By Anne M. Filiaci, Ph.D.
When Lillian Wald graduated from nursing school on March 31, 1891, she did not move back to her parents’ home or directly into another job. Instead, she chose to stay at the New York Hospital for a few months, helping her mentor Irene Sutliffe prepare for the entrance of a new class of nursing students.
After she had completed her extended stay at New York Hospital, Wald did not return to Rochester. Even if she had decided to do so, the life that she had known there was gone. Her father–gentle, dependable Max Wald, on whom she had always relied for support and love, died in May of 1891 of apoplexy. After his death, Lillian’s mother Minnie moved in with her daughter, Julia.
During this period of uncertainty, Wald faced a dilemma about what she wanted to do with her life. She wished to help people, to be of use. Yet if she became a private-duty nurse–a job many graduates took–she would most likely be limiting her assistance to those who could afford to pay her for her services. On the other hand, she knew she could not stay at the hospital. There, she would be forced to submit to the very discipline under which she had chafed as a student. She had found it difficult to avoid speaking out against the hospital and the doctors when she thought they were wrong. She could not face a lifetime of holding her tongue and obeying the orders of others. She was far too independent for that.
Before the year was out, Lillian Wald had made up her mind about what to do. Loving children and wanting to work with those whom she thought were the most in need, she accepted a position at the New York Juvenile Asylum.
The New York Juvenile Asylum (NYJA) was a large orphanage founded in 1851 by businessmen and professionals concerned about the increasing numbers of unsupervised poor children who roamed New York City’s streets. By the time Lillian Wald started work there, the Asylum had “accommodation for one thousand children.” Some were brought in by the police–picked up for minor crimes like vagrancy and theft. Others were dropped off by destitute parents who could not afford to care for them. Many of these parents were widowed mothers.
The average stay for residents was from one to two years. Many children came and went annually. Those who left were often returned to parents, adopted, delivered to legal guardians, or sent out west on “Orphan Trains.” A few attained majority and some “escaped.” On rare occasions a child died in custody.
During Wald’s tenure, the Asylum received children at its House of Reception–located, according to the 1893 Annual report, at 106 West 27th Street. At the House of Reception, the orphanage assessed children brought for admission. Those who fit its profile went to the Asylum’s main buildings to live.
From 1854 to 1905, the Juvenile Asylum’s main buildings were located at 176th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues (“Amsterdam Avenue to Broadway”) in Washington Heights, “at the upper end of Manhattan Island.” The Asylum’s Annual Report for 1893 described the location as
“one of the finest on the Island, commanding a view of the Hudson River and Palisades for many miles, the Harlem River and Long Island Sound, and the whole country for miles around, dotted with cities and villages and elegant country-seats.”
When Wald worked there, “the Asylum grounds” contained “about twenty acres, extending from Amsterdam Avenue to Broadway.” Surrounded “by a substantial stone wall and picket fence,” the “part adjoining Amsterdam Avenue” consisted of “a fine Oak Grove of four acres, and a new double cottage for the use of” employees. The Asylum also had “twelve acres…for farm and garden purposes.” Its “Buildings and Yards” stood on “the remaining four acres…near the central part of the grounds…enclosed on three sides by a brick wall eight feet high.”
At the Asylum, the children were segregated by gender and age. They resided in wards and ate in large dining rooms. The Asylum’s buildings also housed some teacher and staff accommodations, an Assembly Room, a chapel, a library, school rooms, a gymnasium, and a playroom.
While at the Asylum, child residents received a “moral, intellectual and industrial education.” In addition to attending regular school, their “industrial” training consisted of performing much of the work that was needed to run the Asylum. They toiled in its Sewing Room, mending room, two Kitchens “in the basement,” laundries, tailor shop, gardens, shoe shop and bakery.
Lillian Wald probably worked in the Asylum’s “Hospital” on the third floor of the Gymnasium building–although she may have also worked at the House of Reception. At either place, she would have been working as the only nurse–the 1893 report lists only one “Hospital Nurse” in its directory of employees, and only one “woman officer” listed as “Hospital” at the House of Reception. At either venue, she would have worked under the direction and supervision of “Visiting Physicians.”
The types of diseases and illnesses that Wald would have encountered ranged from routine to serious. Most were most typical of those found in a (poor) juvenile population at the time. The 1893 annual “Physician’s Report” to the “President and Directors of the New York Juvenile Asylum enumerated the cases “treated in the Hospital” at the Asylum itself. The list included ten cases of pneumonia, nine sprained ankles and one foot wound, five cases of tonsillitis, three of scabies, four fractures, as well as abscesses, peritonitis, a cyst, a scalp wound, a case of tubercular meningitis, and a case of croup. At the House of Reception, in addition to other treatments, “all children requiring vaccination” were “vaccinated,… a number of teeth” were “extracted” and the “Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary,” took “several cases of trachoma which required operation.”
Deaths were fairly rare–in 1891, five children died and in 1892 there were three fatalities. The Asylum’s report of 1893 was pleased to note that”[o]ne death occurred, September 15th, from meningitis” and that this was “the only death that has occurred since May 20, 1892—-nineteen mouths ago—-among a thousand children.”
Although Wald’s love for children brought her to NYJA, she quickly became disenchanted with the way of life there, and with the practice of raising and caring for young people in large, impersonal institutions. On more than one occasion during her stay, she fought against the mistreatment of her charges. She told stories of these small battles throughout the rest of her life. In one case, she learned that an Asylum boy, accused of disobeying a rule, was about to be punished without having the right to defend himself. Wald stepped in and demanded a hearing for him. The boy got his hearing, and Wald got the satisfaction of seeing him prove that he was innocent. In another, instance, Wald was passing “through a room in an asylum when the dentist was paying his monthly visit” and “saw a fine-looking young lad about to have a sound front tooth extracted because he complained of toothache.” No alternative was even considered. When Wald, appalled, offered “to have the boy given proper treatment outside the institution,” the offer “was not accepted,” but the boy’s tooth was saved. Yet another time, Wald encountered “a little homesick lad” who “displayed his hands” to her. The hands were “swollen from paddling”–in spite of the fact that Asylum insisted “that corporal punishment was not administered.” Wald’s “request for an investigation,” coupled with her additional request to “be privileged to hear the inquiry, put a stop, and I am assured a permanent one, to this form of discipline.”
Wald would later detail other, more subtle, ways that living in large institutions negatively affected children. At “best the life is artificial,” she wrote, “and the children lose inestimably through not having day by day the experiences of normal existence.” Some of the consequences of institutional living were obvious–the children, for example, lacked table manners and the ability to know the value of goods and services that they made and consumed. Other effects were more insidious. The rigid structure of the orphanage, Wald often asserted, inhibited individual motivation and stunted emotional growth by “curbing…initiative and… belittling…personality.”
After a year spent in treating the sick and attempting to fight the system on behalf of her charges, Lillian Wald left the Asylum. She had discovered that in certain important ways, the Asylum was no different from the New York Hospital. In both cases, large, impersonal institutions that sought to help people sometimes achieved just the opposite. Inflexible rules and regulations seemed to be always getting in the way of Wald’s ability to make a difference.
Bibliography
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
Feld, Marjorie N., Lillian Wald: A Biography, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009
New York Juvenile Asylum, Forty-Second Annual Report of the New York Juvenile Asylum Legislature Of The State, And To The Common Concil of The City of New York, For the Year 1893. NY: TROW DIRECTORY, 1894. Hathi Trust, Digitized by the University of Illinois, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112107730241;view=1up
Current Mar. 13, 2013
New York Juvenile Asylum, New York Juvenile Asylum Records (Children’s Village), 1853-1954, “Biographical Note,” Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library,http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_6909466/index.html
Current Mar. 13, 2013
Wald, Lillian D., The House on Henry Street, N:Y: Henry Holt & Co., 1915
Photographs and Images
Max Wald’s internment record at Mount Hope Cemetery, stating date of internment as May 31, 1891 and cause of death as apoplexy, Link to Illustration Current March 13, 2013
New York Public Library Digital Gallery, search for phrase “new york juvenile asylum 1800-1899 in subject,” 2 pictures, at Link to Illustration and Link to Illustration Current 7/1/15
Copyright Anne M. Filiaci 2014