Document Signed: EB admits Elizabeth B. Phelps to the WMC.
Emily Blackwell, Co-Founder of Woman's Medical College, Admits Elizabeth B. Phelps - New York Suffragist & First Woman Physician in New Jersey
Blackwell, Emily. Document Signed. New York: Woman's Medical College, 1868-9.
Partially Printed Card, 3-3/8 x 4-5/8", on buff stock, of the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary, 126 Second Avenue, New York, Session of 1868-9 (number hand-written) Materia Medica & Therapeutics, admission ticket for Elizabeth B. Phelps (her name hand-written), signed "Emily Blackwell, M.D. Sec." across the side, also hand-written across the front of the card is the signature, "A. B. Ball".
Emily Blackwell (1826-1910) was the younger sister of this Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman of modern times to receive a medical degree. In 1848, she decided to follow Elizabeth into medicine and began reading under Dr. John Davis. She was, however, turned down by 11 medical schools. She persevered and in 1954 graduated with honors from Western Reserve University in Cleveland. With her sister Elizabeth and Marie Zakrzewska, she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, the first U.S. hospital to be run by women doctors. In 1858 she was left completely in charge. By 1868, Elizabeth was back and they established a medical school. Emily served as dean and professor of obstetrics and diseases of women for the next thirty years. In 1898, her school merged with Cornell University Medical College in New York, which agreed to admit female students on an equal footing with male students. It is a testimony to the quality of education that Emily Blackwell provided that as prestigious a school as Cornell agreed to the merger.
Elizabeth B. Phelps of Orange, NJ was the first female physician in New Jersey and an important member of the New York woman suffrage movement. From a wealthy family, in 1869, the same year she enrolled at the Women's Medical College, she purchased a "large and elegant house on East Twenty-Third Street...which she dedicated as the 'Woman's Bureau." (Harper, p. 320). Anthony's suffrage newspaper, “The Revolution”, was housed on the first floor. Later that year, when Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, Phelps was elected a Vice President. A close friend of Anthony, in 1870 she organized (with Anna Darling and Charlotte Wilbour) the fiftieth birthday celebration of her friend. By 1872 she was the subject of an attempted blackmail by Victoria Woodhull. Hoping to raise money to keep her newspaper afloat, she printed dummy copies of the journal with completely made-up stories of sexual indiscretions of Elizabeth B. Phelps, Laura Curtis Bullard, Lillie Devereaux Blake and even Anthony herself. She failed; the women's reputations survived but Woodhull's newspaper did not.
This interesting piece of ephemera links two key American women and documents the establishment of the first U.S. hospital run by women doctors and one of the first medical schools for women run by women.
See: Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote, p. 75. Harper, Life & Works of Susan B. Anthony, pp. 320, 327, 341, 349, 360, 480. NAWI, pp. 165-167. Stanton, Eighty Years and More, Chapter XI. Timelines, p. 222.
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