Program

NYS Historic, Pomeroy Education Program

Subject

Building, People

Location

31 S Clinton St, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601, USA

Lat/Long

41.698889, -73.921806

Grant Recipient

Arlington High School

Sara Josephine Baker was born on November 15, 1873, in Poughkeepsie, NY. She grew up here at 31 S. Clinton St. until she was sixteen. Following her father and brothers’ untimely deaths as she was about to attend Vassar College, Baker was faced with the financial burden of supporting her mother and sister. According to her autobiography, she “considered herself elected”. She gave up going to Vassar and instead took her remaining funds with her to New York City to enroll in the new medical college that had been established by Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell.

Her risky decision paid off and she graduated with her medical degree from the Women’s Medical College at the New York Infirmary in 1898, its final year before it merged with Cornell’s Weill College of Medicine. Her interest in child hygiene began after her only failed class, called “The Normal Child”. She credits her later work on preventive hygiene as being inspired by having to take the course twice and discovering that it was actually a very important subject of study on the second try.

Following her graduation, Dr. S. J. Baker interned at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, MA for one year. When she returned to New York City she opened a private practice and treated mostly women and children. After about 15 years, according to her autobiography, she applied for the civil service exam, for the position of a medical inspector at the Department of Health. This began her career in Public Health, as she got the position and began inspecting children in schools for illness.

During this time, she continued to witness the high infant mortality rate, particularly among the poverty-stricken areas of the city. She began to look for healthy babies and attempted to educate the mothers on how to care for them to prevent illness.

In 1907 Dr. Baker had her first encounter with Mary Mallon, known as Typhoid Mary. Baker was charged with investigating and detaining Mary. Mary had recently been linked as a healthy carrier of Typhoid to multiple outbreaks. Mary Mallon was extremely resistant to the idea that she, as a healthy person, could be the source of illness in other people, and refused to cooperate or stop working as a cook. Dr. Baker could not get her to understand that she was harming other people, and Mary was forcibly quarantined. This was controversial, and she was released. Dr. Baker had to arrest Mary a second time, as she continued to work as a cook and infect people with Typhoid after her release.

In 1908 she was appointed as Director of the newly created Bureau of Child Hygiene and began her campaign to educate the New York City’s population of mothers on preventative measures that could increase their children’s chances of surviving.

In 1917 while serving as director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene, Baker was asked to speak for the NYU Bellevue Hospital Medical College on preventive care for children, but she refused to unless they allowed her to enroll in their Public Health PhD program. Unable to find another male lecturer with her expertise, they allowed her to enroll. She is listed as a student in 1916 and 1917, and her autobiography and obituaries state that she received her second doctoral degree in 1917. She wrote four books about preventive child hygiene during the early 1920’s, and her autobiography in 1939.

Baker served as Director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene until 1923, after which she began her lecturing and consulting years. By the time she retired, she was credited with saving over 90,000 babies and nearly halving the infant mortality rate in NYC. With this renown and fame, she became a lecturer for Columbia and New York Universities and consulted with the U.S. Public Health Service and NYS Department of Health. She was a Fellow with the American Medical Association and President of the American Child Hygiene Association. She also served as an appointed member of the League of Nations Health Committee. She served on the Board of Trustees for the NY Infirmary, the hospital founded by the Blackwell sisters and where she had attended medical school.

She was active not only in the medical field, but also in the women’s suffrage movement. She was noted in multiple obituaries as having been an active and outspoken advocate for the women’s suffrage cause. In 1915, there were multiple articles covering Dr. Baker’s speaking and writing on behalf of the suffrage movement. In one from October 8, 1915, Dr. Baker was reported as speaking at the Mothers’ Conference along with Dr. Anna C Hedges from the State Department of Education. Dr. Baker argued that countries which have allowed women the legal power of voting have seen a decrease in their infant mortality, due to women having a say over the conditions of their cities which affect them (Poughkeepsie Eagle News). The American Women’s Suffrage Association, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the Congress of Women of the World’s Fair bestowed recognition on her for her work in Public Health, listing her as one of the “outstanding fifty women of the country” on their fiftieth anniversaries.

The student-led application for this grant came from students at Arlington High School, led by instructor Robert McHugh. The students researched Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, then gathered and submitted the required materials for the historical marker as part of our Pomeroy Education Program.

Source:

“Fighting for Life”, S. Josephine Baker, New York: The Macmillan Co.,1939.