Nursing then and now

Minor Hospital Nursing Class of 1910

Seattle

I had some great collections to work on at MOHAI in 2014, including a logging boot manufacturing company, some old business records from a local radio station called KIRO, a collection of historical mountaineering photographs, and of course, family scrapbooks, which are often donated to the museum.

Doing the research to find background information on a collection is the best part of writing the finding aids, and no matter how dry the subject seems at first, once you delve into the local history they are unfailingly interesting.

But since Amanda became an RN last year, I especially enjoyed working on a scrapbook put together in the 1940's by an alumnae group of nurses who attended school at Minor Hospital, one of the first hospitals established in Seattle in 1906.

In 1910, a week stay in a private room at Minor with round-the-clock nursing attention would set you back about $50.  If you had a baby, you did not hold it without a nurse looking carefully on, much less feed the baby yourself until it was time to go home.  You were in the hospital to "rest."  My, how the times have changed.

 A Minor Hospital nursing supervisor holding a baby

Minor Hospital closed in 1928, along with the nursing school, but the former graduates continued to meet for reunions until the 1950's.  During that time, they put together a detailed and elaborate scrapbook.

It's amazing that the original hospital building still exists, and looks like this today. It is owned by a Baptist Church and they are currently doing some interior renovations with no plans to tear it down.

You can click on this LINK to see the finding aid and learn more about early nursing education.  The finding aid is pretty detailed, and was time-consuming including the exact names of the students. But now their descendents might someday find great-great-granny on the internet. And perhaps come to the MOHAI archives to see this beautifully preserved scrapbook.

A class page from the scrapbook