Lillian D. Wald Papers

1889-1957

Lillian D. Wald was born on March 10, 1867, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to German immigrants Max D. Wald, a dealer in optical wares and Minnie Schwarz. The Wald family moved to Rochester, New York where Wald received a private education at Miss Cruttenden's "English-French Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies and Little Girls." At the age of sixteen, she applied to Vassar College but was rejected because of her youth. Growing tired of social life in Rochester, Wald looked to nursing as a profession in which she might be afforded the opportunity for serious work as well as an outlet for her talents and ambition.

In 1889, Wald entered the New York Hospital School of Nursing. One year after her graduation, she enrolled at the Women's Medical College where she was asked to teach home nursing on New York City's Lower East Side. The lack of public heath care for the growing immigrant population of the neighborhood prompted Wald and fellow student, Mary Brewster, to abandon medical studies and work full-time in the service of New York's poorest citizens. Wald officially left medical school in 1893 and organized nursing classes for immigrant families on the Lower East Side at a tenement house on Jefferson Street. This home nursing program was the origin of the Henry Street Settlement. By 1895, Wald had successfully raised enough philanthropic interest in her project to establish a "Nurse's Settlement" in a house at 265 Henry Street. Early benefactors of her work included Mrs. Solomon Loeb and her son-in-law Jacob H. Schiff, as well as Rita Wallach Morganthau, and Irene and Alice Lewisohn among others. As financial support grew, so did the Henry Street Settlement. The 11 resident workers before 1900 expanded to 92 nurses by 1913. At the time of Wald's death there were nearly 300 nurses working from some twenty branches throughout the city.

Wald was also an innovator in the field of public health care. As the Henry Street Nurses' Service gained national attention, it became the model for similar programs in cities throughout the United States. Public health nursing emerged as a profession as a direct result of Wald's work and ideas. In 1902, she arranged to have a Henry Street nurse provide full-time care to children in public schools. This program led the New York City Board of Health to organize the first public school nursing system in the world. In 1909, she worked to convince the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to provide nursing service to its industrial policyholders. She was also instrumental in the creation of the department of nursing and health at Teachers College of Columbia University. The American Red Cross undertook rural public health nursing in 1912 at her instigation. Wald's appointment as the first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing in 1912 positioned her as a respected leader in American public health.

The Henry Street Settlement's mission gradually expanded beyond nursing and the health care needs of the immigrant population. Education, employment and recreation were addressed by Wald's various initiatives to reform community life. She was a pioneer in stressing the importance of play and the need for public playgrounds. A music school was added to the settlement's program along with classes in vocational guidance, home economics and prenatal care. The Neighborhood Playhouse on Grand Street was opened in 1915 with support from Alice and Irene Lewisohn.

As the age of reform progressed, Wald, along with Jane Addams and Florence Kelley shared a commitment to economic and social change. They worked to alleviate poverty, support children's welfare and expand the role of women in society. Kelley started the National Child Labor Committee in 1904 with the continuing support of Wald. This organization was responsible for legislation to ban child labor, and for the creation by president Theodore Roosevelt of the Federal Children's Bureau, under the direction of Julia Lathrop.

In 1914, Wald, Kelley, Addams, and others founded the American Union Against Militarism, the forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union. As president of this organization, Wald met with president Woodrow Wilson and lobbied congress and advisors in the White House to allow neutral nations to end World War I through mediation. However, Wald was critical of the confrontational tactics used by some suffrage and peace activists fearing that they would interfere with her work with the Henry Street nurses. She served as chairman of the Nurses Emergency Council during the influenza epidemic of 1918 and lectured widely on the history of nursing, and the importance of health care. Her memoir House on Henry Street was published in 1915, and a second volume, Windows on Henry Street was released in 1934.

Wald's health declined throughout the 1920s, but she still managed to travel to Russia on invitation of the Commissioner of Health in 1924. That same year she served as vice-president to Bellevue-Yorkville Health Demonstration and as the American delegate to the Women's International Conference on Peace and Freedom in Zurich, Switzerland. She was the first woman recipient of the Rotary Club's gold medal in honor of her life-long service as sociologist and organizer. Wald maintained a close relationship with three-time British prime minister and architect of the British Labour Party, James Ramsay MacDonald and his family. In 1928, she publicly supported the presidential campaign of Alfred E. Smith. Her involvement in daily affairs at Henry Street gradually decreased by 1933, when she retired to her house in Westport, Connecticut. While in retirement she continued to contribute to magazines, including the Survey, Forum and Atlantic Monthly. After a long illness, Lillian Wald died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1940.

Sources:

"Lillian D. Wald." Dictionary of American Biography, Supplements 1-2: To 1940. American Council of Learned Societies, 1944-1958. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006.

"Lillian D. Wald." Historic World Leaders. Gale Research, 1994. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006.

Smith, Helena Huntington, "Rampant but Respectable" The New Yorker, December 14, 1929.

Wald, Lillian D. The House on Henry Street. Henry Holt, 1915.