Lillian Wald

Lillian D. Wald ( born March 10, 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio; † September 1, 1940 in Westport, Connecticut ) was an American nurse and founder and longtime director of the Henry Street Settlement social project in New York City.

Life

After visiting the Miss Cruttenden 's Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies in Rochester began Lillian Wald, who came from a German -Polish- Jewish family, in 1883 to study at the School of Nursing of the New York Hospital and then worked as a nurse. In 1891 she began studying medicine at the Women's Medical College. During her studies she was assigned to teach nursing home care in the densely populated East Side of Manhattan.

Their arrival in the district they besprieb later in her memoirs with the words:

Affected by the local conditions they decided to end the study of medicine and to devote themselves to nursing as a life's work. Together with her fellow student Mary Brewster she rented an apartment in a tenement house and founded in 1893 the Henry Street visitin Nurse Service, the medical services offered to patients who are visiting a doctor financially could not afford the bills and exhibited only to those who are in ware able to pay this.

For this nursing service, the groundbreaking social project Henry Street Settlement was established. This could be expanded to new, larger living quarters through the financial support of the banker Jakob Heinrich Schiff after 1895. Within a few years provided the organization providing health care to thousands of New Yorkers safe. In addition, the facility over the years operated the first public nursing school in the city as well as summer camps for disadvantaged children.

In addition, she was an outspoken pacifist, which occurred also for the improvement of housing in poorer neighborhoods and the prohibition of child labor. Furthermore, she was not only a member of the American Red Cross, but also co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) in 1909 and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915.

After the death of Lillian Wald, who worked as director of the Henry Street Settlement to 1930, originated within the organization, a banking institution and a Psychiatric Hospital.

Her memories of the establishment and the work of the social project, she published two autobiographies: 1911 first appeared The House on Henry Street, 1934 Windows on Henry Street followed.

Lillian Wald, which is one of the major Jewish-American figures of the 19th and 20th century, was admitted into the National Women 's Hall of Fame one hundred years after the founding of the Henry Street Settlement 1993. She was honored among other things, by his posthumous induction into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City.

External links and sources

• Lillian Wald at the Notable Names Database (English)

Background literature

• RL Duffus: Lillian Wald: Neighbor and Crusader, New York City ( Macmillan Co. ), 1938
• Beryl Williams Epstein: Lillian Wald: Angel of Henry Street, New York City (J. Messner ), 1948
• Beatrice Siegel: Lillian Wald of Henry Street, Collier Macmillan, 1983
• Nora Krug Berkley: "That damned nurse troublemaker ": Lillian Wald, from nursing to politics Durham, NC (Duke University Press ), 1992
• Doris Groshen Daniels: Always a Sister: The Feminism of Lillian D. Wald, Feminist Press, 1995

• Person ( care)
• Social worker
• Feminist
• Person (New York City )
• Americans
• Born in 1867
• Died in 1940
• Woman