In Portland, Maine, where I went by the advice of Mr. Samuel E. Sewall and his aunt, Miss ——, I also met with no success for the Infirmary. Here, in spite of my being the guest of some of their relatives, none dared to expose themselves to the ridicule of asking acquaintances to see or hear a woman doctor. To illustrate again something of the feeling regarding a woman doctor, I must tell an incident which in after years caused us great amusement.
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt had introduced me, in Boston, to Mr. Joseph Sewall, and we had been invited to meet Mr. Samuel E. Sewall, Miss Lucy E. Sewall and Miss ——, their aunt. While sitting in the parlor waiting for the dinner hour, Lucy Sewall went upstairs and, as she told me in later years, examined my cloak, bonnet and gloves in order to find out whether they were neat and respectable, she feeling a great uncertainty as to whether a regularly graduated and practicing woman physician could attend to the minor details of proper habiliments. Dr. Hunt was accepted by them as a curiosity but she had never been a regular student in a college. However, all this company became our truest friends, as the history of the New England Hospital for Women and Children testifies.
The season being July, it was not favorable for doing any more than securing signatures, guaranteeing for the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children six hundred and fifty dollars, for half the rent annually for three years. But friendly invitations to revisit Boston caused me to return in early October.
The encouragement which I brought back to New York from the Boston friends rendered it easy for Dr. Blackwell to secure among her friends the other half of the rent. However, we also needed money to furnish and to prepare the house as a hospital and dispensary. But we hoped to obtain this additional money from the Fair which had been so long in preparation, and it was in connection with this that I again appeared in Boston.
It was then that I made the most valuable acquaintance of Mrs. E. D. Cheney who has ever since been a true and devoted friend of the medical education of women.
This visit was rich in experience as I was introduced by my acquaintances made in July to a great number of the leading women in the anti-slavery cause. From these I learned how the anti-slavery bazaars were managed, and I obtained a promise to provide a table at our New York fair in December, as well as the names of several ladies who would superintend it, so that accommodations for their sojourn in New York might be made. Another table was promised by Dr. Blackwell’s English friends to whom she had appealed by letters.
I also visited a number of the smaller towns around Boston for the same purpose but without success. A list of the Boston people in whose houses I spoke, creating enthusiasm, and who subscribed towards the half of the Infirmary rent as well as towards the table for the Fair, is still in my possession and I will here copy the names:
- Miss Lucy Goddard
- Miss Abby May
- Miss Mary Jane Parkman
- Mrs. George Hildreth
- Mrs. George Hilliard
- Miss Anna Lowell
- Mrs. Mary G. Shaw
- Mrs. Sarah S. Russell
- Mrs. W. L. Garrison
- Mrs. E. D. Cheney
- Miss Sarah Clarke
- Mrs. James Freeman Clarke
- Mr. George W. Bond
- Mr. Samuel E. Sewall
besides a goodly number of others not so prominent in benevolent and advanced work for women.