French Hospital and Nurses

With the season of school semesters, the San Francisco History Center has interns in the department working on special projects. What's on the 6th Floor? asked Lauren, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection intern, to be a guest blogger and highlight a collection.


French Hospital Nurses by Lauren Gaylord

I never thought of nurses having all that much fun until I searched through a photo album chronicling just that. Turns out these guys and gals know how to have a good time. Two photo albums in the possession of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection feature the hard-working staff at San Francisco’s French Hospital during the 1910's and 1920's - Agnes Fay Photograph Album (SFP 63) and French Hospital and Family Photograph Album (SFP 64). Though long gone and transformed into the Kaiser Permanente French Campus, the French Hospital was a powerful force in San Francisco medicine for over one hundred years.
Located for a time on Bush Street, and then on Bryant Street, it settled into its permanent location bordered by Geary Street, Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, and Anza Street in the Richmond District around 1895. Though the origins of the French Hospital are traced to as early as 1851, a School for Nursing was not founded until the hospital moved to Geary Street. The training school became very popular among young women looking for as much of a career and independence as the early 20th century could afford. Many students passed through the school, as Three Years – French Hospital yearbooks for the years 1919 and 1921 can attest. Their difficult studies, however, did not stop these nurses-in-training from having a little fun! The yearbooks include rhymes, jokes, and ditties about the graduating class such as this one: 

Miss Sadie Klenzendorf, so stately and tall,
For her, it seems, all short men fall.   
Here's hoping in the future she'll marry a man 
Who can handle the rolling pin as well as she can.

French Hospital & Family Photograph Album SFP 64

There's also plenty of good old nurses' humor with sections called  "Hospital Alphabet," "The Bacteriological Ball," "Microbe National Convention," and "Our Ten Commandments."  

French Hospital & Family Photograph Album SFP 64

National Nurses Week might not be for another six months, but that does not mean we cannot honor the members of this hard-working profession year-round. Come up to the Sixth Floor, San Francisco History Center, to check out our French Hospital photograph albums and the School of Nursing's class yearbooks. You may request and view the photograph albums during the open hours of the Photo Desk. To sate an interest in the nursing profession in general, check out these titles:

Agnes Fay Photograph Album SFP 63


Bonnie Bullough's The Emergence of Modern Nursing, 1964

M. Adelaide Nutting's A History of Nursing, 1907-12


Thelma M. Schorr's 100 Years of American Nursing: Celebrating a Century of Caring, 1999

Patricia D'Antonio's American Nursing: A History of Knowledge, Authority, and the Meaning of Work, 2010





 

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