Mildred Fry, an excellent nurse

The letter, typed on Homewood Sanitarium letterhead, dated 13 October 1913, praises Mildred Fry as follows:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
This is to certify that Miss Fry is a graduate of the Homewood, having taken a high standing in her class. She is an excellent nurse, and I can recommend her very highly to your good services. You will make no mistake in employing Miss Fry on any case that needs professional nursing.
A.T. Hobbs
Medical Superintendent

In addition, the letter came into my keeping with a set of real photo postcards, providing us with a portrait of Mildred and some of her family members.

Perhaps the most notable postcard is presumably of Mildred herself.

The picture shows Mildred in a crisp, white uniform, emphasizing her professional status. The open book on the table beside denotes the learning she has acquired in nursing school. It seems likely that this image was taken on (or near) her graduation in 1913. There is no caption or writing on the back but it seems safe to assume that this is Mildred herself.

Mildred Fry was born on 11 July 1892 in Dunnville, Ontario. Both the 1901 and 1911 Ontario censuses show the Fry family resident on a farm near Dawn, in west Lambton County. She was from a large family. Between them, the two censuses list the following children of Mildred's parents, Malcolm and Jessie: Della, Mildred, Ina, Francis, Ada, Burton, Dwight, Morley, and Jessie. A large family but not an uncommonly large one for the era.

Another real photo postcard in the set shows Mildred in a lovely, formal Edwardian dress, along with accessories including a nice hat, a pearl necklace, and a wristwatch. Very timely!

Next is a postcard with a message written on the back that identifies the woman in the image: "Wishing you a Very Merry Christmas // Della." So, the picture likely features Mildred's older sister Della with her husband Perry Sanderson, along with their two boys Nelson and Burton, as listed in the 1911 Census, which locates them on a farm near Dawn.

With this identification in mind, it is straightforward to identify the women in the postcard above as Mildred (seated) and Della. The ladies are dressed in very elegant later Edwardian summer attire. In particular, Mildred has full-length gloves and a generous hat pin. It is not unlikely that this attire belonged to the photographer, as they often had a closet of special clothing on hand for dressed-up photos.

Another photo shows a couple of young women dressed in nice, cool-weather clothing and photographed outdoors, seated on a log. The postcard is not labelled but the context suggests that they may be Mildred's younger sisters Ina and Ada.

There are a few more images in the set but the last one I will include here is one of a young man in military uniform. There is no notation on the back of the postcard to say who this is. However, a reasonable guess would be that it is Clark Francis Fry, one of Mildred's younger brothers. Records of the Canadian Expeditionary Force show that Francis signed up in January 1916 and shipped out overseas the following year. So, this image might date from some time in that interval. He served in the 18th Canadian Battalion, and was active with it during the climactic Hundred Days Offensive in 1918. Just after the Armistice, he caught the Spanish Flu and was sent to recover in hospital in England. He returned to Canada the following year and later moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, to start a new life in the textile industry there.

Mildred leaves a light imprint in historical records. The most substantial record that I have found is a description of graduation ceremony of the Homewood nursing students, class of 1913 (Mercury, 14 May). The ceremony took place at the Sanitarium on the evening of May 13. Dr. Hobbs praised the excellence of the graduates, followed by Dr. MacKinnon, who administered the Florence Nightengale vow, and Rev. H.E. Abraham, who presented the diplomas. The roll of graduates illustrates the kind and number of students in the program at the time:

Miss Fanel Claus, St. Thomas, Ont.
Miss Hannah McCann, Lucan, Ont.
Miss Myrtle Davison, Shelburne, Ont.
Miss Estelle E. Fuhr, Wyecombe, Ont.
Miss Margaret T. Bates, St. Ann’s, Ont.
Miss Blanch A. Smith, Iona, Ont.
Miss Mildred D. Fry, Petrolia, Ont.
Miss Josephine E. McGuire, Guysboro, N.S.

Each graduate was also presented with a bouquet of pink carnations and roses. The evening concluded with dancing.

In November, 1914, Mildred is mentioned in the London Advertiser as a delegate to the Women's Institute convention in that city, and is specifically identified as a delegate from Tupperville, a community in Chatham-Kent, where she resided on a farm on R.R. 2. So, it appears that Mildred did not pursue a career in nursing.

On 30 August 1919, Mildred married Fred Groombridge in Sarnia. The 1921 Census places the Groombridge family back in Mildred's old stomping grounds of Dawn. The family remained in this vicinity and Mildred died in 1958 and is buried in Petrolia.

Young women like Mildred were increasingly engaged with professional education and skills in the early 20th century. Jobs as shop clerks, stenographers, bookeepers, telephone operators, and more opened up opportunties for them in Canadian cities. Nursing was once such occupation.

In 19th century Anglo-American world, nursing was popularized by the famous Florence Nightengale, who treated soldiers injured in the conduct of the Crimean War. Efforts to professionalize nursing resulted in the establishment of nursing schools, starting in Toronto (1881) and Montreal (1890) in Canada.

In the realm of psychiatric care, the Rockwood Asylum in Kingston, Ontartio, was the first to establish a training school (1888) for what would be known as psychiatric nursing today. Professionalization of psychiatric nursing lagged behind that of medical nursing, perhaps due the subject's lower status. In this respect, Homewood was early to develop professional standards and schooling of psychiatric nurses. It adopted uniforms for its nurses in 1902, a signal of their distinction from simple, hired help. In 1906, Homewood opened its school.

("Main Drive, showing Manor and Colonial Building, Homewood Sanitarium, Guelph, Ont." ca. 1905. The message on the back reads, in part: "The picture is a lunatic asylum probably your future home. I’ll meet you there maybe." Publisher unknown.)

In a letter to Provincial Inspector Bruce Smith in 1913, the year of Mildred Fry's graduation, Superintendant Hobbs described the schooling at Homewood in this way (Warsh 1989, p. 115):

My graduate nurses ... undergo a training of two years and three months, undergo a strict course of lectures, and pass a very strict severe standard for their examinations.

Homewood offered a variety of treatment methods in that era, including occupational therapy (as it would be called today), amusements (such as sporting events offered on its extensive grounds), tonics, withdrawal therapy, gynaecological surgery, electrotherapy, hydrotherapy, the rest cure, the gold cure (a treatment for alcoholism), and a kind of chemotherapy. Nursing training would have involved learning and assisting in all of these theraputic regimes.

Nonetheless, graduates were not seen as equal to nurses with medical backgrounds and experienced difficulties in getting good jobs and professional status. (The Province of Ontario finally established professional accredidation for psychiatric nurses in 1922.)

As such, students like Mildred Fry provided inexpensive labour during their training but faced significant challenges in finding work in the profession upon graduation. Perhaps these challenges help to explain why Mildred returned to farm life shortly after her graduation from Homewood.

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Works consulted for this post include:

• Warsh, C. K. (1989). Moments of unreason: The practice of Canadian psychiatry and the Homewood Retreat, 1883-1923. McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP.