Nurses marching in a Suffrage parade in Washington D.C., March 3, 1913.
Library of Congress
Nursing as a profession was in its infancy in the late 19th and early 20th century. Prior to this time, anyone could call themselves a nurse, as there were no educational or licensing requirements. By 1900, there were hundreds of nursing schools in the United States, but most graduates did not work at hospitals, which used unpaid students to fulfill their labor needs. Graduate nurses had to seek private employment, which could be an undependable source of income. As they began to organize themselves to seek more control over their profession, nurses realized that having a voice on issues such as working hours, wages, and licensing standards depended on having the power to vote.
Nurses had other reasons to support the suffrage movement as well. Suffragists specifically appealed to women who were concerned about public health issues, and the right to vote was seen as a means to improve problems such as urban sanitation, poor working conditions, and childhood hunger. Lavinia Dock, a pioneer in the nursing field who became heavily involved with the suffrage movement, was an active leader of the National Women’s Party and wrote numerous articles for nursing magazines as part of her drive to encourage support for suffrage within the nursing profession. Dock proclaimed in 1913 that the nursing movement was “a part of the woman movement in its entire program.” Although nursing organizations had voted to stay neutral about suffrage in 1908, reflecting their ambivalence and concerns about retribution from men in power, the tide began to change. In 1913, a small contingent of nurses in full uniform braved a hostile crowd to march with 5,000 suffragettes in Washington, D.C. Two years later the American Nurses Association formally voted to support the 19th Amendment during their annual meeting.
Maryland Suffrage News (Baltimore, Md.), 29 May 1915.
Library of Congress
The suffrage leaders in Baltimore also included women who worked in or supported the medical profession among their ranks, such as Edith Houghton Hooker, a social worker who founded the Just Government League in 1909 and started the publication, Maryland Suffrage News. Mary E. Lent, a Johns Hopkins-trained nurse, was president of the League through 1912. Lent was also superintendent of the Visiting Nurses Association of Baltimore, and later had a leadership role with the U.S. Public Health Service. Elizabeth King Ellicott was an early suffrage leader who also used her wealth and influence to help open the Johns Hopkins medical school to women. In 1906, she founded the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore, which published The New Voter, the first suffrage magazine in Maryland. Ellicott also led the Maryland Federation of Women’s Clubs, which was not directly active in the suffrage movement, but worked to support legislation affecting girls and women.
In 1910, the Equal Suffrage League proposed an amendment to the Baltimore City Charter that would have granted the right to vote to any Baltimore resident over the age of 21 who could read and write. The bill was overwhelmingly defeated in the Maryland Legislature, but Ellicott did not give up. The League introduced another version in 1912, which would have extended the right to vote to Baltimore women who paid property taxes. The bill was criticized by other suffragists as essentially granted the right to vote based on class (and by default, race, since most African American women did not own property). Others saw it as a way to get a foot in the door, in hopes of larger changes down the road.
Although the Baltimore bills failed, there was one group of women who had vocalized their supported for it early on: nurses. Ellicott and Lent spoke about the legislation at the Maryland State Association of Graduate Nurses’ annual meeting in February 1910, and obtained their unanimous support. The Association had its own activist background, working with the Maryland Federation of Women’s Clubs to get state legislation passed that would establish a central directory of registered nurses that same year. In 1919, after hearing a speech by Edith Houghton Hooker, the Association voted their unanimous support for suffrage.
As the professionalization of nursing evolved alongside the suffrage movement, it was inevitable that even those Baltimore nurses who were not actively involved with suffrage organizations were exposed to their ideas. They would have come across articles about suffrage in the American Journal of Nursing and other publications, and might have been handed a “silent speech card” containing messages about suffrage as they walked down the street. They might have attended a speech at the local YMCA, or one of the many “open air” meetings Edith Houghton Hooker held from her automobile. It would have been hard to miss the Just Government League’s Prairie Schooner as it kicked off a 350 mile journey from Charles Street in downtown Baltimore. Those nurses who were inclined towards activism would have been encouraged to take a “speakers class” to learn how to promote suffrage themselves, or to work at the polls, or attend political party meetings alongside men. There were many “little suffrage duties” that nurses could take on, and, as Lavinia Dock had implored back in 1908, if they were too busy with work, they could still provide moral and intellectual support. Nurses were always busy, and were about to become more so in 1917, when the United States entered the world war. The sudden exponential need for trained nurses to help treat wounded servicemembers returning from abroad, was soon to become a reality in Baltimore.
