Page 7 - Wallingford Magazine Issue 53 Early Spring 2025
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had a female doctor in the early years Scott Joplin pounding out his rags on the comments from male students and fac-
of the 20th Century. Since I assumed I’d piano in the American Pavilion or sam- ulty: A Tufts professor was heard to com-
never know for sure whom our crocodile pled Wrigley’s new Juicy Fruit Gum. ment, “No real lady will wish to study
bag belonged to, I figuratively assigned medicine!” Some women medical stu-
it to Dr. Carrie North, and could already dents in Philadelphia were subjected to
imagine her walking from her home near “spitting and jeering” by male students
the post office up and down Main Street while attempting to attend lectures at
as she attended to the medical needs of the Pennsylvania Hospital. But despite
the citizens of our town. Who was this the obstacles they encountered, 2432
intelligent and courageous woman who female doctors were practicing in the
dared to enter an elitist profession dom- U.S. by 1880, and 7387 in 1900, the year
inated by men? And what was the gener- Carrie began working in Wallingford.
al status of female physicians during the
time this bag would have been in use? 1893 Chicago World’s Fair Carrie North graduated from Tufts with
her doctor of medicine degree in 1898 in
Following are some New England female Tufts College of Medicine: c.1885- a class of 69 men and 14 women. Several
doctors who attended women’s medi- 1898 articles in the Boston Evening Transcript
cal schools and the dates they received With a household of doctors and other described the graduation ceremonies
their degrees at the latter half of the Vic- educated family members, it was nat- and festivities: “After the chapel exer-
torian age. ural that Carrie might decide to attend cises, the guests and students strolled
medical school. Many women attempt- around the grounds which were in per-
Sophia Penfield 1869: ing to enter the profession in those days fect condition to make this enjoyment
Connecticut’s first woman doctor. applied to medical institutions specifi- doubly pleasant. Informal receptions
Practiced in Danbury. cally designated for women, such as: the were held by little groups seated here
Female Medical College of Pennsylvania; and there under the fine shade trees
Mary Moody 1874: Women’s Homeopathic College of New before dinner.” Later, papers were pre-
Practiced in New Haven. York City; the New England Female Med- sented, speeches made, and President
ical College in Boston; and the Women’s Elmer H. Capen welcomed the assem-
Rebecca Lee Crumpler 1864: Medical College of New York. But these bled crowd. Carrie’s family in the audi-
First African-American female doctor. kinds of schools were viewed as inferi- ence must have been very proud of her
Practiced in Boston and Virginia. or, with less demanding curricula. From accomplishment. Her name was listed in
the fact that she applied to Tufts Col- several newspapers along with the rest
Harriet Judd Sartain 1854: lege (now University) Medical School, of her class. Her hometown newspaper
Practiced in Waterbury. an esteemed mostly male bastion, we printed, “Carrie North is a full-fledged
can infer that Carrie was a smart, con- doctor.”
A Goshen Childhood: 1874-1885 fident, and ambitious young woman,
Without much to go on, I tried to piece pushing the boundaries of acceptable Post-Graduation: 1898-1900
together an outline of events in Carrie’s behavior for her sex. Tufts opened its Perhaps doctor North received the
life. [She rarely used her given name, medical school in 1883 and accepted a crocodile doctor’s bag as a graduation
Caroline.] I searched for her in Walling- small number of women from the start. gift from her physician father. Whoever
ford City Directories, medical directo- It is possible that she worked to pay for owned our bag in the WHPT archives
ries, Connecticut and Massachusetts her education as many women did. But I may have taken a cross-Atlantic voyage
newspapers, yearbooks, and genealogy suspect her family was fairly well off and around this time. Adhered to the end of
databases. She was born in Goshen, Con- able to pay her tuition at Tufts. It would the bag are the remains of a blue Cunard
necticut in 1874 into a prominent family be interesting to know more about her decal. In 1899, the intermediate class
of doctors and state and local elected life in Boston during her college days. liner Ivernia was launched by Cunard to
officials. The middle child, she had two much fanfare. It was outfitted to accom-
brothers, Joseph and Harry. Though she It is probable that she heard disparaging modate both freight and passengers.
later went on to receive her medical de-
gree, it is unclear what kind of under-
graduate education she had. In those
days one did not necessarily need a col-
lege degree to get into medical school,
so she may have had only a high school
background. A newspaper reported that
during the summer of 1893, Carrie and
a girlfriend travelled alone to attend
the Chicago World’s Fair. It must have
been an eye-opening experience for the
young woman from rural Connecticut.
She probably rode on the world’s first
Ferris wheel, toured the life-sized rep-
licas of Columbus’s ships, and tried out
the first zipper. Perhaps she even heard
Randall’s Island Hospital
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