of women.
The Arundell Club met with instant success. Miss
Elizabeth King was elected president and it was un-
doubtedly due to her dominating personality and her
64 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
capacity for leadership that the club was finally
launched and steered successfully through the difficulties
of its early years. At first a few rooms, then a house
on West Madison Street were rented for club purposes
and later a handsome dwelling house on North Charles
Street, in what was then a fashionable section of Balti-
more, was acquired by purchase. Finally the club built
a hall adjoining its house. It has maintained its house
and assembly hall for many years as headquarters for
manifold activities of club women. It was under the
fostering care of the Arundell Club that the Maryland
State Federation of Women's Clubs was organized and
in its buildings have been held many historic meetings
concerning the advancement of women's interest. Its
greatest service, however, in my opinion, has been to
furnish in its attractive rooms a meeting place not only
for its own members, but for all groups of women in-
terested in problems of public welfare.
After Miss King, Mrs. Sioussat stands out most dis-
tinctly in my recollection as a dominating figure in the
early history of the Arundell Club. She has served its
interests continuously for many years, and if she would
consent to write a history of this club she could give a
record of the early feminist movement in Baltimore that
would certainly be of great interest, although I know
quite well that the term feminist is anathema to her.
Although my own engagements did not permit me to
take any active part in the work of the sections of the
Arundell Club proper I followed with great interest the
work of its section on Home Economics. Fortunately
the year the Arundell Club was organized the opening
of the Johns Hopkins Medical School brought to Balti-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 65
more Professor and Mrs. John J. Abel. Mrs. Abel at
that time was known as a scientific writer on dietetics.
She was an intimate friend of Mrs. Ellen S. Richards
and a co-worker with her in founding and advancing the
Home Economics movement in the United States. Mrs.
Abel was at once drafted into the work of the new club
and from that time to the present she has been the most
powerful single influence in educating club women of
Maryland in the science and art of home-making
and in directing their energies to securing aid from all
sources educational, social and legislative for advancing
the interests of women in the home.
One of the first subjects she took up in her section
was a consideration of a family budget. She took up
a study of the proper distribution of a two thousand
dollar and of a five thousand dollar family income
under conditions of living in Baltimore. This, now a
commonplace for high school girls, was a novel and
revolutionary idea, causing considerable hilarity among
the husbands. At the time this study was in progress
I was taking my meals at a boarding house where sev-
eral members of Mrs. Abel's section with their husbands
took their meals. The days of the Arundell sectional
meetings furnished lively discussions at the dinner
table, and I well remember with what shouts of laughter
and derision the men greeted the final report which stated
the amount each income, if properly apportioned, would
give to the husband for his own pleasures. I sometimes
wonder whether the thorough teaching of women in their
schools and clubs for the past twenty years as to the
necessity and method of budget making for the wise
expenditure of family income has not indirectly greatly
66 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
influenced the policies of our State and national govern-
ments to at last adopt a budget system for handling their
finances.
At the period the Arundell Club was founded the idea
that women could have any direct interest in govern-
ment, municipal, state or national, found scant consid-
eration in Baltimore. I have already referred to the
attitude of public opinion toward the educational dis-
abilities of women so that it will be easily understood
that the question of their political disabilities was a
topic not to be touched upon in polite society. Balti-
more was a boss-ridden city, and city and state politics
were looked upon as a nasty business from which right-
thinking men would protect their women folk. And
yet so keen an interest did Miss King and some of her
associates have in civic problems that soon after the
Arundell Club was successfully inaugurated a subsidi-
ary club was formed known as the Arundell Good Gov-
ernment Club. It was the first women's association or-
ganized in Baltimore to consider civic problems. I have
heard Miss King say that to no question with which she
dealt in the organization of the Arundell Club did she
give the same consideration as to the wisdom of attach-
ing to it this good government club for women. She said
she had sought advice from intelligent and public-spir-
ited men of her acquaintance, that she had made it a
subject of prayer, and that it was with considerable ap-
prehension that it was finally launched. The constitu-
tion affirmed its purpose to be "to bring together persons
interested in the good government of Baltimore City, and
by their co-operation to promote the honest, efficient and
economical administration of said city and the choice
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 67
of fit persons for public office; to protect the public
health and morals and secure capable and faithful sub-
ordinates in public employ from removal or other preju-
dice for partisan or personal reasons." In order to
guard the name of the Arundell Club from any sem-
blance of radicalism the constitution of the Good Gov-
ernment Club provided that the president of the Arun-
dell Club should be ex-officio a member of the Executive
Board of the Good Government Club and that no pub-
lic action could be taken by the club unless approved
by the Board of the Arundell Club. The Arundell Club
Board was always a very conservative body and in 1905
the Good Government Club feeling hampered by this
restriction attempted to drop this clause from its con-
stitution. The Arundell Club Board then passed a reso-
lution to the effect that so long as the Arundell Good
Government Club retained its name and held its meet-
ings in the Arundell Club building any public action
proposed must be subject to the veto of the President of
the Arundell Club.
So long as Mrs. Ellicott remained president of the
Arundell Club and was a controlling influence in its
policy there was no fear that any public action decided
upon by the Good Government Club would be vetoed,
as she was as keen as any of us in pushing the causes
we were interested in. These causes were represented
by committees on municipal hygiene, on medical inspec-
tion of schools, on court for Juvenile offenders and on
public schools. The Good Government Club was, how-
ever, nine years old; it had served an important func-
tion in the education of its members and had at least
one constructive piece of work to its credit as it had se-
68 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
cured a compulsory school law for Baltimore City. It
was agreed that an active civic club could no longer be
kept in leading strings by another organization, and its
members voted to disband.
I had been a member of the Executive Committee of
the Arundell Good Government Club from its organiza-
tion and in 1905 was its president. Associated with me
on the Executive Board were Miss Edith Hamilton of
the Bryn Mawr School and Mrs. B. A. Corkran as vice-
presidents; Mrs. M. N. Perry, treasurer; Miss Frances
Seth, secretary, and other members: Mrs. William M.
Ellicott, president of the Arundell Club; Mrs. William
Cabell Bruce, Mrs. John T. King, Dr. Eleanor Lord of
Goucher College, Mrs. William H. Morriss, Miss Julia
Rogers, Mrs. James H. Van Sickle. No subsequent at-
tempt was made in Baltimore to organize a distinctly
woman's civic club until the year 1915, which saw the
birth of the Civic League.
It is not surprising that the first subjects to claim
women's interests when they organized for civic work
should be the public schools and the public health. It
is certainly interesting that their two achievements so
far in Baltimore in initiating and securing legislation
are the School Attendance Law secured by the Arundell
Good Government Club and the City Milk Ordinance,
one of the best in the country, secured by the Women's
Civic League.
Soon after the organization of the Good Government
Club Miss Mary Richmond, now of the Sage Founda-
tion, then general secretary of the Baltimore Charity
Organization Society, suggested the formation of a com-
mittee to study the conditions of school attendance in
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 69
Baltimore with a view to securing legislation if an in-
vestigation should warrant it. Such a committee was
organized in 1899 with Miss Richmond as chairman. A
fund was secured by private subscription for the pur-
poses of the investigation and Miss Florence Pierce was
appointed to conduct it. The plan was Miss Richmond's.
She selected a number of representative neighborhoods
which might show the effect of certain social and indus-
trial conditions on school attendance, for instance, one
where the school population was almost entirely foreign
born, or of foreign born parentage; a colored district;
one where mothers were engaged in the packing indus-
try; and one in Woodberry in the vicinity of the cotton
duck mills. The results proved very interesting and in-
structive. While the investigation was in progress Miss
Richmond was called to a position in Philadelphia and
the report was completed by Miss Jane Brownell, then
assistant head mistress of the Bryn Mawr School, and
by Miss Pierce. When the report was ready it was sub
mitted to a group of public-spirited men for their con
sideration and advice in February, 1901. Finally a
committee from the Good Government Club was ap
pointed to draw up a bill and to see it throu2:h the As
semblv. This committee consisted of Miss Brownell
Miss Mary Willcox Brown (nov/ Mrs. John M. Glenn)
Miss Mary Garrett, Dr. Sherwood, Miss Florence Pierce
I was chairman, making the seventh member. At last
came the fateful day for the presentation to the Assem
bly of Maryland of the bill and for a formal hearing
We were somewhat excited, as it was, I think, the first
time any of us had appeared at a public hearing in An
napolis. Mr. William Cabell Bruce (Senator Bruce) was
70 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
to be our spokesman. On the morning of the day set for
the hearing word came that Mr. Bruce could not be pres-
ent. Consternation reigned, but Miss Garrett undertook
to go to his office and get him to Annapolis if possible.
She was successful and so was Mr. Bruce.
The bill, of course, met with opposition. There was
one gentleman in the counties who attacked it bitterly
in the newspapers and finally got out a printed sheet
for distribution, saying, among other things, that it was
a bill sponsored by seven old maids who couldn't possi-
bly know anything about the needs of children. Dr.
Sherwood and I met Miss Brownell at the Women's
University Club in Paris in November, 1924, where we
were all staying, and in reviewing our common experi-
ences in Baltimore Miss Brownell said she still has a
copy of this manifesto among her treasures. The bill
became a law and has not, I think, been much modified
since that time.
The Good Government Club was early in the field
advocating medical inspection of schools. It is inter-
esting to recall in the light of rather recent history that
we discussed as an academic question whether medical
school inspection should be administered by the Munici-
pal Health Board or by the School Board. Both plans
were being tried in different parts of the country. Dur-
ing Dr. Bosley's term as Health Commissioner, he told
Mrs. John T. King that he had a contingent fund at his
disposal which he could devote to a beginning of medi-
cal school inspection, and suggested that a formal re-
quest be made to him by the Good Government Club. A
committee was appointed with Mrs. King as chairman
to proceed in this matter. I do not remember how the
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 71
consent of the School Board was obtained, but the Health
Board did at that time begin the work of medical inspec-
tion which now has grown to large proportions.
When it was made public that some special school
inspectors would be appointed a prominent member of
the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty suggested to Dr.
Sherwood and me that one or two women doctors ought
to be included in these appointments. The Good Gov-
ernment Club immediately found two women able and
willing to serve in such a capacity, but they were not
considered. It was not until women had the suffrage
that women physicians were appointed to work in the
schools by the Health Board. In 1923, when the ap-
propriation for medical school inspection was decreased,
the women were the first to be dropped from the rolls —
fortunately, however, four have now been re-employed
for duty in the Eastern and Western High Schools.
The first appointment of women to public boards in
Baltimore was the voluntary act of Mayor Hooper in
1897. Mayor Malster, who succeeded Mr. Hooper, re-
appointed two women on the Board of Charities, but
substituted Miss Eckles, the men of whose family were
Republicans, for Miss McLane whom Mayor Hooper
had selected as the most suitable woman for the board
regardless of the politics of her family. Dr. Sherwood,
having no male political complications, was appointed
by Mayor Hooper and retained by his Republican suc-
cessor. This may be one reason that Dr. Sherwood has
had a continuous service on public boards ever since
women have been appointed to such boards, first on the
Board of Charities and second on the Bath Commission.
She served through two administrations on the Board of
72 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Charities and Corrections and was slated with Miss
McLane for reappointment to the same board under a
third administration, but here for the first time, I think,
women's organizations interested themselves in these
municipal appointments of women and possibly made a
mess of it.
Exactly what happened I do not know, but Mayor
Hayes, after stating in the daily press that he expected
to appoint two women to the School Board, Miss Mary
Garrett and Mrs. Judge Schmucker, and two to the
Board of Charities, whom he did not name in public,
finally let it be known to the women interested that so
far as the appointments of women he had so far con-
sidered were concerned he had wiped his slate clean
with the exception of Mrs. Schmucker for the School
Board. I presume he was pestered by various groups
urging various candidates. His green bag went to the
Council containing the appointment of Mrs. Judge
Schmucker to the School Board, Mrs. J. J. Abel to the
Board of Charities and Mrs. A. E. Robinson to the Jail
Board. Mrs. Schmucker resigned after a short time and
there were no further appointments to the Board until
Mayor Broening appointed Mrs. Putts. I doubt whether
women's organizations, strong as they have become, have
had much influence in naming the women who have in
recent years been appointed on municipal boards, except
possibly in the last appointments to the School Board.
The Woman's Civic League was the successor of the
Arundell Good Government Club inasmuch as it was
formed by women for the study of civic problems and
for making their influence felt in the solution of such
problems, but it was in no sense an outgrowth of that
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 73
club, or of any existing woman's club. While Mrs.
Corkran, Mrs. Abel, Mrs. Van Sickle, Mrs. Miller and
other former workers in the Good Government Club were
active as charter members of the Civic League the initia-
tive in its organization was taken, I think, by a group
of women who had not been hitherto identified with
women's club activities. I remember accepting an in-
vitation to the Belvedere in 1912 to consider the forma-
tion of a civic league and being much interested in the
group of women present and in the discussion. The fif-
teen years which had passed since the organization of
the Arundell Club had wrought a great change in the
attitude of Baltimore women, and the formation of a
league of women determined to actively interest them-
selves in smoke abatement, proper disposal of garbage
and refuse, clean milk and other questions of municipal
housekeeping seemed quite natural to them and very
properly not only the business of women but their duty.
The Civic League was a success from the beginning.
It effected an organization which included the entire
city. It developed or brought to light leaders of great
ability. When the great war came it formed the nucleus
for co-ordinating the activities of the women of the city
of Baltimore and the State of Maryland.
The second Woman's Club of Baltimore of which I
have any intimate knowledge is the College Club. It
was chartered in 1894 and incorporated in 1909. When
it was organized by Mrs. Fabian Franklin and Miss
Elizabeth Carroll it was difficult to find any college
women in Baltimore. The first year its membership
included Mrs. Franklin, Miss Carroll, Mrs. Morris
Carey, Miss Julia Rogers, Miss Searle, Mrs. H. M.
74 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Thomas, Dr. Sherwood and myself. Only four women
in this group had college degrees, but all of them had
had one or more years of college or university training
I was admitted to membership because I had been a
matriculate student at the University of Ziirich. When
I took my medical degree the man or woman taking a
medical degree who had a college degree, or any college
training, was an exception rather than the rule.
The College Club was organized for purely social pur-
poses. Young college women were coming to Baltimore
as teachers in the Bryn Mawr School and in the Wom-
an's College, and those of us already on the ground
wanted to show them a friendly spirit. The Association
of Collegiate Alumnae, now the Association of Univer-
sity Women, was a few years old, but college clubs for
women with their own houses and centers had not
emerged from chaos. The sole activities of the Balti-
more College Club from 1894 to 1909 were tea and
conversation. Members entertained the club during the
winter months at their own homes. If any distinguished
college woman visited Baltimore a special tea was given
in her honor. It was all very pleasant, but the number
of college women was increasing because more Balti-
more girls were going to college and more college women
from outside were finding employment in Baltimore.
The number of members presently was limited, first to
forty and then to sixty. In 1905, when the National
College Equal Suffrage League was formed, then the
youngest group to organize for suffrage, and it was pro-
posed to find out whether it was feasible to form a
branch in Baltimore, Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett
arranged for an afternoon meeting at the Roland Park
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 75
Country Club and the College Club secretary was asked
to make a list of all women college graduates so that an
invitation might be extended to them. To the surprise
of most of our members the number of college women
in Baltimore was found to be between three and four
hundred. After that it seemed to me and to others
absurd to have a college club with a membership limited
to sixty. Truth compels me to say there had been no
great demand for membership. Other cities, however,
were beginning to have active college clubs taking
leadership in women's civic and social activities. The
Women's College of Baltimore was increasing yearly
the number of its graduates resident in Baltimore and
it seemed there should be a college club on some per-
manent basis.
In 1908 Miss Julia Rogers had closed her house at
821 N. Charles Street and gone to Europe for a pro-
longed stay. Miss Rogers had been one of the small
group of Baltimore women who had attempted to work
at the Johns Hopkins University in its early years. She
had subsequently been in residence at Newnham Col-
lege, Cambridge, She was one of the Baltimore Com-
mittee of the Women's Fund for the Johns Hopkins
Medical School. She had taken an active interest in
establishing the Evening Dispensary for Working
Women and Girls, had been its secretary and treasurer
for many years. The Baltimore Association for the
University Education of Women had been organized in
her reception room. I once heard Miss Thomas, speak-
ing to the College Club after it occupied Miss Rogers'
house, say that the first college woman graduate she had
ever seen was a cousin of Miss Rogers, a Vassar A.B.,
76 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
whom she had met in the very room in which she was
then speaking.
When I passed Miss Rogers' empty house that year
she was in Europe I often thought how the College Club
missed her entertainments. No one was absent the after-
noons Miss Rogers entertained. When Miss McLane
was going to join her in the early summer I said to her:
"Tell Miss Rogers to come back, the College Club misses
her, and if she isn't coming back tell her to give us her
house for the College Club." I said this jokingly. As
I recall it now I thought if the message were delivered
Miss Rogers would be indignant at my temerity and I
was glad I should not be there to see it. I heard noth-
ing from this suggestion until Miss Rogers returned in
the fall and established herself at the Belvedere. She
sent for me one day and told me she had decided to
open her house and let the College Club use it indefi-
nitely. I never was more taken aback in my life. Her
offer of a furnished house free of rent and taxes was so
unexpected and so generous that when I, at her request,
presented the matter to the Club the members wouldn't
believe it. It was something that had never happened
to a woman's College Club before and has never hap-
pened since. The house was opened in 1910 with a bril-
liant reception, Mrs. Fabian Franklin at the head of the
receiving line. On that occasion the Club got more
newspaper notice than it ever received before or since.
It was immediately incorporated, adopted a formal con-
stitution and offered membership with small dues to all
college women resident in Baltimore and its vicinity.
After the reorganization of the Club I acted as its presi-
dent for a number of years.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 77
For the seventeen years it has occupied Miss Rogers'
house it has steadily increased its membership and in-
fluence. It is now the Baltimore branch of the Ameri-
can Association of University Women, and one of the
strong woman's college clubs in our country. Like the
Arundell Club it has been, in its way, conservative, and
while the College Equal Suffrage League used the club-
house as its headquarters the College Club kept itself
free from any entangling alliance with the suffrage
cause. How college women in Baltimore became inter-
ested in suffrage is interesting enough to have a chapter
to itself.
As I write these pages and recall the growth of the
Women's Club movement in Baltimore and in Maryland,
what interests me most is the avidity with which women,
when once organization had been effected, took to the
consideration of educational and social subjects. When
the Maryland Clubs federated, there was not a single
club whose interests were other than art and music and
literature. As I have previously said, the period in
which these various State Federations were being formed
and bound together by the General Federation was the
period of the rise of the public health campaign. The
Maryland Federation had no Department of Public
Health for a number of years. I asked Mrs. B. W.
Corkran, the first year she was president of the Mary-
land State Federation, to appoint me chairman of a pub-
lic health section. I believed that health problems were
bound to assume importance for the clubs and that there
should be some one officially charged to bring matters
pertaining to health before the club women and to ad-
vise action on health measures brought before them. She
78 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
secured the assent of her board to such a section and
from that time until 1924 I appeared before the State
Federation at its annual meetings to represent health
measures.
My work at Goucher College and my other profes-
sional engagements made it impossible for me to do any-
thing except act in an advisory capacity. I have great
sympathy with the chairmen of sections in the General
Federation who advise State Federations against the ap-
pointment of professional women as chairmen of their
various sections. It is much better to have in such posi-
tions a woman of leisure who can make the work of the
section her principal interest, and who is able to initiate
measures and carry them through.
In Maryland, however, it has rarely been necessary
for the women to take the initiative in public health.
The State Health Board and the City Health Department
have done that for many years, and the important serv-
ice that the clubs could render was to stand behind and
endorse the measures advocated by the State and by the
City.
In all legislation affecting public health for many
years the State and City Boards have had the backing
of the Federated Clubs, and if one reads the resolutions
passed at their annual meetings one will be impressed
by the advanced and yet conservative attitude taken on
public health. Occasionally the women have been rest-
ive because the City and State Boards did not move fast
enough in the direction they had started, and they have
at times brought pressure to bear to hasten action where
health interests were involved, but they have always re-
sponded to intelligent guidance. Dr. Sherwood and I
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 79
have had no greater stimulation for our own progress
along the road of public health than has come to us from
our contact with the women in the Federated Clubs of
Maryland. We have had the privilege of representing
them at many public hearings in city and state, and we
owe the club women a debt of gratitude for the inspira-
tion they have given us and for the confidence they have
placed in us. Why we and other women physicians of
Baltimore were entitled to speak to them with some au-
thority on public health questions was due to the knowl-
edge and experience gained in the various public health
campaigns which have characterized the last twenty or
twenty-five years.
Chapter VI.
Women s Activities in Public Health — The Tuberculosis
Commission — The Vice Commission — Child
Welfare — Food Conservation — Clean Milk
Any one with medical training who has followed
closely the progress of the great experiment in public
health made by the United States in Panama, of the
campaign against tuberculosis, of the movement for
sanitary and moral prophylaxis, and of that for the pro-
tection of maternity and infancy may claim some fun-
damental acquaintance with the public health problems
of the present century and the methods evolving for
their solution. It is not my province in these remi-
niscences to try to trace the history of the public health
movement, possibly the most important movement in
80 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
modern civilization. It has, however, been a privilege to
have watched it from infancy to maturity and to have
lived to see it firmly established on a scientific founda-
tion. Great schools of hygiene with other endowed
foundations for research on the causes of ill health, the
co-operation of many agencies in practically testing out
methods of health control, and determining their value,
the enlightened policies of public health administration
in National, State and Municipal Boards, with the wide-
spread educational propaganda designed to reach all
classes and conditions of our citizens give promise of
results that will incredibly reduce human misery and
enhance the value of human life.
The first modern public crusade for health in our
country was the campaign against tuberculosis which
began in the last decade of the last century. In Mary-
land the movement was initiated by the appointment of
a commission to study the entire subject of tuberculosis
as found in the State. The Maryland State Board of
Health sponsored this movement. My earliest recollec-
tion of the State Board of Health is the fact that Dr.
John S. Fulton was its secretary and that Dr. William
Welch was a member of the Board. Dr. Sherwood and
I early learned to look to Dr. Fulton for leadership in
public health and to greatly value his advice and friend-
ship. In 1902 Governor Smith appointed a Tubercu-
losis Commission to study the problem of tuberculosis
in the State of Maryland. I think I owe my appoint-
ment to this commission to Dr. Fulton, at any rate the
first I knew of the appointment was a letter from Dr.
Fulton received in Maine when I was on my summer
vacation, saying the Governor had received from me no
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 81
acceptance of appointment, and he, Dr. Fulton, was anxi-
ous to have a woman included on the Commission. The
original notice I never received. Of course, I promptly
accepted the appointment, considering it not only an
honor, but a great opportunity for advancing my educa-
tion in public health. It certainly did that.
The Commission, under the chairmanship of Dr.
Thayer and the co-operation of the State Board of
Health, made a thorough study of all phases of the sub-
ject as existing in the State of Maryland. The Commis-
sion was continued with some slight changes in person-
nel by Governor Warfield. It made its final report to
the Governor of Maryland in 1906 with recommenda-
tions for legislation which subsequently came to be
known as the "Maryland Plan" — widely adopted in
other states.
This final report of the Maryland Commission fur-
nishes an important source book for students of tuber-
culosis as a public health problem. I have used it con-
stantly in my college classes in hygiene as a required
reference book.
A fundamental requirement of the "Maryland Plan"
now accepted as a commonplace of any plan for the con-
trol of communicable diseases, the reporting of cases,
met with much determined opposition both from the
medical profession and from laymen on the usual
ground of interference with personal liberty. The
Maryland law provides that the report of cases shall
be by name, but that the files of reported cases should
not, in any way, be made public. I remember one of
the early efforts of the Arundell Good Government Club
was to request the City Health Department to placard
82 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
houses containing patients with measles, scarlet fever
and other communicable diseases and the hesitancy and
delay with which such placarding was finally under-
taken.
During the progress of the study of tuberculosis in
the State of Maryland by the Commission, the State
Health Board took the initiative in organizing a tuber-
culosis exhibition, the first public exhibition of this kind
held in the United States and one of the first hygiene
exhibitions held in the world. The use of McCoy Hall
was granted by the Johns Hopkins University for the
purpose and arrangements were made to conduct
throughout a week a symposium on all phases of the
subject of tuberculosis by a series of evening lectures in
McCoy Hall to be given by various speakers, experts in
their special fields, drawn from the country at large.
Various committees were appointed and made respon-
sible for the various exhibits. Dr. Sherwood and I had
charge of the one designated Home Care of the Tuber-
cular. In addition to this we undertook through the
Evening Dispensary, which collected a fund for the
purpose, to go over the records of death from tuber-
culosis in the City Health Department for ten years
from 1890 to 1900, securing the data which Dr. C.
Hampson Jones, then Assistant Health Commissioner,
desired in order to represent graphically the sec-
tional incidence of the disease in Baltimore. He
had no funds at his disposal for such a study. With
the data we secured Dr. Jones had a map made which,
on the opening night of the exhibition, seemed to inter-
est the newspaper reporters as much as anything in the
display. Every organization in the city dealing with
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 83
social and civic problems was impressed into the service
under the general direction of Dr. Fulton and every one
worked hard.
The success of the evening lectures and the exhibition
exceeded anything we had thought possible. McCoy
Hall couldn't give standing room to all who tried to at-
tend the evening lectures. The crowds at the exhibition
were phenomenal and came from all classes of society
in Baltimore. The exhibits were carefully and con-
stantly demonstrated. It was not only Baltimore and
the State of Maryland that supplied the visitors, they
came from all parts of the country. It is possibly not
an exaggeration to say that the "Maryland Tuberculosis
Exposition," with its accompanying lectures, was one
of the greatest events that ever occurred in the public
health movement of the United States.
During that week a meeting in the Donovan room of
McCoy Hall gave birth to the National Tuberculosis As-
sociation, which this year holds its twentieth annual
session.
Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University
says: "It may be fairly said that so strenuous a warfare,
or one engaging in its ranks so many earnest and active
workers, has probably never in the history of the world
been waged against any disease as that which has been
fought in the United States against tuberculosis during
the past twenty-five years." Yet he maintains that this
warfare against tuberculosis has had comparatively lit-
tle effect on the diminution of the death rate which was
steadily declining before this movement took place.
That is an academic question not to be discussed here,
but there is no gainsaying the fact that the anti-tubercu-
84 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
losis campaign developed the methods for all subse-
quent health campaigns and has to its credit much of the
modification of the environment brought about by mod-
ern sanitation and hygiene.
One of the very early results of the anti-tuberculosis
movement was the emergence of the public health nurse.
In Baltimore the Instructive Visiting Nurse Association
organized in 1896 under a board whose president was
Miss Elizabeth King (Mrs. Ellicott) soon after the tuber-
culosis exposition offered to place one of its nurses at
the disposal of the City Health Department for exclusive
use with tubercular patients. At that time the Depart-
ment employed no nurses. Out of this pioneer work
has come the employment of the health nurse, now a
sine qua non for City and State Health Departments, not
only in the departments of communicable diseases, but
in their school work and child welfare departments as
well.
The success of the opening campaign against tubercu-
losis encouraged groups of workers in other phases of
health control to bring to the attention of the public
their special problems. One of these which seemed to
the initiated most pressing, possibly of greater impor-
tance than tuberculosis, was the problem of the venereal
diseases. By the year 1900 modern medical science
had accumulated a body of facts with reference to these
diseases — as to their causes, the manner of their des-
semination and their etiological relationships which
would ensure diminution in their incidence if they were
brought under public health control. On the other hand
the social sciences had accumulated appalling evidence
of the economic and social misery growing out of the
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 85
prevalence of these diseases. But the difficulties of
launching a campaign against the venereal diseases and
the social evil were manifestly greater and more com-
plicated than an anti-tuberculosis campaign. I remem-
ber at the end of the first public meeting ever held in
Baltimore for the discussion of this subject Dr. Howard
Kelly came from the audience to the platform, after the
formal addresses, and began his speech with the words;
"Thank God it is now in the open." This exactly ex-
pressed the feeling of many of those present interested
in public health. After this meeting Dr. Fulton wrote
to Dr. Sherwood and myself, saying of all the meetings
he had ever attended for the dissemination of health in-
formation this was the greatest.
The events leading up to this meeting are interesting
enough to record here. There had existed in Maryland
for a number of years a small association for the sup-
pression of vice with national affiliations. Dr. Edward
Janney, a member of the Society of Friends, was one of
its most active members both in the local and in the
national associations. Dr. Janney and I had been fel-
low students at the Millersville State Normal School and
I had renewed my acquaintance with him after coming
to Baltimore. One evening in the fall of 1907 Dr. Sher-
wood and I were invited to a meeting arranged by Dr.
Janney, held in the home of Mrs. E. A. Robinson to
hear an English clergyman speak on certain phases of
the "White Slave Traffic." He had come to the United
States to try to secure the co-operation of our Govern-
ment with the Governments of certain European coun-
tries in suppressing or controlling a growing traffic in
girls. It was a profoundly impressive meeting. At its
86 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
end I said to Dr. Janney: "Where are the Hookers, did
you invite them to this meeting?" He said he did not
know them and knew nothing about the work they were
at that time instituting. Dr. and Mrs. Donald Hooker
had that year returned from Europe and taken up per-
manent residence in Baltimore, as Dr. Hooker had been
appointed associate Professor of Physiology at the Johns
Hopkins from which institution he had received his
medical degree two years previously.
During their student days in the medical school and
during their sojourn in Germany Dr. and Mrs. Hooker
had become so thoroughly impressed with the necessity
of some movement for the control of sex relations and
the evils physical and social growing out of these that
they were giving time and study to various phases of the
question. On their return to Baltimore they had opened
and maintained a home for unmarried mothers. If fol-
lowing these cases into the courts and learning the gross
injustice these women received did not drive Mrs.
Hooker actively into the suffrage movement, it did have
that effect on some of her most intelligent co-workers,
and certainly accentuated her own opinion about woman
suffrage.
Soon after the meeting at Mrs. Robinson's Dr. Sher-
wood and I brought Dr. and Mrs. Janney and Dr. and
Mrs, Hooker together one afternoon at our home and, as
a result of that afternoon's exchange of experiences, we
decided that the time had arrived when the subject of
the venereal diseases and the social evil might be made
the subject for educational propaganda in Baltimore.
By the joint efforts of Dr. Janney and Dr. Hooker a
public meeting was arranged sponsored by the Medical
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 87
and Chirurgical Faculty (The Maryland State Medical
Society), the Maryland Conference of Charities and
Corrections and the Maryland Federation of Women's
Clubs.
This meeting was held in McCoy Hall in November
1907. It was advertised as a meeting to consider sanitary
and moral prophylaxis, a phrase which had been used
first, I think, by Dr. Prince Morrow of New York who,
as the pioneer in our country of this movement, had or-
ganized a society in New York under this name. Dr.
Morrow was the principal speaker of the afternoon. The
president of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, Dr.
Hiram Woods, presided. In addition to Dr. Morrow,
Dr. Charles P. Emerson, a member of the medical staff
of the Johns Hopkins and a prominent social worker,
spoke on certain social aspects of the question. I pre-
sented the subject of social diseases and the home. After
the formal addresses several persons from the audience
came to the platform and addressed the meeting, among
them Dr. Howard Kelly and Dr. Flora Pollock. Dr.
Morrow made a profound impression upon the audience.
This can be illustrated by a story told me by two friends,
women physicians, who had come down to Baltimore
from Philadelphia to attend the meetings of the State
Medical Society and had remained for this meeting.
They said a lady sitting by them before the meeting be-
gan said: "I do not know what this meeting is about,
but I belong to the State Federation of Women's Clubs
and so have come to learn." After Dr. Morrow had
begun his address and it dawned upon her what was
meant by "sanitary and moral prophylaxis," she said:
"I think this is no place for me, I must try to get out."
88 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
The hall was crowded and getting out was no easy mat-
ter. After another interval she said: "No, I shall stay,
this is something women should know about." This
exactly expressed what has been my firm conviction
ever since my medical student days. Women who have
been taught the truth about matters pertaining to sex
will be the most potent factor in creating "a new con-
science in regard to an ancient evil." Fortunately today
such education is becoming general.
As a result of this meeting and a study of the inci-
dence of the veneral diseases in Baltimore presented at
a meeting of the Baltimore City Medical Society by Dr.
Hooker, the Maryland Society of Social Hygiene was
organized under the fostering care of the State Medical
Society, the constitution providing that the majority of
the members of the Executive Committee should be phy-
sicians appointed by the Medical Society. I served on
the Executive Committee for many years, at first as the
only woman member. It was for me an illuminating
and educative service.
During the early days of the campaign against the
social diseases — the terminology finally generally adopt-
ed— vice commissions were appointed in various parts
of the country to study local conditions and to suggest
remedial measures of control. In 1913 Governor Golds-
borough appointed a State Commission for Maryland,
the only state commission I think ever appointed. The
committee numbered fifteen, two being women, Miss
Anna Herkner, then a resident of Baltimore, a promi-
nent social worker, and at that time a member of the
staff of the State Board of Labor and Statistics, and
mvself. Dr. George Walker was appointed chairman
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 89
and it was to his indefatigable labor that the Commis-
sion made a more thorough study of all phases of the
subject than had been made by any other vice commis-
sion. The Commission served three years. Its formal
report to the Governor was never published in full, as
there were no funds for the purpose. It would furnish
an important source book for students of the subject.
When the great war came, such progress had been
made in the educational propaganda against the social
diseases, and such able leadership developed by the na-
tional society, the various state societies, and the na-
tional and state departments of public health that it was
possible to formulate a program for the study, the pre-
vention and control of venereal diseases in the United
States Army on a scale never before attempted and to
carry it out under government supervision. The war
program has been carried over as a peace program.
In point of time as indicated by the formation of a
national association the third great public health move-
ment in our country was that now designated as the Child
Welfare movement. The original national association
was organized under the name "The Association for the
Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality." In certain
respects this has claimed a greater share of my interest
than any of the other movements, first, because it is fun-
damental and inclusive of all the others, and second,
because this movement has been initiated, fostered and
sponsored by women as a direct result of their higher
education. The argument most commonly made both
against extending women's educational opportunities and
against removing their political disabilities was that
either of these would disrupt the home. Yet the earli-
90 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
est problems that claimed the studious attention of the
first generation of college women were those directly
bearing upon the home, and the first legislation secured
by women after they had the franchise was a congres-
sional bill for the protection of maternity and infancy.
In 1911 the International Tuberculosis Association
held its third session in Washington. Dr. Fulton had
resigned as secretary of the Maryland State Board of
Health a year previously to assume the duties of Di-
rector General of this meeting and the Hygienic Ex-
hibition which was held in connection with it. Among
his various assistants he secured the appointment of
Miss Gertrude Knipp, a graduate of Goucher College,
to have charge of the press service, a very important
position in an international meeting of this kind. Miss
Knipp had then chosen journalism as a profession and
was on the staff of the Baltimore Sun when she accepted
the appointment referred to. Dr. Fulton told me dur-
ing the progress of the Washington meeting that when
he had suggested this appointment it had been objected
to by his Board on the ground that she was a woman,
and necessarily incompetent for such a job. But when
the work assigned to her was accomplished with extraor-
dinary success the same critics calmly said she couldn't
have done it because she was a woman. However, dur-
ing that week in Washington, Dr. Helen C. Putnam of
Providence, R. I., a woman physician well known for
her work in public health, especially as a lecturer on
school hygiene and the social diseases, persuaded Miss
Knipp to join her in arranging for a conference
on the subject of Infant Mortality. Dr. Putnam had
been a classmate of mine in the Philadelphia Medical
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 91
School and a student at Vassar with Dr. Sherwood. In-
deed, I recall, now, the first time I ever heard of Dr.
Sherwood was in a letter from Dr. Putnam written to
me in Ziirich, telling me to look up Miss Mary Sher-
wood who was a student of medicine in Ziirich and who
could undoubtedly be helpful to me.
Dr. Putnam's conference was called in New Haven
November, 1912, with Miss Knipp acting as executive
secretary. Dr. J. H. Mason Knox, Dr. Sherwood and I,
in addition to Miss Knipp, were the Baltimoreans pres-
ent. At this conference the National Association for the
study and prevention of Infant Mortality was formed
with Baltimore chosen as its headquarters, and Miss
Knipp appointed executive secretary. From small be-
ginnings this Association, now known as the American
Child Health Association, has become one of the most
powerful public health organizations in our country.
Shortly after this New Haven Conference the
Children's Bureau of the United States Department of
Labor was organized with Miss Julia Lathrop as its
chief. Miss Lathrop had also been a student at Vassar
with Dr. Putnam and Dr. Sherwod and, as is well known,
had been a resident of Hull House for many years asso-
ciated with Miss Jane Addams and Dr. Alice Hamilton
and other distinguished leaders in the social service
movement. Of the various papers read at the New Haven
Conference the one I remember best was presented by
Dr. Alice Hamilton on the relation of a high death rate
to a high birth rate, a study made from Hull House on
a Chicago group, the first study of this kind, I think,
made in the L^ited States. Dr. Hamilton's sisters. Miss
Edith and Miss Margaret Hamilton, are well known in
92 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Baltimore because of their long connection with Bryn
Mawr School. Dr. Hamilton was one of the group that
found opportunities for study and stimulation in the
pathological laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Hospital
in pre-medical school days. She has devoted herself to
pathological research and stands out as an example of
the possibilities of combining pure research with its ap-
plication to some practical problems of social science.
When Harvard established its school of Industrial
Hygiene Dr. Hamilton as one of America's chief au-
thorities on industrial medicine was called to an asso-
ciate professorship in this school, the only woman who
has ever held a position on the Harvard faculty.
The work of Miss Lathrop in the Children's Bureau
is too well known to need reference here. The studies
carried out in this Bureau covering all phases of social
conditions bearing upon the life and health of mothers,
infants and children formed educational propaganda of
inestimable value in advancing the Child Welfare move-
ment. It was on the basis of these studies that the bill
for the protection of maternity and infancy was formu-
lated which women asked Congress to pass as their first
contribution to the laws of the country following their
enfranchisement.
In addition to the activities of the National Associa-
tion and those of the Children's Bureau and antedating
both, Child Welfare as a public health problem had
been vigorously undertaken by the Health Department
of New York City in a special bureau organized and di-
rected by Dr. Josephine Baker, a department which has
served as a model for all subsequent health bureaus of
Child Welfare.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 93
I have already said that our experience gained in the
Evening Dispensary had emphasized for Dr. Sherwood
and me the rebellious feeling aroused in our medical
school days against the conditions surrounding child
birth and the care of infants. Obstetrics we saw as the
one department of medicine which tolerated two stand-
ards of practice, that of the doctor of medicine, often
inadequately taught, and that of the midwife, in our
country the untrained as well as the so-called trained.
We watched the advance of medical science destined to
affect the teaching and practice of obstetrics as pro-
foundly as it was affecting every other branch of medi-
cal practice and Dr. Sherwood, at least, began to feel
stirring within her the spirit of a crusader. She had
determined in Dispensary days that whenever and how-
ever she found the opportunity she would press the cause
of better obstetrics. As the first chairman of the Sec-
tion on Obstetrics in the National Association for the
Prevention of Infant Mortality she conducted at several
annual meetings symposiums on this subject securing the
co-operation of well-known men and women in the
United States and Canada, among them notably Prof.
J. Whitridge Williams of the Johns Hopkins University.
The report of the papers in this section published in the
annual transactions forms an important source of in-
formation for students of this subject.
Dr. Sherwood's service in the Evening Dispensary and
her service as chairman of the midwifery committee of
the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty (Maryland State
Medical Society), her membership on the Executive
Committee of the Baltimore Babies' Milk Fund Asso-
ciation from its organization and her membership for
94 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
many years on the Thomas Wilson Sanitarium Board,
in addition to her work as medical director of Bryn
Mawr School, gave her such an intimate knowledge of
conditions surrounding child-birth and the care and
health of children that among the women of Baltimore
and Maryland she came to be looked to for leadership
in these matters.
It was, therefore, eminently fitting that she should be
chosen to organize and develop the Bureau of Child
Welfare in the City Health Department when it was es-
tablished. The inception of this department is due to
Dr. William T. Howard, Assistant Health Commis-
sioner. Dr. Howard persuaded Mayor Preston that
the time had come for Baltimore to develop a separate
Bureau of Child Welfare, and it was Dr. Howard who
invited and urged Dr. Sherwood to accept the head of
such a department.
The great war brought with it a most interesting pub-
lic health campaign in regard to food. Fortunately
women were prepared for this as the Home Economics
movement and other agencies had carried the teaching
of the new science in regard to food into girls' schools
and colleges.
One of the most impressive women's meetings I ever
attended in Baltimore was the one held in the Lyric after
the United States had entered the war. Mr. Hoover was
to address the women. Everyone can recall how, under
the slogan: "Food will win the war," the women in our
country were organized for an intensive campaign of
education in food values, effecting such co-operation of
effort as they had never known before. The body of the
Lyric was filled with women representing every section
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 95
of the city. As I looked over that vast concourse of
women every face seemed set in a fixed expression
of determination which seemed to say "we can and we
will." My memory travelled back across the years
when, during the war between the States, I had seen
in my home my mother in company with other women
ravelling lint as their great service in war time.
I thought what a marvelous change in the status of
women fifty years had wrought. It was not the work
of willing hands alone that was demanded of them in
the great World War, but knowledge and its applica-
tions were essential to guide those hands. Moreover, I
knew that if it became necessary all the teaching in re-
gard to food, scientific and practical, even the essential
research, could be taken over by women. It brought
home the triumph of the higher education of women and
justified all the effort and struggle by which it had been
achieved.
Among the various experiences Dr. Sherwood and I
have had in following these great movements in public
health some have been discouraging, some have been
depressing and some have been amusing. For the causes
we were interested in we have listened to and taken part
in hearings before mayors, before special committees
of the City Council, before various city boards and be-
fore committees of the State Legislature and of the
United States Congress. We have testified as witnesses
in courtrooms and before justices.
Naturally, one of the earliest subjects that interested
us was the milk supply. The ordinances of the city in
regard to milk were few and primitive in our early days
in Baltimore. Dr. Sherwood, in a paper presented to
96 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
the Maryland Public Health Association about 1896, a
rather short-lived organization, had discussed the sub-
ject of food and milk and referred to the cow stables
in the city. One of the health wardens asked her to visit
with him a few of the worst where cows never saw the
light of day. Subsequently he asked her to testify be-
fore a justice in a suit brought against the owner of
some of the cows she had seen. After she had given
her testimony a man in the room arose and, shaking a
fist in the air, asked who had paid this woman for com-
ing here and giving testimony. She was then a mem-
ber of the Bay View Board. As she came out of the
room she encountered this man at the entrance, very
suave and oily in manner, with profuse apologies. He
was a dealer in cows and sold to the Bay View Board
and some one had told him who "this woman" was.
The fight for a clean and safe milk supply for Balti-
more advanced slowly. The interests of the small as
well as the large dealer had political protection. I re-
call one occasion when, at the request of Dr. Jones, vari-
ous organizations were asked to send representatives to
the City Council to hear a discussion on an ordinance
the Health Department was trying to have passed, and to
speak to the question if the occasion arose. Many rep-
resentative citizens, men and women, were present. Miss
Mary Garrett I remember, sitting on the steps of the
speaker's platform. The Council postponed the con-
sideration of the question, but its members were evi-
dently much incensed at the presence of its visitors, espe-
cially the women, and we overheard many uncompli-
mentary remarks as we went through the corridors of
the City Hall, mostly to the effect that these things
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 97
(councilmanic action) were none of women's affairs and
they would better be at home attending to their own
business. In the light of such opinions it is interesting
that the final fight for securing a satisfactory ordinance
controlling the sale of milk in Baltimore City was car-
ried to a successful conclusion by the milk committee
of the Woman's Civic League and won largely through
the efforts of its chairman, Mrs. Francis King Carey.
I remember once at a hearing on an ordinance re-
garding pool rooms, with a clause designed to keep chil-
dren out of them after a certain hour at night, that one
of the women present overheard two men discussing the
situation. One said: "The women are out in force to-
day." "It makes no difference," said his companion,
"they have no votes." More and more it was borne in
upon the consciousness of women using their influence
to promote the betterment of environmental conditions
of living that they lacked one essential tool, and before
1910 Dr. Sherwood and I had come to the conclusion
that women must bend their energies to securing the
suffrage before they could hope to make much further
progress in making their influence felt on the causes in
which they were interested.
I recall walking from my office to Goucher College
one morning after one of the hearings on a milk
ordinance, through streets of doubtful cleanliness,
seeing unsanitary milk being distributed by unsanitary
methods, and thinking about our unfiltered water sup-
ply, our lack of a sewerage system and of any sanitary
and adequate method of disposing of refuse and gar-
bage. The first person I met inside the College doors
was a man holding an important official position in the
98 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
business administration, whose opinions and mine did
not agree on suffrage for women. I told him about the
conditions I had been reviewing in my mind, about the
meeting of the Council the previous afternoon and then
said: "I feel so good this morning because I have no
responsibility for these matters. I was told so last even-
ing in the City Hall." "But you have," said he, and the
following conversation took place. "What can I do,"
I asked. "You can talk about it, you can write to the
public press about it, you can make public speeches
about it, there are many ways in which you can exercise
an influence about it." "Yes," I replied, "I have tried
all those ways, lo, these many years, now why aren't
you willing to let me express my opinion by quietly de-
positing a vote in the ballot box." He had no answer
but the usual one that woman's place was in the home.
Thinking women had grown grey and tired hearing that
answer, having learned that there wasn't a single ac-
tivity concerned in successful home-making which was
not dependent upon a community life regulated by legis-
lation in which they had no direct voice. The demand
for suffrage was a corollary bound to follow the educa-
tion of women.
Chapter VH
Personal Experiences in the Suffrage Campaign
As far back as I can remember I believed in Woman
Suffrage. As a girl in high school I had committed to
memory the Constitution of the United States and had
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 99
rolled the sonorous sentences of its preamble under my
tongue with unction. It was a rude awakening when I
found that "we, the people," did not include women.
All the schools I had ever attended before entering upon
the study of medicine and all the schools in which I had
taught were coeducational. In the normal school in
which I had my preparatory training as a teacher,
two active debating societies in which women had
an equal share with men, were used by the
men as training schools for their future political activi-
ties. Few of the men proposed to spend their lives in
the teaching profession. To them teaching was to be a
stepping stone to some more lucrative and dignified
activity. The extension of the suffrage to women was
thoroughly debated in these societies. I never saw much
reason in the arguments advanced against it. However,
at that period I was not especially interested in suffrage
propaganda, although I v/as an early subscriber to the
Woman's Journal and a constant reader of its pages.
I presume I passed my opinions over to my pupils
because I remember once, when principal of a high
school, I assigned the subject to the senior class for de-
bate and the cleverest boy in the class was given the side
against suffrage for women. He came to me in great
distress and told me he could do nothing with the sub-
ject because he believed thoroughly in suffrage for
women and did not want to debate against his convic-
tions. I pointed out to him that often the best way to
test one's beliefs was to argue against them. I had found
that method useful in my own experience.
The first suffrage meeting I ever attended was when
I was a student of medicine in Philadelphia in 1888.
100 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
when the National Woman Suffrage Association held one
of its annual meetings there. Strange to say, among the
women medical students there was little or no sentiment
on the subject at that time. Few of them were inter-
ested enough to attend any of the meetings. Several
of us, however, went to an evening meeting and had no
difficulty in finding good seats. Susan B. Anthony, Julia
Ward Howe and Lucy Stone Blackwell were on the
platform and all spoke, Lucy Stone making the principal
address. Had I not been convinced before that there
were no valid arguments against extending the suffrage
to women I should have come away from that meeting
a suffragist. Some of my companions who had gone to
scoff came away convinced.
However, at that period and subsequently I was more
interested in securing the extension of educational op-
portunities to women than in helping to secure suffrage
for them. I presume if I thought about it at all I con-
sidered that full freedom of educational privileges was
bound to be followed by the removal of women's politi-
cal disabilities. Then, too, I had not at that time been
brought intimately into contact with any of the workers
in the suffrage cause.
Theoretically, then, when I came to Baltimore, I was
a suffragist, but I had never lifted a finger nor con-
tributed time nor money to advance the suffrage cause.
I have already pointed out how gradually, in my medi-
cal-social work in Baltimore, it was borne in upon my
consciousness that the ballot was a very important tool
in securing social legislation. Hitherto it had been the
injustice of the laws affecting women which impressed
me most. In short the argument was based on women's
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 101
rights to a share in a government "for the people, of the
people and by the people." Now, however, the appeal
was different. I saw the necessity of the ballot for
women in obtaining the social legislation for which they
were working. It was clear to me after appearing be-
fore committees of the legislature that a request to legis-
lators would have much greater force when we could
say "thousands of voters stand behind this request," in-
stead of "thousands of women desire such legislation."
My teaching of hygiene as a community problem led
straight to the ballot. Therefore, when the opportunity
came to engage, as far as I could, in actively supporting
the cause of woman suffrage, I was quite ready.
How long there had existed in Maryland a branch
of the National Woman Suffrage Association I do not
know, but I had never heard of it previous to the year
1905 when I was informed that on the invitation of the
Maryland State Suffrage Association the annual meet-
ing of the National Association would be held in Balti-
more in February, 1906. It was this meeting that led
me actively into the suffrage cause. It was this Balti-
more meeting that Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw char-
acterized as the turning point in the suffrage movement
in the United States. It was at this time that large
groups of college women became actively interested in
suffrage. It was after this meeting that active suffrage
propaganda was carried on in Baltimore and in Mary-
land.
In the fall of 1905 Miss Garrett, who was then living
with Miss Thomas at Bryn Mawr, came to see Dr. Sher-
wood and me to enlist our interest in the coming annual
meeting of the National Women Suffrage Association to
102 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
be held in Baltimore. She assumed we were suffragists.
In the course of the conversation she turned to Dr. Sher-
wood and said: "Of course, Dr. Sherwood, you believe
in suffrage." It was quite characteristic of the general
attitude of many educated women that Dr. Sherwood
responded: "Why, Miss Garrett, I haven't thought much
on this subject, but I think I shall believe in it." Miss
Garrett had hardly left us when Dr. Sherwood took from
our library shelves John Stuart Mill's "Subjection of
Women." Before she was through with the book she
was an ardent suffragist. Many college women profes-
sors and others at that time retired to their studies with
the literature on suffrage and emerged therefrom con-
vinced and active workers in the cause.
Dr. Sherwood and I promptly put ourselves at the
service of Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett to work ac-
tively for the success of the convention. Mrs. Ida Hus-
ted Harper, in the third volume of her "Life and Work
of Susan B. Anthony," gives a graphic description of
the Baltimore meeting in a chapter headed "Tributes
of College Women — Suffrage Funds," indicating that
the outstanding features of this convention were the Col-
lege evening and the promise of Miss Garrett and Miss
Thomas to undertake to raise a fund of sixty thousand
dollars payable in six annual instalments for the work
of the Association. When this was finally assured it
was the first time any large or definite sum could be
counted upon by the Association for budget purposes.
Mrs. Harper says: "Because of its unique character
and the prominence of the speakers the evening devoted
to College Women was the leading event of the week."
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 103
The audience assembled in the Lyric for this meeting
filled it to overflowing. It was probably, in point of
numbers and in the character of the listeners, the most
brilliant audience that up to that time had ever attended
a suffrage meeting in our country. I remember Prof.
Mary W. Calkins, who represented Wellesley College
on the program, said to me the following day; "I was
amazed at the size and character of the audience that I
faced last evening. In Boston such an audience to hear
Woman Suffrage discussed would be impossible." The
audience, however, by no means represented Baltimore's
interest in the subject. Miss Garrett had opened her
house on West Monument Street for the week of the
convention where she entertained as house guests Miss
Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and other
distinguished women, and where she gave, during the
week, a series of dinners, luncheons and receptions. For
the College evening she had sent out invitations for a
large reception to follow the exercises at the Lyric and
most of the guests who were going to the reception went
to the Lyric first and this fact accounted for a large part
of the audience.
Those of us who acted as advance agents for Miss
Thomas and Miss Garrett in preparations for this Col-
lege evening had many amusing experiences. Two are
worth relating, one connected with the appearance on
the program of the name of President Remsen of the
John Hopkins University as the presiding officer, and
the other related to the statement on the program that
students of the Woman's College in cap and gown would
act as ushers.
104 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Among the women whom Dr. Sherwood and I had
tried to interest to the extent of being willing to endorse
the program was the wife of a prominent professor of
the Johns Hopkins University. She was a northern
woman of independent views and we had very little
doubt that she would be willing to place herself on rec-
ord as favoring the suffrage movement. Much to our
surprise when we approached her she was very hesitant
about having her name used, but said she would con-
sult her husband. A few days later she called me by
telephone to say that she had talked it over with her
husband and they both felt that, as the Johns Hopkins
University was a very conservative institution, it would
not be wise for her to have any share in our prepara-
tions. I had hardly put down the telephone receiver
when Dr. Sherwood received a telegram from Miss Gar-
rett saying President Remsen would preside on College
evening and Dr. William Welch had consented to occupy
the chair at another meeting.
I am afraid we took a good deal of malicious pleas-
ure the night of Miss Garrett's reception in greeting
woman after woman who had refused to have her name
used in any way in connection with the meeting, but who
was literally "bowled over" by the sight of Miss An-
thony and Mrs. Howe. Mrs. Harper well says of this
occasion: "No one present ever will forget the picture
of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Howe sitting side by side on
a divan in the large bay window of Miss Garrett's house
with a background of ferns and flowers; at their right
stood Miss Garrett and Miss Thomas, at their left Miss
Shaw and the line of eminent college women speakers
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 105
of the evening with a beautiful perspective of conserva-
tory and art gallery."
The college women of Baltimore, however, will recall
with greater vividness the following Sunday afternoon
when Miss Garrett invited them to come in for a cup of
tea and a personal word from Miss Anthony. There
we literally sat at her feet and knew we were in the
presence of a great soul. Miss Anthony was then ap-
proaching her eighty-sixth birthday which was to be
celebrated in Washington the following week. I shall
never forget the picture she presented in the fading light
of the afternoon and the fitful play of the flames of an
open fire. She wore her famous garnet-colored velvet
dress and lace collar. We, a small group, sat on the
floor and listened to the few words she had to say. What
they were I do not recall, but what I carried away with
me was an impression of a woman characterized by great
simplicity, strength and dignity, indomitable spirit and
infinite patience. I never think of Miss Anthony as I
saw her that afternoon, without recalling what Dr. Sher-
wood was wont to say when we had identified ourselves
with the suffrage cause. She said it wa5 good to be an
American woman in this particular period of our coun-
try's history because we were the one class of human
beings that were striving to obtain freedom and liberty,
and that there was nothing in human experience so good
for the soul as such a battle. What she and I did for a
few years fitfully. Miss Anthony had done for more
than half a century continuously and it had left a noble
imprint upon her.
Miss Anthony came to Baltimore an ill woman. Mrs.
Harper says "Dr. Mary Sherwood, a skilled physician
106 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
and a friend of Miss Garrett's, was at once summoned
and during Miss Anthony's stay gave her most devoted
attention, declaring it to be an honor and privilege to
render service to one who had done so much for all
womanhood. A trained nurse from the Johns Hopkins
Hospital willingly consented to assume the garb of a
maid in order that her patient might not know she was
so ill as to need professional attendance." Woman doc-
tor and woman nurse vied with each other to bring
bodily comfort to their patient, while both felt that it
was one of the great privileges of their lives to min-
ister to her. The nurse accompanied Miss Anthony to
Washington and then to her home in Rochester, where
her death occurred March 13th, just about four weeks
after her appearance in Baltimore.
In the preparations for the College evening an invi-
tation was extended to students of the Woman's College
of Baltimore to send a group of students in cap and
gown to act as ushers. I recall very distinctly a meeting
of the Board of Control of the College held about a week
before the Woman Suffrage Convention. President
Goucher was in the chair after one of his prolonged ab-
sences during which Dean Van Meter was acting presi-
dent. After the business of the meeting had been trans-
acted Dr. Goucher took from the table what I recog-
nized as an advance program of the suffrage convention.
He was not in sympathy with the suffrage movement and
his views were shared by the majority of the professors
who formed the Board of which I was the only woman
member. Very quietly but with evidence of some feel-
ing he said: "I have in my hand a program of the suf-
frage convention to be held in Baltimore which states
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 107
that on Wednesday evening students of the College will
act as ushers in cap and gown. I should like to know
who is responsible for this statement." For a minute
there was a tense silence, then Dr. Van Meter said: "I
am responsible. This will be an important occasion for
college women. Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith, Mount
Holyoke will be represented on the program by promi-
nent members of their respective faculties. The
Woman's College of Baltimore should have a place
on this program and I have taken the liberty of selecting
a representative group of our students to act as ushers."
The deed was done and the unwisdom of withdrawing
permission was so obvious that no action was taken. Not
only did the students turn out in a body on College even-
ing, but Dr. Van Meter was on the platform to deliver
the invocation with which the meeting was opened.
More than one conservative group was swept into ac-
tion contrary to the will of the majority during that
memorable woman's week in Baltimore. The Arundell
Club, with a membership mostly indifferent or actually
hostile to the suffrage cause, gave Miss Anthony an after-
noon reception. The president of the Club, Miss King
(Mrs. Ellicott), was an outspoken advocate of woman
suffrage and entered fully into active leadership in all
subsequent suffrage work in Maryland.
The Baltimore Convention was followed in City and
State by active and general suffrage propaganda. Al-
though our State did not finally ratify the Constitutional
Amendment, it was not because Maryland suffragists
failed to wage a vigorous, active and intelligent cam-
paign under capable leadership. I doubt whether any
State in the Union developed better leaders in their
108 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
communities than Mrs. William M. Funck, Mrs. Eliza-
beth King EUicott and Mrs. Donald Hooker.
However much they may have differed in their opin-
ions as to the methods to be used in advancing the cause
they were honestly and loyally devoted to it and were
always able to present a united front to the State Legis-
lature and on other occasions when unity was essential.
I have already said that so far as I know the only
suffrage organization in Maryland prior to the Balti-
more Convention was that led by Mrs. Funck. Promptly
after the convention a group of women who had been
active in the woman's club movement concluded that it
would be wise to organize another association and they
unanimously decided upon Mrs. Ellicott as president.
Mrs. Hooker, I think, was one of the original executive
board of this body. Eventually with the appearance of
a militant wing in the national suffrage association, and
its separation from the parent body, a third organiza-
tion representing this group was formed in Maryland
with Mrs. Hooker as its president.
In addition to these organizations the National Col-
lege Equal Suffrage League maintained a Baltimore
branch with headquarters at the College Club. This
National Association had been formed by Mrs. Maud
Wood Park who represented it at the College evening
of the Baltimore convention. Its object was to do propa-
ganda work among women college graduates and col-
lege students. Early in its history a meeting for college
women with Mrs. Park as the speaker was arranged by
Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett at the Baltimore Coun-
try Club. About two hundred Baltimore college women
drank tea together that afternoon, listened to an able
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 109
address by Mrs. Park and were enthusiastic over her
address and her charming personality, but very few of
them were ready to commit themselves on the subject of
suffrage. I remember very well that a few of us took
dinner afterwards with Mrs. Park in the dining room of
the Club and the surprise expressed by the men there
that this young and charming woman had been the suf-
frage speaker of the afternoon.
There were all kinds of women in the suffrage ranks
just as there are all kinds in any cause. Some of them
undoubtedly were there because they were "queer." I
remember meeting a woman delegate from the State of
Washington at a reception to the delegates to the Balti-
more Convention given by Miss Garrett Friday afternoon
of convention week. She obviously belonged to a class
familiarly known as "cranks." She told me after some
conversation that no one had introduced her to Miss
Garrett and she desired to meet her. I offered to pre-
sent her, but asked what her name was and whether she
was "Mrs. or Miss." She straightened herself up, gave
me a haughty look and replied: "I have been married
three times and the sweetest word in the English lan-
guage to me is 'Miss.' "
As the general campaign for suffrage waxed hotter,
women college students, as a rule, having been won over,
its sponsors felt that the National College Equal Suf-
frage League had served its purpose and it was ami-
cably disbanded.
I was present in Washington at the annual conven-
tion of the National Woman Suffrage Association as a
delegate from the National College Equal Suffrage
League when this action wa§ taken. There was no oppo-
110 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
sition to such action and the league died peacefully and
quietly. At the same time a new league was born. It
was at this convention that the split came between the
conservative and the radical wings represented on the
one side by Miss Shaw and the old line suffragists and
on the other by Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and a vigorous
contingent of youth. It was not, however, a division
between the old and the young as some of the oldest
suffragists I knew, women seventy and eighty years of
age, promptly joined the militant wing while many of
the youngest I knew were found in the ranks led by Miss
Shaw.
Whether militancy advanced the cause of suffrage in
the United States and brought suffrage sooner than it
otherwise would have come is an unanswerable question.
The militants say it did and by dint of constant affirma-
tion they have made many people believe it is true. I
believe myself that while it did not retard the progress
of suffrage, it was useless and much of it foolish. I had
occasion once at the request of Dr. Kelly to visit a Wash-
ington jail to see one of the women who was undergoing
a hunger strike. It seemed to me that any person who
took pleasure in a fancied martyrdom ought to be per-
mitted this form of self-expression if she desired it.
Forcible feeding was so familiar to me from my service
in an insane hospital that it failed to arouse any par-
ticular sympathy for those who chose to put themselves
in the position in which it might be needed. The only
time during my service at Norristown that a patient at-
tacked me was when I had ordered a cessation of her
feeding by a tube, a method which had been used with
her for four or five years because she refused to take
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 111
food in the usual way. There is nothing intrinsically
unpleasant about the process after one is used to it.
Of the many addresses made in Baltimore in the in-
terest of woman suffrage, the one I remember most
vividly is the first one made by Mrs. Pankhurst. This
was on her first visit to America before she had adopted
window-breaking as an argument for suffrage. The
meeting was held in a theatre on a Sunday afternoon,
two innovations that, in my opinion, boded ill for its
success. I was, however, mistaken. The theatre was
crowded with a representative audience and the speaker
made a profound impression. I look back upon that
address as one of the few great speeches on any subject
I have heard in my life time. When Mrs. Pankhurst
visited Baltimore a second time she had lost her ability
to draw an audience or to hold spellbound those who
listened to her.
In the years between 1906 and the end of the cam-
paign for suffrage Baltimore audiences had the oppor-
tunity of hearing the subject thoroughly discussed by
the ablest speakers in the country who took the plat-
form for and against suffrage during that period. I re-
call that the day after a meeting arranged by women
opposed to the extension of suffrage to women at which
the principal speakers were a Judge of the Federal
Court and an eminent New York lawyer, a young woman
came to see me in my office. She was a beautiful South-
ern girl studying art in our city. She said: "Dr. Welsh,
I was at that meeting last night and heard those two old
gentlemen talking against suffrage. Now I am on the
fence in this matter, but if I hear many more speeches
like those I shall step down into the suffrage ranks.
112 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
They said that if women got suffrage they wouldn't
marry and homes would be broken up. Now, you know
that is foolish. Nature will take care of that." There
was, of course, plenty of foolish talk on both sides as
happens with any controversial subject.
The greatest thrills of the campaign came with the
street parades. 1 marched in one in Baltimore and in
the famous one staged in Washington the day before the
first inauguration of President Wilson. I had elected
to take my place in the parade with a group of women
physicians from the Women's Medical College of Penn-
sylvania. One of our most cherished traditions when I
was a student there was the story of Dr. Ann Preston,
the first Dean of the College, leading a small group of
women medical students in a forced march down the
middle of Chestnut Street protected by the police from
a mob of male medical students who had hooted them
out of a clinic which the women had been given permis-
sion to attend. I doubt whether the jeers or insulting
remarks which that small band listened to because they
were seeking educational freedom for women were any
worse than those we listened to fifty years later because
we were seeking political freedom.
The Washington parade with the accompanying pag-
eant in spite of, and because of, the lack of protection
afforded it by the Washington police, made a profound
impression throughout this country. The professional
women in cap and gown, lawyers, doctors, teachers and
students formed a conspicuous section of the parade.
The Trustees of Goucher College had refused to grant a
holiday to the student body, but the newspaper photo-
graphs showed a very large contingent of caps and
CONTRAST OF POLICE CONTROL OF SUFFRAGE PARADE, MARCH 3,
AND OF INAUGURAL PARADE. MARCH 4, WASHINGTON, 1913.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 113
gowns behind a conspicuous banner bearing the single
word "Goucher." I think the majority of the students
and a large number of the women members of the fac-
ulty marched behind that banner.
In the September following the Washington parade
Dr. Guth entered upon his duties as President of Gou-
cher College. His formal inauguration took place in
the Lyric in November of that year. The audience filled
the Lyric to its capacity, while on the platform was
grouped a colorful assemblage in academic costume
representing many of the leading universities and col-
leges of the United States. In his inaugural address he
declared in very positive terms his conviction that suf-
frage should be extended to women. At that time of
six prominent women's colleges along the Atlantic sea-
board three of the presidencies, Vassar, Smith and
Goucher, were occupied by men, and Goucher's new
president was the first of these to publicly declare him-
self in favor of woman suffrage. The three women
presidents, representing Bryn Mawr, Wellesley and
Mount Holyoke — all of whom were on the stage that
afternoon — had been for many years workers in the
suffrage cause.
With suffrage for women an accomplished fact I am
often asked whether I consider that it has been a suc-
cess. That question has no interest for me. Obviously
it admits of no answer. In a democracy, government is
the business of the entire adult population. The bal-
lot is the means by which an individual expresses an
opinion on questions of government, and it is not only
the right of the individual to use it, but it is his duty to
do so. Once in a parlor meeting where I was one of the
114 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
two speakers debating the question of woman suffrage,
I made the assertion that in my opinion not only should
every adult individual in a democracy have a right to
vote, but that he or she should be punished by fine or
imprisonment for failure to exercise that right. A lady
in the audience gave vent to her aversion to such senti-
ments by a prolonged hiss. As I passed her to my seat
she seized some part of me and said: "Do you mean to
say that if the vote comes to women I ought to be fined
or sent to prison if I fail to use it," "Yes, madam," I
replied, "that is my opinion, but do not fear. You and
I will not live to see any such really democratic day."
Chapter VIII
Personal Experiences as a Member of the Goucher
College Faculty
In 1894 I was appointed by Dr. Goucher, then presi-
dent of the Woman's College of Baltimore, to succeed
Dr. Mary Mitchell as professor of Physiology and
Physical Training. The first statement issued by the
Woman's College, announcing its opening and its pro-
posed courses, stated that it was the intention of the au-
thorities of the College to make provision for the care
of the health of its students in a department which
should be co-ordinate with the other departments of
the College. The catalogue of 1892 announced the ap-
pointment of Dr. Alice Hall as the head of a depart-
ment of Physiology and Physical Training with the title
of professor and a place on the faculty and on its Board
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 115
of Control which consisted of the president, the dean and
instructors holding the rank of professor. It was not
President Goucher's policy to appoint women to pro-
fessorships and except in this department for many
years the only woman on the Board of Control was the
woman physician. In 1904 Dr. Eleanor Lord, associate
professor of history, was made a full professor, and
from that time until 1916 Dr. Lord and I were the only
women on the Board of Control which determined the
academic policy of the College, and, until student gov-
ernment became a part of College policy, exercised a
certain measure of control over the rules and regulations
for the conduct of students.
Now a woman who accepted a position in a woman's
college in 1890 to develop a department of hygiene en-
tered an unworked field and could practically make of
it what she pleased. She could expect little or no help
from her colleagues in trying to give her department
academic rank because the subject of hygiene as a dig-
nified subject for department standing in a college of
liberal arts was unheard of and a professor of physical
training was given scant consideration by the early gen-
eration of doctors of philosophy who were rapidly fill-
ing the professorial chairs in colleges. Indeed doctors
of medicine themselves looked with doubtful eyes on
teachers of college hygiene who supposedly gave their
time to teaching gymnastics. I recall that Dr. Frances
Emily White who, as professor of physiology in the
Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, had taught
Dr. Hall, Dr. Mitchell and myself, lamented the fact
that three of her students were wasting their talents and
116 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
their medical education in teaching gymnastic move-
ments to girls.
As a matter of fact none of us could have taught gym-
nastics had we desired to do so nor were we engaged
for that purpose.
My predecessors saw to it that the foundations for
developing a department of hygiene were well laid in
that they insisted that animal physiology was to have a
distinct place in the curriculum and that its teaching
should be controlled by their department.
Other women's colleges had physicians in their facul-
ties, but they were employed primarily to look after the
sick. In the Woman's College of Baltimore the distinct
understanding was that the physician did not look after
the sick. In my first interview with Dr. Goucher he told
me that the policy of the college was to designate two
male physicians resident in Baltimore, one of the regu-
lar school (he said "allopathic") and one homeopathic,
to be called to the dormitories in cases of illness, the
nurse in charge calling the doctor after ascertaining
from the student her preference. Until 1914 the cata-
logue stated that illness in the dormitories was entirely
in the care of the resident trained nurse. She made her
report to Dean Van Meter every morning, and received
her instructions from him. The woman physician on
the college faculty had no official recognition so far as
the dormitories were concerned and no authority over
the nurse. Her salary included nothing for medical
services to sick students.
Manifestly there were difficulties in such an arrange-
ment. To the nurses themselves it was unsatisfactory
and I found they were eager to seek advice and direc-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 117
tion from me. As time passed on I gradually assumed
the medical direction of the infirmary without any com-
pensation and without any official appointment. This
led to two complications — one an occasional explosion
from Dr. Van Meter when difficulties arose, the other
the assumption of students that they were entitled to
medical service, although they paid nothing for it even
in the shape of an infirmary fee.
When Dr. Noble became President I was appointed,
by action of the Board of Trustees, medical adviser to
the College with the understanding that I was to organize
the care of the sick in an infirmary as I saw best, but
to receive no compensation for medical services from
the College. I was never willing to establish a relation
with students on a fee basis, as I felt that such an ar-
rangement was not compatible with the relationship de-
manded for preventive work. So long as the College
was small and the medical work light I was glad to in-
clude the care of the sick girls in the infirmary among
my duties, especially as the policy was early adopted of
sending those acutely ill for more than a few days to
various hospitals of the city.
When Dr. Guth came to the presidency he confirmed
this arrangement and gave me full authority in the in-
firmary. When the number of students increased rap-
idly and my other duties became likewise greater, one
year, with President Guth's approval. Dr. Mabel Belt,
one of our own alumnae, was called in to care for stu-
dents in the infirmary ill for more than one day. When,
at my request, she sent her modest bills to the students
there was a great uproar in the College. A meeting of
the student organization was called to consider the mat-
118 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
ter. Parents wrote protesting letters to the president
and, altogether, the situation was very unpleasant, for
Dr. Belt, who, by the way, has never been able to col-
lect those bills. The catalogue distinctly stated that
students were not entitled to medical care. My own re-
action was first one of indignation and second the reflec-
tion that it was my own fault. However, this led to the
final step in the organization of the department of hy-
giene. An infirmary fee to be paid by all resident stu-
dents was instituted and an additional physician with
the title of assistant professor of hygiene was included
in the personnel of the department, part of whose duty
is the care of sick girls in the infirmary. We were for-
tunate to find one of our own alumnae — Dr. Van Duyne
— to inaugurate this arrangement.
So far, then, as my duties were defined when I be-
came associated with the Woman's College of Baltimore,
they included a physical examination of every student
who entered college, day students and resident stu-
dents, placing on permanent record the results of this
examination. On the basis of these examinations I was
to assign students to the work they might do in the gym-
nasium. The instructors in the gymnasium were my
assistants and were directly responsible to me in all
questions affecting health. I was to give one hour lec-
ture weekly on hygiene to freshmen, who were required
to attend this course, and was to have charge of a course
in animal physiology as part of the work required of
students making a major in biology.
The two parts of this program which appealed to me
were the opportunity of observing presumably healthy
girls and the effect of exercise upon them, and the op-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 119
portunity of teaching physiology. The one-hour course
in hygiene did not seem to me worth while as a college
course.
In 1894 we were still in the midst of the discussion
precipitated by Dr. Clarke's book entitled "Sex in Edu-
cation." The reproductive organs in women were looked
upon as the source of most of their ills and the function
of menstruation as a monthly recurrent disabling period,
even if not accompanied by dysmenorrhaea. One has
only to read the pages devoted to the subject by Stanley
Hall in his monumental work on Adolescence to realize
on what insecure foundations one may weave a theory
as to a suitable education for women. It seemed to me
that the gymnasiums connected with women's colleges
should be looked upon as laboratories where one might
study the effects of exercise and of mental work upon
the health of girls and women. Moreover, the emer-
gence of gynaecology as a specialty of medicine with
its intensive study of the cause of the diseases of the
reproductive organs of women and their secondary mani-
festations was yielding a harvest of generalizations
founded on sound knowledge that were revolutionary in
their character so far as their bearing on the health of
women was concerned. No one can appreciate this quite
so clearly as a woman physician who knew women stu-
dents and their ideas on these subjects in 1894 and who
dealt with the daughters of these students and the daugh-
ters of other women of the same generation twenty-five
years later. There was scarcely a student in those early
days with a neurotic history or a neurotic tendency
whose mind was not fixed upon her reproductive organs
as the source of all her troubles. Her dismay and that
120 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
of her friends at the idea of systematic gymnastic exer-
cise or of athletics as a required subject was often too
great to overcome. One young woman told me once that
an eminent gynaecologiest of the old school had told
her that if women knew what dangers lurked in their
pelvic organs they would not step from the pavement to
their carriages or vice versa. When I mildly suggested
that it was then fortunate that the majority of women
in the United States didn't have the opporuniy of per-
forming these acts she did not seem much impressed.
Dr. Alice Hall, who had organized the department of
physical training, had advised that the College adopt the
Swedish system of educational gymnastics and the em-
ployment of teachers trained in the Royal Central In-
stitute in Stockholm. The early students will remem-
ber the various Swedes who presided over their required
gymnasium work. Miss Oberg, Miss Palmquist, Miss
Kellman, Miss Erickson. They possibly never knew
that these teachers looked upon the American girls as
"soft" in the sense that they were obliged to give them
very mild exercises compared to what their country-
women demanded. It was difficult for these teachers
to learn that they must make many concessions to the
prejudices of the American girl and not require her
adherence to rigid rules or ask her to undertake really
vigorous exercise.
When I accepted appointment to the faculty of the
College it was understood that I would proceed to Swe-
den and observe directly the methods of educational
gymnastics used there. So in April, 1894, Dr. Sher-
wood and I set forth to learn what we could about Swe-
dish Educational Gymnastics in Stockholm. We spent
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 121
five months in the study and observation of the training
schools for teachers and the actual teaching of gymnas-
tics in Sweden, Germany and England. I came back
convinced that the Swedish system offered the best foun-
dation for systematic formal gymnastics in classes, but
that there should be added the English zest for sports
and athletics. I advised Dr. Goucher to try an English
teacher when the next vacancy occurred, from the School
of Madame Osterberg, a Swede, who had introduced
the Swedish system into England and established a
school there for training teachers which specially em-
phasized athletics and sports. In 1897, when I visited
England again, I was commissioned by Dr. Goucher to
find a teacher, and through Madame Osterberg's influ-
ence I was fortunate in securing the services of Miss
Hillyard who will be remembered by many former stu-
dents as a splendid specimen of physical vigor and an
inspiring leader in outdoor sports. She introduced
hockey to the College. Miss Hillyard had been a stu-
dent at Girton, but because her health seemed not good
had gone into physical training as a profession, and
after her own experience could often laugh a girl out
of her ideas concerning physical disability.
While Dr. Sherwood and I were in Stockholm Dr.
Sherwood received a cablegram from President Thomas
asking her to accept a position as medical director of
Bryn Mawr School and as lecturer on hygiene and medi-
cal examiner of students in Bryn Mawr College. She was
at that time lecturer in pathology at the Woman's Medi-
cal College in Philadelphia, which took her to Philadel-
phia once a week during the college year. She accepted
the position offered and for a number of years spent a
122 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
day and a half in Bryn Mawr and Philadelphia until her
medical work in Baltimore no longer permitted of such
regular absences. By this arrangement Dr. Sherwood
and I began at the same time practical work in hygiene
with girls in secondary schools and with college women.
We worked out together methods of instruction and
of medical supervision. As Dr. Sherwood has con-
tinued as medical director of Bryn Mawr School ever
since her appointment we have been most helpful to each
other in school and college work.
Until 1913 the instructors in physical training in the
Woman's College were Swedes and English women, with
one exception who did not increase my desire for Ameri-
can trained teachers. However, our own schools of
physical education were steadily improving and an in-
creasing number of women college graduates were en-
tering these schools, so, finally, when Miss Jervis, an
English woman who had followed Miss Rodway, who
had succeeded Miss Hillyard and who was one of the
most successful of all our teachers, left us for work in
China, the department was organized with all American
teachers, with one of our own graduates as director. The
success of Miss Von Borries is a great satisfaction to
the College authorities. I believe the department of
physical training in Goucher College has never been so
efficient as it is at present.
Gradually as I gained experience and knowledge and
compared the final organization of our department in
Goucher College with that in other women's colleges I
became fully convinced of the wisdom of our arrange-
ment in making physical training a special phase of hy-
giene administered in close correlation with the teach-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 123
ing of hygiene and the care of the sick in one compact
department with a definite head. As a rule the instruc-
tors in physical training have learned to value this or-
ganization, especially as they have been given free hand
to develop their own ideas after thorough discussion and
have been given full authority in their own field.
The basis of the supervision of the health of students
is laid in their physical examinations made on entrance.
In the early days these were the subject of much discus-
sion and of frequent, sometimes violent, objection. It
was said it was useless and expensive and an interfer-
ence with personal liberty. In the light of the present
day campaign for periodical physical examinations of
all individuals as a fundamental requisite for personal
hygiene it is interesting to remember these objections.
As years passed by and the methods of physical exami-
nations used in colleges and elsewhere were made more
uniform and complete our records have become more
valuable for systematic study. In the light of large
numbers of such examinations it is no longer possible
to assert that college conditions have detrimentally af-
fected the health of women students. It can usually be
shown that the symptoms attributed to college life
existed when the student entered college. I know more
than one student who thinks her health was permanently
injured by her gymnasium requirements or by her stu-
dies in college, but I fail to recall one such case where
the claims could be substantiated. Fortunately, in re-
cent years, one rarely hears these forlorn stories.
When I had my first interview with Dr. Goucher I
told him of my interest in some of the physiological
problems that might be studied in the gymnasium and
124 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
he expressed his interest and thought I would have time
for some of the studies I had in mind. This did not
prove to be the case and my own contributions to the
literature of this subject have been nil. Yet I have
never lost sight of the possibility and have urged the
same attitude on other members of the department and
induced them to make special studies and publish their
results.
The prospect of teaching physiology to major stu-
dents held special attractions for me because my inter-
est in chemistry had been a factor in deciding me to
take up the study of medicine. In my medical school
days I had decided to take up the subject of physiologi-
cal chemistry as a profession if I could get the oppor-
tunity. In my last year in medicine I consulted Dean
Bodley of the medical school in which I was a student,
one of the first women in our country to teach chemistry,
about leaving the medical school and taking up the study
of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. She said to me: "My experience in life has
been that it is well to finish what one begins. You are
one year from your medical degree and I think you
would be unwise not to finish your course." She pointed
out that opportunities for women in the field of chem-
istry were very limited. The last consideration did not
deter me, indeed it served as a stimulus until I learned
the truth by experience. Her advice to finish what I had
begun was very helpful and I have passed it on many
times to perplexed students. At the end of my last years
in college, however, I was led to believe that if I were
qualified, a position for teaching physiological chemis-
try would be available for me. I did not desire to prac-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 125
tice medicine and I rather think I seized upon the some-
what nebulous hopes held out to me. I decided to go
to Zurich as it seemed on inquiry the best place avail-
able for a woman to get what 1 wanted. At the end
of a year and a half in Ziirich, when I was about to be-
gin my thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy with
physiological chemistry as my major subject, the pros-
pects of securing the teaching position I had in view
vanished. As I did not feel justified in incurring fur-
ther financial obligations without a more definite out-
look for the future, I returned home to seek a job,
which I found in a hospital for the insane. When the
Hopkins Medical School opened in 1893 I was residing
in Baltimore, and found the opportunity of taking
up a problem in physiological chemistry in Dr. Abel's
laboratory. Work in this was interrupted, however, by
my appointment to the Woman's College of Baltimore
with its requirement of a trip to Sweden.
I make this rather detailed statement because it ex-
plains why I say that the prospect of teaching physiology
to somewhat advanced students was particularly attrac-
tive to me and why I have always claimed physiological
chemistry as a course to be given in the department of
physiology. My first advanced courses were largely de-
voted to this subject.
When I accepted a position in the Woman's College
of Baltimore in March, 1894, Bennett Hall Annex was
in process of building, not because the College needed
more gymnasium space, I was told, but because Mr. Ben-
nett was willing to give an additional building, but only
one for physical training purposes. It was, however,
126 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
agreed that the first story and basement of the Annex
were to be fitted up for the use of the departments of
biology and physiology and hygiene, which were then
taken care of in the basement of Goucher Hall.
Dr. Maynard M. Metcalf was then in charge of the
department of biology. When I entered upon my duties
in September, 1894, the new building, while not quite
completed, was ready for partial use. Students from
1894 to 1916 will remember the first story of Bennett
Hall Annex, one half its present size, divided into lec-
ture room and laboratory serving the purpose of teach-
ing biology, botany, physiology and hygiene.
Whatever success I had in those early days in teach-
ing was in large measure due to the generous en-
couragement and cordial co-operation of Dr. Metcalf.
Our departments had a common budget which he ad-
ministered. All his material was freely at my disposal
and our apparatus and books chosen with reference to
the needs of the two departments were common prop-
erty. The assistants and the mechanic were common to
both. To me it was a congenial and helpful atmosphere
and I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Metcalf that
I have never been able to repay.
Dr. Metcalf was a stimulating and inspiring teacher
and the department of biology under his direction took
a leading place in the college and my work shone by
reflected light. Of the five or seven students who were
majoring in biology in my first year three subsequently
took advanced degrees. Florence Peebles did distin-
guished work at Bryn Mawr as graduate scholar and
ifellow. She won the Bryn Mawr European fellowship
and took her degree of doctor of philosophy at Bryn
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 127
Mawr in 1900. Subsequently she returned for a time to
the Woman's College as an instructor in our department
and organized the first classes in vegetable physiology.
Letitia Snow, now associate professor of botany at Wel-
lesley College, a Ph.D. in botany of Chicago, was also
in that group. The third student of the group, Lily Kol-
lock, took a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1899. These were the first Goucher
graduates who proceeded to the degree of doctor of
philosophy. Of the forty-six Goucher graduates who
have taken the degree of doctor of philosophy or that
of doctor of medicine at a university the large majority
have majored in biology. It is evident that this depart-
ment has stimulated its students to proceed with scholar-
ly work.
It is rather significant that the part of the work I was
engaged to do when I entered the faculty of the Woman's
College which interested me least was the weekly lec-
ture on hygiene to freshmen, and yet, eventually, this
elementary course led to the most important work I did
at Goucher College as a teacher and to the constructive
contribution I made to the College, the organization of
a department of hygiene with three subdivisions. Health
Instruction, Health Supervision and the Care of the
Sick.
The foundations for such a department were laid by
my predecessors, but the superstructure was not possi-
ble in their day. It was a gradual growth due to several
factors, the most important of which was the rapid ad-
vance of scientific knowledge upon which modern hy-
giene is based. A second important factor was that in
1895 the one-hour lecture course was changed to a three-
128 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
hour course required of all students in the sophomore
year. A one-hour required lecture course to College
students on a subject which they think they know all
about without any instruction commands respect neither
from students nor faculty and that was exactly the posi-
tion hygiene as a college subject held in women's col-
leges, at least for many years.
When I was called upon to organize a three-hour
course in hygiene for college sophomores there were
available no text-books, no periodicals and no reference
books on the subject adapted to college requirements.
The preceding chapters of these reminiscences show that
during the early years of my college connection my own
education was advancing and my interests were being
definitely crystallized in the subject of hygiene and pub-
lic health. My problem was to take a class of students,
the majority of whom had had no previous training in
science, and give them the necessary biological, chemi-
cal and physical concepts necessary to the understanding
of hygiene as applied science, to thoroughly instil into
their minds a respect for hygiene as a growing body of
truths of fundamental importance to human life and
human happiness, and finally to make them familiar
with the sources to which they might look in the future
for authoritative information on hygienic subjects. How
well I succeeded students alone can tell, but at any rate
for many years by the method of lectures, recitations
and demonstrations under the designation of "R one"
I conducted a semi-popular course running through the
year that at least possessed the one merit Hippocrates
regarded as fundamental for any method of treating
bodily ills — it did no harm. I was accustomed to tell
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 129
the students that they might forget most of what they had
learned in the classroom — which might be an advan-
tage— but the subject itself would constantly grow in
importance as they grew older. I presume most of them
know now that this is true, even those who began the
course with dislike and aversion and ended it with the
same sentiments.
Fortunately early in the history of this course the
general college curriculum was modified so that all stu-
dents in the freshman year were required to study either
chemistry or physics. Finally, in 1914, when the college
curriculum was entirely reorganized on a semester basis
a required course in general biology was made to pre-
cede the hygiene course, which became a one semester
course. At present students, with few exceptions, come
to the study of hygiene, having had preceding courses
in chemistry, physics and general biology. Moreover,
with the phenomenal growth and revival of spirit that
have occurred in the College since Dr. Guth became
president, the department of physiology and hygiene
has had its share in the general development. It has
been generously dealt with in the matter of personnel
of its staff, in buildings and in equipment. Its courses
have been increased and expanded, and as I look back
over the years and see its progress I feel very grateful
to have had a share in developing this department of
Goucher College.
Early in my college experience I saw that my time
would be increasingly taken up with this elementary
course in hygiene and administrative duties and that I
should not be able to continue teaching the advanced
course in physiology.
130 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
In the most depressing period of the College history,
when the outlook for the future was very grave with
the finances of the College at their lowest ebb, the neces-
sity arose for me to have an independent assistant,
who could give all her time to my department. I felt
this was my opportunity to secure the services of a
physiologist, but two great difficulties stood in the way.
First, women physiologists were very rare and, second,
Dr. Noble, then president of the College, could not see
his way clear to offer any adequate salary. It was
rather a hopeless quest, successful finally only because
while women physiologists were scarce, positions open
to them were still scarcer.
While I was pondering over a method of finding a
satisfactory assistant I received a letter of inquiry from
a young woman who said she was about to receive her
degree of doctor of philosophy in physiology from Cor-
nell University and was seeking a position for the fol-
lowing year. This I learned subsequently was one of
several letters she sent out to various women's colleges.
I urged President Noble to give me at least a small ap-
propriation to which I agreed to add from my own slen-
der salary one-third the amount granted. With this I
was able to offer the young woman a position which
looked very unpromising both as to salary and as to con-
ditions under which she must do her teaching. We
were then using the gallery of Bennett Hall Annex for
a demonstration laboratory and the small room over the
archway as a physiological laboratory. She agreed to
come to Baltimore for an interview on her way to her
home in Indiana after the Cornell commencement. She
came and seemed rather contemptuous. The one thing
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 131
besides her general air of disapproval that I remember
clearly about that interview was that she looked delicate
and carried the heaviest suit case I had ever lifted. I
had no idea 1 would ever see her again. That summer
I spent in Europe in low spirits over the next college
year prospects. In August I heard from the young
woman that she would accept the position offered her
and so Miss King came to the Woman's College.
It is not necessary for me to tell Goucher students of
the last fourteen years that whatever success has attend-
ed the work of the department of physiology and hygiene
in these years has been largely due to Miss King, and
that the development of the advanced courses in physi-
ology and bacteriology are almost entirely her work.
Her services have been invaluable.
I served the College under four presidents — Dr.
Goucher, Dr. Noble, Dr. Van Meter and Dr. Guth. I
honestly think that I never failed in loyalty to any of
them and I think they were all my friends. With Dr.
Goucher and Dr. Noble I never had conflicts of any kind
and with Dr. Van Meter and Dr. Guth none that could
not be amicably settled. I saw each of these men render
invaluable service to the College and, except Dr. Noble,
whose service was too brief for that, their personalities
were permanently impressed upon the traditions of the
College. I have already had the opportunity of giving the
alumnae my personal impression of Dr. Goucher — his
invariable optimism, courtesy, consideration and friend-
liness are the qualities that always come to my mind
first when I think of him.
While we are all wont to think of Dr. Van Meter as
"Dean" Van Meter he was far more intimately con-
132 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
nected with the college and its policy than would be in-
dicated by that title. Dr. Goucher because of the mul-
tiplicity of his interests was absent from the College for
long periods at a time and the continuity of its academic
policy for many years was the work of Dr. Van Meter.
It would be difficult for me to put into words what I feel
about Dr. Van Meter and his services to the Woman's
College of Baltimore, especially to its students. My
long association with him in faculty meetings, on the
Board of Control, and in his office in intimate discus-
sions about the welfare of individual girls inspired me
with respect for his ideals, confidence in his judgments
and willingness to follow his intellectual leadership.
Dr. Noble came to the presidency of the college at
the darkest period in its history. It was during his presi-
dency and through his influence that the name of the
College was changed from the Woman's College of Bal-
timore to Goucher College. I remember the evening of
the day he had presented his final report to the Trustees
with his resignation that he and Mrs. Noble came to
dine with Dr. Sherwood and myself. He was late and
very tired. He said he thought in his final report he
had rendered a great service to Goucher College, and
I am sure he did. As a result of that report the Trus-
tees of the College were obliged to face the situation of
a college hopelessly in debt and with no endowment.
The recollection of the two or three years of the Col-
lege, immediately preceding the advent of Dr. Guth,
seem to me somewhat of a nightmare. I recall once dur-
ing those years, when Dr. Van Meter was acting presi-
dent, I had an unusually attractive offer of a position
outside of Baltimore. When I asked Dr. Van Meter's ad-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 133
vice on the subject he said: "Were I in your place I
should accept at once, the future for Goucher College is
very dark." I had, however, no intention at that time of
leaving Baltimore even if Goucher College went out of
existence.
In the campaign undertaken in 1913 for a million
dollars to pay the debts of the College, it was clear to
those who knew that even were the College debts paid
the College could not continue to exist, and certainly
could not grow and develop if funds for a productive
endowment were not available.
The first interview I ever had with Dr. Guth he said:
"I do not know what I came to Goucher for at any rate."
It was a hot day in Baltimore and he and Mrs. Guth
had been house hunting. I didn't see myself why
he had come, until I knew him better. Then I saw that
the hard job — to take a dying college and restore it to
life and vigor — offered a challenge to him. The "job"
has been hard, no one not intimately familiar with the
inside history of President Guth's administration knows
how hard, nor how successfully he has met it. Since I
have been away from Baltimore Dr. Guth has given to
the Alumnae Quarterly, I understand, an estimate of
me in my relations to Goucher College. My observa-
tions of him and his method of attacking his problem
will be reserved for a later number of the same periodi-
cal.
In the early days of my college relationship the fac-
ulty was small enough for all of us to get pretty well
acquainted with each other. All of the members of the
faculty were, I think, my friends and many of them
were not only my friends but my patients. This was
134 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
true of the faculty families. I saw the Frolicher boys
through various children's diseases and the Butler chil-
dren through more serious illnesses. Students of the
early years will remember Professor Butler, professor
of English, as one of the ablest and most attractive men
who have ever been members of the faculty. He gave
the name to Donnybrook Fair, suggested the publication
and assisted the students in getting out the first editions.
It was a sad day for us when he was called to Boston
University.
Assisting Dr. Butler for several years was Miss Lathe,
a rare spirit and an able and inspiring teacher. To the
students she looked the picture of robust health, but she
was in the early stage of an invalidism which ended in
her death a few years after she joined the faculty. In
addition to Dr. Butler, Miss Lathe and Dr. and Mrs.
Frolicher, I found in the faculty, in 1894, Dr. Hop-
kins, professor of Latin, a quiet scholarly gentleman
who undoubtedly preferred his study and classroom
to the administrative duties of the presidency, which had
been his as first president of the College; Dr. Shefloe,
professor of romance languages and librarian — never
so happy as when he was doing chores for the students
who knew well how to take advantage of his good na-
ture; Dr. Blackshear, professor of chemistry, who did
not think the female mind was adapted to the study of
his subject and who was the object of never ending jokes
among the students because of a devoted mother who
always spoke of him as "Charlie" and related to them
innumerable stories of his precocious childhood; Dr.
Metcalf, associate professor of biology, who has become
one of the most distinguished members of that early
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group; Dr. Thomas, the much quoted by students — who
was expected to cover in his teaching American history
and all the social and political sciences — always an un-
compromising advocate of woman suffrage; Dr. Gorton,
professor of mathematics, who died early in the session
of 1894, familiar to more recent students from the por-
trait which hangs in Goucher Hall; Dr. Maltbie, asso-
ciate professor of physics who took over mathematics at
Dr. Gorton's death and had charge of two departments
until Miss Gates was called to the chair of physics in
1897. Aggressively efficient he organized a model regis-
trar's office on a modern efficiency basis and, eventually,
left the teaching profession because it offered too re-
stricted a field for his growing interest in social and po-
litical problems. Miss Lord, associate professor of his-
tory, who, in her long connection with the College, left
an indelible impression on the students whom she stimu-
lated to scholarly work and upon the larger group with
whom she dealt for many years as Dean of the College;
Mademoiselle Melle, a brilliant and interesting French
woman who assisted Dr. Shefloe and furnished abund-
ance of entertainment to students and faculty; Miss
Wells, who taught Greek and who constantly told the
students how things were done at Smith, her alma mater,
and who managed to get some graduate instruction at
the Hopkins, but not in Greek; Miss Bunting, assistant
in biology and physiology, who kept the students in-
formed of how things were done at Bryn Mawr, where
she had been a graduate student.
On the whole the faculty was a strong faculty and
did good team work. Among the women especially
there was an eager desire to send students on to gradu-
136 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
ate study, and in the main I believe it is true that most
of the students of the Woman's College of Baltimore
who sought opportunities for university study in the
early years received their stimulation from some woman
member of the faculty as well as the assistance they
needed in finding ways and means of proceeding to
graduate study. Students of the earlier period of the
College history will recall Miss North, who succeeded
Miss Wells in Greek, an able and forceful woman whose
students under her direction gave a Greek play, one of
the outstanding scholarly performances in the history
of the College; Miss Van Dieman, now one of the best
known authorities of the world in certain phases of
Roman archaeology, a stimulating and inspiring teacher;
Miss Knapp, famous in the English department for her
short story and theme work; Miss Abel, a driving per-
sonality whose course in history furnishes fireside talk
wherever her former students gather; Miss Williams,
Mile. Melle's successor in French, gracious and charm-
ing, taking upon herself in her work burdens all too
heavy for her physical well being — sacrificing herself
to her scholarly and teaching ideals, laying down her
work only when overcome by permanent invalidism.
Two women, Mrs. Frolicher and Miss Bacon, belong
in a peculiar way to the history of the College. One
will be remembered best by the early students, and the
other by all the students of the College since 1895.
Mrs. Frolicher represents the pioneers among women
who were obliged to seek their university training in a
foreign country. She was, I think, the fourth American
woman who took the degree of doctor of philosophy at
the University of Zurich at a time when neither Ameri-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 137
can nor German Universities would receive women stu-
dents. It is no wonder she exercised a powerful influ-
ence upon the early scholastic ideals of the Woman's
College. She was the first professor of German in the
College and brought Dr. Frolicher over as the first pro-
fessor of French, marrying him on his arrival, thus ter-
minating the engagement which had taken place when
they were both students in Ziirich. Even students who
did not come directly in the classroom under the in-
fluence of Dr. and Mrs. Frolicher appreciated the indi-
rect influence that radiated from the German depart-
ment. The Schiller Kranzchen and the German plays
which they conducted were popular and well known.
Undoubtedly many strong students majored in German
merely to come under their scholarly direction.
Miss Bacon was brought into the college in 1895 on
the recommendation of Dr. Maltbie as assistant in
Mathematics. I think I never knew any woman who
kept at her subject more patiently and persistently than
Miss Bacon. She took every opportunity she could find
for advancing her mathematical education. When the
Hopkins admitted women to its graduate departments
she began work with Professor Morley and ultimately
took her doctor's degree with but one semester's leave of
absence from her college duties. Every one in College
trusts Miss Bacon — students and faculty alike. They
know she is honest and just, loyal to the College, a sym-
pathetic friend to colleagues and students and a teacher
who demands much of her students and urges them to
scholarly work. She, as well as Miss Lewis, was a Fel-
low of the Baltimore Association for Promoting the Uni-
versity Education of Women.
138 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Five of our own graduates became major members of
the faculty after they had completed their university
work. Dr. Florence Peebles and Dr. May Kellar, the
first of this group, remained but a few years when other
opportunities offered them a more promising future.
Dr. Annette Hopkins, the next of this group, has served
her Alma Mater as a member of the department of Eng-
lish, at present its chairman, both as a teacher and as an
Alumna, with rare efficiency, devotion and loyalty. Dr.
Merritt and Dr. Barton are the youngest of this group.
Manifestly a college faculty is a changing group.
While there was no very marked increase in the size
of the college either as to students or as to faculty
until 1914, numerous faculty changes had occurred be-
fore that date especially in positions held by instructors
and assistants. The assistants have always been largely
recruited from our own graduates and in most depart-
ments it has been the policy to urge them after two
year's service to proceed to advanced study or to seek
positions in secondary schools. It has been rare to have
men appointed as assistants or instructors — Mr. Gay was
brought from Hackettstown Seminary by President
Noble as instructor in the English department when Dr.
Hodell, who had succeeded Dr. Butler, was professor
of English. When Dr. Hodell whose name is indis-
solubly associated in the minds of his students and his
associates of the faculty with "the Ring and the Book,"
resigned to go into business for which he had developed
a great talent, Dr. Van Meter, then acting president,
nominated Mr. Gay as his successor. When Dr. Metcalf
was called to Oberlin President Goucher appointed as
his successor a man carefully selected by Dr. Metcalf —
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 139
Dr. Kellicott, distinguished for his scholarly and teach-
ing ability. It had always been Dr. Metcalf's purpose
to establish an independent department of botany and
he had brought into the College Dr. Florence Peebles
and then Dr. Forrest Shreve for this purpose. Subse-
quently Dr. Mast, and on his call to the Hopkins Dr.
Langley, were nominated for this post by Dr. Kellicott.
Of these four only one, Dr. Shreve, had chosen botany
for his field, the others were zoologists, willing to teach
botany for a time. It was fortunate for the College
that Dr. Langley was on the ground ready to succeed
Dr. Kellicott in zoology. He has selected Dr. Cleland,
a botanist, to develop a College department of botany.
Dr. Shreve found his wife in the department of physics
at Goucher College and turned her into a botanist. He
resigned to accept a place in the Government service in
research at Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Gay, by the way, also
found his wife in the Goucher physics department.
In my thoughts of Goucher College I am accustomed
to think of my association with it as divided into two
distinct periods — one from 1894 to 1914 and one from
1914 to 1924. In the second period I saw the College
take on new life, new vigor and new growth. The fac-
ulty has become so large that it is no longer possible
for one member, like myself, to have the intimate con-
tact with her colleagues that was a marked feature of
the early days, and yet by the various devices of faculty
club, faculty teas and faculty meetings for general dis-
cussion and other methods of approach between instruc-
tors a rather surprising unity of purpose is attained.
When there is added to this the social and other tradi-
tions of students and faculty carried over from the old
140 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
period into the new, one realizes that there really exists
a distinctive Goucher spirit, constantly being translated
into Goucher ideals.
To my mind the most difficult and perplexing prob-
lem in the large college is to devise a method for secur-
ing true co-ordination of effort in the various depart-
ments themselves, and then the co-ordination of the vari-
ous departments into a unity of effort to secure that kind
of education for all the students which will fit women
to meet the demands life will make upon them. In a
multitude of counsellors chaos will result unless there
is wisdom with authority to settle differences and en-
force unity. For this reason I rejoice that Goucher has
a president who is a man of vision — a fearless leader
with broad outlook, scholarly attainments and adminis-
trative ability, and who is a profound student of the
problems of college education.
Chapter IX
Personal Experiences With Goucher College
Students
From 1894 to 1924 I was more or less closely asso-
ciated with every student who entered Goucher College.
As my mind goes back across the years I see them in
endless procession — thousands they number — passing
before my vision — eternally young. However they may
have differed at various periods in external appearance,
in dress, in manner, in speech, this one thing they all
had in common — youth, with its inconsequences, its
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 141
seriousness and its fearlessness. It is for this last
quality — their fearlessness — that one loves them and
blesses them, and rejoices to live among them.
Many of these young people were constantly seeking
advice v^hich they did not intend to follow, flitting from
one member of the faculty to another, keeping their
friends awake at night craving sympathy for fancied
ills, mental and physical, with an insatiable egoistic
appetite. Eagerly in the early days they demanded op-
portunities for "service," in their modern vocabulary
insisting upon their right to "self-expression." It was
largely through the persistence of one of our students
who proceeded against the advice of all the leading so-
cial workers in Baltimore that a George Junior Repub-
lic was formed, located between Baltimore and Washing-
ton, now defunct, but which had for a number of years
a more or less precarious existence.
College descriptive slang changes as fashions in dress
change. For many years I haven't heard the word
"grind" which, in the early days, was so constantly
used to express contempt for any young woman who re-
garded her classroom work as the principal object for
which she was enrolled as a college student. This is,
doubtless, partly due to the fact that as years have
passed the opinion has become more general that edu-
cation in the College in its broad sense means the use
of all the activities provided for the development of
body, spirit and mind, many of which are found outside
classroom lectures and the study of the printed page.
I might devote this whole chapter to a consideration
of what might be called "Excursions in Freedom" in a
Woman's College. In thirty years discipline, curricu-
142 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
lum, teaching, administration have all yielded defence
after defence against the onslaughts made in the name
of freedom or of greater liberty. Student government
has entirely replaced control of students' behavior
by president, trustees and faculty — with constantly in-
creasing authority over all conduct in the hands of stu-
dents; the curriculum has been modified more and more
by the elective system with greater and greater freedom
of choice for students to determine what they will study
and how much; already students occasionally pride
themselves on "running an instructor out of college,"
and the next step in their progress will be to demand
a choice of their instructors, a right to which is loudly
now proclaimed in limited student circles.
I have often wondered whether, after all, the benefits
to be derived from our present methods outweigh the
delightful moral and intellectual irresponsibility for the
student resulting from a faculty supervision of conduct,
and a rather fixed required curriculum. One thing is
certain, students are far more severe as judges of con-
duct and as imposers of penalties than their instructors
and other constituted college authorities have ever been.
Age and experience of life bring leniency in judgment
of behavior. I have never sat in committee or other Col-
lege body of instructors before which a case of disciplin-
ing a student was brought that some one or more did
not make every effort, usually with success, of having
what seemed a just penalty remitted. As to the curricu-
lum, with a free elective system we turn out neither bet-
ter trained nor better satisfied students than we did with
a fixed curriculum when an A.B. degree indicated that
students had had largely the same required courses.
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 143
The first case of discipline I recall that came before
the Board of Control was in my first year in the Col-
lege. President Goucher was in India and Dr. Van
Meter acting president. A group of resident students
had gone to a Hopkins reception at McCoy Hall under
the chaperonage of Mrs. Pierce, the first mistress of a
hall, I think, and a woman who seemed to have the
respect and confidence of the students. The call of the
dance — plenty of young men being present — was strong
and six or seven of the young women yielded to tempta-
tion and in spite of Mrs. Pierce's admonitions proceeded
to enjoy themselves on the floor. Now dancing in the
halls or outside of them was forbidden in accordance,
I understood, with certain rules of discipline of the
Methodist Church. All the culprits, I think, were mem-
bers of this church and several of them were daughters
of prominent clergymen of this denomination. The
Board decided on some penalty — I do not think it was
expulsion because I am quite sure 1 should not have
voted for that — and I did vote for a penalty. I think
the penalty imposed was that these students must with-
draw from the halls of residence. At that time stu-
dents were not required to live in the halls, but when
they did do so they signed a paper on entrance saying
they understood the rules of conduct required of stu-
dents in residence and would abide by them. It was,
therefore, a just penalty to withdraw the privileges of
residence from those who had violated their promises.
Action of the Board of Control in these matters had to
be confirmed by the Board of Trustees and in this case
the Board of Trustees did not confirm, but reversed the
action of the Academic Board and the girls got off with
144 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
a reprimand. I am quite sure this suited Dr. Van Meter,
because a softer-hearted man to woman's fraihies never
existed — no matter how fierce he sometimes seemed. As
a rule this was true of all the men on the faculty. They
always managed to find reasons and methods for letting
the girls do what they pleased. Women instructors, es-
pecially of the early period, jealous of the reputation
of college women both as to scholarship and character
were much more severe in their judgments and greater
sticklers for holding the girls up to all requirements,
scholastic and otherwise.
As an illustration of this attitude on the part of women
instructors I shall cite an incident that occurred in my
first or second year. The German department gave a
play during the year in the gymnasium or in the audi-
torium of the Latin School, where plays were at that
time presented. At this period, dramatics, as well as
attendance at theatres and operas, was interdicted by
the rules of the Methodist Church. Dramatic represen-
tations were regarded as questionable performances for
college entertainment. However, a German play, given
in German, was looked upon as more or less scholastic
in nature. At this particular play there was a mixed au-
dience of men and women and some of the girls in the
play, taking the parts of men, appropriately appeared
in male attire. This was contrary to custom in women's
colleges before mixed audiences. Some of the women
members of the faculty took exception to this play es-
pecially as they overheard some objectionable remarks
by young men who were present. This led to consider-
able unofficial discussion of the subject among faculty
and students. The propriety of inviting men to the an-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 145
nual gymnasium exhibition came into the discussion. In
the early years this exhibition was a prominent feature
in college activities and always drew a large and repre-
sentative audience. One of these gymnasium exhibitions
which I attended at the invitation of Dr. Mitchell, at a
time when I had no idea that I should ever be connected
with the College, was the first time I ever visited
the College. I recall standing in the gallery in a dense
crowd of men and women and overhearing two young
men who I subsequently heard were among the "col-
lege beaux" commenting on the young women in what
was to me an exceedingly offensive way. Moreover, at
that time in the other women's colleges men were not
admitted to these performances unless, in one college
at least, they were sixty years of age or over.
As a result of the general discussion a petition was
circulated by a few of the older students, instigated un-
doubtedly by some of the women members of the fac-
ulty, asking the Board of Control to take action prohibit-
ing students from giving plays in which they took men's
parts in men's clothes before mixed audiences and ex-
cluding men from the gymnasium exhibitions. Some
such action was finally taken after much deliberation
and plain speaking. It created a great stir among the
students. A few days after the action was made public
the students undertook a demonstration of disapproval
in Goucher Hall. Various placards were put up on the
walls, the general tenor of which were objections to fac-
ulty interference with the liberty of students to enjoy
themselves and employ themselves as they pleased.
"Evil to him who evil thinks" appeared in various con-
spicuous places. Statues in the hall were draped in the
146 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
interests of modesty and a large group of students ap-
peared in chapel with masks over their faces. As no
one in authority paid any attention to this demonstra-
tion the hubbub subsided. For a number of years after-
wards, however, these rules remained in force. Gradu-
ally, with a changing attitude of public opinion and the
generally greater freedom permitted to young women,
or assumed by them, the policy changed without any
official action.
For many years it was considered extremely improper
for a student to be seen out-of-doors in her gymnasium
suit. At one period in the history of the College we
had two high fences built between which, unseen by the
outside world, gymnasium and basket-ball might be
taken out of doors. For years no men were admitted
to the annual basket-ball games. When the Annette
Kellerman suit appeared as a bathing costume for stu-
dents it aroused much adverse criticism. Fortunately
all these questions of women's dress for athletic pur-
suits have been settled by the common sense rule that
if a woman is to do athletics she should be properly
dressed for the purpose and a proper dress is one which
impedes her bodily motions as little as possible.
It is somewhat surprising when one passes in review
the various student activities that have imbedded them-
selves as traditions in the college life how many had
their origin in the very early days of the College.
Either the early students had more ingenuity, or enter-
ing an empty field, they preempted all the space with
things so essentially good that they have never been dis-
placed. I have already referred to Donnybrook Fair
as dating back to Professor Butler's day. The Phi Beta
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 147
Kappa Chapter was secured for the College largely
through the efforts of Dr. Maltbie. The Junior-Senior
banquets began very early. They had been instituted
before my time. The first one I remember is that
given by the class of 1898 to the class of 1897, which
I attended as honorary member of the class of 1898.
Mr. Charles J. Bonaparte was honorary member of the
class of 1897 and he came in from his country home
and sat through the entire evening seemingly with great
enjoyment, making one of his characteristic speeches in
his inimitable manner. His speech and that of Georg-
ette Ross were the features of the evening, and I have
never heard better on similar occasions since. I attend-
ed the banquet the following year given by 1899 to
'98. The one thing I remember about this banquet
was the presence of Mrs. Goucher, who was the honorary
member of 1899. She was a gentle and gracious lady,
and I retain very vivid and unforgettable memories of
the social occasions at which she was present. After
1899 it was many years before I attended another
junior-senior banquet, as it was not customary until
much later to invite guests other than the president and
dean of the College and the honorary members of the
two classes.
Honorary memberships of the classes were instituted
early, but these were not always bestowed upon mem-
bers of the faculty, and in their early history honorary
members were looked upon as ornamental rather than
useful. Since 1902 or 1903 the honorary members
have always been selected from the faculty and have
been hard worked by their respective classes.
148 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Senior dramatics did not exist as a fixed custom un-
til about 1900. I have already referred to the difficul-
ties attempts at dramatic presentations by students under
College auspices met because of the College church affili-
ations. It was due, I think, to the efforts of Dr. Shefloe
and Dr. Frolicher after long and earnest discussions in
the Board of Control that action was finally taken that
in view of their scholastic value to students plays care-
fully chosen and supervised might be given by the stu-
dents. For many years the senior play was always a
Shakespeare play. The one I recall with greatest vivid-
ness was that given outdoors at Evergreen, the Buckler
estate, not at all because from the dramatic standpoint
it was the best, but because of the delightful setting.
Departmental plays were given from time to time more
frequently in the early days than later. I remember
once Mademoselle Melle urged me to come to a French
play the department was arranging. I said I did not
understand spoken French well enough to enjoy it. With
a characteristic shrug of the shoulders she replied : "Oh,
I shall not understand the students either, but then they
are young and will look pretty." I went and enjoyed it.
In spite of the fears entertained as one objection to
dramatics in the College that it would enamour students
of a professional actor's life — it has not done so. A few
of our students have gone on the stage, but as a rule
they have not sought the footlights.
Boat rides as methods of class entertainment were
early institutions. As this method of travel often has
unpleasant consequences for me I have rarely had the
pleasure of these excursions. The first one I remember
was one over which Minna Reynolds presided which
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 149
the juniors gave the seniors — at least she persuaded me
to go and looked after me on the trip which was very
wet and soggy. The second one I took was given by the
Pennsylvania Club and I went on that because I was a
Pennsylvanian — it also was wet and soggy. The last
one, however, I shall always remember with great pleas-
ure because nothing in the weather nor any other cir-
cumstance happened to mar a perfect afternoon. It was
one of the recent sophomore boat rides for seniors with
a delightful entertainment in the open air.
State and other sectional clubs have in some form
always existed in the College, but with the exception of
the Southern Club, "they had their day and ceased to
be." The Southern Club, as a distinct organization, no
longer exists, but it had the longest lease of life of any
of the sectional clubs. When 1 came into the College
and for many years afterwards "the Southern Prom," as
it was called, given by the Southern Club was one of
the chief events of commencement week, and the South-
ern Club held a conspicious place in college activities.
Not all southern girls were admitted, only those, I was
told, who were fiercely loyal to "the lost cause." On
one occasion, I was told, feeling ran so high that an
American flag was torn to pieces and trampled under
the feet of these loyal young women.
It was a great thing for young women from all sec-
tions of the country to be brought into intimate contact
with each other and to see that, after all, their hopes
and aspirations and problems were much the same no
matter where they came from, and to learn that the
world might hold other points of view than those of
the small section which they called home. I recall two
150 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Students coming to my office one afternoon when the
cause of woman suffrage was beginning to be a matter
of discussion among college students. When we were
through with the medical interview I said; "How do you
feel on this suffrage question?" One of them, a splendid
specimen of young womanhood, said: "You know. Dr.
Welsh, I am from Wyoming, I have always been accus-
tomed to women voting and I had to come to Baltimore
to learn that it wasn't respectable." "Well," I said, "you
know the argument that suffrage for women will have
a baneful influence upon the home, how is it in Wyo-
ming; do women neglect their homes and children?"
"Look at me," she answered, "do I look neglected?" It
was a sufficient answer. Turning to the other I asked
"How do you feel on this question?" "You know. Dr.
Welsh, I am from South Carolina and it is bad enough
for me to have come to college; if I went home and said
I was a suffragist I should be looked upon as an outcast
in my small community." These two students belonged
to the same sorority and one of the very few benefits I
ever saw in sororities was that a small group bound
together by some sort of a tie that held them, in spite
of great differences in their home environments, were
bound to reach some sort of agreement in fundamental
differences of opinion.
Sororities, or Fraternities as they were called in the
earlier days, were introduced before my time. Whether
those responsible for their introduction were benefac-
tors or malefactors depends upon the point of view.
They have possibly caused more discussion, more dis-
sension, more ill will, more heart burnings than any
other subject affecting the social life of our students. I
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 151
have known occasions when they have been the imme-
diate cause of serious conditions of ill health in stu-
dents. I recall only one occasion when they were offi-
cially considered by the College authorities. The sec-
ond or third year of my college connection application
was made for the establishment of a new sorority. The
Board of Control appointed a committee to consider the
whole subject of sororities in their relation to a woman's
college. I served on this committee and I remember I
thought the students who appeared before us to plead
the cause of the sororities made a very poor showing
However, the committee finally reported that as sorori-
ties were firmly established in the College, to forbid
them would require too drastic action. It recommend-
ed, however, that the College should not recognize them
in any official way and that they should be notified the
rooms which they then used in Goucher Hall would be
needed for other purposes. When one realizes how every
nook and cranny of Goucher Hall is now used for aca-
demic purposes and that four buildings in addition
do not today provide adequate accommodations for
classrooms, laboratories and library, it seems incredible
that at one time in its history the College had rooms to
spare in Goucher Hall for the use of a group of secret
organizations owing allegiance to a national body with
no college connections. Later the control of the ends of
the corridors of the residence halls by the various
sororities was objectionable to many students and was
finally not permitted. Fortunately, with the growth of
the College, the sororities no longer occupy such a con-
spicuous position in the general student life, and I doubt
whether it makes much difference whether they exist or
152 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
not. Dr. Noble, a strong fraternity man himself, ob-
jected to them in Goucher College because they did not
exist in the other independent women's colleges of our
grade along the Atlantic seaboard.
My earliest recollection of attending a college social
function after I had entered the faculty was the Friday
evening reception to new students given then by the Col-
lege Young Women's Christian Association — now more
appropriately by the Student Organization. The recep-
tions or social functions which the earlier students will
remember best were two given annually by President
and Mrs. Goucher. Some time in November, on the
date of the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees,
President and Mrs. Goucher entertained at an evening
reception the senior class, the faculty, the officers of the
College and the trustees in the president's house on St.
Paul Street, now known as Goucher House. This was
always a gala night for the seniors. It was "Alto Dale
Day," however, which students looked forward to for
four years, and the memory of which is treasured by
all who ever enjoyed those days as one of the most pleas-
ant experiences of their college life. Seniors, alumnae,
faculty, officers and trustees wandered through the woods
and spacious grounds surrounding the charming coun-
try home of President and Mrs. Goucher, drank water
from a bubbling spring, ate their suppers on the lawn
overlooking the rolling country and hills of eastern
Maryland, got close together in intimate comradeship,
forgot their diflferences and their troubles, saw the sun
go down, the grounds illuminated with Chinese lanterns,
waited until the moon came up and walked down the
long drive to the waiting cars. Dr. Goucher with them
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 153
in his grey hat, his panama suit and his walking stick,
always a conspicuous figure at the gate waving good
night. They are unforgettable days for the earlier
graduates.
President and Mrs. Noble carried on the tradition of
a winter reception to the seniors and faculty. President
and Mrs. Guth transformed this into a most delightful
Christmas party just before the Christmas recess, and a
reception to seniors and alumnae as part of commence-
ment week festivities. Returning alumnae of the earlier
days who constantly bemoaned the lack of anything re-
sembling "Alto Dale Day" will now rejoice in Alumnae
Day on our own beautiful campus. Since this is now
well established, why not call it "Alumnae Alto Dale
Day," reviving the old name for a new setting and thus
carry on an old tradition?
In quite recent years the annual Thanksgiving Dinner
the Saturday evening before Thanksgiving recess, which
brings students, faculty, trustees and various officers of
the College together in a delightfully informal way, has
been, I think, permanently engrafted as a College insti-
tution. With this and the revival of May Day celebra-
tion, now an afternoon's outing on our own campus
in which everybody connected with the College joins,
carrying with it an entertainment which annually be-
comes more worthy and dignified, the College has two
new methods of cultivating college spirit. In this con-
nection the annual sing-song contest of recent years fixed
tion, now an afternoon's outing on our own campus
for one of the evenings during the fall meeting of the
Alumnae Council should be mentioned as another in-
formal occasion where students come together in friendly
154 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
rivalry and show that spirit of true sportsmanship that
all efforts in athletics are designed to cultivate.
The annual passing of Sophy Moore and other similar
exclusively interclass social amenities, including the
freshmen hazing, take place as they have done from
the earliest years with little variation. I have person-
ally come to endure the hazing period as a silly season,
representing a mental escape from the repressions of
adolescence — always hoping that a new form indicating
more originality and ingenuity will be developed, better
suited to adult life.
In my own department gymnasium and athletic activi-
ties have assumed many new forms and intra-mural
contests innumerable mark the various periods of the
year. The required three hours a week in physical edu-
cation for all students is still in force, but the earlier
students subjected to the strictly Swedish system would
have difficulty in recognizing its modern applications.
One thing, however, students both of the early and later
periods would find preserved, a faithful and loyal pre-
siding genius in Bennett Hall, earlier known as
"Amanda" and later as "Harriet." Amanda I found
established in her place and Harriet I contributed as her
successor. I, myself, am under many debts to these two
faithful women. Amanda was born a slave and looked
back upon her old mistress with love and gratitude for
the lessons she had taught her. She could neither read
nor write, but so skilfully did she conceal this that it was
months before I discovered it. She was very intelligent
and one of the most loyal and faithful souls with which
I have ever come in contact. She was a shrewd judge of
character and I never knew her make a mistake in
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 155
"sizing up" a girl, although she was exceedingly careful
about expressing an opinion. She had a quaint and home-
ly philosophy. It has always been to me a source of re-
gret that I did not record some of our long conversa-
tions in which she developed in epigrammatic sentences
her observations of life as she saw it, and her common
sense rules for meeting her problems. Harriet, in her
way, is quite as individual a character. Both of these
good women have taken great pride in their positions,
and the keenest interest in all College activities. Both
have had an almost uncanny power of making just esti-
mates of the character of the girls with whom they come
in such close contact.
I could, of course, fill a large volume with anecdotes
of my personal experiences with the students of Goucher
College in the last thirty years. At times when I have
been asked what my specialty in medicine is I have re-
plied "young women between the ages of seventeen and
twenty who go to college, whose bodily ills are few and
whose mental ills are not usually serious." For this
very reason, however, the College physician must be
constantly on the alert or she will frequently find her-
self in diagnostic error. I have seen unusual and rare
medical cases in my college practice that I have not
found in my private practice nor in a large dispensary
practice. My most important work, however, and that
which I have valued most, is the intimate personal con-
tact which one gets with the students in a doctor's office
where the doctor must seek to penetrate into the inmost
recesses of the emotional nature, to make the girl, as
it were, look at her real self as a first step to finding a
way out of her difficulties. Girls have occasionally said
156 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
to me: "Now, Dr. Welsh, do not use me as an example
in your lectures," I have always been able to reply: "Do
not trouble yourself, I have had plenty of experiences
before I ever saw you and I do not draw on recent ones
for illustrative material. You will never be able to fix
any of the illustrations I use in class upon any one you
ever knew." I had just one principle in dealing with
students. I told them the truth always as I saw it at the
time. I made many mistakes in dealing with them; I
was often impatient over what seemed to them matters
of great moment and I never hesitated about giving a
girl "a piece of my mind" when I thought she needed
it. Some never forgave me, but then that was to me a
sure sign that they needed to be told by some one what
I had said to them. In my own memory there linger
only one or two disagreeable recollections connected
with any of the Goucher students I have known. I think,
on the whole, they believed in the honesty of my inten-
tions and my desire to be of service to them.
While it would be manifestly improper for me to
record experiences with individuals, I can give a few
examples to illustrate the qualities which made a strong
appeal to me in these young people, their essential kind-
liness, their self-control and their efficiency as shown
in collective action.
Always in my lectures in hygiene I was obliged to
point out the essential need of the ballot as a tool for
securing conditions in the community favorable to
health. My opinions on suffrage for women were well
known to the students. I have referred in the chapter
on suffrage to the demonstration and great parade staged
in Washington the day before Mr. Wilson's inaugura-
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REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 157
tion in 1913. I have told there how Goucher College
failed to give a holiday for that event. I had undoubt-
edly told my classes that I intended to march in this
parade as I always took them into my confidence about
any of my actions that had a public or semi-public
character. The parade was to take place Monday after-
noon. I had two classes meeting from nine to eleven on
Monday morning. Very late Sunday night a letter was
delivered to me at my home saying that the sophomore
class appreciated the fact that I desired to take part in
the suffrage parade in Washington and they wanted me
to be free to do so without feeling that I was neglecting
any of my duties. They had, therefore, decided unani-
mously to "cut" the nine and ten o'clock hygiene classes.
As I had no intention of going to Washington until
twelve o'clock, I presented myself as usual behind the
lecture platform at nine and ten-twenty, but the seats
were all empty. The kindness and generosity to me had
its reward, in part, as a holiday for them as the Goucher
contingent in the parade was a large one and the stu-
dents made an entire day of it.
The self-control of the average student and her ability
to meet an emergency is sometimes very surprising to
those who believe in the traditional view of woman's
entire lack of these two qualities. I can recall so many
incidents when students have shown presence of mind
and ability to meet emergencies of serious nature that it
is difficult to select one for illustration. I was called
by a student one evening to come to one of the residence
halls at once. She said a serious accident had occurred.
A trained and experienced nurse, who was acting as
temporary mistress of a residence hall, in manipulating
158 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
the elevator met with an accident that caused her death
in a few hours. The students handled the situation with
rare good judgment. When I arrived very promptly on
the scene the woman was dying, but she was in her bed
with doctors and the College nurse in attendance. Stu-
dents had released her from the elevator and secured
prompt aid. I spent the night in the hall with the stu-
dents, but there was not the slightest evidence of panic.
In all cases of unusual illness, accidents and cases of
infectious disease, I took the students promptly into my
confidence, explained the situation to them clearly and
asked for their co-operation which I always got. They
understood this and that nothing was concealed from
them about illness. Miss Browne, the resident nurse
for a long period, was a very careful observer, and
while the students sometimes objected to her as a nurse
and to me as a doctor on the ground possibly of our
peppery tongues they knew they had good and efficient
service.
When the great epidemic of influenza occurred very
soon after College had opened in the fall of 1918, I
had a good illustration of the collective efficiency of the
students. We had more than one hundred cases to care
for. It was possible to get but one nurse in addition to
Miss Browne, our one resident nurse. These two nurses
were obliged to give all their time to the infirmary
which had about twelve beds reserved for the more seri-
ous cases. The remainder of the residence hall of which
the infirmary occupies the top floor was turned into a
temporary hospital. With a volunteer service of stu-
dents and a few women of the faculty we were able to
organize the care of the sick in a way that would other-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 159
wise have been impossible. The student assistants
never failed us, and I recall their efficient assistance as
the one relieving feature in a situation fraught with
great anxiety and responsibility.
At another period in the history of Goucher College
the assistance and encouragement of the students car-
ried me through a very anxious period when I acted as
chairman of the Women's Committee in the campaign
for a million dollars undertaken by the College in 1913.
In this campaign, lasting for a week, daily reports of
various teams were made at luncheon at the Emerson
Hotel. The trustees stated publicly that the College
would close its doors if a million dollars was not pledged
by the end of the week. I shall never forget that week
with its daily disappointments at noon and the daily en-
couragement of the afternoons when students and alum-
nae always buoyed up my depressed spirits by some un-
expected contributions and by their unfailing optimism.
It was during this campaign that two large and impos-
ing meetings were organized and carried through by
students and faculty — one held in Ford's Opera House
with the aid of the Eastern and Western High Schools
and with a message from President Wilson regarding
Goucher College brought over from Washington and
read by his daughter Jessie, one of our alumnae.
The second was a rally of College women held in McCoy
Hall with President Thomas of Bryn Mawr as the
speaker of the evening. Her address of that evening
published and widely distributed was an important con-
tribution to our college literature and should have a
permanent place on the library shelves of every
alumna.
160 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
In short, as I review the thirty years I have associated
with the students of Goucher College, I am more and
more impressed with the debt I owe them. I have
learned more lessons from them than I have ever suc-
ceeded in teaching them. I have received from them
many evidences of friendship and good will that have
given me precious memories — I am very grateful to
them.
A few days ago, riding on a funiculaire up a wooded
mountain which I was considering walking down, I
looked through a beautiful forest of beeches to see if
a road was available. I said to Dr. Sherwood, who was
with me: "There is a road which goes down as well as
up, we shall certainly be able to take it." I did not un-
derstand for several minutes why she seemed so much
amused. When I finally saw the point I could not
help thinking how good it would be in life if we could
find a road that only "goes up." This is my greatest
wish for the future of Goucher College, that it is on a
road that will always ascend — always go up. Its fate is
largely in the hands of its students past, present and
future. I am confident they can be trusted, and that
for Goucher College "the best is yet to be."
Chapter X
Conclusion
A well known philosopher and teacher is said to have
begun his lecture to students by telling them what he in-
tended to say, then saying it and to have ended by tell-
ing them what he had said. Having begun these remi-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 161
niscences by saying that my residence of more than
thirty years in Baltimore covered a very interesting
period in the history of the education of women, of their
organizations, of their political enfranchisement, and of
their active participation in public life; having reviewed
in a general way these various movements as I saw them
begin and progress in this city, it may be well finally
to sum up briefly what I trust I have said.
It was more than a lucky chance that brought Dr.
Sherwood and me to Baltimore in the early years of the
last decade of the last century. I feel confident that no
other city in the United States could have offered at that
time the same opportunities for personal education and
public service to two women physicians interested pri-
marily in the sound elementary education of girls; in
training opportunities for the collegiate and university
education of women; in the extension of the sphere of
activities in which women might engage outside of the
home, and in the application of scientific knowledge to
the solution of social problems of the community and
to the special problems of the home with which the
majority of the women must always deal.
In 1890 the Johns Hopkins University, fifteen years
old, leading and promoting the development of Univer-
sity education in our country, had influenced the ad-
vance of standards of secondary education of boys in
Baltimore by the relation of the undergraduate require-
ments to the public high schools and other secondary
schools for boys. The Woman's College of Baltimore,
five years old, was destined to exert an even greater in-
fluence on the secondary education of girls. It was of
primary importance to the secondary education of girls
162 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
in Baltimore that a college for women should have ad-
vanced academic standards. Fortunately the Woman's
College was founded in the shadow of the Johns Hop-
kins and at a time when standards for the collegiate
education of women were well established north of the
Mason and Dixon line. Vassar was twenty-two years
old, Wellesley and Smith were firmly established, while
Mount Holyoke with a proud history of seminary work
behind her had entered upon her collegiate career. Bryn
Mawr was busy attacking the final problem of higher
education of women by organizing its work on a univer-
sity basis. It seemed at that time that the history of
securing collegiate and professional opportunities for
women in our country must be repeated, that is, that
the sole hope of obtaining university opportunities lay
in providing at least one special institution for this pur-
pose. Intelligent women in Baltimore knew well what
should be required of an institution professing to give
college education to women. The success of such an
institution would depend upon whether its founders and
those responsible for its academic success builded on a
firm foundation of sound scholarship and broad toler-
ance of the search for truth.
It cannot be gainsaid that in the early history of the
Woman's College of Baltimore suspicion was outspoken
as to the possibility of a college founded under denomi-
national and sectarian influence meeting the ultimate re-
quirements for the collegiate education of women. As
a member of the faculty of this Baltimore College from
1894, and because of relationships outside the College,
I had abundant opportunity of watching its development
both from within and from without. In 1915 in an ad-
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 163
dress made at the celebration of the twenty-fifth anni-
versary of the founding of the College, the day preced-
ing the inauguration of President Guth, I reviewed the
influences of external aid which seemed to have forced
the College into the path of academic soundness. After
referring to external causes already mentioned I
said "Within the college various forces were working
towards this same end (academic soundness). There
was President Goucher's unfailing optimism which kept
the College doors open in spite of constantly increas-
ing financial indebtedness. Moreover, there was his
zealous guiding of the academic freedom of instructors
against attacks, whose rumblings were heard, upon the
teaching especially of biology, Bible and history. There
was Dr. Van Meter, a target of attack because of his
teaching of Biblical history and interpretation — his ear
always close to the educational ground, always an advo-
cate of educational progress and educational freedom.
There were the young men professors for the most part
doctors of philosophy of the Johns Hopkins University,
fresh from their university work, holding high ideals of
scholarship. Above all, shall I say beneath all, was
the influence of the women instructors, the majority of
them graduates of northern women's colleges, deter-
mined that the instruction of girls in this College should
m.easure up to the standards women had set for them-
selves. In the class room and outside of it they were
continually encouraging the students to form high ideals
of scholarship and to demand that the college should
stand for these ideals, bringing their influence to bear on
the college authorities on the one hand and on the
students on the other."
164 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Whatever other forces were at work these external
and internal influences certainly helped powerfully to
guide the college in the direction of academic success.
In 1913 during a campaign the College made for money
to liquidate its indebtedness, President Thomas of Bryn
Mawr made an address to a large meeting in McCoy
Hall on the subject: "What College Education Means to
Woman. What Goucher College Means to Baltimore."
Miss Thomas is a native of Baltimore and the most dis-
tinguished woman Baltimore has produced in my gen-
eration. College women at least know that Miss Thomas
is very chary of bestowing praise on educational insti-
tutions for women unless it is well deserved.
In the course of this address President Thomas said:
"Recently to the surprise of Baltimoreans, perhaps
even to the surprise of the faculty of Goucher College
as well, Dr. Kendrick Charles Babcock, the Educational
Expert of the United States Bureau of Education, after
a searching examination extending over several years,
has singled out Goucher and placed it among the fifty-
nine colleges and universities of the first academic rank
in the United States. No one who is not in the college
world can realize the full significance of Goucher's
place in Class I of the five hundred and eighty-one col-
leges and universities of the United States, many of
them with great reputations and endowments and long
years of effort behind them. Only fifty-nine have been
placed in Class I and little Goucher, only twenty-four
years old, without a penny of endowment, staggering
under its crushing load of a half-million dollars of debt,
is among those fifty-nine colleges. Of the twenty-one
best women's colleges in the United States only six are
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 165
in Class I: Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar,
Wellesley and Goucher. Of the one hundred and eighty-
five colleges and universities south of the Mason and
Dixon line, only five are in Class I: the University of
Virginia, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt Univer-
sity, the Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College.
But although Baltimore may have been surprised, other
colleges like the Hopkins and Bryn Mawr which year
after year have been testing the undergraduate training
of Goucher as its graduates have worked side by side
with the graduates of other colleges in their graduate
schools were not surprised. They know Goucher ranks
high among colleges for the excellence of its teaching."
Since 1915 Goucher College has kept its pace in the
educational world. It has more than doubled in size,
and has been placed on a sound financial basis. To
have had a part in the development of a great college
for women with its direct influence upon secondary edu-
cation of girls would in itself justify the statement that
I had had in Baltimore unusual opportunities for ob-
serving the development of educational opportunities for
women. But further than this I have had unusual op-
portunities of observing the extension of university
privileges to women by a Baltimore university. This
came slowly. Qualified women tried in the early years
of the Johns Hopkins University to enter as graduate
students. There are traditions of women seated behind
curtains listening to lectures. Christine Ladd (Mrs.
Franklin) had a fellowship in mathematics; Florence
Bascom won her degree of doctor of philosophy, but
took her diploma by proxy.
166 REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE
Educational militancy was not unknown in Baltimore
in the latter part of the last century. Just two years
after the Woman's College was born a few militant
Baltimore women having gained wisdom by defeat in
fromtal attacks on the carefully guarded portals of the
Johns Hopkins University, executed a successful flank
movement, forced an entrance through a side door and
made it simply a question of time when full freedom
for all university courses would be theirs. When the
Medical School was opened in 1893 on a foundation
provided by women the University circulars contained
the statement: "The medical school is open to women,
but they are not admitted to any other departments."
From 1897 until such restrictions were removed the
Baltimore Association for the Promotion of the Univer-
sity Education of Women kept an eye upon the Univer-
sity watching for the first sign of a kindly spirit
toward women graduate students and the other eye on
Baltimore watching for women who demand univer-
sity opportunities.
The proximity to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the
pre-medical school days and to the hospital and medical
school subsequently gave Dr. Sherwood and me oppor-
tunities for medical work and for following the public
health movement unparalleled in any other city in the
country. The Hopkins laboratories and clinics were a
me(Hcal Mecca for both men and women physicians
throughout the United States. Dr. Osier, Dr. Welsh,
Dr. Kelly, Dr. Halstead and Dr. Hurd saw to it that the
women who came found their way to Dr. Sherwood and
me. These women invariably told us that they found
nowhere else conditions so favorable for the study of
REMINISCENCES OF THIRTY YEARS IN BALTIMORE 167
medical science and for stimulating interest in medico-
social problems. We owe many lasting friendships to
these women medical pilgrims.
While it is doubtful whether our medical, educational
and sociological interests would have brought us in any
other city under the influence of such great men as we
learned to know in Baltimore, I am quite certain that
elsewhere in our country we would not, in 1891, have
come into intimate contact with a small group of out-
standing women actively interested in the medical edu-
cation of women and in advancing professional oppor-
tunities of women physicians. Subsequently Baltimore
brought us opportunities for service in all phases of the
movement which concerned itself with advancing the
interests of women and children.
My thirty years in Baltimore then have been rich in
opportunities for progressive self-education and de-
velopment; for contacts with great men and remarkable
women; for lasting friendships; for service in educa-
tional and social fields. They have stored up precious
memories. Could any other place in the world have
given me so much? I doubt it and am profoundly
grateful.
Baltimore, November 10, 1925.