In late August of 1893 Wald informed her benefactors that she and Brewster were thinking of moving out of their Rivington Street location. The College Settlement was about to begin its “regular winter” schedule, and the planned activities—mainly clubs—were “not identical with the work” of the young nurses. Since Wald and Brewster wished to keep the focus on their nursing, they felt they had to vacate their rooms so that the space could “be used for workers who can give their time wholly to the specific work of the house.”
Yet the young women initially procrastinated. “We have not done much towards getting that house,” Wald explained. There were a number of reasons for their hesitation. First, Wald and Brewster already knew from experience that it would not be easy to find suitable quarters on the Lower East Side. Secondly, their daily work kept them too busy to look for a space. Finally, they had qualms about spending the money required to make a move—it was, after all, a “time” of great “need,” and any cash they could get might perhaps be better spent “directly for the people.”
Wald’s desire to focus mainly on nursing ultimately overcame any doubts she may have had. “[W]e have decided” she wrote, “to live in a tenement house rather than to give the work up.” The two young women eventually found a suitable space on the fifth floor of 27 Jefferson Street. There, they were able to rent the whole “vacant floor at the top [which was] so high that the windows along the entire side wall gave us sun and breeze….” The tenement apartment was also, Wald revealed, the only place “in which our careful search disclosed the desired bathtub.” The final deciding point was the warm and welcoming “janitress,” Mrs. McRae, who would soon become the nurses’ staunch protector and longtime friend.
Once the nurses found a place to live, they needed to convince their worried families that they would be safe living on their own. Georgia Beaver Judson, a nurse who worked with Wald in those early days, reminisced decades later that “even the doctors used to be fearful for our presence in the thickly settled East Side,” and “[f]riends used to advise us how dangerous it was to go about unaccompanied.”
Wald and Brewster had to calm their relatives’ fears about the neighborhood and also to allay concerns about the nature of their accommodations. Wald remembered,
“‘Naturally objections to two young women living alone in New York under these conditions had to be met, and some assurance as to our material comfort was given to anxious, though at heart sympathetic families by compromising on good furniture, a Baltimore heater for cheer, and simple but adequate household appurtenances.”
The nurses decorated their “painted floors with easily removed rugs,” and “curtained” the windows “with spotless but inexpensive scrim.” They filled the “sitting room with pictures, books and restful chairs.” Placing “the family mahogany” in the dining room, they settled in for the next two years.
Lavinia Dock, a nurse and longtime friend who visited the apartment in these early days, described “[t]heir tiny rooms” as “charming in the simplicity of clean, bare floors, six-cent white curtains and green growing plants.” She noted that, unlike most middle-class women of the time, the two “did all their own work, except laundry and scrubbing.”
If they ever found their lodging crowded or uncomfortable, Wald and Brewster faced a “constant reminder” that they “occupied exactly the same space as the large families on every floor below us.” To illustrate the point, Wald told a story of “the little lad from the basement,” their “first invited guest,” who found their apartment “luxurious beyond the dreams of ordinary folk.” Mary Brewster had prepared a “simple but appetizing dinner” for him, and Wald “set the table and placed the flowers.” Later that night,
“the boy’s mother came up…to find out what we had given him, for Tommie had rushed down with eyes bulging and had reported that ‘them ladies live like the Queen of England and eat off of solid gold plates.’”
In spite of the relative luxury of their surroundings, Wald and Brewster’s apartment was rarely if ever a retreat from their daily work. Inundated with visitors soon after they moved to Jefferson Street, Wald remembered that visits to their apartment started “[i]n the early morning, before we had time to put the kettle on.” She wryly noted that
“The much-esteemed bathroom, small and dark, was in the hall, and necessitated early rising if we were to have use of it; for as we became known, we had many callers anxious to see us before we started on our sick rounds.”
The “procession” of visitors, she wrote, “continued after our nursing rounds were ended till the last minute of the night, before we sank into fatigued sleep.”
During those hard economic times, the young women’s visitors sought more than nursing services:
“They came begging us to help them find work, or at least to give them a ticket entitling them to a few days of the ‘made work’ which was being provided as a relief measure.”
Wald and Brewster did their best to comply, furnishing nursing services and other help. But perhaps more importantly they made friends with her neighbors, listening to them and learning about what they needed.
Wald also made friends with wealthy donors and other philanthropists, whom she asked to help provide for the neighborhood’s needs. She made sure she always thanked her sponsors, acknowledging their support and providing them with detailed reports on her work. Being attentive to the poor, making connections with other reformers and professionals, convincing the prosperous to give to those less fortunate–these were the talents, in addition to nursing, that Lillian Wald quickly discovered in herself. Before her first two years in the neighborhood had passed, she had honed these talents into an immense gift.
Bibliography
Carson, Mina, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-1930, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Daniels, Doris Groshen, Always a Sister: The Feminism of Lillian D. Wald, New York, Feminist Press, 1989.
Duffus, R.L., Lillian Wald: Neighbor and Crusader, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939.
[Epstein], Beryl Williams, Lillian Wald: Angel of Henry Street [author’s name on title page is “Beryl Williams”], NY: Julian Messner, Inc., 1948.
Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, A Generation of Women: Education in the Lives of Progressive Reformers, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Lotz, Philip Henry, ed., Distinguished American Jews, (Creative Personalities, v. VI), NY: Association Press, 1945.
Trachtenberg, Leo, “Philanthropy That Worked,” City Journal, Winter 1998. http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_urbanities-philanthropy.html Current 9/29/21.
Wald, Lillian D., Papers, (Correspondence, Wald to Jacob Schiff et al., August 29, 1893), New York Public Library.
Wald, Lillian D., The House on Henry Street, N:Y: Henry Holt & Co., 1915.
Wald, Lillian D., Windows on Henry Street, Boston: Little Brown, and Company, 1934.
Whelan, Anne, “Georgia Beaver Judson, a Pioneer With Lillian Wald, Little Realized Inevitable Scope of Settlement Work,” The Bridgeport Sunday Post, June 4, 1939.
Woods, Robert A. & Albert J. Kennedy, Handbook of Settlements (Russell Sage Foundation), NY: Charities Publication Committee, 1911.
Yost, Edna, American Women of Nursing, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1947.
Illustrations
“Family making artificial flowers,” by Jacob Riis, c. 1890 CE. Link to Illustration or for image only Link to Illustration Current 10/22/14
Library of Congress, Mulberry Street, New York City, Digital ID: (digital file from intermediary roll film) det 4a31829 Link to Illustration, Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-1584 (color film copy transparency) LC-USZC4-4637 (color film copy transparency) LC-USZCN4-45 (color film copy neg.), Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Link to Illustration Current 9/29/21
LOC, Title: New York City – The recent “heated term” and its effect upon the population of the tenement districts A night scene on the East Side / / from sketch by a staff artist.
Date Created/Published: 1882 Aug. 12. Medium: 1 print : wood engraving. Summary: Tenement dwellers sleeping on roofs and windowsills.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-75193 (b&w film copy neg.)
Call Number: Illus. in AP2.L52 Case Y [P&P] Notes: Illus. in: Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, Aug. 12, 1882, p. 393. Link to Illustration Current 9/29/21
LOC, Title: [Jewish market on the East Side, New York, N.Y.] Related Names: Detroit Publishing Co. , publisher. Date Created/Published: [between 1890 and 1901]
Medium: 1 negative : glass ; 8 x 10 in. Reproduction Number: LC-D401-12426 (b&w film copy neg.) LC-DIG-det-4a07950 (digital file from original) Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication. Call Number: LC-D4-12426 <P&P> [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Notes: Title and date from Detroit, Catalogue J (1901). “Dup” on negative. Detroit Publishing Co. no. 012426. Gift; State Historical Society of Colorado; 1949. Link to Illustration Current 9/29/21
LOC, Rivington Street Title: The Ghetto, New York, N.Y. Related Names: Detroit Publishing Co. , publisher; Date Created/Published: [between 1900 and 1915]
Medium: 1 negative : glass ; 8 x 10 in. Reproduction Number: LC-D401-71269 (b&w film copy neg.) LC-DIG-det-4a23253 (digital file from original) Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication. Call Number: LC-D4-71269 <P&P> [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Notes: Sign on post: Rivington St. Corresponding glass transparency available on videodisc frame 1A- 30950. Lower East side. Detroit Publishing Co. no. 071269. Gift; State Historical Society of Colorado; 1949. Link to Illustration Current 9/29/21
Copyright Anne M. Filiaci 2021