Lillian Wald

Lillian D. Wald (1867–1940) was a nurse, social worker, public health official, teacher, author, editor, publisher, women's rights activist, and the founder of American community nursing. Her unselfish devotion to humanity is recognized around the world and her visionary programs have been widely copied everywhere.

Biography

Wald was born into a comfortable, German-Jewish middle-class family in Cincinnati, Ohio (her father was an optical dealer). In 1878, she moved with her family to Rochester, New York. She attended Miss Cruttenden's English-French Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies, and upon graduation, tried to enter Vassar but was denied, as the school thought her too young, at 16. Several years later, however, she went on to attend New York Hospital's School of Nursing.

In 1893, after a trying time at an orphanage where children were maltreated, she started to teach a home class on nursing for Lower East Side (New York) women. Not long thereafter, she began to care for sick residents of the Lower East Side, and soon decided to devote her life to this cause. Along with another nurse, Mary Brewster, she moved into a spartan room near her patients, in order to care for them better. She was the founder of the Henry Street Settlement which later attracted the attention of Jacob Schiff, a prominent Jewish philanthropist who secretly provided her the means to help more effectively the "poor Russian Jews" whose care she made her life's mission. She was able to expand her work later, having 27 nurses helping her by 1906. She never married, preferring to devote herself fully to her career. She authored two books relating to this work, the first being The House on Henry Street, first published in 1911, followed by Windows on Henry Street in 1934. Both books went through numerous printings and today modern reprints are available in both hard and paperback editions. Today, Lillian Wald is widely regarded as the founder of visiting nursing in the United States and Canada.

Another of her concerns was the horrendous treatment of African-Americans (especially the rash of hundreds of lynchings), and as a consequence, she was one of the seminal founders, in 1909, of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). As she was already renown for her social work, her involvement in this newly-founded organization was instrumental in raising support for the cause of racial equality. In fact, the first major public conference to create the organization opened with a meeting at her Henry Street settlement.

She died in 1940 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Many people mourned the loss of the dedicated nurse and immigrant reformer. The Lillian Wald Houses on Avenue D (Manhattan) were named for her. She was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester.

External links

The House on Henry Street Lillian Wald's 1915 memoir, H. Holt and company. (full text from Google Books.)
Nursing Leaders (Santa Fe Community College)
Women in the Progressive Era (National Park Service)
Women’s Employment and Health (The National Women's Health Information Center)
Women of Valor exhibit on Lillian Wald at the Jewish Women's Archive
Lillian Wald Biography at the Jewish-American Hall of Fame
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/rbk/faids/wald.pdf PDF guide] to the Wald papers