[Group portrait photograph of fourteen African American nurses and nursing students outside of Dr. J. H. Mudgett’s Private Hospital and Training School for Nurses, 2030 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia] [graphic] / Dan E. Paul, commercial photography, Bell Ph
Title
[Group portrait photograph of fourteen African American nurses and nursing students outside of Dr. J. H. Mudgett’s Private Hospital and Training School for Nurses, 2030 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia]
Description
Group portrait depicts the women, including Helen Waller, posed in three rows on the steps outside the entryway to the hospital and training school. Five woman stand in a line in the top and bottom rows and four women stand in a line in the middle row. The women hold their arms to their sides or behind them and have plain expressions. The women in the bottom row wear white, ankle-length dresses with long sleeves and collars, white stockings, and white shoes with heels. They also wear nurses caps with the one of the woman in the middle trimmed with a thin black stripe along the edge, possibly “Miss Harris, super-intendant of the nurses.” The women in the upper rows wear white, long-sleeved shirts, white apron dresses, and nurses caps. The sign naming the hospital and school adorning the building is partially visible in the right. The figure who is Helen Waller, a 1919 graduate of the hospital is not known, but likely one of the women in the first row., Dr. J. H. Mudgett’s Private Hospital and Training School for Nurses was established by New Hampshire-born white (per census records) physician John H. Mudgett and chartered in 1919. Mudgett served as the medical director of surgery. In 1921, the school was one of a number of nursing schools advertised in the “Evening Public Ledger” as offering “Free Tuition, Board, Lodging, and a Nominal Fee” to be trained as a nurse. Mudgett, graduated Dartmouth Medical School in 1896 and resided in Philadelphia as a physician by circa 1905. By 1925, he was listed as only a physician with no listing for the training school. Mudgett, a member of the First African Baptist Church, died in 1945. At the time of his death he was in a multiracial marriage with Adeline Mudgett (1889-1958), a former dressmaker. His race on his death certificate had been altered from white to “colored.” Helen Waller (1897-1925) was one of the first nurse graduates of Mudgett’s Hospital in 1919. By 1924, she worked as a child hygiene nurse before her death in 1925 from tuberculosis., Title supplied by cataloger., Date inferred from article about “Mudgett’s Hospital Has Its First Commencement,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 19, 1919., Name of photographer from photographer's stamp on verso., Manuscript note on verso: Helen Waller, 2020 Turner Street., See also complementary group portrait photographs - Education - M [P.2022.5.2 & 3].
Creator
Paul, Dan E., photographer
Date
[1919]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *group portrait photographs - education - Mudgett's Hospital [P.2022.5.1]