Callie Brown Charlton, M.D. in Hine's History of Oregon 1893

H.K. Hines published An Illustrated History of the State of Oregon (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1893) when Esther Clayson was a student at the University of Oregon Medical Department in Portland. Like the Oregonian Souvenir, published the year before, this book provides some context for Portland and Oregon life and culture in this same period.

Hines, a Methodist minister and trustee of Willamette University published few biographical entries of women. But he did include Callie Brown Charlton, M.D., Esther Clayson's mentor in medicine.

She attended St. Mary's Academy in Portland and in 1872, widowed with a small daughter, Lorena, decided to study medicine. Charlton taught school in Portland's Holladay Addition and studied with Dr. C. H. Raffety (Willamette University Medical Department graduate of 1869) before being admitted to the Willamette University Medical Department, receiving her diploma in 1879. 

Hine places Charlton at the center of female student activism at Willamette without, alas, giving us much detail. He notes that "it was only the second year that the sex had been admitted to the college [this was not accurate -- Hine was omitting Mary Sawtelle] while many discriminating restrictions were placed upon them, and the course of study to which they were admitted was much circumscribed, essential features being eliminated." These "essential features" likely included dissection.

"Against much opposition," Hine continued, "Mrs. Charlton led the contest for the rights of women, which proved successful, and by which she won the lasting esteem of the faculty and management, among whom are yet numbered some of her warmest friends; her genuine earnestness in the search of knowledge in the line of her chosen profession had much to do with this feeling, as well as with her success."

Willamette admitted women with restrictions after Mary Sawtelle's controversial time there. Materials at the Willamette University Archives suggest that many male faculty opposed women as students and for a time in the 1880s women were officially banned. We need to know more about this story and Charlton's role in challenging restrictions to women's medical education in Oregon.

Charlton embraced homeopathy, a popular therapeutics at the time [see Anne Taylor Kirschmann, A Vital Force: Women in American Homeopathy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004)]. She studied for a second degree at Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago and graduated in 1886 (Hine's 1866 is a typo). She returned to practice in Portland and delivered Esther Clayson's sister Charlotte in 1884. Esther's mother Annie Clayson invited Charlton to dinner and Charlton became a role model for Esther and her medical ambitions.

Here is Charlton's entry in H.K. Hines An Illustrated History of the State of Oregon (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1893). The text appears on pages 973 and 974 and her image faces page 973.

 

 

Oregon Woman Suffrage at the Western History Association Meeting at Oakland, October 16, 2011

I was honored to be a part of a session exploring Oregon woman suffrage history at the Western History Association meeting in Oakland October 16, 2011.

Historian of Pacific Northwest women, women's clubs and women teachers Karen Blair, chair of history at Central Washington University chaired the session. Panelists included Sheri Bartlett Browne, who teaches history at Tennessee State University and gave a paper on Frances Fuller Victor's suffrage philosophy and Jean M. Ward, professor emerita at Lewis and Clark College, who presented on Bethenia Owens-Adair and her suffrage ideas and activism. I gave a paper on Esther Pohl Lovejoy and her idea of civic health, forged during her Portland suffrage and public health days, something she expanded to a transnational view of international health with the Medical Women's International Association and the American Women's Hospitals.

We appreciated Karen's comments and the questions and ideas from the audience. Thanks, too, to supporter Eliza Canty-Jones, editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and president of the board of the Coalition for Oregon Women's History.

The papers explored the particular Oregon threads of these women's suffrage ideas and activism and their ties and contributions to broader national and transnational suffrage and social justice movements.

Eliza Canty-Jones, Karen Blair, Jean Ward and Sheri Bartlett Browne, Oregon Woman Suffrage session, Western History Association, Oakland, California, October 16, 2011.

Kim Jensen, Karen Blair, Jean Ward and Sheri Bartlett Browne, Oregon Woman Suffrage session, Western History Association, Oakland, California, October 16, 2011.

More Portland Medicine in the Oregonian Souvenir 1892: The University of Oregon Medical Department

The Oregonian Souvenir 1850-1892: October 1, 1892 (Portland: Lewis & Dryden, 1892), published by the Oregonian newspaper to boost Portland and the state, provides one view of Oregon medicine as Esther Clayson (later Pohl Lovejoy) attended medical school. The last post featured the Oregonian Souvenir's take on St. Vincent's and Good Samaritan. Today a look at the representation of the University of Oregon Medical Department, newly-installed in its grand new building at 23rd and Lovejoy.

 

This copy of the McCaw, Martin and White architectural drawing of the new 1892 UOMD building appears on p. 77 of the Oregonian Souvenir. (Compare it with this image in the Historical Collections & Archives, Oregon Health & Science University.)

The editors provided a brief history of the founding of the UOMD in 1887. "After great effort, and the consequent annoyance in arranging the details of an enterprise of this magnitude and importance, it was decided by the board to erect a small temporary building on ground owned by the Good Samaritan Hospital" where the first sessions were held.

The new building, they said, had it all. "The beautiful and commodious building occupied by the Medical College at the present time, was erected with a view of its adaptability to the very best and most advanced instruction in medicine, more especially in laboratory and other practical work in the science." It was "fitted with all of the best appliances of a modern medical school."

Clinical facilities at St. Vincent's and Good Samaritan hospitals "are unexcelled by any colleges located in cities the size of Portland, in the United States." And the faculty "has kept pace with the advances in medical education and the curriculum of the school now covers four years' study, and three winter courses entitle the student to the degree of M.D." The faculty wanted "to make and keep the school prominent among the standard colleges of the United States."

In a final flourish the editors noted: "The members of the faculty are strong, vigorous and enterprising, highly successful in the practice of their chosen profession, and thus far having succeeded in maintaining the high excellence of their school, they will not allow it to fall behind in the race for supremacy among medical colleges on the coast." (Oregonian Souvenir, 77-78)

Portland Medicine in the Oregonian Souvenir 1892

In the middle of Esther Clayson's (later Pohl Lovejoy) medical school years from 1890 to 1894 at the University of Oregon Medical Department in Portland the Oregonian newspaper published a large folio volume to boost Portland and Oregon towns and also to boost the Oregonian. Portland medicine in Esther Clayson's years got a favorable report in The Oregonian Souvenir 1850-1892: October 1, 1892 (Portland, Lewis & Dryden, 1892).

Esther Clayson and other students at the UOMD received practical instruction and experience at clinics and dispensaries at nearby St. Vincent's and Good Samaritan Hospitals. 

This image of St. Vincent's Hospital, the Children's Home and Good Samaritan Hospital appears on p. 28 of the Oregonian Souvenir in a photo by McAlpin and Lamb. St. Vincent's, located on 12th and Marshall, had been in operation since 1875 and would move to its new building in 1895. Good Samaritan had also opened in 1875 on Hoyt Street. [See Olof Larsell, The Doctor in Oregon: A Medical History (Portland: Binfords & Mort for the Oregon Historical Society, 1947), 514-27.]

Esther Clayson pursued her medical education at the same time that Portland nursing was professionalizing. Bellevue-trained nurse Emily Loveridge established the first Pacific Northwest training school for nurses at Good Samaritan in 1890. St. Vincent's followed in 1894, the year that Clayson received her M.D.

The editors of the Oregonian Souvenir wrote with enthusiasm about hospitals and charitable institutions in Portland as they hoped to boost the city and state. "Benevolent societies, public charities and hospitals are here in large representation," they wrote. "Poverty is almost unknown and want is very uncommon, but those who by sickness or misfortune are rendered helpless are well cared for." St. Vincent's, they reported, "has admitted about 15,000 patients" since its establishment in 1875. Good Samaritan "is one of the most thoroughly equipped institutions of its kind on the coast." (Oregonian Souvenir, 74.)

Lives of Women Citizens Presentation Monday, August 29

Join us for the Lives of Women Citizens at History Pub: McMenamin's Bagdad Theater Monday, August 29 at 7:00

Oregon Attorney General's Decision December 10, 1912: Women Can't Serve on Juries -- Historical Connections and a Few Loopholes

We've been discussing Portland's experimental all-female jury, whose members participated in a trial concerning a woman accused of keeping a house of prostitution on December 4, 1912. There was spectacle, speculation, and some important claims for women's fuller citizenship through this service.

The experimental jury may also have influenced the next policy decision about women and jury service in the state. As we've seen, the Oregonian reported on November 3, 1912, two days before the successful ballot measure for woman suffrage, "considerable opposition has developed to the suffrage amendment among voters who express themselves as being highly favorable to giving the women the ballot, but who are opposed to their being harassed with the onerous duties of the juror." Attorney General Andrew Crawford did not make a ruling at the time but he told the Oregonian that he had no doubt "but a law could be passed by the legislative assembly exempting women from jury duty and that such a law would be constitutional and not deny to all the equal protection of the laws."
 
In Attorney General Andrew M. Crawford's correspondence files (archival materials that the ever knowledgeable Austin Schulz helped me to locate this summer at the Oregon State Archives -- thank you, Austin!) backed with newspaper coverage we find additional information about the connections between the experimental jury and the subsequent decision. The AG decided that women were NOT eligible for jury service because of the successful woman suffrage ballot measure, yet provided two loopholes.

From the correspondence files we learn that on December 4, 1912, the very day of the experimental all-woman jury in Portland, J. D. Venator, the Deputy District Attorney for Lakeview, Oregon, in Lake County in the central part of the state, wrote to ask for the Attorney General's formal opinion "as to whether a woman is, under the new law, qualified to serve upon Juries, providing she has all other qualifications as required by law."

Crawford responded on December 10, referring to Section 990 of Lord's Oregon Laws that contained gendered language: "he" and "a male inhabitant" when referring to jury qualifications. Crawford concluded: "The recent amendment to the constitution [woman suffrage] did not change the status of women as far as citizenship is concerned. It only made them qualified electors, and did not in any way change their condition as far as jury service is concerned." Women, he said, could not serve on juries "until further legislation."

Newspaper coverage adds to the intrigue.

The Oregon Journal, which as we've seen was the most supportive of the Portland newspapers of jury service, reported that the opinion was "unexpected" and reprinted the decision.

"Women of State Not Eligible for Juries--Crawford," Oregon Journal, December 11, 1912, 1.

The Oregon Statesman of Salem indicated that the decision was by "common consent of counsel" for the AG's office. Both Attorney General Crawford and Assistant Attorney General DeLong were there for the briefing, it appears.

"Can't Serve On A Jury," Oregon Statesman, December 12, 1912, 1.

The Statesman's report also featured Attorney General Crawford holding open a few loopholes for women's jury service in spite of the ruling. "The opinion will have the effect of excluding all women from juries where a felony charge is involved," he said while "commenting on the opinion to newspapermen." But he said that he did not think "it will interfere with them serving as juries in civil cases" or misdemeanor cases. In these latter two cases jurisdiction could be waived by participants "and I see no reason why women should not serve on them, if is agreeable to the litigating parties."

In other state constitutions voting qualified persons for jury service (Nevada, 1914, Michigan 1918, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1920 with the federal woman suffrage amendment -- Burnita Shelton Matthews, "The Woman Juror," Woman Lawyer's Journal, 15 no 2. (April 1927): 15-16.) In other states, like in Oregon, the process was more complicated.

Did the hoopla over the experimental all-woman jury influence any of the advice counsel gave to the AG? Did they take a negative view as a result?

Could Crawford have overruled? And was he influenced by the all-female jury? In November he responded to those who were worried about women having "onerous" jury duty and said that he had no doubt that a law exempting women from jury service would be constitutional. But in explaining the decision on December 10 by "common consent of counsel" denying women full jury service he opened the door for women to serve in civil and misdemeanor cases. Did the all-female jury nudge him toward support? Was this as far as he could go given the constitution?

What followed was over thirty years of wrangling: a 1921 law for a "mixed jury" that was quickly amended. Until legislation in 1943, women could "opt out" of jury service because they were women. Some few women did serve on civil and misdemeanor cases in the years after 1912. But like most other states the concept of women's jury service in Oregon was highly contested.

I'm researching more about the rest of the story but will turn to some other topics for the next blog posts. Thanks for your attention to these accounts of Portland's first "experimental" all-woman jury.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury -- Editorial Reviews: The Oregon Journal -- "They Have Done No Worse"

In the last of the three Portland newspaper editorial reactions to the December 4, 1912 all-female "experimental" jury, the Oregon Journal weighs in with a bit of equity about the process and the verdict.

"We have had a jury of Oregon women," the editors noted in an editorial titled "The First." Those who read about it will be chiefly impressed that it failed to agree." But it took an hour and forty minutes, "to convince the members that agreement was hopeless. Was it because it was a woman?" they asked? Or (and they could not resist taking a jab) "because of the blandishments of 'Pike' Davis in his tearful appeal with its sprinkling of modest references to his efforts as a pillar of suffrage?"

But then the editors ask some important questions. Was it because the defendant was clearly not alone and was being set up to take the blame. "Perhaps the jurors for acquittal reasoned that the woman was an instrument in the hands of underworld men, and that she was brought to bay while the men escaped."

Perhaps the evidence was not there to prove guilt. And there was, perhaps, an equal argument for both points of view. Lawyers thrive on such things, they said.

"It might have looked better to a waiting world for this first jury of Oregon women if there could have been an agreement. The news has gone to the country, and the disagreement will bring out a chorus of 'I told you so.'"

But, the editors insisted, "juries of men do the same thing. Groups of judges" including those serving on the United States Supreme Court "similarly perform."

"The women of the first Oregon jury have the satisfaction," they wrote, "of knowing that they have done no worse."

"The First," Oregon Journal, December 5, 1912, 8.

And so? The next blog post will explore how the fallout about this "experimental" all-female jury may have influenced the Oregon Attorney General's decision about women and jury service . . .