An Ethical Heroine
Miriam Claude Meijer, Ph.D.© 2002
Obscurity was the normal fate for women physicians. When Nancy
Blanche Jenison, M.D. died in 1960 (7 November), no obituary appeared
for her in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Her
death was mentioned in the Johns Hopkins Magazine (March 1961)
without detail. Nothing appeared in the New York newspapers. Only The
Washington Post (November 12, 1960, p. C3) carried a full
announcement:
“Memorial services for Dr. Nancy Jenison, who died… in New York City at the age of 85,
will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Washington Ethical Society, 1822 Massachusetts av.
N.W.
“Dr. Jenison was a longtime resident of Washington…
“She was raised in Chicago, where her father was a prominent architect, and was a
graduate of Wells College, Aurora, N.Y. After teaching high school for several years, she
went to Johns Hopkins University, and received her M.D. She practiced medicine in New
York for some 20 years. Upon retirement she came to Washington, where she worked with
various groups for improved race relations.”
Nancy Jenison left her estate to the
Washington Ethical Society.[1] In the long
run her life had a greater impact than that of
famous people. Women like her understood
the true power of the purse and their
determination could push the next change in
society over the edge.
__________
[1] My entry on her was published in American National
Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999), v. 11, pp. 933-934.
Industrialization
The period around Nancy’s birth was a critical one in America’s
history. During the decades before the Civil War, Americans
experienced the greatest development of industrial production and
urbanization. The once integral home economy was dismantled, and,
from this time forward, many divisions were created: work versus
leisure, the domestic versus the occupational, and public versus private
life.
The U.S. Census of 1860 indicated that only 10.2% of women were
employed outside of the home. A larger proportion of the female
population was placed at the margins of production than at any time
before or since. This fact gave foundation to the doctrine of “the
separate spheres,” a segregation of the masculine and feminine
spheres: separate but complementary.
Men were the “bread-earners” and women the “bread-givers.” The
“commanding” male would fight, politick, and scrape for his income,
while the wife would oversee the world of “human ties,” particularly
within the family. “True womanhood” and the cult of domesticity made
the women’s stable home base an anchor to the young men who faced
uncertain economic prospects and constant moving. The ideal of the
modern family created by the middle class was small in size, emotionally
intense, and female-supervised.
Feminism
Ironically, motherhood could
be used to justify activities
outside of the home. A new
phenomenon—the women’s
college—developed after the Civil
War. Educators tried to elevate
the domestic occupation from
drudgery to a noble profession
with female education. Domestic
science included the “physics” of
ventilation, the “chemistry” of
home remedies, the “aesthetics”
of furniture, the “architecture” of
domestic space, and the
“psychology” of child care. The
intention was to assure the
endurance of domesticity, but
women’s schooling had the
opposite effect.
Educated middle-class women used their learning and newly
acquired self-confidence to assert themselves in public. While the
businessmen of the Gilded Age were building their trusts and
monopolies, the women of the upper and middle classes were creating
equally impressive national organizations with their own ideas about
society. Operating through settlement houses, women’s clubs, and
welfare agencies, women developed the reformist critique of industrial
America. In the Progressive Movement, women used the cult of
domesticity—not to separate themselves off from the world of men—but
to participate in selected aspects of social and economic life.
Chicago
Nancy Jenison’s mother, Caroline M. Spooner (b. 11 April 1851),
“who lived in Chicago through all her active life, was passionately
interested in education, the future of woman, the welfare of the Negro,
and in America.”[2] Nancy’s father, Edward Spencer Jenison (b. 23
January 18147) was an architect who helped rebuild Chicago after the
Great Fire. The Chicago City Directories revealed that he later
became a civil engineer. Both parents came from Ohio but spent their
lives in Chicago. Nancy was born on 8 July, 1876 in Republic, Ohio,
where her mother retreated to give birth (Nancy had an older sister
and a younger brother). Called “Nannie” in her childhood, Nancy was
confirmed at All Souls church, attended Greenwood Avenue School,
and graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1893.
During Nancy’s lifetime, the role of women and their opportunities
changed radically. In 1890 only 25% of college graduates were female
(3,000), but, by 1900 40% of them were female! Between 1890 and
1920 the number of professional women increased 226%, almost triple
the rate of male advancement. By 1920, 5% of the nation’s doctors
were women, as were 1.4% of the lawyers and judges, and 30% of the
college presidents, professors, and instructors.[3]
__________
[2] Text on a plaque of Nancy Jenison in the Washington Ethical Society.
[3] Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York:
Franklin Watts, 1979): 138-141.
Wells College
Nancy attended Wells College, a small women’s college in Aurora,
New York, from 1894 to 1898. She was the Artistic Editor of the
literary college publication and a member of the college Settlement
Association.
At age 22 (1898) she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English.
In the Wells tradition of planting an ivy to commemorate her class
graduation, Nancy delivered the Ivy Day Oration. We can confirm that
she successfully fulfilled the Wells College ideals that she described:
“So we have had to learn to be self-dependent. Every task has been valuable only as it has
strengthened our abilities and made us capable of greater things. There is always work to
be done, some of it easy, some of it difficult. The world cannot stand still. Each
generation must take up the work of its predecessor. …”[4]
Although a number of America’s early woman physicians grew up or
were educated in this area of New York, famous as the “burned over
district” for its unorthodox ideas, at this time there is no indication that
Nancy was thinking about medical school.
__________
[4] N. B. J., “Ivy Oration,” Cardinal (1898): 147-151.
School Teacher
The alternative to the comparative
idleness of the native-born middle class
daughters between puberty and marriage
(about six years) was school teaching.
For several years Nancy taught high
school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; found it
most trying, and gave it up.[5] The
profession that attracted more women,
other than teaching, was medicine.
Female teachers were paid one third that
of their male counterparts, whereas the
average income of a woman doctor in
1881 was three times that of a male
white-collar worker.[6]
There were other reasons for women to enter medicine. Medicine
meshed personal ambition with ideology perfectly: self-development
while helping others. Women physicians could pursue a career and
reform society without overstepping too far the bounds of accepted
propriety. Known to love children, Nancy must have decided that she
could help many more children as a physician than as a teacher or
mother. It was also common for female physicians to have a physician
in the family already and the brother of Nancy’s mother was a successful
Ohio surgeon.[7]
__________
[5] A 1906 letter from her sister addressed to Nancy in Milwaukee states: “I’m sorry you’ve had
such a hard time.” Madge Jenison papers, 1905-1960, The New York Public Library, Manuscripts
& Archives Section.
[6] Mary Roth Walsh, “Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply:” Sexual Barriers in the
Medical Profession, 1835-1977 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977): 184.
[7] Henry Kuhn Spooner (1837-1908) was a surgeon in charge of the first division, twentieth
army corps, during the Civil War. He became one of the oldest and best known physicians of
Seneca County in Ohio. Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women
Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985): 93.
Baltimore
Most important, by 1890, an
unprecedented feminist victory
had been won: women were to
be admitted to an elite medical
school. The “Women’s Fund
Committee,” founded by four
wealthy and capable Baltimore
women, endowed half a million
dollars to the financially-strapped
Johns Hopkins University on the
condition that women be
admitted to its new School of
Medicine on the same terms as
men from the day it opened in
1893.
Nancy decided to become a doctor sometime between her two
periods of graduate study at The University of Chicago. In 1899, she
studied philosophy, but, during her second residence, in 1906, she took
general inorganic chemistry in preparation for Johns Hopkins University.
In 1907 she was admitted to the first-rate coeducational medical school
which emphasized research in the basic sciences. Nancy’s late
decision—she was 31 years old—was typical for women in medicine
because this career choice required a woman to be very strong in
character. Nancy became one of seven women in the 1911 class of 90
graduates and about the 67th woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins as
a M.D.[8]
__________
[8] Female medical students were generally older than their male counterparts. Alan M. Chesney
and William H. Howell, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine: A Chronicle (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1943-1963), vols. 1-3.
New York City
Although hospital training was increasingly recognized as essential
to a complete medical education, the only American hospital open to
female interns was the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
This free clinic had been founded in 1853 by Elizabeth Blackwell (18491910), America’s first woman medical doctor. From 1911 to 1913 Dr.
Jenison interned at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.[9]
Some medical women had salaried positions in schools or asylums,
but most were in private practice. Dr. Jenison did both. In 1914 she
became Clinical Assistant at the New York Infirmary for Women and
Children and at the Mount Sinai Dispensary.[10] She was promoted in
1915 to Assistant Attending Physician at the New York Infirmary for
Women and Children and from 1917 to 1926 she continued there as
Attending Physician. Dr. Jenison published a case of blepharochalasis
in a Russian Jewish boy immigrant that she observed from 1912 to
1914.[11]
In 1916 Dr. Jenison joined the Cornell University Medical College,
first as Assistant Physician, and then also as Clinical Instructor in
Medicine, continuing both positions until 1929.[12] From 1916 to 1919
she became also a Sheldon Fellow in Medicine at Cornell. From 1919
until 1921 or 1922 she worked as an Adjunct Assistant Visiting
Physician at Bellevue.
__________
[9] This clinic exists today as the New York University Downtown Hospital.
[10] “Nancy Jennison.” Mount Sinai Hospital annual report 1914. Our thanks to Barbara J.
Niss for this information. Levy Library, Mount Sinai Medical Center, 1 Gustave Levy Place,
Box 1013, New York City, New York 10029-6574.
[11] Nancy Jenison, M.D., “Blepharochalasis,” New York Medical Journal 118 (September 11,
1915): 555-556.
[12] Cornell University Medical College Announcements (1916-1930). Our thanks to Adele A.
Lerner, Archivist, for this information. New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Archives,
1300 York Avenue, New York City, New York 10021-4896.
Dr. Nancy
Women physicians gravitated to what
became “feminine” medical specialties, and
Dr. Jenison, likewise, chose pediatrics. Her
private practice, where she was affectionately
addressed as “Dr. Nancy,” flourished for two
decades in New York City. Women doctors
favored the cities. A disproportionately large
percentage of patients were female and
women often preferred a woman doctor. One
such patient wrote Dr. Nancy:
“When I first met you thro Dr. Wakefield you remember,
I thot you the most common sense physician and one of
the nicest people I knew.”[13]
Dr. Nancy carried a correspondence with
many of her patients after they had moved
away and received photographs of the
children she had treated as they grew up.
__________
[13] Letter to Nancy Jenison from Melinda R. Abbot, 5 High Ridge Road, Worcester,
Massachusetts.
World War I
In 1915, the year that the American Medical Association (AMA) finally
admitted women as members, a woman surgeon (Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen)
founded the American Medical Women’s National Association, which Dr.
Nancy joined instead. In 1917 she helped co-author their War Service
Committee’s report.
“We, the undersigned, offer our services to the Secretary of War as members of the
Medical Reserve Corps, to be utilized to the fullest extent for home or foreign service,
as indicated after our names, by the United States War Department in the present war.
We desire that opportunities for medical service be given to us equal to the
opportunities for medical service given to medical men, as members of staffs of base
hospitals and otherwise, and that we be given the same rank, title, and pay given to
men holding equivalent positions.”[14]
However, the short duration of the first World War precluded any
meaningful advance for American medical women. Their contribution was
limited to the establishment of a number of hospitals in Europe and the use
of some 55 women doctors as contract surgeons. These women
performed surgery in military hospitals without any military status or
benefits such as pensions and most hospitals dropped female interns as
soon as the war was over.
__________
[14] Nancy Jenison, M.D. co-author, “Report of Work June to October, 1917 War Service Committee
of the Medical Women’s National Association,” The Woman’s Medical Journal: A Monthly Journal
Published in the Interests of Women Physicians 27 (October 1917): 218-225.
Female Professionals
Dr. Nancy took advantage of every opportunity that presented itself to
her. She traveled a great deal and even studied abroad. She never
married.
The women born between 1865 and 1874 married later and less
frequently than any group before or since. At the turn of the century
nearly one in five married women was childless. The trend away from
domesticity was most pronounced among educated women. They
rejected marriage in favor of meaningful work. In 1920 75% of the
female professionals were single.[15] These women liked their freedom
and knew how to enjoy themselves. Dr. Nancy, for example, frequented
the cultural events of Chicago and New York City. Her personal effects
included programs from many museums, operas, and plays. Her sister,
Madge C. Jenison (1874-1960), earned recognition in Woman’s Who’s
Who of America, was captain 25 Assembly District (N.Y. City) Woman
Suffrage Party, co-founded an important book shop, published short
stories and a few books, and wrote articles on German Model Housing
and Workman’s Insurance.[16]
__________
[15] Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York:
Franklin Watts, 1979): 142.
[16] John William Leonard, ed. Woman’s Who’s Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of
Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914-1915 (New York: The American
Commonwealth Company, 1976): 429-430. Publishers’ Weekly (March 14, 1960): 41. Publishers’
Weekly (July 4, 1960): 167-168. Who’s Who of American Women: A Biographical Dictionary of
Notable Living American Women, vol. 1 (Chicago: Marquis, 1958): 646; vol. 2 (1961-1962): 507.
Retirement
In 1931 a 55-year-old Dr. Nancy retired from practice to live in the
countryside in Bound Brook, New Jersey. In 1939 she visited
Guatemala. Her sketchbook indicates a budding interest in
anthropology—a field in which female professionals had made great
strides.
At the age of 66, thanks to
the fact that she knew
Spanish and French, she
studied for a year in Mexico
City at the National School of
Anthropology.
Washington, D.C.
In researching her family history she learned that her mother’s greatgrandfather had owned slaves in Maryland. A dramatic incident occurred
after her grandfather had moved to Kentucky with his slaves:
“Sometimes during their early residence there the colored people planned an
uprising and were to kill all their masters and families. They move a curve down
the middle of the forehead as a membership sign. An old colored mammy who was
of the bunch finally told our grandmother and she hid with her two little children
till the disturbance was quelled.”[17]
Dr. Nancy moved to Washington, D.C. to work on improving race
relations. She was as convinced that African Americans had equal rights
with other citizens as she was of women’s rights.
__________
[17] Manuscript, Washington Ethical Society Archives.
Dr. Beauchamp
Most likely she met Dr. George E. Beauchamp (1906-1988), the
Leader of the Washington Ethical Society, at civil rights events. She
joined the Society in 1950, when she was 74 years old, and George
and his wife Catherine became “family” to her. In 1951, when Catherine
Beauchamp’s mother died, Dr. Nancy moved into the Beauchamps’
house, and accompanied them, well dressed and prompt, every week
downtown to the Ethical Society for the Sunday services. Catherine
Beauchamp wrote to me in October about her memories of Dr. Nancy:
“I can’t remember how long she lived with us, but long enough for us to adopt her
into the family. Every morning she’d come down the backstairs to get a cup of hot
water for her tea. Her evening meal was the only meal she ate ‘out.’ A restaurant
only a block away provided the main meal unless she took a bus or taxi
elsewhere. When possible, of course, I offered her a special dish, sometimes a
meal. She was so kind and thoughtful, and very independent!”[18]
No longer practicing medicine, except to help poor children in a clinic
downtown or to give emergency assistance, Dr. Nancy served the
Washington poor neighborhoods and the Ethical Society.
__________
[18] Letter from Catherine Beauchamp to Miriam Meijer, October 30, 1997, from Kissimmee,
Florida.
Ethical Society
In 1954 the Society purchased their first Meeting House, realizing
George Beauchamp’s dream, at 1822 Massachusetts Avenue, close to
Dupont Circle. Knowledgeable about plant nurture, Dr. Nancy took
charge of its front lawn, worked regularly on the monthly newsletter,
served as a member of the Hospitality Committee, sold souvenirs from
her travels to Latin America and Scandinavia at the Society’s “Fairs,”
and sold plants after the Sunday services.
Dr. Nancy became convinced that the Society should move into a
larger building and she began to work toward that end. But since the
building, a former family row house, was heavily mortgaged in tens of
thousands of dollars, most members thought expansion unlikely.
Nevertheless, Dr. Nancy established a building fund to retire the
mortgage and sold live plants, shrubs, and ivy cuttings after the Sunday
meetings to contribute, slowly but steadily, to this fund.
After the Beauchamps retired to Florida in 1957, Dr. Nancy moved
downtown to the Washington Fellowship House near the Society.
Three years later she returned to New York City to care for her sister
Madge. Soon after Madge’s death Dr. Nancy died at 85. Edward L.
Ericson, the Leader, conducted a memorial service for her in
Washington. Only after the service was it discovered that Dr. Nancy—
despite appearances—actually had a fortune!
Estate
Her last will and testament reflected her life. To Wells College Dr.
Nancy bequeathed ten thousand dollars for scholarships to “native
American and negro girls” until 1975, then to be used for any girl
studying at Wells College. Her gift continues to provide general
financial aid for students at Wells College today.[19] The scholarship
which her will established at the Johns Hopkins University, where she
had already donated her stamp collection, can be found on the Internet:
“Dr. Nancy Jenison Scholarship Fund. Through a generous bequest from Dr.
Nancy Blanche Jenison, a member of the Class of 1911, a scholarship fund was
established in 1963 to provide financial assistance for deserving women medical
students.”
Otherwise, her entire estate was left to “the Ethical Society where
George and Catherine are members.”[20]
Dr. Beauchamp decided that her legacy should go into the building
fund that Dr. Nancy had created. Once the will was resolved, the
bequest paid off the old building, which was then sold to make a down
payment on a new larger structure uptown. Thanks to her generosity,
the Society could discontinue its dependence, since 1959, on annual
Leadership subventions by the American Ethical Union.[21] In 1964 the
contemporary Washington Ethical Society building, designed by Cooper
th
and Auerbach, opened on 16 Street near Kalmia Road in Shepherd
Park.
__________
[19] Email communication of April 8, 1999. Amy L. Robinson, Acting Director of
Development, Pettibone House, Wells College, Aurora, New York 13026.
[20] Catherine Weaver Beauchamp, Family Ties and Tales (Daytona Beach, Florida: The
Daytona Beach News-Journal, 1989): 162.
[21] New York Law Journal. Wednesday, January 15, 1964. L. D. MacIntyre, The Washington
Ethical Society 1943-1944—1963-1964: A Story of Its Beginnings and Its Development
(Washington, D.C.: The Washington Ethical Society, 1964): 69.
A Life Well-lived
Nancy Jenison, M.D. had a vision about what was possible for her.
She had to go up against everything everybody else thought about
what women like her should be doing. She followed her own
inclinations, and, thereby in so doing, she pushed history forward. The
independence and determination, which had enabled her to become
one of the nation’s few female physicians, served her to the end.
In her retirement she was motivated to turn her efforts to civil rights.
She had learned about her great, great-grandfather owning slaves; she
took responsibility for her family and she paid it back. She took a
wrong and made it right.
Nancy Jenison fulfilled maternal urges without herself having
babies. She experienced joy and honor in finding ways of being a
woman other than in having babies or even in being a mother. She did
not make motherhood the end-all of being female. She nurtured,
educated, and cared for (many) others beyond her personal home. Her
femininity was channeled into a multitude of directions and she touched
the lives of many people.
Conclusion
While some thought it sad that she was childless, old and solitary
with her gardening, sketching, and bird-watching, Dr. Nancy lived
exactly as she chose. Her hobbies fit with her scientific training, her
frugality permitted the growth of the Washington Ethical Society, and
thereby she returned the favor that the Baltimore Women’s Fund
Committee had handed her.
Nancy Jenison was a woman who lived her personal life in a way
that made her life count in social progress, whether it was in teaching,
in being a medical doctor, in being active in civil rights, or in nurturing
the Ethical Society. At each stage of her life she found some purpose
to service. A freethinker devoted to laws fair to women as well as men,
to black people as well as white, she found a kindred spirit in Ethical
Culture, a movement which had been founded in this country the year
of her birth. She invested in the humanistic religion that encouraged
members to be ethical catalysts in the community at large.
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