Photograph Album Documenting Nurses' Training at Mercy Hospital and College of Physicians & Surgeons, Baltimore, 1920
Thirty-two 6" x 8" gelatin silver photographs mounted to both sides of black cardstock leaves, string-tied, with new black paper covers added. Undated, but the year 1920 appears on a chalkboard in one image. Pencil writing in a hard-to-decipher language—possibly Lithuanian—on first image, otherwise clean. Images are very clear and appear professional. The Sisters of Mercy—an international Catholic women’s association dedicated to helping those in need—established the Baltimore City Hospital School of Nursing in 1899. They offered a rigorous three-year training program with classes taught by experienced nurses and by professors from the nearby College of Physicians & Surgeons. The school quickly drew large numbers of applicants and needed a place for them all to live. They soon constructed a “spacious home of modern engineering and equipment” that offered “more than 100 sleeping rooms which are well lighted and ventilated, spacious parlors, library, lecture room, study and recreation halls” (Costello, Sisters of Mercy of Maryland). Some of the images in this album appear to show parts of the nurses’ home (a courtyard, parlor, and dining room), while others show nursing student in the classroom, learning to make a hospital bed, assisting during surgery, working in the pharmacy and the kitchen, tending babies in the maternity ward, and ministering to the sick and wounded. A valuable record of the lives of nursing students at this school, of which little visual documentation seems to remain.
Item #20857
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