HISTORICAL NURSING: MARY MAHONEY AND WALT WHITMAN

Historical Nursing: Mary Mahoney and Walt Whitman

Historical Nursing:

Mary Mahoney and Walt Whitman

Introduction

Mary Mahoney and Walt Whitman shared strikingly similar nursing experiences. They engaged in the same cultural and personal work within their respective hospitals and recognized the dissolution of boundaries inside of the hospital. At the same time, yet in different places, Mahoney and Whitman entered into the hospital space with consideration that the workings on the inside disrupted the circumstances on the outside.

Main Body

The nursing course that Mary Mahoney entered at age 18 was rigorous--her training was in the medical, surgical and maternity wards and night duty was required. The last four months of the 16-month training period were used "to prove the students' competence in all of these clinical areas" (Cross, 2006) by sending them into homes of the sick for private duty under the direction of the school. In addition there was 12 hours of classes each week in physiology, nutrition, bedside practice and disinfectants. Her 16-hour day, 7-days a week training included washing and ironing, cleaning and scrubbing and cooking. The demands were great.

Mary Eliza Mahoney was only about five feet in height and she weighed less than one hundred pounds. But she was a very large woman. She was the first black woman in America to graduate and practice as a full-fledged nurse in this country. Enrolling in the School of Nursing at the former New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, (which was at Dimock St., and Columbus Ave.) in March, 1878, she received her nursing diploma in August, 1879. (Davis, 2008)

Mary Mahoney was born in Boston in 1845. Her parents, Charles and Mary Jane Stewart Mahoney, came to Boston from North Carolina and raised Mary and two other children at 31 Westminister St., in Roxbury. (Cross, 2006)

Of the 40 student nurses who were admitted to training with Mary Mahoney only three received the diploma at the end of the 16-month course--two white girls and Mary Eliza Mahoney. The young black nurse went on to serve as a pioneer in her field for over 40 years. She was constantly a credit to the New England Hospital for Women and Children and she paved the way for other black women to be admitted to the Hospitals' School of Nursing.

Miss Mahoney's career took her into private nursing in the homes of the sick in Boston and its suburbs, in New Jersey, and North Carolina. Wherever she went her services were in great demand. After her parents' death, Mary Mahoney rented an apartment on Warwick St., in Roxbury, where she lived out her life. (Davis, 2008)

This country's first black nurse did more than just care for the sick. She worked to organize nurses to improve the status of the black nurse. She helped organize The National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908, in New York City. And in 1909, at the Association's first annual conference in Boston she gave the welcoming ...