This is an update to our post of a few years ago about the accession we received from Carney Hospital. We wanted to share one more item from this collection that contains a fascinating look into American medical history.
This book is undated, but we estimate it to be from sometime between 1900 and 1920. It was designed and sold as a record book, like a patient register or a phone book. However, the doctors and nurses instead used the book as their go-to guide for different medications and treatments. The advice included doses of different treatments, all arranged alphabetically by disease.
We admit that none of us are medical experts, and the writing sometimes descends into what could be called “doctor’s scribble,” with various medications we have never heard of. Check out this advice for “Nausea and Vomiting” as an example…
Nonetheless, for those who have some knowledge of medicine and medical history, it provides a valuable piece in the evolution of the way medicine has evolved and in the ways that we treat different maladies.
In addition to this usefulness, there are some specific store names with addresses included for preferred places to procure certain treatments. They even include specific names of stores with addresses. Check out this entry for “Hand Lotion.”
An address in Chicago for a long-defunct store provides evidence of the network of hospitals and pharmacies throughout the country at this time, as well as the state of economics and medical commerce at this time (Incidentally, if anyone can provide dates for this store that helps us to more accurately date this book, we would appreciate any assistance you can provide!).
The Carney collection is available to researchers on-site, with plans for pieces of the collection to be digitized and made available in the future.
Sometimes posts for this blog include new historical research by our staff. Sometimes it is used as a way to promote certain collections. Sometimes our posts are just meant to be fun. For this post, we wanted to discuss some of the ways in which researchers interact with the archives and must draw conclusions based on information that is found in the collections and the information that is not.
In December 2021, a researcher named Lanny Ottosen with the Travis County Historical Commission in Austin, Texas reached out to us looking for information about the Texas smallpox epidemic of 1917. While the archives certainly have collections related to the Daughters’ history in Texas, none of us are Texas residents immersed in detailed Texas history, and none of us were familiar with the state’s smallpox epidemic.
The initial responses that we sent did not contain an enormous amount of information. A few of the published, formal histories of the hospital included a paragraph about the smallpox epidemics. One described how a few Daughters of Charity ventured the seven miles north of Austin to work at the “pest camp,” a then-common term for a quarantine sites, and listed the Daughters who “probably worked at the camp.” While it is good that this information was noted, it was far from the empirical accounts that either we or Mr. Ottosen were looking for, and the “probably” does not inspire the greatest accuracy in the information. There were, however, five letters describing the smallpox epidemic in the special service collection related to such outbreaks, four from Sister Ursula Fenton to the Provincial from March-May 1917 and one from Sister Lucia Beil from May 1917 with eyewitness accounts of nursing at the camp. Sister Ursula’s first letter even went into detail about death rates in the camp and the city at large and the first names of Sisters who went to nurse there.
Sister Ursula Fenton to Sister Catherine Sullivan, March 22, 1917
Mr. Ottosen was able to confirm that these letters matched the newspaper clippings he had discovered. He then asked about any photos of the smallpox camps of 1917 or the more famous Spanish flu camps of 1918, the latter of which we were well aware of the in the collection and happily passed on to him. He then asked another question that stumped us a little, as he asked about entries in the patient registers. These are large bound volumes from the early days of Seton Hospital noting the names of patients and their diagnoses.
For being such a large epidemic, there were only two entries for smallpox in March 1917. However, the second entry contained a key clue as to the reason for this lack of information. The comment on the entry reads “Transferred to P.H.,” presumably meaning pest house. No further smallpox cases appear throughout the rest of 1917.
We are left to make an interpretation of history based not only on what is included in the records, but also based on what is missing from the records. We know that there were extensive cases of smallpox, nursed by the Daughters of Seton Hospital, but they do not appear in the patient registers. We have deduced that, after a certain point, when the city and county began to ramp up their public health measures, the quarantine sites had their own patient registers, which, to date, have not been found.
When St. Malachy parish was founded in 1860, the Mill Creek neighborhood in which it was located was largely Irish. By the early 20th century, the neighborhood formed the heart of a major African American neighborhood of St. Louis, with successful small businesses, churches, and a music scene helmed as the home base of Scott Joplin and Josephine Baker.
In 1941, the Archdiocese of St. Louis turned operation of the parish over to the Jesuit Fathers. By this point, redlining and segregation had eroded the neighborhood, with the city neglecting to care for water, electricity, or deteriorating buildings. It was in this environment that the Jesuits invited the Daughters of Charity, long established in the St. Louis area, to open a school.
The school operated from 1941 to 1959, although enrollment began to decline after 1947 when Archbishop Joseph Ritter enacted desegregation throughout the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese. Prior to desegregation, the accounts in the collection written by Daughters of Charity depict a group of sisters trying their hardest under highly restricted circumstances, teaching in a substandard building with secondhand supplies and minimal assistance.
Archbishop Ritter had advocated integration in the schools before the Supreme Court Brown v. Board decision, and the end of segregated schooling offered a happy ending for the children and their educations. A 1957 account in the collection attested that “because the children of our families are now permitted to attend white schools, their families are moving into better neighborhoods.” This did not mean that the old neighborhood saw an end to its neglect, however. Whether it was described as “slum clearing” or “urban renewal,” the effect was the same when, in 1959, almost 20,000 residents were removed and much of the neighborhood – including St. Malachy Parish – was demolished. https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2018-03-01/remembering-mill-creek-valley-once-home-to-20-000-black-st-louisans
From St. Louis Globe Democrat
The St. Malachy School collection is not large, just half an archival box that stacks three or four inches high. The Daughters’ accounts reflect the challenges of the times in which they lived and served. They show a strong awareness that their students were being shortchanged, both by the poverty of their neighborhood and the way in which their schools had been neglected for resources. There is evident regret that they were unable to do more for their students:
Sister Aurelia [Hogan] had trained her summer school catachumens well, and the neophtes [sic] followed suit. The older boys brought out saw-horses on which they placed boards, making two long tables, while benches and chairs were quickly hauled forward. The children, smaller ones first, formed in a single line leading toward the counter, at which seven W.P.A. [Works Progress Administration] colored workers dished up a steaming hot dinner. We marveled at the order maintained, for though each child received his portion and immediately walked to his place, not one touched a morsel until the entire table – about fifty children had been seated. Then, with heads reverently bowed, they said Grace in unison, and ate dinner. Poor hungry children! Father informed us that this was the only “square” meal some of them got all day. It was furnished in part by the W.P.A. surplus commodity program, while Father supplied the rest with whatever financial assistance he was able to procure from charitable benefactors.
….
Of classroom equipment there was none – no text-books, no blackboards nor chalk, no paper nor pencils. So, with a fervent “Veni Sancte” in our hearts, we read and sang – anything to quell disorder, — until Father McHattie arrived to perform what was probably the hardest duty of his new position. How his big, compassionate heart must have hurt as he quietly explained to the children that as we could accommodate only two hundred pupils, he was forced to send nearly half of them back to their former schools. Then Father read a list of names and a sad, heartbroken crowd of youngsters followed him out of the room.
The narrative accounts of St. Malachy and the neighborhood all depict African Americans from a white point of view, but this does not mean that the collections are devoid of information that directly provides pieces of information about individual members of Mill Creek’s African American residents. While there are no surviving class lists in the collection, programs of events provide names of students along with their graduating year. Other publications reflect the pride of taking part in the school and parish communities and demonstrate a proud and successful Black Catholic parish.
Edition of a Parish newsletter, 1946
Commencement program, 1943
The collection also, perhaps most valuably, contains approximately 50 photographs that show the life of the school and of the Mill Creek neighborhood. Among them are the joy that only comes from children.
The collection is available here in the Archives for on-site research. It is a candidate for digitization in the near future, and we hope to provide an update when that day arrives. Based upon research need, we can create scans for remote use. Please contact archives@doc.org for more information or to schedule an appointment.
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