We at once entered into negotiation for the house we had in view and obtained the refusal of it for the 1st of March, 1857. We also ordered the twenty-four iron bedsteads needed, for the sum of one hundred dollars, and all the ladies went to work begging and preparing house linen, so that when the year closed we held a most joyful New Year’s Day, and received so many congratulations that we actually thought ourselves in the command of thousands of dollars.
The house was an old-fashioned mansion of the Dutch style, at the corner of Bleecker and Crosby Streets, just at the outer end of what was called the “Five Points,” fully respectable on the Bleecker Street side, and full of patients and misery on the other side and at the rear. And we spent the few weeks which elapsed before we could begin to arrange it in getting the good will of editors, ministers and business men, in order that we might procure the means for carrying on a charity for which we had nothing but an empty purse.
Dr. Blackwell’s influence among the Quakers, many of them rich, and Miss Mary L. Booth’s indefatigable notices in the newspapers, opened to us the ways of procuring the necessary materials for the dispensary, which occupied the lower front room. It contained a consulting desk, an examination table behind a large screen, shelves for medicines and a table for preparing the ingredients of prescriptions. The front entrance hall was comfortably arranged with settees for the patients to wait their turn. Donations from several wholesale druggists were received, and second-hand furniture suitable for our purposes was cheaply acquired.
A door was put in to separate the back hall from the front hall, and in this back hall was placed a large stove which heated the stairways, there being no furnace in the house. This back hall also served as a dining room for the officers, while the large kitchen opening into it was ample for all culinary purposes and also allowed space for the servants’ dining table.
The second floor was arranged for two wards, each containing six beds; while the third floor was made into a maternity department, the little hall room serving as a sitting room for the physicians. Open grate coal fires provided the only heat throughout the house.
The fourth, or attic, floor contained four rooms—two large ones and two small ones, with a square hall in the center. The two large rooms served as sleeping rooms, one for four students and the other for three servants. One of the small rooms served a similar purpose for the resident physician and one student, while the other was the much needed store and trunk room. As the attic was rather low studded, the doors were all kept open, and the skylight of the center hall was kept lifted except during a storm.
These apartments were furnished with such material as benevolence provided. It was the most curious mixture of elegant old furniture and cheap stands and chairs, without any comfort or system, each of us doing the best we could with our belongings as the house was almost entirely devoid of closet room.
Into this primitive, first true “Woman’s Hospital” in the world, I moved in March, superintending all its arrangements, with the kind assistance of a few ladies appointed by the now organized board of directors. We ventured to hire one servant to clean, wash and do general work, as I was the only inmate until the house was regularly and formally opened on May 1, 1857.
Dr. Blackwell was aided in procuring speakers by Dr. Emily who had returned from Europe a few weeks before this memorable event. Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. William Elder from Philadelphia and Dr. Kissam, a prominent New York physician who was in favor of our experiment, carried out the program and solemnized the undertaking, while the audience, seated among the snowy white little beds, felt proud of having accomplished so much.
But even here my proposition to have one of the Drs. Blackwell also speak and explain our intentions was refused by our patrons, because it was feared that she might speak “like a Woman’s Rights woman.” So we remained in the background, in the most elated spirits yet modest in appearance.