New England Hospital for Women and Children records

The New England Hospital for Women and Children (NEH), founded by Dr. Marie Zakrzewska and Ednah Dow Cheney, opened in Boston on July 1, 1862. It was, for more than a century, a teaching hospital where women doctors and nurses could study and practice medicine and women could receive treatment from female doctors. It was the first hospital in Boston to offer obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics all in one facility. The concept grew out of Zakrzewska's close friendships with influential women in Boston. These early supporters included reformers such as Abby May, Caroline Severance and philanthropist, Lucy Goddard. Goddard served as president for the first twenty-fuve years until 1887. Cheney served as secretary, becoming president in 1887. She resigned in 1902. During its first ten years the NEH served primarily the immigrant population of the area. Despite the hard financial times during the Civil War, Dr. Zakrzewska and her supporters raised enough money to sustain the hospital in its early years. Throughout the nineteenth century the NEH grew steadily from ten beds and approximately $150 in assets in 1862 to a budget of $146,000 in 1872. Among the doctors who served the NEH were Dr. Susan Dimock and Dr. Lucy Sewall. The country's first trained nurse, Linda Richards, studied at NEH in 1873; and the first African-American nurse, Mary Eliza Mahoney, graduated in 1875. Born and nourished by separatism, the nineteenth century solution to sexual discrimination, the hospital, by the time of its centennial in 1962, was facing conflict over integration and the challenge of justifying its existence as an all-woman's hospital. This was due in part to a growing tendency among women doctors to achieve professional equality with men, manifested by the integration of the medical profession, specialization, membership in male-dominated medical societies, and affiliation at male dominated hospitals. There were continual financial troubles as well and in the 1950s, the United Community Services of Greater Boston recommended that the hospital be open to male physicians. In response to this pressure, the board of directors adopted one of its recommendations and changed the institution's official name from the New England Hospital for Women and Children to the New England Hospital, thus indicating their willingness to accept men as patients. The controversy continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Following a long battle led by Blanche Ames Ames, Chair of the hospital's board of directors, the NEH closed in 1969 and reopened as an outpatient clinic. The clinic was named the Dimock Community Health Center.

See also Hospital With A Heart: Women Doctors and the Paradox of Separatism in the New England Hospital, 1862-1969, by Virginia G. Drachman (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1984).