By Anne M. Filiaci, Ph.D.
During the 1880s and 1890s, Shaw Lowell made it a point to seek out and mentor younger women who had a serious commitment to charity and reform work. Lillian Wald was one of these women. In spite of Wald’s inexperience and the difference in their ages, from the first Lowell treated the young nurse, in Wald’s own words, “like a comrade.” Soon the two women became close friends.
Wald felt “an intense gratitude” for Lowell’s aid and friendship during those “early experimental days of the lower east side.” In her first book, The House on Henry Street, Wald described Shaw Lowell as one of the “women who stand out with the greatest distinction” among those “fine personalities who influenced and guided us from the first weeks of residence in the friendly college settlement through the many years that have followed.”
Like Wald’s benefactor Jacob Schiff, Shaw Lowell generously introduced the young nurse to other influential people. Shaw Lowell also acted as a role model, encouraging Wald to hone certain skills the younger woman had acquired in nursing school. These skills—observing, documenting, and reporting on the condition of patients—were directly applicable to the methodology of scientific charity espoused by Shaw Lowell.
Wald remembered Shaw Lowell not only for her influence and guidance, but for the nurturing role that she played in the life of an idealistic young nurse who was often toiling so hard that she pushed herself to the point of exhaustion. “It was in the winter of ’93 when things were at high tension,” Wald recalled, that Shaw Lowell “called upon me frequently offering to do all kinds of things, suggesting that she do ‘some of the errands’ that I might spare my strength for…caring for the sick and learning the neighborhood.”
Wald also did favors for Shaw Lowell in those early years, contributing to the younger woman’s sense that she was a friend and equal to her mentor. One cold winter night, Wald later remembered, Shaw Lowell asked her to write a letter to the editor for publication in one of the city’s newspapers. Wald complied at once, in spite of the lateness of the hour and the freezing weather. “I sat in the kitchen of our little apartment with my feet in the oven,” she said, “as it was too cold to hold a pen in the frigid temperature of the room.” After finishing the letter, the cold, tired nurse “went down the many flights of stairs and mailed it in the post-box.”
Shaw Lowell also encouraged the development of the Nurses’ Settlement on Jefferson Street and later on Henry Street, believing that settlements and settlement workers were great allies in her own work. “What we ought to have,” she said, “are settlements in every street.” Claiming that “[e]xperts are required in every field,” she looked to settlements to provide these experts. In addition to including settlement workers on the COS’s district committees, Shaw Lowell also used other settlement resources to help conduct many of her projects.
Settlement workers had a perfect opportunity to investigate and alleviate the plight of the poor, Shaw Lowell knew, but she also relied on them to advocate for the poor, exhorting the young idealistic men and women to “report the neglect of the city government to do its duty, … report the oppression of employers,” and speak out on behalf of their neighbors. “They must cry aloud” she insisted, “for more air, more space, for a larger and better life in every way for the great masses of men and women in our cities.”
Even as she relied on settlement workers to further her work, Shaw Lowell also provided them with the tools and resources they needed for theirs. In 1893, as Chairwoman of the COS Committee on Vagrancy, she organized and ran a laundry for women and a work yard for men. These ventures gave food and temporary shelter for those willing to work at least three hours a day. When Wald encountered people during her daily rounds that needed this kind of assistance, she was relieved that she could refer them to these enterprises.
Copyright Anne M. Filiaci 2016